Most of the 1950’s comes back into distant focus for me through the lens of my Dad’s 8mm movies or Kodak slide shows played again and again over the first seven decades of my life.

Note from the author: 
This is the first of eight autobiographical posts by decade following this same outline for each in an August 2025 SERIES. 

The 1950’s to which History points

By now few of us look back to the 1950’s. We were to be called the baby boomers and most of us no longer remember the realities of that decade.

Although I was born at the turn of the decade into the 50’s, we were all slight late-comers to the baby boomer generation launched at the conclusion of World War II in A.D. 1945.

Our fathers had mostly been a part of the war in one branch of the military service or another.

Our mothers too, who had dutifully been brought into service of the country by stepping into many industrial manufacturing roles vacated by all the men called to the battlefronts of the Pacific and Europe.

To many of us the bomb was part of the BOOM leading into the early lives of all of us ‘boomers.’

In later years we wondered if F.D.R. had really been right when in our fathers’ youthful generation during the Great Depression the President had assured,

“The only thing we have to fear… is fear itself.”

We were all pretty scared of the bomb (especially during those occasional duck-and-cover drills under our elementary school classroom desks).

The 1950’s as I recall

I suppose that your life is little different from mine in that as we look back — further and deeper into our past — many of our memories have faded.

My recall of the end of the 50’s has clouded into a nostalgia more to my liking. I would have been beginning fourth grade in 1959, a time when elementary school dominated my weekdays.

School

Cortland Elementary was an old dark-red brick building at the end of Park Avenue, a narrow two-lane street shaded mostly by maple trees with sidewalks leading south to West Main Street. My dad had graduated from Cortland High School, housed there for decades and his class picture (1941) hung on the wall of the main hallway.

Some of the kids walked to school, but we got to ride the bus (driven by Mr. Whiteside who lived on Park Avenue). My brother and sister and I crossed a generally deserted East Main Street to catch the bus.

When we grew older I would watch for the bus out the window from our couch near the window looking south. I could see our bus as it turned the corner and approached for our stop (in about two or three minutes) and could shout ‘the bus is coming’ to my younger sister and brother as we rushed toward the front door with lunchboxes, coats, books, etc.

I don’t remember much about our half-day kindergarten or first grade up until then — only the teachers (even now); but recess, of course, was our favorite part of the school day.

Cortland Elementary’s playground in the 1950’s was across Pearl Street and our teachers would line us up to WALK down the hall TOGETHER and STOP before crossing to the playground.

Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite

I also recall the one weekend the Barnum and Bailey Circus came to Cortland and they unloaded all the animals from a train on Erie Street (just block west of the school) and paraded them to an area near our playground where they pitched a HUGE circus tent. I had never seen BIG elephants (and lions and tigers and bears.. ) Of course we all went to the Circus with all these animals doing tricks and clowns up close and a ringmaster walking about with great pomp, creating great expectations and anticipation in another ring as his amplified voice resounded from his hand-held mic on a long cord over the buzz of the crowd and animal noises though-out the big-top tent arena with a backstage of a whole open field (where we were never allowed to go) between our playground and the tracks.

Besides elementary school, like most children my early memories centered around places related to my family.

The 50’s of our Parents and Family

Pretty much everyone in Cortland Ohio knew everybody else, or at least someone from their family. In addition to his other job at the mill, Grandpa Harned was mayor and judge — Grandma Harned had horses and ponies we got to ride (the last ones in the village before it grew into a city).

I once visited my Grandpa Harned at Richards Feed Mill where I got to ride on the belt-elevator. It was like a daring amusement ride lifting the millers up into the floor above, who would then step off as the belt continued to rise to the wheel near the roof and return on the other side to the ground floor.

Most of all I remember the aroma of fresh-ground oats poured from the huge slowly-rotating grinding stone and bagged in burlap for the horses. Even fresh hay bales brought to Grandma’s barn didn’t smell quite so good as the fresh ground oats she fed her horses and ponies every day.

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Jobs of our Parents

Except for summers until Labor Day, kids went to school.

Our dads had jobs in places we knew and did things we mostly thought that we understood.

Dad and Uncle Bob, with a party-line phone number one digit lower than ours, were Harned Brothers Construction and built custom homes and some commercial projects like building the new Sparkle Market over the foundation of Cortland’s old movie theater on S. High Street next to the R.B. Market which they also built.

Some years, Mom worked too —  at Packard Electric (one of the big G.M. plants in Warren).

When we were older, mom would sometimes allow us to walk (together) down to Isley’s dairy on West Main. Isley’s hand-scooped ice cream into a cone or into a milkshake mixed right in front of you —  all like a show just for you taking place behind their counter (with those cool stools that spun).

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Who mattered most then?

Actually, it was family that mattered most to most to nearly everyone back then. Extended family too — especially grandparents, aunts and uncles. Various family reunions were big every summer and sometimes we traveled to see distant relatives in other states.

Almost every kid like me had a mom who took charge of our everyday upbringing. We thought every kid had a dad, too – and then later discovered a few new kids at school who didn’t.

As the oldest I was expected to know what was going on with my sister and brother. We all learned to connect to extended family of my dad’s and mother’s at various summer family reunions.

Teachers mattered too; they were like a parent and we had to obey them like our mom and dad — OR ELSE!

That might be one reason I wanted to be a teacher. They were kind, knew more than our parents (or so we thought) and some teacher always cared when you couldn't figure out something in class or life. 

Both parents expected us to respect teachers, policemen, and firemen (which my dad volunteered as one). And we had better listen to our preachers, Sunday School teachers, scout leaders and the parents of the other kids we knew.

Our Faith of these years past

Like my brother and sister and a few cousins who lived nearby, we also grew up together with a few kids our age from church.

Everybody goes to church — or so I thought. Most of my elementary school classmates weren’t part of my Sunday School class, but eventually we learned where they also went to church.

What shall I do?

In 1959 some of my Sunday School classmates and I started reading the first five books of the Bible.

‘Ugh! Leviticus,’ I lamented as I struggled through it knowing that we had to make it through Deuteronomy.

Our Sunday-school teacher (a parent of a girl in church, as I recall) kept check on us every Sunday, explaining all that we had (were supposed to have) read in our weekly assignment.

Some of it was pretty exciting, but we all probably wondered what Moses had to do with JESUS — Who IS, after all, the reason we all went to church.

 Like the good citizens our parents expected us to be, one Sunday we joined our church in a ceremony confirming our faith — Methodist, in our case, like my father and (later, I would find out, because we never saw them there) my paternal grandfather).

All the moms and grandmothers in our church family also were members of our church and many of them were our Sunday School teachers and some parents were also our scout leaders.

Reverend Birney, our dynamic (Moses-like, I thought) preacher of Cortland Methodist Church, presented me a Revised Standard Version Bible , which I still own today along with many others and still read regularly.

So this nine-year-old fourth-grader would continue into a tumultuous 60’s , anchored by the Gospel and trust-worthy Christian friends from the Methodist and other churches.

And Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel,

“Keep silence and hear, O Israel: this day you have become the people of the LORD your God.

You shall therefore obey the voice of the LORD your God, keeping his commandments and his statutes, which I command you this day.”

Deuteronomy 27:9 – Revised Standard Version

What will our Future bring?

Taking into account how time blurs our memories of the past, we’ll move on to the 60’s; but as times reconnect we may briefly reminisce back to the 1950’s.

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