In
the 1950's, David was a student in the D.C. Everest School District.
Could you tell us any of your memories you have of the 1950’s?
I could start off with like in that entertainment section, channel seven
first came on in, I think it was fifty-three, and we got a TV set in fifty-five,
and half of what you’d watch, they weren’t on 24 hours a day like they are
now, you’d have a test pattern for most of the day, and what you did have
everything was black and white. And
I remember going back, going to school, with some of my friends I went to
Schofield School, up to sixth grade, we’re talking early 50s, 50-53, when the
Korean war went down, we’re talking about, what, what happened if we were
grown up enough to be over there. Like
I said, I was in 6th grade at that time. A lot of the political stuff.
I remember when Castro took over, but I thought that get rid of Batista,
a dictator, didn’t realize that Castro would be just as bad as he was.
Brown vs. Kansas Board of Education that was, what, 54, so I was only 11,
I remember reading about it, and wondering how people could keep other people
from going to school, of different races. In
like 57, Eisenhower, he was President, sent the troops down, the National Guard
down to Little Rock to desegregate that school.
Some of that stuff is still happening today.
It was settled but its still there.
Some of the things about technology, that you have in there.
Sputnik, that raced everybody to get a little more math so that we could
learn how to get more rockets, or any rockets, up into space.
There was a section on the Cold War, in 60 I was in the army in Germany,
in 61, I was in Germany when they built the Berlin Wall and every person in an
outfit that was the United States troops in Germany was on alert, ready to go to
Berlin, some people did go, we didn’t go.
There was something on sports heroes; I liked baseball, my Milwaukee
Braves, Aaron, and Matthews, and Warren Spahn.
Spahn just died in 85, Aaron’s still living, he played, he started out
playing in Eau Claire, Wisconsin professional team.
Rock and Roll in there, when Elvis started out, my singer, I liked Buddy
Holly, he was killed in 59 in a plane crash, he played at the Rothschild
Pavilion in 57. A ticket cost $1.50
to get in. Which I didn’t have,
so I’ve never seen him. Clothing
style, they had what they called saddle shoes, white in the back and the front,
and black or brown around, over, across the instep.
One question on teenagers, are they different today then they were back
then? I think there’s more
pressure on teenagers today, drugs, and everything is different.
Everything was more laid-back in the 50s; there wasn’t as much stuff
out there, to get involved with. I
think it was 61 the Beatles hit big in Europe.
Then when I got out of the Army in 63 and I came back, then they hit it
big back over here again, only on the Ed Sullivan show. So I went through that
twice. When they‘re records in
the States, I think they were the top five tunes in the top 10 chart. That one,
Emmit Till, where he was murdered. I
remember that hit the headlines in the paper.
Now they’re going to retry that case.
They‘re looking into that again. The
two people, I guess, the main two that did it, I guess, are dead.
There’s somebody who is still connected, so they’re having a new
trial. There’s a section on the
Cold War, I was in the Army, during that, like I said , they built the Berlin
Wall while I was over there they never wanted to give the G.I.s passes
to go downtown. Because May
1st was Communist day and they figured some communist would make trouble with
the American soldiers. So everybody
was kept on base and that during that time.
With the Emmit Till case, how did that affect you
personally?
Well, really, the desegregation…In Texas, he whistled at a white woman and
they hung him or killed him or however they did it.
Like when I was in the service, I was down, I took basic training at Fort
Laramie, when I come home on leave, I had to go down to San Antonio, Port San
Huston. We went to Tulsa, you would come into the bus station, one half was for
coloreds and one half was for whites, two separate doorways. Up here, there was
nothing like that. The only Negroes in Wisconsin, were in Milwaukee, and
Madison. That was kind of a shock
to see that thing up here. There
weren’t any Negroes up in this part of the woods.
That was the same thing that Hank Aaron and all the other ballplayers
faced in the 50s. They had to eat separately from their teammates. They
couldn’t go anywhere that the white people could go. In the south when they
tried to boycott things, the police would turn a fire hose on them in
Birmingham. Those poor Negro girls
got killed in that church fire too. I’ll
tell you, some of this stuff, it’s not as evident as it was then, but
there’s still racial prejudice all over.
It’s the Hmong and every other race color coming over here now.
I wondered why, like Emmit Till, why stuff like that happened.
Do you remember the Montgomery bus boycott that happened
in ‘54 and ‘55?
I was eleven or twelve at the time. I remember Martin Luther King Jr. led
tha. He got killed in 1968.
What do you remember about the Little Rock situation?
Orville Faubus was part of that. He was the governor of Arkansas. He stood
in the doorway and wouldn’t let the Negro children get into the school.
Eisenhower called in the National Guard of Arkansas to help them get into the
school. A lot of these white
schools went private so the blacks couldn’t go there even, after they were
integrated.
Do you remember any television shows you watched when
you were a kid?
Milton Berle was a big show back then. All the shows were all black and
white. We had a black and white
set. They didn’t broadcast all
day. John Schofield had a show on channel seven. It was the first television
station with a kid show. Rudy the
Wrangler with Ruddy Kapinka. “I Love Lucy” was around then. Lucille Ball and
Desi Arnaz. I also remember, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” It was about
this beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, he was always in the coffeehouses reading poetry.
How about with the movies, do you remember Marlon Brando
or James Dean?
James Dean did two real big movies. He got
killed in a car accident. Marilyn
Monroe, Jimmy Stewart and Bing Crosby were big movie stars.
I remember we used to go to the movies. I lived in Schofield on Bridge
Street. We’d walk over to the
19th Hole and then we’d take a bus to Wausau to see a movie on Saturday or
Sunday. Get in for a quarter you
watch two movies. Coming
attractions, serials like the Lone Ranger with Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers. Cartoons and the news, and you could stay in as long as you
wanted to. I could go to a movie for a quarter. Prices have changed. It’s
like a haircut. That was a quarter
when I was young. Now you have to
pay $13.
Do you remember going to McDonald’s
when you were a child?
Yeah. The first one they had was on Grand Ave. in Schofield. Hamburgers were
fifteen cents and french fries, small French fries were a quarter.
And then, where it is now, that used to be a gas station.
They built it in 1955.
Could you tell us more about your job in the 50s?
I graduated high school in 1959. I had a paper route for a couple years I
worked at a grocery store stocking shelves for a while. When I got out of
school, I joined the army in 1960. I
was in the army until 1963, then I worked at the Memorial Hospital.
There were two hospitals in the city
at that time. Memorial and
St. Mary’s up on the hill on 6th Street. I worked there for two years and
then. I started working at the Wausau Daily Herald. I just retired from there. I
worked there for 37 years. I really
didn‘t have that many jobs. I left the hospital in 1966. That’s where I met
Sharon. We got married in 1966 and I started at the paper in 66'.
How were women viewed and treated?
They’d normally, stay home and be housewives.
Back then you didn’t see many working, and if they did work it was a
lower pay job. Husbands went off to work and women stayed home as housewives and
took care of the kids. Today women can do the same jobs.
Can you describe the fashions from the 50s?
What people would wear and how they appeared?
I talked about the saddle shoes. Boys had duck tailed haircuts.
All the grease slicked back.
Do you remember Eisenhower’s presidency?
Yes. I remember he was an army general and then he was the president of
Columbia University and then he became President of the United States.
Nixon was his Vice-President. He
ran against Adlai Stevenson. I
remember one of the things he said just before he left office was, "Don’t
let the military industrial conglomerate get too powerful in the country."
What did you think of Joe McCarthy?
He was from Appleton. He was
the one, under every bush there was a Communist. So that’s the McCarthy
hearings. I thought there were some
Communists around but I don’t think like he said.
And then in Hollywood they blacklisted a lot of authors and screenwriters
and actors. They said they were
Communists and they didn’t get to work in Hollywood for 20 years.
Then you hear about the Rosenbergs.
They were executed. Somewhere
I read that they really, there’s always other ones involved.
They just catch the lower fish. They
were executed. There was another
one, Greengrass. Some in-law there.
They were supposed to be passing atomic secrets.
Did you think Communism was a threat to the United
States?
There were some, but I don’t think that it was that huge.
There’s always some on the fringe over here, but the thought of a
nuclear war. There were bomb
shelters. Some people had a special
room in their basement that they could go into or underground.
I mean, Truman dropped the bomb, right.
But it helped to end World War II.
Do you remember General McArthur?
He wanted the world to invade China.
Truman fired him. At that time, well there’s still Communism there in
China. I don’t see how he could
have taken over China. There are a
lot of people there. That’s when
Truman fired him. I don’t think
he could have invaded China. Unless
they would have dropped a bomb or something.
How many billion Chinese were there then?
Not quite as many as now, but, you think somehow they could settle all
this stuff by diplomatic means, but that never works.
How did the Korean War affect you and your family?
Just that it was tragic, but, otherwise not really.
My dad, he was in WWII, so he had just gotten out of that in '45, '46, I
think, and I was too young, I was still in grade school.
It didn’t affect us that much. You
know, there were people over there dying and there they stayed. There are still
some overseas, prisoners yet in North Korea.
Earlier you mentioned Fidel Castro went into power,
could you expand a little more?
Well most people, Batista was a dictator and they thought Castro would free
the Cuban people. He’s a bigger
dictator than Batista was. Then the United States tried to invade in the Bay of Pigs in
'61 and that was a flop. Castro’s
still in power. I just heard the other day he had a physical and he’s healthy.
Nothing the matter with him. He’s
got to be close to 80 already. Somebody’s
always invading somebody else somewhere. Even
to this day.
Earlier you were talking about Sputnik, too.
How did you react to it? Did
it affect you any?
That was what, '57, or '54? I
was in high school in '57. Everybody studied more math, so we can get rockets
up there, but they were afraid they put warheads up there and they would take
over everything, the Russians.
Were you aware of the Hydrogen Bomb?
Yes. No matter what you
thought, if you got a group together, what were you going to do about it?
And we were in the Cold War for almost 50 years.
Until the Berlin Wall was down. Now
all those countries just join NATO. Russia
and the eastern European countries. Makes
you wonder what if some of them drop the bomb and how long they are going to be
around.
What new technology was available during the 50s?
That’s when computers started. I remember something that started…the first computers were
as big as a room. I think that was
in the 40s…
You mentioned with baseball, what other sports heroes
did you have at the time?
I liked baseball, like I said Aaron, Matthews, the Braves, Micky Mantle, and
Joe DiMaggio. Football, I wasn’t
into that much. Course the Packers
really didn’t start winning Super Bowls in the 60s, but they were still
winning Championships. I was into
baseball. I saw two Milwaukee
Braves games, when I was in eighth grade. Our teachers, after the school, just
after spring break, after school ended in June or May she took us down to
Milwaukee. We rode the train down to Milwaukee to see the Milwaukee Braves
baseball game. See I was in seventh
grade with Miss Nair at Everest and she took us all in eighth grade.
One year she was a seventh grade teacher and that year she was in eighth.
Our class, well I went to what’s now the junior high, we were the first
class to start there in seventh and graduate.
Now, what is it now, just sixth through the eighth, isn’t it?
What other classes did you take?
Math, I never went to college, math, English.
I took citizenship in ninth grade. Always
had to take gym class. Typing, I
had a couple years. Now you never
see a typewriter around. Everything’s
computers. History, one-year world,
one year was American. I don’t
think any of the teachers at Everest are there that I had anymore.
Historians say people in the 50s were conformists, do
you agree?
There was the Beatnik frenzy…there was the Korean War, but otherwise it
was a dull generation, there wasn’t that much going on.
Course you didn’t have the drugs and stuff you do today.
What was family like in the 50s? How is it different from today?
It wasn't more laid-back, but less stressful than it is today.
Today everybody goes around like crazy.
Nobody’s got any time. Now
both wife and husband have to work just to make ends meet.
Years ago usually only the husbands worked.
You didn’t make as much, but things didn’t cost so much.
TV, you would watch the test pattern.
I used to listen to radio a lot. All
the old radio shows. …Archie,
Fibber McGee & Molly, Henry Alder, all those Tales of the Texas Ranger.
Lone Ranger, I followed that every week. It was condensed on TV a serial
every week it was continued. …53
or 55. …Everybody listened to the
radio. Things are different today.
Do you remember the quiz show fraud?
Yeah, I’m trying to think last night who was involved; I can’t remember
his name. One was Charles Van Doren, but there was another, and MC that was
involved. I can’t remember who it
was. Oh Hal Marks.
He’s dead now. I haven’t watched a quiz show on TV for a while.
Until Regis come on now. What
is it 10 million, they’ve got a new one.
The one, $64,000 Question, that was the one that Dr. Joyce Brothers was
on. She’s still a psychiatrist
today. She won $64,000 in the
subject of boxing. She’s still a psychologist today.
Oral
History Project 
