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31 – ZEBRA STRIPES

The first question someone time-traveling from 1954 to 2024 might ask is why everything has a box of black lines on it.

Barcodes were actually invented in the early 1950s, before I was born. But no one could figure out what to do with them. The idea, as is the case now, was to scan them to identify parts and equipment. But they didn’t catch on.

Until somebody figured out that they could solve the problem of what the actual price was for something bought at a supermarket.

Before that, it was those stupid stickers or those price stamps. Sometimes, there would be more than one, and the shopper had to figure out which one was right.

Then the shopper would take a cart full of stickered and stamped groceries and household products to the cash register, wait on a long line, get to the beleaguered cashier looking all over each product for the price, who would then shout to the manager when there was a missing sticker or two prices stamped on the package and, when all that was done, handing the tired shopper a narrow strip of paper with a bunch of printed prices but little or no identification of what price went with which item.

Does that sound about right to you? 

With barcodes, also called UPCs, the cashier scanned the product and rang up items a lot faster. The receipt showed what the price was for the specific product.

That led to self-checkout – the idea that the shopper him or herself could scan the products and pay without benefit of a cashier.

Barcodes were used for tickets to events, the original intention of identifying inventory and even paying tolls and giving out tickets on highways.

Their cousins are the square-shaped, odd-patterned QR code, which is used to link to restaurant menus, videos promoting a resort hotel, the guide to a museum or any number of things.

The barcode is, in reality, the universal language of the 21st century. That would have been a real head scratcher 70 years ago.

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32 – IF A DOCTOR SAYS IT’S OK, IT MUST BE OK

In the waiting room where my Dad hung out as I was being born, he might have leafed through a magazine with the ad below: 

He wouldn’t have given it – or any of the claims Rosalind Russell makes in the ad – a second thought.

People kinda thought smoking was bad. But in 1954, there was no public evidence to link smoking to diseases like lung cancer and emphysema.

This ad, however, was one of the last of its kind. Earlier ads proclaimed that doctors recommended certain cigarette brands – and that was quickly becoming untrue.

My father was a regular smoker in 1954. Camel was his brand. And, in something that might shock my siblings if they read this, I actually saw our mother smoke a cigarette in our living room.

But by 1961, my Dad had given up the cigarettes, starting an 18-year devotion to cigars as a “healthier” option. I never saw my Mom smoke again.

In January 1964, 60 years ago, the Surgeon General of the United States issued a landmark report that changed the way Americans looked at cigarettes. Dr. Luther Terry said cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer for men and probably a cause for women. He also said it was a probable cause for chronic bronchitis.

That was the beginning of a major change in the relationship between Americans and smoking. Warning labels on cigarette packages and anti-smoking ads. Big taxes on tobacco. The end of cigarette advertising, first on TV and radio, then in print. Banning smoking in public places. 

Instead of glamorous – the kind of thing Rosalind Russell or, another star of a 1954 cigarette ad, Ronald Reagan would do – it was now vulgar and unappealing.

Nevertheless, it has taken a long time to bring smoking rates down. And the tobacco industry isn’t going without a fight – introducing vaping, a way to smoke without burning dried leaves. It’s still what the tough kids do to prove themselves.

What it’s not – filtered or otherwise – is healthy. Despite what Auntie Mame might say.

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33 – JUST THROW ANYTHING ON

At least once a year, I watch what I think is the most famous film clip of the year I was born: Willie Mays’ spectacular catch in game one of the 1954 World Series.

The most amazing thing about it is, well, the catch itself. (Here it is:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrsg_-dV7Q

The other amazing thing, to me, is in the last frame of this particular clip.

The fact that everybody in the crowd sitting in New York’s Polo Grounds is wearing a jacket, a shirt and tie, or both.

I haven’t worn a tie to a baseball game since I covered Game 5 of the 1978 World Series in Yankee Stadium. That’s because I came from a friend’s wedding. I was the only reporter doing so.

Sometime between the 1950s and 1970s, people stopped dressing up all the time. Because when you look at films from that era, ballgames were not the only things that people wore what we now refer to “dress clothes.”

People wore dress clothes to the park. People wore dress clothes to the theater. Women dressed up to do housework. 

Where you really notice it is on an airplane. Everybody, even the kids, used to dress up to fly somewhere.

The only people wearing dress clothes on the last flight I took were the flight attendants. Even they were somewhat casual.

Of course, another explanation for that is that you practically need to undress to get past security. But that’s a different matter.

I’m not sure why casual became the way to dress. TV? Rock and roll? It’s a waste of time and energy? The rise of designer name clothing?

Your guess is as good as mine.

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34 – YEAH, BABY

If you asked my parents in 1954 where babies come from, I wager they’d be more likely to believe they were delivered by a stork than what some of the actual answers are today.

In 1954, if a couple was unable to have children of their own or a woman wanted a child without engaging in sex with a man, tough. The only way they could be parents would be to adopt – and that was pretty much not an option for a single person, man or woman. Many couples did, however, to their everlasting joy.

But, in 1978, British researchers announced the birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first person conceived by in vitro fertilization, in which sperm and egg are fertilized outside the egg. In Brown’s case, that was a Petri dish – not, as popularly described, in a test tube.

This breakthrough in assisted reproduction led to others.

Couples who had trouble with fertility or the physical ability to conceive children now could. Women could have sperm implanted from an anonymous donor and bear a child of their own. 

Women structurally incapable of carrying a child to term could have a laboratory-fertilized embryo – often frozen – implanted in another woman who could then deliver the baby. Gay couples who wanted to be fathers could do so.

Woman who wanted children but also wanted a career so that they could provide for those kids were able to freeze embryos for a time when they more ready to be mothers.

There were moral questions raised at first. The man who became Pope John Paul I (who died a month after investiture) worried that women could be reduced to becoming “baby factories.” But he also expressed joy for the families that so wanted to bring life into the world that they would try something like this.

In vitro fertilization, though, is not easy, even after 46 years. There’s a high failure rate. There’s a high miscarriage rate. It is an expensive proposition. 

As a result, there is a lot of heartbreak.

Adding to it, just this year, were idiot Alabama judges who ruled that frozen embryos are people – and that destroying them, as sometimes needs to be done as part of the process, is akin to murder. It’s part of the extreme right-wing effort to demonize anything that allows a woman to make a choice as to whether they should or shouldn’t have children.

The ruling has led to confusion and dismay among Alabama families just trying to be happy.

My parents would probably be shocked by the idea of in vitro fertilization. But they’d be horrified that anyone who would deny would-be Moms and Dads the joy they experienced from their four children.

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35 – NO BABY

The year 1954 was in the heart of what we now refer to as the Baby Boom – the vast generation of children born after soldiers returned home from World War II.

For the most part, the women who bore those children – my mother among them – wanted to do so.

But, 70 years ago, there were few options for any woman who either wanted to enjoy sexual activity with men or, more darkly, endured nonconsensual sex.

The idea of birth control dated back to the 19th century, when groups formed in the U.S. and Britain to promote the idea of family planning. Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control clinic in this country, was 74 years old in 1954 and funding development of medical methods of contraception. 

Those medical methods – in the form of hormonal pills taken by women on a daily basis – first surfaced in the 1960s.

There was one problem: The disapproval of large swatches of society.

Sanger, herself, was arrested for opening those clinics and spreading information about contraception. Religions – in particular, the Roman Catholic Church – condemned birth control as being against God’s will.

In the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, by a 7-2 margin, that government prohibition of contraception information was unconstitutional. The ruling opened the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and made family planning a reality for most Americans.

At the same time, circumstances contributed to the movement to legalize abortion.

It’s not as if there weren’t any abortions before 1973. It’s just that they were illegal. There were doctors who performed them in secret. There were also women forced to do terrible things to themselves, sometimes proving fatal, in order to end an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy,

And there were reasons besides an accidental pregnancy. For instance, in the early 1960s, women were prescribed a drug aimed at mitigating the discomfort than accompanies getting pregnant. 

The problem was the drug, Thalidomide, deformed the fetuses. Children were being born with defects that made for some very depressing photos on the pages of Life magazine.

In other instances, women developed life-threatening complications, and they and their families faced the horrible choice of delivering a possibly unhealthy baby or letting the woman who bore that child suffer and possibly die.

In 1967, Colorado became the first state to legalize some abortions – in cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother or fetus. Three years later, New York became the first state to allow abortion for whatever reason a woman gave.

Then, of course, came Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion for whatever reason throughout the United States. The Supreme Court voted 7-2, with justices appointed by both political parties of the issue on both sides.

Women could choose to terminate a pregnancy or use a method of birth control that prevented one. That should have been the happy ending.

It wasn’t.

The forces that worked to ban birth control and abortion since the 19th century – mostly religious groups – gathered strength. The Republican Party – despite the fact that four of the seven votes for Roe were justices appointed by Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon – became a rallying point for those who wanted the decision overturned.

In 2022, with six Republican-appointed justices – three of them picked by Donald Trump – on the Court, Roe v. Wade and another case were overturned. Abortion was no longer legal everywhere. In some states, it was pretty much illegal.

One of those justices, Clarence Thomas, suggested that the Griswold ruling legalizing birth control should also be reconsidered.

This would all have been bewildering to my parents in 1954, But my mother lived to see a lot of this happen and fully supported the idea that a woman has the right to choose what she does with her body.

She would be really upset if she saw the current situation. 

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36 – BOW, WOW

Dogs were “man’s best friend” in 1954, and there were plenty of cats around as well. 

But the relationship between people and animals, both wild and domesticated ones, has widened considerably in the last 70 years.

One example came in the fall of ’54. That was when two television dramas, “Lassie” on CBS and “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” on NBC, debuted. While Rin Tin Tin only lasted a few years, Lassie was a Sunday night family fixture into the 1970s.

That was followed by the advent of real-life animal shows and films. Walt Disney championed live-action films with animal characters. And NBC aired “Wild Kingdom,” animal scenes filmed around the world and hosted by Lincoln Park Zoo director Marlin Perkins and, later, zoologist Jim Fowler.

The prevalence of animal heroes in the media made people more sympathetic to all forms of animal life. And it manifested itself in different ways.

The pet industry exploded, with superstores like Petco and PetSmart, and online merchants such as Chewy, not to mention whole aisles in big supermarkets. Communities set aside areas as dog parks, where canines could mingle with others of their species. Baseball teams created “Bark at the Park” so that dogs and fans could cheer their teams.

With non-pets, the depiction of animals’ lives inspired the creation of organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA, and the Humane Society of America, both joining the long-standing American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

And lots of people decided that part of that sentiment included not eating animals in any way, shape or form. Veganism, which not only forsook meat but any product that originated from an animal (i.e. honey, milk), was adopted by a large segment of the population, with such noted adherents as Paul McCartney and Bill Clinton.

My parents weren’t pet lovers (my Dad called every dog he saw Rex Cecil, as if it’s a real name) – and I imagine that’s a factor as to why I’m not either (although being bitten by dogs twice and attacked other times didn’t help). I think they probably would be surprised to the extent that animal loving has become so prevalent in society. 

But they probably wouldn’t bark too much about it.

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37 – FADE AWAY

Of course Alzheimer’s disease existed in 1954. 

It’s just that the people you and I think of as having the disease wouldn’t have had it back then. Or at least be able to say they had Alzheimer’s.

Until the 1970s, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was limited to people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who experienced memory loss and other signs of dementia.

But once the definition changed, it turned out that the majority of elderly people diagnosed with dementia had Alzheimer’s. 

It also turned out that, with a population that was living longer, there were so many more cases.  

One of them would be my father. 

So my family and 6 million other American families understand, in a way people just didn’t 70 years ago, how devastating Alzheimer’s is. It exploded into our consciousness with all the pain a disease can deliver. And if affects one in 16 people over the age of 65, according to the National Institute on Aging.

My father passed away seven years ago today. I’ve tried to block out the memories of his last years and focus on what made him great – his sense of humor, his ability to tell a story, his way with words and the strength of his love and devotion to his family.

But as I and my peers reach these later years, the fear of Alzheimer’s gets more real. I’m not sure how to stop it – we keep hoping for a real cure. But I sure as hell am going to try.

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38 – мужність

The mortal enemy of the United States on the day I was born was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

We were in an arms race with the Soviet Union. We were petrified that some nutty leader would attempt to nuke us into oblivion. 

In a few years, there was a space race to go with it. And the Soviets seemed determined to spread their influence around the globe.

But that nutty leader wouldn’t be Joseph Stalin, who died in 1953, the year before I was born. By April 1954, Nikita Khrushchev had assumed the important job of Communist Party Chairman. 

Any hope that Khrushchev would be a kindler, gentler Soviet leader were crushed in 1956, when he sent troops to end an anti-Communist uprising in Hungary, and vanished in 1961 when the Berlin Wall divided the occupied former German capital.

Every U.S. President from Truman to George H.W. Bush stood fast against the Soviets. In the case of John F. Kennedy, that meant taking us to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when Khrushchev placed nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from this country.

It was during Bush’s presidency that the USSR crumbled. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet bloc states shed their totalitarian ways and there was a sense that the threat had abated. Now, we could focus on nut cases in the Middle East.

A former KGB agent – someone who was a toddler in Leningrad in 1954 – wended his way to power in Moscow. Vladimir Putin was a required to be a member of the Communist Party when he was serving the Soviets from New Zealand and East Germany. 

But, magically, he foreswore Communism for a form of Russian nationalism that included helping oligarchic capitalists and reclaiming territory that the Soviets controlled up until 1991.

And, from 2017 to 2021, it was no longer the United States standing up to the Russians. Putin had a buddy in President Donald Trump and laid the groundwork for further mischief.

There was however, one leader who was determined to stop him. A former comedian who ascended to the presidency of Ukraine – which had been the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office in 2019 – a year in which he had a very uncomfortable meeting with Trump, who was seeking dirt on potential presidential rival Joe Biden. The meeting led to Trump’s first impeachment, in which he was acquitted.

When Putin sought to expand his Russian empire by retaking Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyy and the bulk of the Ukrainian people weren’t having it. Expected by the world to capitulate in days, the Ukrainians are still standing. Their courage – мужність in Ukrainian – should be an inspiration to all who believe in democracy and freedom.

It would have surprised my parents if you told them, in 1954, that a place supposedly part of the Soviet Union would stand up to the attempt to recreate something like it in the 21st century.

Here’s the part that would have stunned and saddened them – and most other adult Americans: With Ukraine fighting for its life, politicians in the United States – mostly Republicans following the Putin-apologist Trump – would work to stop providing aid to keep Kyiv fighting.

It goes to show that the Cold War was about fighting Communism, not the historically aggressive stance of the land mass that is Russia. When Russia turned to oligarchic capitalism, too many Americans were happy to support it.

My parents would be as angry as I am.

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39 – THE MUDVILLE TEN

If there was anything people in 1954 would be certain about what life would be like 70 years later, it’s the fact that there are nine starting players in a Major League Baseball game.

And they’d be wrong.

After the bewilderment, it would be your opportunity to explain the designated hitter, or DH.

It was instituted in 1973 by the American League to increase the amount of offense in a game. AL attendance – that includes my parents’ beloved New York Yankees – lagged the National League, which seemed to play a more exciting game of baseball. The National League had Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Billy Williams and a lot of other sluggers, as well as aggressive players such as Pete Rose and Joe Morgan.

The DH was the American League’s answer to that. It took almost a half-century for the National League to follow suit, boosted toward action by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

Diehard baseball fans, like my parents, had issues with the DH. It seemed like it reduced the pitcher to being a one-way player. And it simplified some of baseball’s strategy – do I pinch hit for a pitching who’s got a good game going but is down a run?

Then, in 2008, Yankee pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, off to a fantastic start in his career, needed to run the bases in a game at Houston, which was then part of the National League. At that time, games in NL parks were played without the DH, a disadvantage to AL teams.

Wang tore up his right foot and needed extensive rehabilitation. It derailed his career and hurt the Yankees’ chances in that season.

As my brother says, my mother was more of a Yankee fan than a baseball fan. When Wang got hurt, the DH became a necessity. We argued about it for the final 11 years of her life.

The DH is one of two rule changes that fundamentally changed major sports.

The other came in basketball.

When there were efforts made to challenge the dominance of the National Basketball Association, upstart leagues introduced a 3-point field goal. It was attained by sinking a basket from a long distance.

The idea was to increase scoring and allow smaller players to have as much impact on the game as the big centers were having in the NBA.

The American Basketball Association, which started play in 1967, introduced three-point baskets (and a red, white and blue basketball). Two years after four ABA teams were absorbed into the NBA, the expanded league introduced the 3-point line. A few years later, it made its way into college basketball.

That rule has made comebacks more feasible in games. And it has produced prolific long-range shooters such as Stephen Curry and Caitlin Clark.

Are games with 3-point baskets and DHs more fun to watch? I don’t know what folks in 1954 would have thought.

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40 – SPARE THE ROD

In 1954, conventional wisdom was that if you wanted to raise a spoiled brat, you would never hit your child.

Corporal punishment was considered necessary at home and in school. It was part of the culture – from the Little Rascals to “The Danny Thomas Show.” 

In the musical “Carousel,” when Billy Bigelow comes back to Earth to make amends for his life, he slaps his daughter when she refuses his gift. But then she tells her mother that the slap felt like a kiss, everybody sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child” was the operative expression. And for some parents, it still is – corporate punishment is not illegal in any American home unless it is excessive. (The problem becomes, of course, what qualifies as “excessive.”)

But starting in the 1950s, attitudes toward corporal punishment began to change.

I don’t have a definitive answer as to why. But I think the one person who might have set off the anti-spanking revolution is Dr. Benjamin Spock.

His watershed 1946 book, “Baby and Child Care,” encouraged parents to cut their kids some slack. He thought affection and treating each child as an individual was a better way to raise them. And though it took a while, parents began to do that.

There were other factors. The kindly ways of children’s show hosts like Fred Rogers and Bob Keeshan, a.k.a. Captain Kangaroo, were at odds with the stern parent image – and may have influenced grownups. And the fact that violence against children – particularly from guns – makes parents more inclined to make their homes a sanctuary rather than a courtroom.

And then there’s science. The American Academy of Pediatrics says corporal punishment leads to a variety of bad outcomes in children – including impaired development, increased aggressiveness and failure to stop bad behavior in the long term.

In 1979, Sweden became the world’s first country to ban corporal punishment in any setting – home or school. Now, 63 nations prohibit it – from Argentina to France to South Korea to South Africa.

In the United States, only four states – Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey and New York – prohibit corporal punishment in all schools. In 27 other states and the District of Columbia, it’s barred in public schools but allowed in private ones. In 19 states – and the Venn diagram of those states and red political states would have a lot of overlap – physical punishment is allowed in public schools.

The idea of hitting someone you love – especially someone virtually defenseless – seems wrong. It seems cruel. 

But hindsight is perfect. Parents of previous generations had the same goal as we do in the 21st century – raising happy, well-adjusted kids. They had a very different way of doing it, because it was all they knew.

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