You find that there are no:
air conditioners (not available to the general public until at least 1946)
television sets (because there is no commercial TV broadcasting,
much less cable TV or TV via satellite)
suburbs (with their suburban shopping malls to hang out at)
parking garages because people were not driving in from the nonexistent
suburbs to work downtown and did not live in their cars.
Wal-Mart or Sams (or any other warehouse store or even giant supermarkets
like HEB&Kroger)
microwave ovens
Cuisinarts (or any other food processors)
TV dinners (frozen entrees) (no TV, remember?)
cordless microphones or cordless telephones or touch-tone phones
or phones in any color other than black (all phones are rotary-dialed
and are owned directly by Ma Bell)
cellular mobile phones in cars or briefcases or anywhere else
calculators (whether solar-powered credit card-size, battery-powered
pocket-size, or plug-in desktop, or any other size whatever)
computers, therefore no Internet much less networks via modem, email,
voicemail, junk telephone calls made by computers using automatic
dialers
fax machines
ATMs nor branch banking (you have to physically go to YOUR bank and
during limited banking hours- 10 AM to 2 PM)
scanners at the grocery store checkout counters
xerox machines (or any other brand of photocopiers)
vcrs nor videos
compact discs or compact disc players
checking accounts at savings & loans
USA Today (national newspaper)
McDonalds or any other fast food restaurant chain
freeways (no interstate highway system for about 15 more years)
jet airplanes (people could not afford to take airplanes anywhere,
not even movie stars. Instead, everyone took overnight passenger
trains when they wanted to travel between cities)
new cars (all you see are Fords and Chevys, all 1940 models or older.
There were no cheap foreign cars. Your car would have been made
by Americans in Detroit.)
cigarette packages do not have a surgeon general warning on them
that smoking causes cancer and all top Hollywood stars smoke
heavily in the most popular films
plastic (certainly not available in general use. Milk was home delivered
in glass bottles.)
penicillin or streptomycin (both introduced commercially after the end
of WWII late in 1945.)
People magazine.
Sports Illustrated magazine
(NOTE: Life magazine had been a weekly since 1936.
Time magazine had been a solid source of news since 1923.)
Vietnamese (or other Asian) people owning and running convenience
stores & service stations
You further discover:
There is a war on.
The United States had never lost a war but had been
fighting World War Two for over three years now.
There are
blackouts (or brownouts) at night with air raid wardens making
sure your lights were covered and not seen from outside.
A nationwide dimout is ordered January 15, 1945 for every
night after dark until dawn the next day due to fuel shortages.
Toys are scarce; there are no bikes, sleds, tricycles, skates, or
electric trains being made anymore. (For the duration of the war.)
Boys and girls alike are preparing CARE (Cooperative for American
Remittances to Europe) packages and rolling bandages.
All the men you see are in uniform (or they are too young to enlist in
the armed services or too old or are handicapped.)
Patriotism has risen to such a fervor that it has become a tradition
to stand and sing The Star Spangled Banner at the beginning
of every ball game. (This was not the case before WWII.)
Young women entertain soldiers and sailors at USO canteens.
Letter-writing comes back into style as a morale booster.
Ma Bell has a monopoly. (There are no other viable telephone companies
such as MCI or Sprint)
Long-distance phone calls must be placed by the operator (no such thing
as direct-dialed station-to-station calls) and were limited to
five minutes per call (and had been so since 1943).
This is still the Age of the Slide Rule, an engineers most cherished
possession.
WWII was not fought with computers nor even
calculators but batteries and batteries of men and women doing
calculations with slide rules to figure out artillery targeting
trajectories and other top military problems.
Instruction in the
fine art of slide rule calculation was still being taught in the
mid-1960s when I was in junior high.
People listen to their radios and read newspapers to keep up with what
is happening in national & international news.
They also go to the
movies once a week and see the newsreel shown between feature
films.
The newsreels ceased to be made probably sometime in the
1960s because I definitely remember seeing newsreels at the
movies when I was a child.
Television finally beat them out as
a source of news.
Movie theaters in the 1940s also were showing cartoons with the
weekly feature film-particularly Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.
I remember enjoying the cartoons at the theatre when I was a kid.
Radio had dramatic programs as well as news such as The Shadow Knows
& Gunsmoke and also comedy programs such as The Jack Benny
Show and Burns & Allen.
Movies were in black and white and had only been talking for maybe fifteen
years.
The first color movie was Wizard of Oz in 1939 but that
was the exception.
Black & white movies were cheaper to make.
Half of the workers on the assembly lines at the defense plants are women,
working side-by-side with men. (This has been so since 1943.)
They were told then that their nation needed them at work and
when the war was over they were told sometimes literally
overnight that the returning male soldiers needed their jobs and
that the women should go back home and be good housewives.
No one has ever even heard of the Equal Rights Amendment
Abortion is illegal
Females had to always be addressed as Miss or Mrs. (No middle ground Ms.)
Mothers put blue stars in their windows for every son serving in the armed
forces and replaced them with gold stars for every son killed in the war.
Ernie Pyle had just been killed on Iwo Jima (on April 18, 1945).
He was
Americas most popular war correspondent who had practically
invented the concept of hometown coverage for the average
soldier.
He accompanied the G.I.s into battle and was considered
one of their own by American soldiers all over the world.
His
columns had been gathered together and published as books, most
recently in 1944 (in a book called Brave Men).
There is a new president in the White House (Harry Truman) for the first time
in many peoples adult lives.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been
president since 1933 and in the past twelve years and
unprecedented 4 terms had led the nation out of the Great Depression
into war.
FDR died April 12, 1945, just about a month short of the
end of the war in Europe (Adolf Hitler died May 1 and Germany
surrendered May 7) and about four months before the end of the war
with Japan on August 14, 1945. )
It was generally known among the American public that FDR was unable to walk on
his own, that he had been paralyzed by polio years ago.
But the press never
showed FDR in his wheelchair or as unable to stand on his own.
So no one
knew that a handicapped person had led our nation during the war years of
WWII.
You had better have your ration coupon book with you went you went to buy meat,
coffee, butter, shoes, and sugar.
Gasoline rations were designed to get
people to and from work but there was not enough left over for Sunday drives.
Sugar rations were cut an additional 25 per cent on April 30, 1945.
People planted Victory Gardens and raised most of the produce eaten by the
nation that way.
The phrase *Don't you know theres a war on?* is heard frequently.
Along with *Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.*
and *Loose lips sink ships.*
There are not enough places for people to live since the war required that
they move from farm to city and wherever they were needed for the
war effort.
At the governments urging, many families emptied a
room and took in renters.
Even so, finding a bed was far more difficult
than finding a job.
Newcomers slept in crowded
apartments, dormitories, boardinghouses-even shacks.
People would take the trolley or the city bus to get around in big cities.
Or they would walk.
All men wear hats in public (even those not in uniform). (Fedoras, not stetsons.)
The armed forces were segregated (although neither the army nor the navy
had been prior to 1919.
During the Revolutionary War, the Civil War,
and through World War I blacks had fought at the sides of whites and
had been treated equally.
Segregation was not ended in the armed forces
until Harry Truman stopped it via executive order in 1948.)
There are still card catalog pull-drawer cabinets at the public library.
There are mechanical cash registers in the stores (not computers printing
out receipts showing exactly what you bought & updating the inventory).
The pumps at the gas stations (which are still all full-serve) are not computerized.
Legal drinking age nationwide is 21.
Legal voting age nationwide is 21.
The United Nations was formed when delegates from 50 countries signed the charter June 26, 1945.
Top Musical Hits (according to Great Song Thesaurus) include:
Its a Grand Night for Singing (from film State Fair)
June Is Busting Out All Over (from Carousel)
Notable films in 1945 are:
Anchors Away (Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelley)
Bells of St. Marys (Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman)
And Then There Were None ((Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Barry Fitzgerald)
National Velvet (Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Dorothy McGuire, Peggy Ann Garner, James Dunn,
Joan Blondell)
State Fair (Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews)
Spellbound (Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman)
Oscars for 1945:
Best Picture: Lost Weekend
Best Actor: Ray Milland (for The Lost Weekend)
Best Actress: Joan Crawford (for Mildred Pierce)
Best Supporting Actor: James Dunn (for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Revere (for National Velvet)
Best Director: Billy Wilder (for The Lost Weekend)
You return to the time machine, reset it for 1996, and go to your public library to READ MORE ABOUT IT!
RECOMMENDED SOURCES:
THIS FABULOUS CENTURY, published by Time-Life. (My call no. is 973.9 Thi)
This set is by decade. See 1940-1950.
V IS FOR VICTORY: THE AMERICAN HOME FRONT DURING WORLD WAR II by
Sylvia Whiteman. Published by Lerner Pub., 1993.
TAKE TEN YEARS: 1940s. By Ken Hills. Published by Steck-Vaughn, 1992.
TIMELINES: 1940s. By Jane Duden. Published by Crestwood House, 1989.
Pages which I xeroxed today. These are from:
GREAT SONG THESAURUS (c. 1989)
PEOPLES CHRONOLOGY (c. 1992)
VARIETY MUSIC CAVALCADE (c. 1971)
DICTIONARY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (C.1989)
CHRONICLE OF THE WORLD
WORLD ALMANC BOOK OF WORLD WAR II (C. 1981)
ALMANAC OF AMERICAN HISTORY
CHRONICLE OF AMERICA
BICENTENNIAL ALMANAC (c. 1975)
Here are the songs on the audiocassettes which I have given Dad recently:
Those Wonderful Years: The Definitive Collection of Pop Hits 1920s to 1950s.
Juke Box Saturday Night. Juke Box Saturday Night-Glenn Miller. Don't sit under the apple tree-Andrews Sisters. Why don't ya do right-Benny Goodman; Peggy Lee-Vocal. Zing! Went the Strings of my heart-Judy Garland. Pennsylvania Polka-The Andrews Sisters. Java Jive. The Ink Spots. Seems like old times.-Vaughn Monroe. Chatanoogie Shoe Shine Boy-Red Foley. Jingle Jangle Jingle-Kay Kyser, Harry Babbit, Julie Conway and The Group-Vocal. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive-Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. Personality-Johnny Mercer. Paper Doll.-The Mills Brothers. Peg O My Heart-Jerry Murads Harmonicats. The Trolley Song-Jo Stafford with The Pied Pipers. Christmas 1994
Those Wonderful Years: The Definitive Collection of Pop Hits 1940s 1950s On Broadway.
Once In Love With Amy-Ray Bolger. So In Love-Alfred Drake. Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend-Carol Channing. Some Enchanted Evening-Ezio Pinza. If I were a Bell-Isabel Bigley. Getting to Know You-Gertrude Lawrence. Old Devil Moon -Ella Logan, Donald Richards. Hey There -John Raitt. I could have danced all night-Julie Andrews. Just in time-Judy Hilliday, Sydney Chapin. Tonight-Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert. Everythings Coming Up Roses-Ethel Merman. If he walked into my life-Angela Lansbury. Climb Every Mountain-Patricia Newey
Christmas 1994
Joel Whitburn Presents: Billboard Pop Memories 1940-44:
I've heard that song before by Harry James & his orchestra; Frenesi by Artie Shaw & his orchestra; Paper Doll by the Mills Brothers; Swinging on a Star by Bing Crosby; I'll never smile again by Tommy Dorsey & his orchestra; Amapola by Jimmy Dorsey & his orchestra; You'll never know by Dick Haymes & the Song Spinners; Don't Fence Me In by Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters; In the mood by Glenn Miller & his orchestra; Star Dust by Artie Shaw & his orchestra. Birthday 1995.
Those Wonderful Years: the definitive collection of pop hits 1920s -1950s:
Happy days are here again. Happy Days are here again by Ben Selvin. The Continental by Leo Reisman. Alexander's Ragtime band by Bing Crosby & Connee Boswell; Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen (Mean Youre Grand) The Andrews Sisters; Shuttle off to Buffalo by Hal Kemp, Skinnay Ennis -vocal; Little Brown Jug by Glenn Miller; All of me by Paul Whiteman, Mildred Bailey-vocal; Goody Goody by Benny Goodman; Jeepers Creepers by Al Donahue; The music goes around & around by Riley/Farley Orchestra; Bob White (Whatcha Gonna Swing Tonight) by Bing Crosby & Connee Boswell; Tiger Rag by the Mills Brothers; Scatterbrain by Frankie Masters; Lullaby of Broadway by the Dorsey Brothers. Birthday 1995.
Plus Uncle Don & Aunt Helen had previously sent him a Big Bands themes audio cassette.