Changing Times, The 40s’ 50s’ and 60s’

By Franklin T. Wike

 

It is my personal belief that money, wars, cars, music, movies, Television and computers are the biggest motivators behind the changes in lifestyles over the decades. The following story depicts examples of changes in society and lifestyles that I have noticed over the years.

 

Family Roots and Transportation

My great grandparents Harvey and Lizzie Fink Hostetter nee Long, lived and died in the same county where they were born. It was also the same county where their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were born and died. During their lifetime, one of the biggest changes my great grandparents saw was the invention of the automobile.

 

My grandfather Warren Hostetter also grew up during a time when horse drawn vehicles were still the main form of transportation but once the gas powered engine became readily available, his life as well as the lives of his descendants would be drastically affected.

 

Due to the hardships of long distance travel prior to the use of automobiles, many young couples ended up dating a neighbor or someone they met at church. In my grandfathers case, being able to make the transformation from riding a horse to driving a car, offered him the ability to conveniently travel to neighboring towns and counties for recreation. It was on one such trip out of town, where he met my grandmother, Marion Leedom.

 

Another major change in his lifestyle involved his choice of occupations. By the time the 1920s rolled around, many new jobs were opening up and my grandfather choose to work as a truck driver instead of a farmer.

 

The Great Depression and WW II

During the 1930s, many people lost their jobs, including my grandfather. Times were tough for everyone, especially a young man trying to support a wife and six children. Prior to getting married, my grandmother had worked at the Hershey Chocolate factory in Hershey, PA. But when she started having children, she quit her job. Fortunately, during The Great Depression, she was able to get a job cleaning house for a detective.

 

In the 1940s, automobiles had another effect on my grandparents lives. During WW II, new cars were not being manufactured because the steel was needed for the war effort. One of the car companies in America at the time was Studebaker Corporation in South Bend, Indiana. During the 19th century, they were the largest builder of horse drawn vehicles in the world. But in 1920 they had quit making wagons and started making electric and gasoline powered automobiles.

 

In 1945, as soon as WW II was over and the car companies were ready to begin production again, my grandfather got a job working for Studebaker.

 

After my grandparents moved to Indiana, my mother Verna Hostetter decided to move back to Pennsylvania, where she met my father Franklin Wike. Unfortunately, their marriage didn’t last and shortly after WW II was over, my mother ended up trying to raise her two boys by herself.

 

Family and Country Lifestyles

I am the youngest of those two boys and my early years involved spending a lot of time with my great grandparents, on their farm. It was located on the outskirts of South Annville, PA. I can still remember standing on a ladder and picking cherries during the summer. I also remember learning how to ride a bicycle on the old country road that separated their farm from the church camp meeting grounds that were filled with little white cabins. Those cabins were for the church members to stay in while attending camp meeting and listening to the preachers. Since my great grandmother was their cook and my great grandfather was the grounds keeper, I got to spend quite a bit of time there also.

 

My great grandparents lifestyle was a simple one. There were no TV’s in their house and I don’t even recall even hearing a radio. Lizzie always wore a dress with a long apron that she would gather together and use to carry the eggs she brought back from the chicken house. They also had a “fruit cellar” with a dirt floor, under the house where she stored her canned goods and other perishables. And the large full size bed my brother, Donald Wike and I shared when we visited was covered with hand embroidered sheets and hand made quilts.

 

As I reflect back on their lives now, I am somewhat envious of what they had, yet saddened by what they lost. What they had was a lifestyle based on family. They stayed close to their parents, cousins and siblings throughout their lives. What they lost was the ability to have that same connection with their children and grandchildren after everyone moved away to different parts of the country.

 

Music and City Lifestyles

My lifestyle at home was quite a contrast from the lifestyle of my grandparents. We lived in Lebanon, PA, which was a much larger town then South Annville. I don’t know what the population of Lebanon was at that time, but in 1942, their graduating class consisted of over 100 students.

 

My mother held a variety of jobs. They ranged from being a clerk at the Bon Ton Department store to working as a waitress in various diners or out at Fort Indiantown Gap, the local Army base.

 

One of the other differences in lifestyles between my great grandparents house and our place was the fact that we had a record player and my mother loved to listen to music. The records she played were the old 78 speed records and I can still remember the titles of her favorites such as “Ship Ahoy”, which was a religious song recorded by a friend of her’s named Donald Wolfe, “ I Really Don’t Want To Know,” by Eddie Arnold, “Oh, Mein Papa,” by Eddie Calvert, and “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” by The Four Lads, but the one I remember her playing the most was, “If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie,” by John Gordy. I think the reason she played that song so much is because she called her sister-in-law, who was also one of her best friends, Susie, even though her real name was Alice.

 

There are several reasons I mentioned those songs. The first reason is because I heard the words to them over and over as a child and they had an impact on my life. I believe that anytime a child hears certain words, stories or ideas over and over, it will have an effect on their core beliefs and ideas. Therefore, the surroundings of my great grandparents lifestyle consisting of living on a farm that was located in the same county where they were born, combined with their close circle of family and friends, plus their conservative religious beliefs helped to mold one set of ideas, while my life in the city combined with mother’s music had a different influence. Her songs had messages of far away places, religion, family and romance.

 

Another reason I mentioned those records is because my mother was a pack rat. She saved everything including her old records. As a result, when she passed away, I inherited her collection of 78 speed records. That means from time to time, I can sit back and listen to the same records I heard as a young child and let the sentimental memories take me back to a special time in my life. This is also my way of letting all my relatives know that once I am gone, I hope that someone within the family will hang on to those records and pass them on to future generations.

 

Creative Minds

Other then listening to records, our lives were fairly simple. My mother did not own a car or know how to drive, so anytime I wanted to go someplace, I had to walk. I don’t recall even owning my own bicycle, but I didn’t seem to mind. I had a little red wagon that I would fill up with old magazines and take to the “Salvage Yard.” That is how I got my spending money for candy. One of my favorite types of candy was wax bottles filled with a sweet liquid similar to soda pop. I also liked the candy cigarettes.

 

For entertainment, my brother and I would take my mothers bobby pins and spread them apart far enough to slide them over a rubber band that we stretched between our index finger and middle finger. Then we would shoot the bobby pins at our window blinds to see how many we could get to stick into the blinds. Of course, we had to make sure the blinds were up when we got done, so that our mother wouldn’t see what we had been doing.

 

Now that I reflect back on my childhood, I think the greatest gifts we had other then family, was our imagination. We had to be creative and think of ways to entertain ourselves.

 

Our First TV Set

Our live style began to change in the mid 1950s. My mother got a job working at a restaurant named Angie’s. I don’t remember the owners name but he was Greek. While my mother worked there, my brother and I stayed in a small trailer out behind the restaurant. Since mobile homes were much smaller back in the 50’s, I am not sure if that trailer was a mobile home or camper, but either way, it was small, especially compared to today’s standards. But it did have one feature that was new to us. It had a TV set.

 

At that time, there was only one TV station that we could get and it was channel 8 out of Lebanon. The only TV show I remember from that time frame was a children’s show called, “Pussy Platypus And His Friends.” Staring some type of puppet where the live audience consisted of groups of children and they would play cartoons. The main reason I remember that show is because my cub scout group attended one time and it was the first and only time I ever appeared on TV.

 

The Beginning of the End

My innocence and sheltered lifestyle was about to end. In the late 1950s, my mother started dating a WW II vet she went to high school with. His name was Wilbert Knapp but we called him Bill. They ended up getting married and since Bill had a car, we began to travel beyond a few city blocks. Our biggest change took place when we moved from PA to Indiana, so that my mother could be close to her parents. Unfortunately, moving to Indiana also meant that we would never get to see my great grandmother again, at least while she was alive.

 

The trip heading out of PA was quite an eye opener for me. The biggest thrill was traveling down the newly built super highway, called the PA Turnpike and going “through” seven tunnels that took you under the mountains. That was quite a contrast to the totally flat land I saw in northern Ohio and Indiana. But the change in landscape was just the beginning.

 

Learning From Grandparents

When we arrived in Indiana, we stayed with my grandparents until we could find a home of our own. My grandparents were wonderful people and I loved them dearly. I spent many years watching and listening to them and to this day am thankful for the many things I learned from them.

 

My grandmother was another woman that always wore a long dress with a full length apron. I watched her gather up her apron many times to carry feed for their horse or carry some type of vegetables from the fields. She also made sure that I accompanied her to church every Sunday.

 

My grandfather was the one that introduced me the principle that work comes before play. When he said work comes first, he meant 10 to 12 hours out in the fields, every day except on weekends. The only reason we didn’t work the fields on weekends is because that is when we went door to door selling the produce.

 

Entertainment

I didn’t mind working that many hours and my grandparents rewarded me for my efforts. Every Saturday night, I would get a glass of Dr. Pepper. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon, we would make homemade ice cream. Whenever the 4H fair would come to town, they would always take me to see it, plus they took me to rodeos and auctions.

 

My grandparents also had a TV set, but it was in COLOR. The way they got their color was by placing a green sheet of some strange transparent material over the screen. Every night after supper, they would turn their TV set on and we would all sit in the living room and watch it until the news came on. That was my bedtime. They used to watch programs such as Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan and Maverick. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons, I would get to watch The Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid or some other western.

 

The only time I remember them having the radio on was Saturday mornings when they would listen to the farm report. That was usually followed by some Tex Ritter songs or a few of the other old favorite country singers.

 

 

 

1939

Approximately 19,000 television sets are operating in England -- Less than a few hundred in the USA.

 

1944

All commercial production of television equipment is banned for the remainder of the war.

• In the United States, television is allowed to continue broadcasting on a very limited basis at some stations In England, however, ALL broadcasting comes to a complete halt, until June 7, 1946.

1946

• RCA begins production of 630-TS, the first television designed and manufactured after the war. Approximately 10,000 units sold by the end of the year, with about 43,000 sold of this model before production ends in 1949. Other manufacturers used the RCA chassis, and placed it in a cabinet of their own design. The initial RCA selling price was $352.

• One of television's critics, Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox (movies) was quoted saying: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

• May 9th -- Hourglass the first hour-long musical variety show, airs over NBC's three stations (New York City, Schenectady and Philadelphia).

• England resumes TV broadcasting on June 7, 1946.

• June 19th -- The first televised heavyweight fight (Joe Louis vs Billy Conn), viewed by a record 140,000 (mostly at bars which had sets installed). One year later, the Louis-Walcott fight is viewed by 1,000,000 people.

• October 2nd -- Faraway Hills becomes the first TV soap opera, airing on the new DuMont network.

 

 

People are talking about Transistors for the first time, saying they just might replace the tube.
4 million TV sets are in use in the U.S. on January 1st.

10 Million TV sets are in use by December 31st.
Some 90 million radio sets are in use in the United States - an average of 2 radios for every home in the nation.

 

 

I grew up in an era where movies had a major impact on my beliefs as to what life should be like.

 

By Franklin T. Wike

 

U S Legacies Magazine June 2004