1957: The Year of My Birth

I arrived at the Moore County Hospital, just outside of Pinehurst, on a Wednesday morning in the middle of January 1957. The highways through the Sandhills of North Carolina were paved by then, but many of the county roads were still dirt. Longleaf pines surrounded the golf courses around Pinehurst and small farms dotted the rest of the county. Bright-leaf tobacco, cured in barns heated by wood, was the cash crop. It was a simpler time. 

The national average family income had doubled since World War II, rising to just above six thousand dollars a year. Of course, per capita income was lower in the South. But on paper Moore County appeared prosperous thanks to its numbers being inflated by rich Yankee golfers. Six thousand went a long way as the average house cost $12,000. However, furnishing it with a pair of Rembrandt portraits remained out of reach for most. A pair of his portraits sold for an even half a million dollars later in the year. 

For non-golfers in the Sandhills, such as my relatives from the Highlands of Scotland, tobacco remained king. People considered the leaf safe and when the markets opened in late summer, it sold for 59 cents a pound. North Carolina raised nearly a half million acres of the crop, producing over 1700 pounds an acre. You can do the math.  

The year began with a meeting of African American pastors who formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We’d hear more about them in the next decade, but integration moved into the forefront. A year after the last veteran from the war which ended slavery died and three years after Brown verses Board of Education ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, it took the military to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Things appeared to move slowly in the right direction, but I’d be in the 9^th Grade before schools were completely integrated. In Congress, the Senate under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson passed the first (mostly benign) civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction. We’d be hearing more about civil rights and Johnson in the years ahead.  

Two days after my arrival, three B-52s made the first non-stop around-the-world flights. General Curtis LeMay bragged we could drop a hydrogen bomb anywhere in the world. New Mexico became the one place we did drop one that year, accidentally. Thankfully, it didn’t detonate which is why no one knew about it.  The military exploded bombs in Nevada but said everything was safe. No one knew differently except for the sheepherders whose flocks lost their wool and began to die off. There were other nuclear accidents in ’57 in the US and UK, but no one talked about them. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, right? And we all knew our government would never do anything to harm us. That myth died before I graduated high school.

Although there were no major wars going on, the world remained tense. The Suez Crisis and the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack loomed. Our government, working with the Canadians, established the DEW line in the arctic to provide us a six-hour warning before the first Soviet bomb could be dropped on an American city. Canadian cities would have a little less time to prepare. By the time the Dew Line became operational, they reduced the margin to three hours as Soviet jets had doubled their speed. In a few months it all became extraneous as the Soviets launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

Later in the same year, the Soviets launch Sputnik, and we’d spend the next decade in a space race. Amidst the space race, some yo-yo created the first plastic pink flamingo. The end was near as prophesied by Nevil Shute in On the Beach, his post-nuclear war novel, published in 1957. I’d read it in high school.

To save us from calamity, we placed our faith in Ike, the President. Many thought I resembled as I, too, had a bald head. Ike wasn’t Herod and didn’t see himself as a king. Nor did he waste any time worrying about a newborn impostor as he perfected his golf swing while supposedly preparing himself for a second term as the leader of the free world. 

Jack Kerouac published On the Road in 1957. People headed out on the road sporting a new line of fancy cars with high fins and excessive chrome. The ’57 Chevy would become an icon of the era as Ike announced the building of interstates to connect the cities of our nation. Off the radar was a little-known Japanese company, Toyota. They loaded a ship with their first vehicles for the US market.

People began flying more and taking the train less. New York City abandoned its trolley cars in 1957. Shortly afterwards the Brooklyn Dodgers (originally the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers) announced their move to Los Angeles. They took the last of Las Angeles trolleys out of service six years later as I started the first grade. Now people think the Dodgers must either be named from their ability at dodging wild pitches or an obscure reference to an artful Charles Dickens character. 

In other sporting news, the University of North Carolina beat Kansas in the NCAA basketball finals.  These teams have remained at the top throughout my life. The Milwaukee Braves led by a young Hank Aaron beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. As a junior in high school, I watched TV as Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth’s home run record. The Milwaukee Braves faded over the next decade and high-tailed it to Atlanta. The Detroit Lions, a team whose demise parallels the city, won their last NFL championship.

Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged in 1957.  Almost seven decades later, “Who is John Galt?” bumper stickers are occasionally spotted on American highways. In the theaters, The Ten Commandments became the top box office success. For a country which seems so religious, the last commandment about not coveting appears overlooked. Rand launched a frontal assault on this commandment with her godless “look out for me” philosophy. Other commandments were also being broken as the movie “Peyton Place, which debuted in theaters, reminded us.      

Radios in ‘57 played the music of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Debbie Reynolds, the Everly Brothers, Pat Boone and Sam Cooke. In Philadelphia, love-stuck teenagers danced for the first time on American Bandstand as more homes acquired televisions. And in England, two chaps named Lennon and McCarthy met and would go on change music as we know it. Humphrey Bogart died just two days before my arrival, but it was still a good year for Hollywood. Not only was Moses selling, but so were dogs. Children everywhere cried watching Old Yeller. Hollywood also released The Bridge over the River Kwai. It inspired whistlers with its catchy theme music (an old British army tune). That tune would later be used in a commercial for a household cleanser which inspired one of the great ditties of my childhood: 

Comet – it makes your teeth turn green.
Comet – it tastes like gasoline.
Comet – it makes you vomit.
So, buy some Comet, and vomit, today!

Even today, I have a can of Comet stashed under my kitchen sink. Some things change, and some don’t.