Ten Reasons to Be Glad It's Not 1958

Nostalgia, nostalgia - well, wake up and smell the dog poop; things weren't so great 50 years ago.

1. No one picked up after their dogs. People were doing well if they got their dog to use the street instead of the sidewalk. (The signs said, "Curb Your Dog," and that's what they meant.)

2. Everyplace you went, there was tobacco smoke. People smoked in movie theaters, in restaurants, at meetings, at their desks. Cigarette smoke (as opposed to cigar smoke) was considered harmless. Polite people didn't blow smoke directly in others' faces. Impolite people did. And the polite host provided ashtrays and possibly cigarettes. Asking people not to smoke in your house was unheard-of; it would have been very rude.

3. Clothing was pretty bad. Almost everything needed ironing, and a lot of stuff needed dry-cleaning. (Raise your hand if you know what a rubber dress shield is.) If you were a woman, you had to adjust your skirt hems every year or two. Men wore suits and ties to church; women wore gloves and hats. Women also wore stockings, which cost a lot, and only lasted a few wearings - sometimes only one. No matter how cold the day, women didn't wear pants to school, church, a restaurant, or even a PTA meeting.

4. Newspapers, magazines, and mayonnaise jars were tossed in the landfill, not recycled.

5. Generally speaking, cities were dirtier. The air was filthy, and the streets were littered.

6. The motor vehicle accidental death rate was one and a half times what it is now: 21.3 deaths per 100,000 population, as compared to 14.2 in 2006. Cars didn't usually have seatbelts, and they weren't built to crush so as to absorb impact, so if you were in a bad accident, there was a really good chance that your car would survive, and you would die.

7. No electronics. Transistors were new. There were no personal computers, no cell phones, no microwaves, no Blackberries, Ipods, DVDs, not even many color TVs. Long distance phone calls were horrendously expensive, and local ones weren't so cheap, either. You couldn't see a movie at home, or watch a TV show except when the network broadcast it. And the TV sets, (like the appliances and cars) were far less reliable than they are now.

8. People died faster. Heart surgery was dangerous and new. Cancer was usually a death sentence. Penicillin worked better than it does now (the bugs hadn't adapted yet), but many other drugs that we take for granted, didn't exist. There were no stents, no shunts, no pacemakers.

9. Job discrimination - all discrimination - was omnipresent and overt. It was hard to get a job if you were over forty. Forty! The classifieds listed, "Help Wanted- Male," and, "Help Wanted- Female." It was perfectly legal not to hire someone because they the wrong age, sex, race or religion. Most places didn't even try to hide what they were doing. In the south, there were "white" and "colored" drinking fountains and waiting rooms. In the north, people just said No.

10. People were LESS POLITE. You don't believe it? A lot of what gets called "political correctness," is just common courtesy, nowadays. We're so used to it, we don't even think twice that no one uses the "N" word, that no one tells jokes in "colored" dialect. Wives would be shocked if their husbands referred to them as, "the little woman," or "the ball and chain." In 2008, insurance agents and bankers look women directly in the eye and talk to them as one human being to another. Black people are served in the order they came, along with white people. And we take it all for granted, but an hour spent in 1958 would have us gritting our teeth.

Nostalgia, phooey.