Discussion Topic |
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK
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May 27, 2011 - 10:00pm PT
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Agreed I want the Nose FA.....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 28, 2011 - 12:42am PT
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actually remember the 50s... but I was young... (though older than Tami)...
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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May 28, 2011 - 12:57am PT
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It's all totally familiar to me, Joej. Plus I have every song on that video in iTunes still. Thanks!!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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May 28, 2011 - 01:30am PT
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I was there. It was okay, but man, my parents had bad taste in furniture...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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May 28, 2011 - 09:58am PT
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I think the best part of the '50's was that children and their parents still felt it safe for them to play and be adventurous. In the summer time we left the house at 8 am with a packed lunch and we didn't come home until the porch light went on at 8 or 9 pm.
We hiked all over the mountains unsupervised, explored caves and old mines, and floated down the Roaring Fork River on innertubes, hitch hiking with people we knew, to get back to our starting point. Nobody ever worried about child molesters or that we would kill ourselves. It was just considered a normal Colorado childhood.
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MisterE
Social climber
Cinderella Story, Outa Nowhere
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May 28, 2011 - 11:20am PT
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That was cool, Guido. I was born in '62 - but some of that material definitely spilled over in to the 60's pretty strongly, because much of it sounds familiar.
I especially loved the RED Skelton show when I was a wee MisterE.
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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May 28, 2011 - 01:16pm PT
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Groovy, man! (I guess I mean totally awesome, dude).
It seems like such a distant time, now. As far away as Medieval Europe.
I agree with Jan: what I miss most is that sense of safety one felt.
One never thought it was remotely dangerous to hitch-hike to get to the hills.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Butterfly Town
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May 28, 2011 - 05:52pm PT
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My older sister was a member of a record club and loved listening those 50's tunes, so I grew up with them and really like the innocence of that time, including the safe times that we felt like we could lead, despite "Drop-Drills" and the accompanying threats of atomic attack. I saw kids yesterday playing in the dead-end street in an up-scale enighborhood that I've lived on, and despite its apparent safety, there is always a parent present watching the kids in a way that we never had, nor felt that we needed.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 28, 2011 - 08:03pm PT
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I was a little young to actually remember much of the 50s - born in 54. And my parents refused to buy a TV and listened to classical music which meant I missed a lot. lol
But I do remember the 57 Nash Metropolitan car. ha My high school buddy bought one (an old beater by then)in '72 or so and one winter we drove it from Portland to Quinault Lake up in the Olympic Mountains - with a canoe on top. The boat was longer than the car but we did a solid 40 MPH the whole way. Later almost drowned when a storm hit and we found ourselves sideways to 3 plus foot white-capping waves, way out in the middle of the lake. ha
My real memories start more about the time the Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan show. My whole family went to my neighbors house to watch. That summer I convinced by dad to let me grow a "Beatles'" hair cut. Things have gone down hill ever since.
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Guck
Trad climber
Santa Barbara, CA
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May 28, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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Back then, my heroes were Walter Bonatti, Gaston Rebufat, and the explorer Paul Emile Victor. There was not a single bolt on any route in the world, and climbing was more of a communion with the mountains than a muscular extension of gymnastics. Anapurna was the first 8000 meter summit conquered with wool clothing, leather shoes and a lot of gusto. I just cannot imagine what the climbers of that time could have done with the "modern" equipment! I still long for the time when people took responsibility for their actions, and did not sue the equipment manufacturers for their failure to make the summit, for the time when family and friends always came first, and for the time when life was not a constant quest to be better that everyone else.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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May 28, 2011 - 09:47pm PT
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Getting honed for the great ranges in Chicago - mid-fifties
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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May 28, 2011 - 09:47pm PT
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Damn, looks like a stand-in for The Beaver.
Yup. Everybody said that. But that's okay. I was Canadian, and what is more Canadian than beaver?
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WBraun
climber
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May 29, 2011 - 01:45am PT
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The 60's was the revolution awakening for all the bullshit we've been fed ....
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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May 29, 2011 - 08:41am PT
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I'd like to try and answer Silver's question if I can.
That 50's were not that good for everyone. I think generally it was a good time if you were middle class, male and white.
And I think the 60's and drugs came because cultures, like people, change and evolve with time.
The youth saw free love (a loosening of morals), psychedelics, and not working for the MAN as progress towards a better life.
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BBA
climber
OF
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May 29, 2011 - 12:17pm PT
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Reminds me of cruising down Colorado Blvd (class of 58, Monrovia). Worst memory was Pat Boone "covering" Fats Domino's songs, e.g., Blueberry Hill. Can you imagine Pat Boone finding his thrill on Blueberry Hill? Listening to Johnny Otis and the best of R&B on Huntin' with Hunter Hancock. But, to tell the truth, the music has gotten better through the years.
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TrundleBum
Trad climber
Las Vegas
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May 29, 2011 - 03:01pm PT
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LOL, I was not born until 60...
But I distinctly remember, in my 'little kid days', my dad slapping my hand away from the radio as I reached to change the station while Fat's was singing 'Blueberry Hill'
~~~~~~~~~~~~
WBraun:
The 60's was the revolution awakening for all the bullshit we've been fed ...
I think of it more like:
Until the fifties the 'American Dream' was not yet fully financed, by the sixties it was.
"Money talks, B.S walks"!
Since the end of WWII, We as a nation have been doing an increasing amount of side stepping with 'smoke and mirrors' while we have been out walking/globe trotting.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 29, 2011 - 03:02pm PT
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Great share Joe!
I couldn't even see over the counter top in the fifties but still appreciate the nostalgia. Even Pat Boone could be cool...amazing.
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o-man
Trad climber
Paia,Maui,HI
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May 29, 2011 - 04:31pm PT
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I was just a little boy in the early fifties.
In the late 50's We lived in a small village in Luxembourg where half of the street that I lived on was still in ruins from artillery and bombings during ww2.
I got my first taste of climbing on the rocks near our house.
We moved from Echternach, Luxembourg, which was very cool, to Bittborg, Germany where my dad was stationed on a tactical air base. The air base was a tense place and was ready to go to war with Russia at any moment.
We were on alert frequently and we spent nights in the underground air raid/bomb/fallout shelters below the building that we lived in.
By the early sixties it was the height of the cold war. The city of Berlin was divided and "The Berlin Wall" was under construction.
The citizens of East Berlin were desperately trying to flee the city. My Cub Scout pack collected and distributed can foods and clothing to refugee family's that had left their homes in East Berlin via tunneling or crawling through military patrolled barbed wire barricades to freedom in West Germany.
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BBA
climber
OF
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May 29, 2011 - 05:24pm PT
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Steve - you missed the point. Pat Boone was an abomination to music, especially the things kids liked and many adults found threatening. Boone was not black, so he would sing in his horrible saccharine way and would get big coverage from the sectors of the world that were against primitive, sexual music, race mixing, etc. The LDS way, you might say. Fats and Little richard and so on were not Donny and Marie.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 30, 2011 - 01:03am PT
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There was not a single bolt on any route in the world . . .
Don't you wish.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 30, 2011 - 01:41am PT
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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May 30, 2011 - 10:52am PT
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The 60's was the revolution awakening for all the bullshit we've been fed ...
yes, werner. but when that genie got out of the bottle, they spent the 70s pushing it back in and sealing the cork. no one misses it except those who remember it.
50s is about america's false innocence. we won the big, bad war, nothing left to do but pose as the good guys against those bad commies on the other side of the planet and start putting on weight. then vietnam came along and it all stopped making sense. then the power whores learned real fast to stop drafting white people's children.
nostalgic for the 50s? watch the truman show.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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May 30, 2011 - 11:56am PT
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I was born in the '50's. now I'm livin' 'em.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 30, 2011 - 12:57pm PT
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"Don't you wish..."--- Too funny John!
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - May 30, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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For a superb read on this era, I recommend "The Fifties" by David Halberstam. For that matter I recommend almost anything he has written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifties_(book);
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Karen
Trad climber
So Cal urban sprawl Hell
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May 30, 2011 - 02:58pm PT
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Ghost, I have a chair almost identical to the one you're sitting in. So it's actually valuable? Cool. I found it in a Salvation Army store for 40.00 bucks and it is in perfect shape, all nicely recoverd.
Guess I shouldn't take it for granted!!!!
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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May 30, 2011 - 04:29pm PT
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I still recall the day the new version of the Tioga Road was opened, I remember vaguely going up the old road. Man, that was a fun trip as a kid. My mom was scared to death of the old road down the East Side.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 12, 2011 - 11:47am PT
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Nifty Fifties Bump!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
merced, california
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May 15, 2012 - 05:51pm PT
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The fifties, yeah.
Redding to Sacto in 1954. Five years old. Mike was seven. Lenna was two.
We had the classic 1950 Chevrolet de Luxe, two doors, folding front seats, three on the column. A death-trap that took us on Old Highways 99, East or West, back to visit the Grandparents in Redding. Interstates are a '60s thing.
We grew into a family of four. We up-graded to a 1956 Ford Country Squire, the one with fake wood and room for nine with the rear-facing (!) fold-up seat in the back. Another rolling death-trap that saw us through trips to Redding, some great vacation trips to Tahoma on the Cal. side of Tahoe, the beach at Carpinteria (three summer vacations, 59-61), and countless trips from home to school. And our first two trips to Yosemite.
They forgot to mention my favorite comic book of all, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which always featured Scrooge's money bin. Here is where the mysteries of earthquakes were revealed to me and my brother. Who remembers the Terries and the Firmies?
And my mother refused to allow us to read Mad Magazine!
But we could listen to as much rock and roll on our transistor radios as we could stand. Money for batteries came out of our allowance. A radical dollar fifty a week.
The Scout Camp at Echo Lake, Camp Harvey West.
Days fooling around on the banks and in the inlets of the undeveloped American River near the Watt Ave. bridge, sifting for Indian beads, the days before it became reprehensible. We collected over five quart jars of beads, and nobody knows where they went!
The time my Cub Scout den went on the brand-new TV station, KCRA, ch.3, on the Skipper Stu and Popeye show.
Crusader Rabbit and Tiger Rags (cartoon).
Amos and Andy on TV in Black and White. Every thing B/W, for that matter.
Gunfight at OK Corral. Lonely are the Brave. Two great Douglas films.
I like Ike, Ike and Dick, bumper stickers, but nothing like I Like Dick. Nobody liked dick back then, in fact it was against the law.
Watching the Sierra Nevada skyline on a clear, windless morning and then seeing the mushrooming exhaust of a Nevada atomic test.
My first ride in a '57 Chev wasn't til 1962. The guy had it equipped with a reel-to-reel in the middle of the dash. Surf music, but it was no longer the '50s.
God died soon after the Big Bopper. He was sorry, folks. Time.
Werner in diapers?
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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May 15, 2012 - 07:18pm PT
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Here's your decadal synopsis from the 20's on, courtesy of The Hold Steady.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
for the Fifties you get:
"We got shiftless in the '50s, holding hands and going steady
Twisting into dark parts of the large midwestern cities"
The "good old days" haven't happened yet, there are significant downsides to every bit of history, and the fifties are certainly no better than average.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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May 15, 2012 - 07:34pm PT
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For a superb read on this era, I recommend "The Fifties" by David Halberstam.
That is a great book, and definitely underscores the idea that the Fifties weren't all amazing for everyone.
I like a quote by historian Stephanie Koontz (in her book, "The Way We Never Were"): "Contrary to popular opinion, Leave It to Beaver isn't a documentary."
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zBrown
Ice climber
Chula Vista, CA
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May 15, 2012 - 07:49pm PT
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Cameras have improved since then.
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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May 15, 2012 - 08:03pm PT
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Where's that flying car I was promised?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 15, 2012 - 08:08pm PT
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The flying part is easy enough, it's the landing component...LOL
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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May 15, 2012 - 08:09pm PT
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Where's that flying car I was promised?
A big hint might be that the style of the house is still 50's vintage.
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zBrown
Ice climber
Chula Vista, CA
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May 15, 2012 - 08:15pm PT
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The 1950's were an era of repression, hence the breakout of the 1960's that Herr Braun mentions.
Charles Raymond Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate are an aspect of this.
Responsible for eleven deaths.
Starkweather would later claim that in the aftermath of the murder, he believed that he had transcended his former self to reach a new plane of existence, in which he was above and outside the law.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 25, 2012 - 10:13am PT
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That 50's were not that good for everyone. I think generally it was a good time if you were middle class, male and white.
Amen.... interracial marriage was still illegal, women were still either housewives, nurses or teachers and if you weren't a Christian, you were some kind of freak. Conformity was everything.
You GOTTA see "Pleasantville" if you haven't.. Trust me, really funny but with a message
Peace
Karl
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Aug 25, 2012 - 10:27am PT
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I went to a catholic high school in Philadelphia in the late 50's. None us climbed yet but we all "dry tooled" when we couldn't get dates.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Aug 25, 2012 - 10:29am PT
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My favorite part of the fifties:
I was thirteen. Unlike many of you, I grew up in the city in a family that had no outdoor connection at all, so this was an eye-opener of indescribable proportions, a new and wholly unimagined world opened up.
Fifty-five years later, and the magic is still alive...
Whenever people (including me sometimes) complain about guides, I have to remember that I owe this lifelong love of the mountains and crags to the Exum guides Dick Pownall, here in 2011
and here with Herb and Jan Conn and Glenn Exum
and Karl Pfiffner (killed in an avalanche in 1960 on the Ellingwood Ridge of La Plata Peak) for the 1957 ascent of the Owen-Spaulding route.
I returned to the Tetons to make guided ascents of the Exum Ridge, the East Ridge of Mt. Owen with Bill Byrd (see http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=693085);, and the SW Ridge of Symmetry Spire with Barry Corbet, here shown on Mt. Owen.
After my senior year in high school, I headed out West on my own. My first guideless ascent was the 5.4 East Ridge of Teewinot, after which I failed miserably on the CMC Route on Mt. Moran, defeated by the bushwacking (this was well before the canoe option) and never even reaching the CMC camp, much less any actual climbing.
A few years later, as the sixties began, I atoned for my previous Moran hiking failures by making an ascent of the Skillet Glacier route
and thrashing into Leigh Canyon
four different times for ascents of the South Buttress,
the South Buttress Right,
Staircase Arete, and No Escape Buttress.
We were, however, turned back once from the trip around Leigh Lake when my partner stepped in a bog which stripped off and permanently swallowed his mountaineering boot.
Many other Teton ascents followed, but alas, I've already leaked out of the fifties and into the sixties...
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Aug 25, 2012 - 10:41am PT
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On the cusp of the 1950's in government post-war housing and before hi-tech photography.
Older sis, bro, and overalls kid
Oh yeah Charlie - to live outside the law you must be honest.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Aug 26, 2012 - 12:10am PT
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Bump 'cause I added a bunch of photos to my fifties (and early sixties) post.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 26, 2012 - 12:30am PT
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Good ol' days . . . ;>)
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Aug 26, 2012 - 12:33am PT
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mouse from merced! Re:
Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which always featured Scrooge's money bin. Here is where the mysteries of earthquakes were revealed to me and my brother.
Who remembers the Terries and the Firmies?
Yeah! They cause earthquakes!
Carl Barks did great duck adventure stories!
I've done my duty by scanning and posting: Uncle Scrooge and the duck-nephews finding lost Inca gold in Peru.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/1578997/Comic-strips-with-climbing-in-em
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
merced, california
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Aug 26, 2012 - 01:39am PT
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It's a little-appreciated bit of knowledge that quakes are indeed due to subterranean beings, Terries, who can form into balls and descend slopes like laser-guided trundulums, slamming into supporting walls and pillars and packed crowds of Firmies. (I think that's how they rolled.)
Incas that look like dogs, much like Beagle Boys...I remember reading this one from the era; most of the WDC&S that I read were part of a massive collection of many different comics (Lulu, Richie Rich, Turok--Son of Stone, Archie, and the obscene, filthy, commie rag, my mom's particular bugaboo, MAD Magazine) in a big old cardboard box in the cellar of a house in Auburn that was rented to my Nana and Grandad. My older bro and I lived in the cellar most of the days we spent up there in the hills, the only sensible way to deal with the summer heat up there.
It was a real grind trying to read them all before the grandfolks moved out of that house in the fall and I had to start fifth grade.
Thanks for the effort of posting that up, Fritz. You should get extra credit.
Edit: This just in. The BSA has awarded Fritz the posting merit badge!
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Aug 26, 2012 - 01:54pm PT
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Great thread Guido!
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Aug 26, 2012 - 06:07pm PT
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Guido/Joe, born in 1956, so I got the tail end, but... much of those shows, songs, comic books, etc were still around in the early 60s, when I was impressionable.
Jim, 1950s Catholic School?
My years being bossed by nuns in Oakland and Walnut Creek was 1961-1968, until I got kicked out twice, then public school.
But what are the ‘good old days’?
I was researching some stuff I was writing for a screenplay about a certain company, the first to come to Ireland from the US.
I’ll leave it that, because I still want to sell it, when to date, I am the only one that I know of that has/is writing about this company.
So I am in the National Library in Dublin (this is several years back), in the archives and I run across some old newspapers from The Kerryman.
Back then the editorials, adverts, letters to the editor, almost everything it seems, ran on the front page.
One issues, a letter to the editor (this in 1909) from a lady: “These young men drinking stout midday on the bridge, and not working, it is disgusting”.
Or a news article in 1909 edition: “The RIC (then the Royal Irish Constabulary before Irish independence) surrounded the cottage where the man had shot is sister in the leg and threatend the officers, the seige lasted most of the day”.
Says another article: “The three men raided the post office but got away with little cash. The RIC is still looking for them (again 1909).”
Letter to the editor (1910) at The Kerryman: “I have been looking for some stout lads to help with both my farm and my shop, but they are nowhere to be found, except drinkg down by the river.”
The GOOD OLD DAYS???
I think it is all in one perspective at times, or the times.
We never built a bomb shelter during the cold war, but like most of you, we did have three drills/alarms at school.
Fire (get out of the building to an assembly point).
Earhtquake (get out of the building or under a desk)
And of course the one we all know when the air raid siren went off.
Stick your heads between your knees (and kiss your ass goodbye).
I have very fond memories of my childhood in the late 1950s/1960s... a mother who was also a father (he died in 1956, I was the youngest, five months, but as a dentist/dental surgeon, my mom, with four children, got by).
And yes, we never locked the front (or side) doors, and I and my sister (and Mac for a while until he learned how to play hookey) had to commute on a Greyhound bus for first and second (her second and third) grades to the nearest Catholic school that had an opening (St Frances de Sales in Oakland from WC. We were never bothered by pervs. Then there were openings for us at St Mary's in WC.
But I alo have fond memories of the 1970s and beyond. Times change, it is keeping up with those changes that can be difficult (and yes, as the youngest and smallest guy, I was always the one in the trunk going into drive-in movies).
Still Guido, I enjoyed that little video you posted.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Aug 26, 2012 - 07:22pm PT
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You GOTTA see "Pleasantville" if you haven't.. Trust me, really funny but with a message
So the 50's was really a fictional movie?
Patric's version is closer to what I lived.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Aug 26, 2012 - 08:30pm PT
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In Georgia life was pretty good for us white middle-class people. I got enthused about gymnastics, studying math, climbing, and yes the music was pretty cool. I got to pilot an F-80 Shooting Star (T-33) briefly (with a Korean war ace), bought a 1957 Studebaker Power Hawk - way ahead of its time - and when I reported for military duty at the University of Chicago witnessed for the first time a student protest in which an American flag was burned. I'm not sure I ever even saw a home bomb shelter and never thought much about the ideological struggle going on between the USA and USSR. I was too young for the Forgotten War, a truly sad affair. And I drove on the brand new interstate highway system that Eisenhour brought to fruition. I have mostly good memories, including roaming all over Stone Mountain, outside Atlanta, when it was still semi-wilderness. A priceless experience. Took a date climbing there a time or two, and they thought I was nuts. ;>)
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telemon01
Trad climber
Montana
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Aug 26, 2012 - 11:06pm PT
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jogill and rgold- great stuff!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Thank gawd we moved on!
Though my gramma's studebaker billet nose was doll, to look at, anyway
Sad that we seem to be moving back to that repressive era.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Will check it out
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Being a kid in the '50's was great, I thought. We had a freedom to roam that hasn't existed in this country for a very long time. I remember my mom packing me a lunch in a brown paper bag and wishing me the best as I spent all day roaming the cliffs of Austin Bluffs in Colorado Springs, hunting for fossils and scaring the poop out of my self on those manky sandstone cliffs. Since "the Springs" was such an Air Force town I got to see some pretty cool post- WW II aviation history, early Jet fighters, propeller-driven airliners, the first helicopters (we called them whirly birds - they were a really big deal). The family ate together for all meals and everyone seemed to watch the same TV programs. There was more program content than commercials. I remember cigarette commercial jingles and everyone smoked in the movies. Humphrey Bogart was the man and John Wayne was young. Candy bars were 5 cents and a bottle of Coke was a dime.
What I sometimes saw but did not understand were the men my dad's age who were self medicating with alcohol due to what they had experienced in WW II. What I did not see because I was a white middle class kid was how much different folks of color lived than my family lived. Our schools, neighborhoods, and churches were not integrated so we kids just were not exposed to that double standard. I wouldn't trade it, I had a pretty wonderful childhood, but I was lucky in ways I could not possibly understand at the time.
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Tobia
Social climber
Denial
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jogill's post brought back some memories. I am a child of '56 and a Georgian. I grew up near Ft. Benning, GA.
Bomb shelters were common in my neighborhood, there were probably a dozen within "bicycle range". Most were built in the mid fifties with the houses and peaked around Cuban Missile Crisis, as FT. Benning was in range and considered a likely target. It seems that there were more backyard shelters than swimming pools at that time, but I have no way of knowing.
They were seemingly identical, I believe fabricated from new underground gasoline storage tanks used at gas stations. They had a 5-6' section of 3' diameter pipe with a a ladder attached that led from the lawn level hatch to the shelter. Most were wired for lights, appliances and the all important television and radio. Books and canned goods lined the shelves, some with all types of surplus military survival gear, which was easily acquired from stores that dealt in market. Cots or bunks hung from the walls or lined the walls. It was a regular Saturday activity to spend time playing in these shelters. Some with permission, some without.
There is at least one remaining in the old neighborhood that I know of.
I second Guido's recommendation of reading Halberstam's The Fifties. If you want to read about the Cuban Missile Crisis One Minute To Midnight by Michael Dobb's is excellent.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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My gawd, Guido, where's this thread been hiding?
I graduated from high school in June 1950 and was a freshman in engineering school at UCLA. I was driving my first car, a 1934 Chevy - graduation gift from my parents. Gasoline was 17 cents a gallon and the Korean War had just begun.
Quite to Royal's disbelief (another story) I climbed Tahquitz Rock in 1952 without the slightest knowledge of "rock climbing". My only climbing experience was the chimneying technique I perfected when I was 8 years old - by squeezing between two garage walls to reach my garage roof. I was attending Vine Street Elementary School in Hollywood - the same school Royal attended - though I was 2 years ahead of him and never ran into him.
I'll dig out some 50s photos.
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WBraun
climber
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Beem me back to the 50's away from all this modern brainwashed horsh!t, where we're all criminals and terrorists until proven innocent.
Away from all these modern nutcases trying to save us from ourselves creating a prison instead.
Where you could still hitchhike in the back of an open pickup truck and camp just about anywhere still .....
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zBrown
Ice climber
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The fifties were all cars and crusing from one to another drive-ins.
Hardly a surfboard in sight, but watchout, the sixties gon' getcha.
Cameras didn't work very well at night.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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I was seven at the beginning of the fifties and a 17 year old teenager at the end. The economic boom after the war was in full sway and suburbs were eating up farmland at the margins of cities.
The civil rights and women’s lib movements had yet to begin. If you were white and middle class you could gaze at your newish car in the driveway as you cut your nearly perfect lawn and be thankful that the number on your house distinguished it from your neighbors homes that flanked you in every direction.
The good old days seem better the more the current days are problematic.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2017 - 09:32am PT
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Sh#t, I forgot I even posted this!
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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You were a child of the fifties Guido....hell, you’re not expected to remember much.
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little Z
Trad climber
un cafetal en Naranjo
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I had a great time
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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i missed 1950 but i've been to canada
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Sure miss my 1050 Studebaker Starlight Coupe!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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^^^Sometimes hooblie's "New Wave" humor passes way over my head.
YCA photo archive.
edit: Photo #2 is from the first attempt in 1955 by these guys.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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1954
I seem to have missed all those bomb shelters and crawl-under-your-desk drills. I graduated high school in Atlanta in 1954, having gotten into climbing the year before, and I don't recall thinking much about nuclear annihilation. Graduating from college in 1958, I went directly into the USAF as a young lieutenant, still not very concerned about mutual atomic destruction.
Even stationed at an air base with SAC B-52s in the air loaded for bear 24/7 I still had no anxieties. What was wrong with me? But then again I don't recall my friends and colleagues stressed out about those issues either. Of course, the B-52 guys were there on the front lines so to speak, and psychological problems in their ranks did surface from time to time.
One incident I remember was the disappearance of a B-52 pilot on base. After an exhaustive search he was found self-compressed in a locker in the flight preparation area. He got help.
Vietnam in the early to mid sixties was when all hell broke loose and society took some bizarre turns. It hasn't been the same since. Some of those societal turns were needed, but that's when the NRA starting moving from a hunter/target-shooting venue to a more military perspective. That's when I dropped out of the organization.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Learning to ski (1955) in the same wool knicker outfit my dad learned to ski in the 30s.
Me and my Dad 1957
Susan
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