No one that I knew owned a TV then, even my grandfather who lived next door on his 2 1/2 acres of Black Cherry trees, Apple Trees, raspberries and Blackberries didn't have one. But, everyone I knew had a radio and used it like a TV to listen to all the programs back then like Gildersleave and Fibber McGee and Molly at night. And everyone had a record player that I knew. And even though they were about 10 times as expensive to talk on then relative to now, most people had a land line phone as well unless it was too remote to have one put in because it would be too expensive to do.
There were no red light, yellow light, green light traffic signals yet that I ever saw in Seattle. But there were what we called "Traffic Signals" which were an evolution that came from train signals. So there was no yellow phase and the signals had words on them that were "Go" and "Stop" so sometimes during the transitions people crashed into each other because the "yellow" phase gives people time to change their minds and to adjust which is why the yellow phase is a good idea. When it was time to go the mechanical arm clanged and went down so the arm went straight out horizontally and when it was time to stop it clanged and the other arm came down horizontally and the go arm went up. This is how you knew when to go and to stop in traffic then in Seattle.
Sometime during the 1950s I believe traffic signals (yellow, red and green) because universal throughout the U.S. I can't find a picture of what the ones looked like in Seattle but here is one from another country:
It is called a semaphore. The ones I saw were mostly white with the words Go on one and stop on the other. So one was up while the other was down in the position above. I didn't see traffic lights everywhere until I moved to California in 1952 with my parents to San Diego. I think all of California had already moved to yellow, red, and green signal lights by then.The other difference was that I rode behind my father at age 2 because I could stand up by standing on the back seat of the car and holding my father's front seat. If he turned the corner too fast to the right I sometimes fell down and hit my head on the doorknob. I pretended I was driving the car this way instead of my father and this made me very happy. If he did a strong left turn it wasn't as bad if I fell because my head would hit the soft rear seat of the 1941 Century Buick. Sometimes Dad raced other guys in this car on Freeways while I was along for the ride back then as this one was really fast and powerful.
If you imagine this a lighter shade of blue and a front visor sticking out above the windshield(they didn't make top tinted windshield glass much then) I rode in one like this from 1948 until 1956 when my Dad bought a new one. This was a three speed column shift stick shift that my mother learned to drive in too when I was about 6 so she would have been around 35 when she learned to drive enough to get a driver's license. I hit the windshield while alone with her a couple of times though, especially when she hit someone's mailbox. Kids had to be coordinated enough to survive parents then even more than now. She needed to drive 1/2 hour each way to a church my parents were in charge of from 1954 until 1960 when I was 12 in downtown Los Angeles. Dad made sure the next Century Buick 1956 was an Automatic Transmission so it was easier for Mom to drive after that. By 1965 she had her own car too. I was 16 in 1964 and bought a 1956 Ford Stationwagon for Surfing and traveling in. So, she bought a new 1965 Gold Chevy Impala which was a nice car soon after. I guess Dad couldn't say no to her after I bought a car which was good because she always owned a car until she passed away in 2008 after that.
This is something like what visors looked like on old cars then: Also, my Dad had a spotlight like this one too on the driver's side. You could turn the spotlight anywhere from inside the car to light anything you needed to Brightly like a headlight until they made them illegal except for the police.
My father had a visor on the front windshield like a hat brim and fender covers on the blue Buick which was all the rage then as well as feelers which would drag on the curbs so you wouldn't hit your tires on a curb when parking. He also had a knob on the front steering wheel which eventually became illegal because women and some men got their clothes caught in them and crashed and sometimes died. But then, steering wheel knobs were common especially on all big trucks for easy turning. After steering wheel knobs became illegal people used other methods which worked just as good and I still use them today when turning.
This is what curb feelers looked like then on the front of this guys pipes behind his front tire.
Though there were many ornate types this is the basic shape of a steering wheel knob that was clamped on the steering wheel back then. to see more go to Google Images to see more of these as well as anything else you want to see there.People were much more macho and tougher in many ways. So, if the weather was above 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit every man would open the window of the driver's side and rest his arm (elbow) where the open window opened and let the breeze blow through his hair. One reason for this was there were no Air Conditioners yet. And most cars didn't have internal vents either yet just heaters for when it was cold. But we did have what were called "Wind Wings". In front of most front windows were little window wings which could direct the wind on you as the front driver or front passenger on hot days to stay cool. It was often awful to ride in the back of a car on a really hot day unless you had a cold drink with ice it in or a wet wash cloth. Otherwise you might get a headache or pass out, especially children who weren't watched carefully enough.
Seat belts didn't come to be required legally to wear until 1984 in New York State. So, though cars often required to have seat belts in them after 1961 in the U.S. nobody wore them unless they wanted to be called a "Sissy" until tickets started to be given out starting with New York in 1984. So, only women wore them at all until seat belt tickets started to be given out. I myself had to get 2 or 3 tickets for not wearing a seat belt starting in Hawaii in 1989 for me to realize it wasn't cost effective not to wear them. Many of us really resented having to wear the damn things after a life of freedom.
One of my best memories of childhood was traveling to death valley in my father's 1960 Mercury stationwagon with my Dad and a friend from Glendale, California where I lived then. We put the back seats down and laughed and sang (I was about 10 I think) and we sang "It was an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka dot Bikini"). So many of my memories were around the freedom of not ever wearing a seat belt. I still think it should be optional whether people wear seatbelts and makes people psychological prisoners being held captive by their cars. And I think this greatly damages young children being trapped in a seat belt or car seat and makes people unfree in their thoughts. People were much freer in the way the grew up before seat belts. Now people act like psychological prisoners instead.
The way people looked at all this then was only the toughest survived. Only women were upset about this and insisted that everyone wear seatbelts. Men always accepted that only the toughest and most resourceful survived. It was Natural selection in action and men always accepted this. I think much was lost in the extreme safety conscious world we all now live in. It makes everyone less capable of anything useful. So, instead of a group of men capable of surviving anything, it isn't that way anymore and I mourn for many of the ways things used to be. Whenever you change the way things have been for thousands of years already there will be a price to pay and we are paying it now and it will get much more extreme in the future. There is always a price to be paid for any change in life. This is always something to remember.
Another interesting thing to think about regarding 1950 is that in 1950 people who were born in 1880 were only 70 years old. So there were people in their 80s and 90s who still remember the Civil War even in 1950. In 1950 anyone 50 or older then remembered horses everywhere and horse drawn carriages and wagons and horses spooking and running amok when automobiles first came on the scene without mufflers and smoked and scared everyone and people started dying traveling at faster speeds. If you crashed in a buggy or wagon you were going so slow if you were inside a wagon you likely wouldn't die but only get injured. But, when cars were first built glass wasn't safety glass and many people got cut and bled to death on just the glass before help arrived to stop arterial bleeding.
Also, chopped down Model A Fords turned into Hot rods killed a lot of young people still around 1950. So, when they built their own Hot rods out of Model A coupes and ragtops (convertibles) many young people died when they hit something and flew 100 feet or more without seat belts. So, surviving to 25 was something harder to do in 1950 than it is today.
In 1952 my grandfather bought the first Black and white big TV in the family so he could watch the Republican Convention which nominated General Eisenhower from World War II to be President. General Eisenhower built the transportation system(built major highways) throughout the U.S. which made us the most successful nation on earth and other nations have been trying to catch up to us ever since. But now our cost of labor is too high to be able to maintain our infrastructure which is very problematic for the nation going forwards. But, maybe with citizen volunteers the infrastructure might be maintained for less money. Otherwise we will have more bridges collapsing and rusting away over the next few decades.
Also, in 1950 the draft of young men 18 to 26 was in place since around the early 1940s after Pearl Harbor. So, if you were 18 and had graduated high school and had relatively good health you could expect to be drafted into the army for four years. So, most young men (If they didn't go to college and get a student deferment) expected to spend 4 years in the Army and to hopefully travel the world in 1950. This didn't change until the late 1970s when the draft ended and we began an all volunteer army. However, this doesn't solve all problems, it also creates many new ones for the nation because historically the problem with all volunteer armies on earth is nepotism. Nepotism tend to separate the needs of the Armies from the needs of the citizens of that country eventually. So, the armies tend to be only for the Armies and no longer for the people eventually. This is historically true when volunteer armies exist for longer than 50 years or so in any country. So, likely within another 20 years or so you will see a draft of both young men and women between the ages of 18 and 26 that are healthy enough for it.
I wouldn't want my daughter to be drafted personally. However, historically I also see the writing on the wall. Hopefully my teenage daughter will be 30 or older when this happens.
Everything including all the people were very different in the ways they saw everything than now. There is almost no way to compare now to 1950 just like there would have been no way to compare 1950 to 1900. The world changes a lot in 50 years. It has now been 63 years since 1950. I just realized it will have been 50 years since the first Kennedy assassination this coming November. Time Flies. I was 15 then.
One another note I lived on my grandfather's 2 1/2 acres of land in Lake Forest Park near Seattle, in Washington. Since most of the dwellings (I guess for the view of the area) were on the hill with my grandfather's larger home near the top of the hill on the property, the driveway was in a circle down to his garages and workshops. Also, he had dug a well on the property that was automated and served the whole property with all occupants there. Everyone who lived there was family. Part of the garage and workshop had been converted into a sort of duplex for my Aunt and her husband and their two children. And then when my father got married he built underneath the garage (since it was on a hill) another apartment which opened up to the berries and Apple and Cherry trees. So, even when I was 2 or 3 I could walk out into a forest of apple and cherry trees and berries (raspberries, boysenberries and blueberries). So, this part was nice. However, the weather there most of the year is cloudy, rainy or snowy depending upon the time of year. So, this I found hard to deal with as a child because it is hard to play outside when it is raining or snowing especially if you are 2 to 4 years of age. However, there was no danger at all for me except for cement stairs going up to the main circular driveways where we (my older cousins and I played on bicycles and I had a little car with peddles and a tricycle to play with until I moved to San Diego when I was 4. Then we rode there (my mother, her mother and I) on the train. I wore a dress suit with a tie and a trench coat and I carried a briefcase when we traveled on the train. Inside the brief case I had coloring books and comic books. I often (read) comic books (I could only just look at pictures then) and laugh when my mother or grandmother read the captions to me. Once I started reading at 5 or 6 years of age I would get my hair cut at the barbers and laugh a lot while having my hair cut while reading funny books or comics pages from the newspapers.
One time my Grandad came when I was screaming from being stung by hornets from a nest. I was 3 or 4 and visiting a friend alone a few acres away and got stung many times. He came running and saved me from the hornets. Then he poured gasoline on the nest and brought me to watch him burn it up. We were always buddies after that. When you are little and someone saves your life you will be friends for life with that person.
I can remember my mother listening to Mario Lansa and singing "Be My Love" along with him on the record player. She was a Coloratura Soprano and really had an amazing voice that sometimes brought tears to my eyes as a child and my grandmother's too (her mother) while we both listened to her singing. Often I would be sitting on the cold floor and kind of bored at 2 and after so one time I pulled down a clock and began to take it apart to see how it was made. Though they were at first angry at me for pulling the clock off the mantle by it's cord they decided to let me take it apart as I was curious to see how it worked at about age 3 after they cleaned the broken glass of the face of the clock up since I had broken it. I always wanted to know how things worked so often at dinner I asked my father how things worked. Since he was an electrician and a very intelligent practical man he would tell me how things worked. So, the more I learned the more I wanted to know about the world.
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