Life was about 10 to 100 times harder to stay alive then. People were dying all over the place at literally any age and this took out a lot of mothers and fathers and siblings and parents or grandparents at a much younger age. People didn't wear seat belts then either so if there was a car or a truck accident often this sent people and children through the front windows too.
Also, racing cars on the streets was a really big thing in the 1950s and 1960s, (especially until about 1965 or 1970 in cities and towns all over the U.S. and having built up your car and tires and suspension for racing was a really big thing then too that often killed people both in the cars they were racing and bystanders on foot or in cars too.
And also then people didn't wear helmets often on Motorcycles because they were too macho to do this and so there were many fatal head injuries many of which I saw. I remember a girl holding the head of her dead boyfriend from a motorcycle crash where he died and she lived because he somehow protected her. This sort of thing was not unusual at all.
I remember on the Ventura Freeway when I was about 8 or 9 years old heading towards Malibu Beach and I heard screaming and saw a stationwagon that had jumped the center divider going the opposite direction flying through the air into oncoming 70mph Traffic. As a child I said to my father not fully understanding this: "Should we go back and help them?" My father said, " Look at the traffic. If we did we would get into an accident too.
It took me a few years to realize that that whole family had died flying through the air into oncoming traffic because they would have hit other cars behind us at an impact of around 140 miles per hour and without seat belts no one could have survived this then with or without seat belts because of the war cars were built then.
But, seeing someone in their 40s look like 70s or 80s people do now was pretty normal and one reason why children thought that anyone over 18 or 20 was an ancient ancient person then much more than now.
I remember working for a guy only 26 years old when I was 15 or 16 at a chain called "Chicken Delight" where they made fried Chicken and he was already a marine Veteran so sort of like someone so hard nosed you might see them in a movie but likely could be dead by 30 just from their attitude and the way they were living and smoking cigarettes. Meeting this strange ex-marine was one of the weirdest experiences in my life because I really could not fully understand someone like this at the time. It really made no real sense to me at 15 or 16 at all.
But, I would not be surprised if this man wasn't alive to see 30 or 40 but I could be wrong about all this. This would have been 1963 when I worked there part time after School.
Also, often people in their 40s in the 1950s had no teeth either because they just pulled their teeth as they rotted to save money or for other reasons. I'm not exactly sure but my father being a valedictorian of his High school Class prioritized dental care. He said, "Your teeth and your feet are really important if you want to live a long time" and he was right.
So, people with no or mostly no teeth often wore full dental plates and would take those dental plates out to scare you or to mess with your head. They thought it was great fun to freak people out.
It was a real thing a lot in the 1950s and early 1960s.
However, by 1965 to 1970 all this completely changed mostly because of more people attending college and not remaining so ignorant as they had been before. the necessity of going to college and not dying or being wounded physically or mentally in the Viet Nam War from the Draft completely changed almost everything about living here in the U.S. ever after that.
So, from about 1963 until 1975 not going to college could literally kill you or steal
