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• first nuclear reactor built
• The Aqualung
• Kidney Dialysis machine
• Nuclear bombs
• Microwave ovens
• Bikini bathing suits - developed by engineer Louis Reard - a special thanks to Mr. Reards
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mobile phones
• General-purpose computers
• Contact lenses
• Charge Cards
• The Slinky
• Velcro
• Penicillin
• Einstein became a citizen of the US
• Commercial air flight
• B-50 flew around the world nonstop refueling midair four times
• 1941 Ted Williams batted 406 the last player to do that since that time. Joined the war as a naval aviator. He also flew in the Korean War and missed five years of baseball in the prime of his career.
• From 1943 to 1946 two University of Pennsylvania professors fill a 30' x 60' room with 18,000 vacuum tubes weighing 60,000 pounds to do ballistic calculations for the Army. It was called ENIAC. Today’s 5-ounce cell phone has 1500 times the computing power.
• 1947 Bell laboratories developed the transistor to perform the duties of the vacuum tubes that completely changed the game.
• In 1948 Pres. Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 that dictated all persons in the armed forces shall have equal treatment and opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. This was the first step to end the scourge of segregation, a battle we are still fighting.
• The music of the 40's is referred to as the big band era also referred to as swing music. Swing refers to something completely different this day and age but we will not go into that. It's interesting one of the more popular big bands was the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey band. In the mid-50s they played a BIG part in ushering in rock 'n' roll.
Please tell me what decade had more influence on our lives and our culture.
We lived 2 miles from my grammar school and 3 miles from my high school, so I walked to school and back every day, rain, sleet, snow, mud, blood or flood. We only had one high school, so the school buses were used to pick up kids from the outlying areas commonly called the “country”.
Dinner time was sacred in those days. You would be home in time for dinner and everyone ate together. My brother and I got into a fight that afternoon and broke a lamp. My mama said wait till your daddy gets home, he will take care of this. So, we set down to dinner and the story unfolded. Father kept a belt hanging on a nail next to our sleeping area which he used as a discipline enforcer. He said when you get through with dinner, we are going to test the strap. We sat at the table asking for more cornbread, green beans, etc. for an hour. Finally, my parents couldn't hold back the laughter. Kenny and I dodged a bullet that day. Physical punishment for misbehavior was very typical. Today it's called physical abuse and can get you put in jail.
THE 50’s
Going to treat 50s like I did the 40s by relating the experiences in my world and talking about what was happening in the outside world.
The 50s decade started with a bang, just like the 40s. It is pretty basic. If you are the top dog everyone wants to try you. This time it was communist China and the Soviet Union using North Korea as their puppet. South Korea was backed by the United Nations (read USA). The Korean conflict, as it was called, lasted 3 years and ended in a stalemate. We all know the story. South Korea under a democratic government has been prosperous and North Korea has suffered under a egomaniac dictator. As mentioned earlier, we are still dealing with all three of these idiots 70 years later. Russia is trying to influence US politics including a presidential election and lord only know what else. China is using “germ” warfare to cripple the world economy. North Korea is threating to blow us off the face of this earth. Other than that, nothing serious.
I was 10 years old in 1950 and had my first job. I delivered papers on Sunday for the Atlanta Journal Constitution which was the state paper for the state of Georgia. Since that time in some form or another I have always had a job. It was a matter of working or not having the extra things that you want during those years. Grandma and Grandpa Bruce sold the farm and they moved back to Augusta so my time was spent 100% in Augusta until 1959. At that point I joined the Army on six-months active duty and 5 1/2 years in the Army reserve. We'll save that for the next decade.
As stated earlier we had moved in the 800 square-foot shotgun house on Maryland Avenue. I was recently asked what is a shotgun house. I'm sure many of you know but for the younger folks, a shotgun house is one where you stand in the front door and shoot a shotgun and it would go out the back door and not hit anything in the house. We lived across the dirt street from the Linwood Hospital, which was a VA mental hospital. The patients would walk along a cyclone fence and we would communicate with them. One patient, I remember vividly, was a “bouncing ball”. We called him that because of the way he walked. I found out later that the wife of my next-door neighbor would stand in her doorway “nakked” not “naked”. The southern language is one of nuance. Naked is when you aint got no clothes on, Nakked like in NA double KK by God ED is you ain’t got no clothes on and you are up to sump’um. Mrs. Johnson was nakker!! Turns out that bouncing ball found a way over that fence and was bouncing on Mrs. Johnson occasionally. There was a basketball court on the other side of the fence at the hospital. I found a way to get over the fence and return the favor by bouncing a basketball to practice my skills. I probably didn't have as much fun as ole bouncing ball.
Can you imagine 4 children (I was the oldest of the brood at 10 years old in 1950) two bedrooms and one bathroom. It should have been total chaos but somehow, we made it work. I'm not gonna lie, it was chaos at times especially as my sisters got older. As I said regarding being “Po”, we never thought anything about it. It was what it was and we went on with life and honestly enjoyed life.
My mother and father had one bedroom. My sisters shared the second bedroom. Kenny and I shared the closed-in porch on the back of the house. We had bunk beds which were against the windows to the outside of the enclosure. We could literally reach out with the other arm and touch the wall.
While we were living our lives, it was in the heat of the cold war and across the Savannah River from Augusta was the Savannah River Plant (SRP). The United States was building the 50’s mass destruction weapons of choice at the SRP, the hydrogen bomb. Like we southerners say “Po” stead of poor, we called it the Bum Plant stead of the Bomb Plant. I can't remember it ever being called the Savannah River Plant. Augusta turned into a boom town. There is a documentary on YouTube about the “Bum Plant”, Building the Bomb.