Cultural Climate of America is Changing Rapidly: Longing for Nostalgia May Only Go Back Twenty Years

These days, if you even have time to stop and look around without interrupting your busy schedule, the cultural landscape of the United States has undergone numerous changes. Some might argue that it's a different world we live in with all the technological advances and computer capabilities. Perhaps, just going back to the tail end of the 1950's and recalling some things that were common in our everyday life from about 1960 to the present, we can take a nostalgic look at where we've been and get an idea of where we're going.

The end of the 1950's featured one-television set households and AM radio. In television programming, you had the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS. The networks would usually interrupt programming every hour with a little jingle to accompany the network logo. The peacock emblem of NBC for example, would stretch it's feathers into various colors in the early days of color TV. Color TV's really didn't come into vogue until about the mid-60's. Many of us who grew up as part of the baby boomer generation had black-and-white TV sets.

The youth of today probably wouldn't know that there was ever such a thing as black-and-white TV sets. Indeed, when personal computers came out, it seems that the screens on the monitors didn't remain in black and white with green letters for very long. Now you can get a flat panel computer screen to rival, if not outperform, your regular TV set. But getting back to TV network logos, for those of us who were TV addicts, we could listen to the familiar jingles without even looking at the screen and know which network we were watching at the top and sometimes at the middle of the hour.

While we're on the subject of TV programming in the 60's, who could forget some of those clever cigarette ads? These days it's not politically correct to mention cigarettes without talking about the lung cancer they can cause, or the emphysema. But back in the 60's, such cigarette venders as Benson & Hedges used to feature some pretty clever cigarette ads. They would emphasize the length of their cigarettes by constantly showing someone running the end of their cigarette into a door or a wall, and the cigarette would remain lit, although the tip would be bent at a 90 degree angle. Who could forget such memorable slogans as, "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should!" Teachers of grammar, using this cigarette jingle as an example of how not to use proper grammar, insisted that it should have stated, "Winston tastes good, AS a cigarette should."

Although not exactly an advertisement for physical fitness, the folks at Camel used to say, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," implying that the taste of a Camel cigarette was so good, it was worth the distance to travel if a pack of Camels couldn't be immediately found. Who can forget such brands as Virginia Slims, targeted at women smokers: "You've got your own cigarette now, baby; you've come a long way now!" Even though the national consciousness of today's health conscious people would prefer we forget all the talk about cigarettes, and indeed, the advertisements were banned from TV about the time of the late 60's or early 70's, people still do smoke, especially in the movies.

Even more amusing were the warning labels that evolved on a pack of cigarettes. They used to say on the side of a pack, that "Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." The warning labels now talk about causing lung cancer and emphysema and other respiratory diseases. Whether you smoked or not, no other behavior or habit has become more stigmatized in recent years, with many cities passing ordinances banning cigarette smoking of any type inside of buildings, including many bars and nightclubs.

Another cultural icon or series of icons that have changed over the years is how music was recorded and sold. Before the 50's, vinyl records played on a turntable with a needle that played up to speeds of 78 revolutions per minute, and were almost the size of an LP (long playing) record that only spun at 33 revolutions per minute. You can see an amusing demonstration of this in the movie, Good Morning, VIetnam, where Robin Williams plays a disc jockey in the 60's during the Vietnam war. During the 60's, record companies got the idea to produce what were called "45's,' which, as the name implied, were vinyl records that spun around the turntable at 45 revolutions per minute, and required an adapter about an inch in circumference in the middle that you had to carefully insert in the donut hole of the record in order to play a 45 on a standard turntable.

Groups like the Beatles would record a hit song on one side and a song not expected to get much airplay on the radio on the other, although at times, the Beatles would record a hit song on both sides. Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields is an example of a two-sided hit during Beatlemania for those of us old enough to remember. The first real concept album, where all of the songs had something in common, as opposed to an LP with just a collection of a band's most popular songs to that point, was considered to be Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by the Beatles. The Rolling Stones quickly followed with Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Who could forget in the early seventies, the 8-track tape recordings? About the size of a paperback novel, you would inject it straight into a tape player and carry around a cassette box with specially fitted slots to fit the odd sized tapes. Tape heads were hard to keep clean and 8-track tapes generally didn't have a long shelf life. They were mainly bought with the idea of playing them in your car so as to avoid the music skipping when you ran over some slight bumps in the road. The LP had it's heyday during the mid 60's until about the late 70's, replaced largely by ordinary cassettes, which then gave way to compact discs. So if you're a music buff, you had to go from a 78, to a 45, to a 33 LP, to an 8-track, to a cassette, and then to a compact disc.

Every time the music industry made a change, they quit carrying music in any of the previous formats. It's hard to imagine that a 78 or a 45 usually only carried three or four songs; a 33 would have maybe ten or twelve depending on the length, an 8-track would have about the same number of songs as an LP, a cassette could record up to perhaps twenty or thirty tunes, and although a CD has about the same capacity, it's interesting to note that MP discs can play up to 150 songs on an MP3 player, and an I-pod can play thousands of tunes.

Next, let's have a little fun with the telecommunications industry. When telephones first came out, you had to call an operator who had to place the call for you. Later, you could dial the phone number on a rotary dial phone, and normally dial the last five digits. Telephone numbers used to have what were called "exchanges." If you're ever driving through an old part of town where they haven't torn down buildings that have signs advertising a business, you may see a phone number written like "HE2-3535." The prefix 'HE" might stand for "Headrick," just as an example, referring to a township where the phone was located on a plat map. The "H" and the "E" on the phone, were the numbers "4" and "3," so now, the phone book would just list the number as 432-3535. In the good old days, you would just dial the "2-3535" digits, omitting the "HE" part, and the call would go through. With the proliferation of phone numbers as well as fax and cellular phones, you have to dial all seven digits, and in some cities with multiple area codes such as Kansas City, you have to dial the area code as well as the seven digits, since you may be calling across state lines between Missouri and Kansas.

One-plus dialing was the fashion for years, where you dialed a "1," plus the area code, and the seven-digit local number, and that's still the case with most landlines. Fifteen years ago, if you used the word "landline," chances are that people wouldn't know what you're talking about. Most cell phones have eliminated the need for dialing the "1" before the area code and phone number, except in some instances where the cellular phone is roaming. But even the word "roaming" may become a distant memory as phone companies are simply packaging everything together in one monthly charge that likely includes the cost of roaming for all their subscribers.

One real dramatic change to the landscape is the sudden disappearance of telephone booths and public telephones. The main reason cited for their disappearance is the lack of profitability and the horrendous cost of upkeep. Plus, you can now go to any discount department store like a Wal Mart, and buy a talk and toss cellular telephone for about ten to fifteen dollars that take about fifteen minutes to activate. For most, the only remaining option is a cellular phone, or a set of them for the family. With unlimited evening and weekend minutes, and free incoming calls, they're becoming more practical and people can avoid the routine of waiting until they get home and turning on an answering machine to see who's called.

With rapid changes in people's lifestyles and the demands of most people's careers, it's not surprising that many of these cultural changes in television, music, and telecommunications have taken place without people noticing many of them. Most people are only reminded of such things if they attend an estate sale or even a museum. The so-called "Beaver" days when mom stayed home and raised the kids while dad worked, disappeared quickly. Even the family farm in the rural areas is quickly disappearing, giving rise to large corporate farms, changing the landscape of rural America. Perhaps the only time people stop and remember some of the things of the past is when they're retired and get to wondering where some of these cultural icons went. If you see a telephone booth somewhere nowadays, most people would assume it's there just for decoration purposes.