Where's My Poodle Skirt and Penny Loafers?

You know you’re getting old when you visit a museum to see an exhibit about the decade in which you were born.  1953. History!?!?  Oh, come on! Am I really an artifact from another era?

Yes, apparently. I am a 1950s-model baby-boomer.  Turns out we are fascinating.

Generally, I am quite captivated by the design and culture of my youth. Ken and I have owned two mid-twentieth century houses. The first was in Richmond, British Columbia. It had been the model home for a development built in 1957 meant to attract those most modern of folks – pilots, stewardesses and employees of the new airport nearby. The house was a 2-bedroom Rancher and by the time we bought it in 1984, it still had all the “modern” décor that would have made it to magazine pages back in the day: pink and black ceramic tile kitchen counters with a pink sink, pink stove top and wall oven; aqua and yellow tile and bathroom fixtures. We loved it. I began to collect 1950s novelty salt and pepper shakers and other memorabilia, such as a Roy Rogers thermos and a metal tray with post card images of Niagara Falls. Our house in Buffalo, New York was an architecturally designed home built in 1950. The architect had followed some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian principles: long and low roof line, overhanging eaves, open plan living and dining room, built-in millwork in the bedrooms. The en-suite bathroom had grey and maroon ceramic tile.

And so, I was eager to see the show, “1950s; Building the American Dream” just recently opened at the Ohio History Museum in Columbus. I wasn’t prepared for how historic it all looked. In my mind, the 1950s were only yesterday. But, there it was, my childhood, rendered as the Olden Days.

Now, I don’t normally go around saying things like, “In my day…” or, “Way back when....,” but there we were, Ken and I on this recent Sunday afternoon, reading labels and looking at photographs and relics from our childhood. At every turn we came across half-century-old items so familiar to us: toys, clothing, push-lawn mowers and other stuff, like one of those canister-shaped, red-tartan-clad picnic coolers and we found ourselves gleefully blurting out old-fogey words such as, “Oh, will you look at that! We had one of those when I was kid!” These exclamations burst past our lips faster than you could say, “It’s Howdy-Doody time!”

The exhibition did a fine job of drawing out the social relevance of the decade in its commentary on politics, rock and roll, bomb shelters, television’s early days, paint-by-numbers paintings, pointy bras and programs like “Duck and Cover,” the insanely naïve “personal protection” concept that instructed school children to hide under their desks during nuclear attack. The “spokesman” for “Duck and Cover,” by the way, was a cartoon turtle named Bert who told kids, “I’ve got a shell, but you need to find a place to hide!” “Quickly now!” The 50s were a weirdly innocent era.

The weirdest artifact in the exhibition, however, is an authentic, fully-rebuilt Lustron House. Well you might ask, “What is a Lustron House?” (Here’s a helpful link for you: www.lustronpreservation.org 

Designed to fill the huge demand for housing post World War II, the Lustron houses came delivered to your suburban lot in pre-fab kits that could be shipped around the country or even packed up and moved to a new quietly desperate suburb should you tire of the one you were in. There were three floor plans available. The one in the Museum has a living room, a dinette, kitchen, utility room, bathroom and two bedrooms. It contained marvelous modern technology, such as the top-loading, in-counter dishwasher that doubled as a washing machine simply by switching out an interior drum. The floors throughout the Lustron were covered with that easy-to-maintain vinyl asbestos tile that mom could just damp mop! Closets had space-saving sliding doors.

Sounds like the American Dream, right? Sure, if you didn’t mind living in a sardine can. The Lustron House was built of porcelain-enameled steel. Yes, the walls, inside and out, were cold, hard, shiny metal. This house possessed all the warmth of a cookie sheet – in a choice of four factory colors! Can you imagine the heat in summer or the cold in winter or the pitter patter of rain on a steel plate roof?  A selling point in the advertising: “You won’t need to put holes in your walls to hang your pictures! Just use magnets!”

As I said, it was a weird era. I'm glad it’s history! Visit the exhibition online at www.ohiohistory.org