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America in the late forties, fifties and early sixties was an exciting place, at least when viewed from this side of the Atlantic. In Britain, where austerity and post-war reconstruction blues were the order of the day, it seemed that America was the place where movie stars came from, the birthplace of rock and roll, the originator of all things cool. Elvis, Brando, Dean were role-models for teenagers in Brighton, Basingstoke and Bootle as much as in Birmingham Alabama or Cambridge Massachussetts. From music and film we built-up an image of life growing-up and living in middle America - it conjured-up scenes of car races between leather-clad heroes in huge Chevvies and roaring T-Birds, drive-in movies - life a constant round of parties, dances and excitement! Of course, this was a nonsense because people in America may have generally had a higher standard of living at the time and certainly the stars and hits emanated from there, but Americans had to deal with hardships and problems just as we did - the Vietnam war and racial bigotry to name but two.

Family reunion

Revard and Diane Vordenbaum grew up in middle America during this period and are probably typical in many ways of the of teenagers at that time. They have now been married since 1967, Revard a co-owner of Brickstone Products Corporation in San Antonio and Diane one of the owners of a 50s and 60s nostalgia shop called Remember This in the small town of Boerne, Texas, where they both now live. Boerne is a small quaint town about 30 miles to the northwest of San Antonio which is the tenth largest city in America. American nostalgia expert Dave Lincoln Brooks interviewed them on behalf of retrosellers on a cool evening in late winter in their cozy apartment and here is that interview:

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DLB: Let's discuss the 50s and 60s...

RV: In the 50s we were just kids.

DLB: How old were you in the 50s?

RV: I was born in '46. In 1956 I was just ten years old.

DLB: But do you remember the 50s then?

DV: Oh yeah!

RV: Part of 'em.

DLB: Well, didn’t you tell me,  Diane--    or was it [your sister] Shirley?--    who told me that the whole mood of the 50’s was real different from the 60’s? 

DV: Definitely.

RV: Sure.

DLB: How was it different?

DV: There was an innocence…

RV: People would stand up and salute the flag. People would take their hats off..... men were wearing hats. If you didn't take you hat off, you took your life in your hands. Because that was God and Country, and that was expected of you. In the 60s , it depends on what year ..... I guess it started in the mid 60s, David. There was a respect for the flag, but a lot of them didn't respect it.

DV: A lot of that started with Vietnam.

RV: No, they didn’t respect what we actually did in the service.

DV: The middle-to-later 60s was the Rebellion. Kind of, things started......

RV: Yes, but even in the 50’s, there was still quite a bit of that. Some were imitating, say, Marlon Brando.

RV: Or James Dean.

RV: Even James Dean was quite young then,  too. We remember those,  even though we were only 10, 12 years old. It was just a different lifestyle. People basically respected each other more, then, I think.    

DLB: Really? 

RV:  Aw, heck yeah,  man. I really believe there was a few people out there, but not like it is now,  where it’s gone to the dogs. 

DV: No respect,   now. 

RV: Nowadays,  there’s respect for The Almighty. I’m not talking about God, I’m talking about The Almighty Dollar! I mean, there are still families that, you know, raise their kids to respect elders, but everything’s too fast now. People are too mobile now. In the 60’s,    people had cars, yeah,  but in the 50’s and early-60’s, people cruised a lot. They didn’t go 200 miles in a day, 300 miles in a day. 

DV: That was unheard of! 

DLB: My mom--   who graduated high school in 1960--    said that when she went back to her 30-year high school reunion in Hillsboro, Oregon,  the big topic of discussion there was Safety. She said that, in those days, everybody left their house unlocked.  And their cars were unlocked. 

RV: Well, that was in a small town. 

DV: Not only was the car unlocked--    but the keys were left in the car! You’d just go out and start your car up. My mother, my grandparents from Louisiana--   they all had their keys in the car.    

DLB:   Nowadays, even in a small town,  I wonder if anybody’d leave their keys in the car? Like here in Boerne? 

RV: No. Everybody’s afraid of getting car-jacked or molested. In the early 50’s, if you molested somebody, man, the cops would beat the soup out of you. The cops had the authority. They were feared and respected at the same time.    

DLB: There wasn’t Political Correctness. 

DV: Exactly. 

RV: Everybody’s afraid these days. Everybody. Doesn’t make any difference how big you are, how small you are. Even the thugs are afraid, whether they admit it or not. They’re afraid they’re gonna get hurt, too! They’re afraid they’re gonna get ambushed one night.     

DLB: Do you attribute this to the prevalence of drugs, or of gangs, or the accessibility of guns,  or…? 

RV: Oh,  no. I think they just want to belong. Everybody wants to belong to something. Back then, we had Clubs…   I guess you could call it a Gang, but it wasn’t a gang. Not like those motorcycle clubs were--   The Hell’s Angels, The Bandidos. I’m sure there was drugs and violence and the sex part of it, back then. Man, sex in the 50’s! You were prim and proper! But that’s a different subject.    In the 50’s, it was Duck-and-Cover. But you don’t remember that, though, do you? Duck-and-Cover because of nuclear attack, because of nuclear war. You’ll see the film clips on TV: they’d tell the schoolkids, Duck-and-Cover! You were to bend over and cover the top of your head. 

DV: As though that would help you at all in a nuclear attack! 

RV: Man, if you just bent over six inches farther, you could kiss your ass goodbye.  (all laugh). Even at ten years old, I remember my father thinking, “Man, you know, I’m going to sell nuclear fallout shelters.” That was big; it was nearly the equivalent of selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. People were genuinely scared of that. 

DLB: Because of the perceived Russian threat? 

DV: Cuba. Khrushchev. 

RV: Or just nuclear war in general; it didn’t matter really where it came from. 

DV: We’d have not only fire drills, but air raids at school. We’d all have to file into the hall. That kept kids afraid. I’m sure kids today have that same kind of fear--   of stuff going on now… 

DLB: Do you think they do? 

RV:  I think that they’re afraid they’re going to have to go to Afghanistan. It’s more localized today;  back then, the nuclear threat seemed to affect the whole world. Even during Vietnam, there was terror, but you fought because it was right. Well, you thought it was right: none of us military servicemen really knew what was going on. I mean, President [Lyndon Baines] Johnson and his cronies were pulling all the strings from behind. I don’t think even the American public knew what was going on; it’s a good thing there was protests back then. It’s not so much protesting the war, but protesting how they handled the war…   police action,   etc. 

DLB: Now, Revie, were you drafted or did you enlist? 

RV: (emphatically) No,  I enlisted! 1966…  or 1967. I enlisted in 1966, then began my boot camp on January 1st,1967. I had left the evening before--  New Year’s Eve.  

DLB: And you two weren’t married at that time?

Young Diane RV: No. 

DLB: But  y’all were, uh, dating?

DV: Yes.     

DLB: But you had already graduated from high school? 

DV: He had. I was still a junior.  

RV: So when you enlisted, did you believe that it was just going to be a  ”quick” war? 

DV: No. It had already been going on for a long time. 

RV: The French had been catching hell since before ’62. But I believe it was the right thing for me to do. 

DV: And you couldn’t’ve changed his mind for nothin’! No. Unh-unh.      

DLB: What was your M.O.S. (Military Occupational Specialty)  in the Marines? 

RV: Oh-three-fifty-one. Machine guns. 60-calibre machine guns. But then they’d scramble you all up; you never knew where you might end up. Even Germany, or wherever. What they were basically trying to do was keep bodies rotating--  because so many bodies were being shipped home. 

DLB: Let me ask you this: when you watch a TV show like HAPPY DAYS or a movie like AMERICAN GRAFFITI  which basically painted a portrait of America in the mid-50’s--    or even the early-60’s--  as being … Some say that the 60’s really didn’t begin until 1963…    until Kennedy’s assassination. 

DV:  That’s true; the first years of the 60’s were still “the 50’s”. Then a lot changed. 

R.V: I thought we were going to get into a nuclear war then.      

DLB: Out of retribution towards whoever bumped off Kennedy? 

R.V:    No, we actually thought the Russians were involved in it. And we were only high school kids who didn’t know jack-diddley. All we thought about was lunch in the cafeteria or getting out of school… 

D.V. I was in junior high at the time…   when that happened. 

DLB: (jokingly) You never thought it was, say, Frank Sinatra or The Mob?   

R.V: No. We never thought it was anybody even linked with Marilyn Monroe,  or…

D.V. We always figured that it was a bigger thing than just Oswald…     that the public never found out the whole story on… 

DLB:    Back to my other question: How accurate, would you say, was that media depiction of America in the 50’s as being innocent…    as in LEAVE IT TO BEAVER or AMERICAN GRAFFITI…?

D.V.: It was innocent!    It was…    “warm ‘n’ fuzzy” ! 

DLB: So that’s not just hokum…? 

R.V. But what you have to understand is, a lot of people wanted it to be that way…     You wanted to be Wally Cleaver, or have June Allyson for a mom. Or have a mother like Ricky Nelson’s mother. 

D.V. And moms stayed home! You’d come home from school, and the mothers were at home! There were mothers that worked;   but very few. 

DLB: And that’s changed nowadays…   for the better or for the worse? 

D.V. No mothers are at home now.   Or  few-few-few are at home.     

DLB: Do you think kids got off to a better start in those days? 

D.V. Yeah,  yeah. 

RV: They had a foundation laid for them. They had God brought into their lives.

DV: And family was a very structured thing. We all sat at the table at specific times and ate together as a family.

RV: I remember, at eight years old, how my father, a salesman, would go to the bar for a beer with his fellas, and unwind, but he always-always-always brought us home a sack of candy. And two dollars,  or a dollar-and-a-half? Man, I mean it filled the sack up! My younger sister,  Marguerite, and I would sit there and separate ‘em all out. And it always amazed me--    even then--   how much candy it would buy. A kid,  even at eight years old, could run around the neighborhood without fear of being kidnapped.

DV: We’d take off on our bikes,  and,  I mean,   go everywhere! Or ride the bus alone. In sixth grade,   when we were--   how old,   eleven? Twelve?--    the rodeo would come to town,  just like it does now. We would get on the bus and ride to downtown San Antonio!  Watch the parade,   then get on another bus and ride out to the Joe Freeman Coliseum to watch the rodeo. Omigod…   today, you wouldn’t let a kid go even--

RV: It was the last thing you thought of. Even death--    which is how things should be now. It was a safer generation…    no need for locked doors. It’s a shame kids today can’t experience the sense of security we did.

DV: We’d sit up and down the curb, waiting for the popsicle man. That was a biggie. Your parents would drop you off, alone at the movies, even when you were little. And you’d stay all day! They didn’t make you get out.  

DLB: Do you think that America was more affordable in those days?

R.V.  You know, we were just talking about that today. My father was selling his product in the 50’s, it was 75 cents a square foot;    now we’re selling the same product for $7.00 a square foot.  

DV. You’d ask your parents for a nickel--    You’d beg for a nickel! You’d go up to The Station and get candy for a nickel.

R.V. A sixteen-ounce Hippo was a nickel.

DLB:  What was “Hippo”?

RV. A brand of soda-water.  It was a big ol’ sixteen-ouncer,  big ol’ bottle…

DLB. Hence the name!  (all laugh)

DV: Everybody had their own little corner store…

RV: “Mom-n-Pop” stores…

D.V. Where you’d get candy for only a penny. You’d go to Minor’s. Or to The Station. Or Kilpatrick’s, which was in Louisiana.   You’d take a nickel and get a Popsicle…  a grape Popsicle.

R.V. In high school, gasoline was 19 cents a gallon.    

D.V. You’d go cruisin’ around…    then you’d pull up and buy 50 cents’ worth of gas!   (laughs). That would get you a couple of gallons. Then you’d  hit all the spots:  there was Drive-Thru Jay’s. Jay’s was one of the first places where you’d pull in, stay in your car,  and push the button,  you know? You’d order, and the girl would bring you out your food.

DLB. Was she on roller-skates?

D.V. No-no-no, that was in the 60’s. There was a place like that in San Antonio…    was it George’s Triple-X … ?

R.V. Yeah, that was a big 50’s spot.

DLB: Oh, the “Home Of The Black Cow”! Over on Fredericksburg Road.

DV. Yes!! You know, it hasn’t been too many years that he quit making hamburgers at that place…

R.V. You know, back in the 60’s, he had to change that slogan for awhile…      Black people were getting terribly offended by the name “Black Cow”.  He got such a run of flak from that…    It was just a Float: a mug of root beer topped with vanilla ice cream.        And Tar Babies--    you remember those little black licorice candies?

D.V. Except they weren’t called Tar Babies. We called ‘em “Nigger Babies”--    and that was the brand name of the candy!! But then,   I remember, in ’83, at my candy store, they came out again with a candy called Black Cow.

DLB: Do you remember Colored and White drinking fountains?

D.V.: Oh God, yeah.

R.V. But we kids didn’t understand it. 

DLB: How late did that last?

D.V. It was well into the 60’s,   down where I was…

R.V. It depended on the area of the United States you lived in. In the Southern states, there was still a lot of resentment. If you were a white woman, and you came across a “colored” person on the sidewalk, the black person was expected to get off the sidewalk and let her pass. In the little town in Alabama, where I lived, the black people still had an engrained respect for the white people:     I mean, the older ones would straighten the younger ones out, by saying: “Y’know, look, we have to live here, and the white people have all the money, I guess. So let’s take ‘em for their money, but let’s give ‘em that little bit of respect in turn…”

D.V. It wasn’t like that!

R.V. You weren’t there! That was years before I met you…

D.V. But I was in Louisiana, and that’s just about as “Southern” as you can get!

R.V. Not as “Southern” as Alabama was.

D.V. Even in the late 1960’s, they still had the Colored side to the Dairy Queen!! The Colored side, and the White side. Drinking fountains? “Colored” and “White”.

R.V. In Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan was still very active. They would still hang people.

D.V. And another thing: down near where my grandmother lived--   up one road and down another--    that area was called the Nigger Quarters. Now that was not being pejorative, necessarily; that’s just what it was called. Nowadays, of course, that name sounds horrible--  You’d never say that!

R.V. Well, I very seldom used that word anyway, because I just didn’t care for it. It’s the equivalent of being called White Trash.   

D.V. I didn’t either. My cousins, who were the same as me, used the word all the time. But my father was in the Army; we lived on post in Washington State with black people. It did not matter. In fact, one of my best friends was a little black boy. And…    I never realized he was…    different. It was not until I was a good bit older, my Dad got out of the military, moved us down south to San Antonio. My grandmother lived in Louisiana, and that was the first time I learned all that-- it was from them.

R.V. It all depended on where in the world you lived then. In South Africa,    they were called "kaffirs". I don’t know what they were called in England. But I never cared for the term…    I’d just call the person, “Hey,  John” or “Hey,   Joe” or whatever your name was.             

D.V. Racist thought was just a Southern thing; a Southern institution.

R.V. Children learn from their parents; they learn the good, they learn the bad. Then it spills over into their lives, with their children.  If a parent decides he just will not raise his kids that way, the children just will not think about it, basically. The biggest help--    and the biggest ruination--    has been that right there (points):   the T.V. Because it shows you the good and the bad going on all over the world. (pauses). And I think we haven’t even begun to see the end of it…

Buddies

DLB:   On a lighter note, Diane tells me that you’re a Beatles fan?

R.V. When they got started here--   was it ’61?   62?--     they didn’t have too many songs. But when Beatlemania hit, it hit hard. And either you liked the British Invasion sound completely, or you didn’t like it at all.

DLB: Who didn’t like the Beatles?     

R.V: Well, all the cowboys didn’t care for ‘em. All the rednecks weren’t really thrilled about all that.   

DLB: What were they listening to?   

DV: Ray Price. Merle Haggard. Johnny Cash. Waylon Jennings.   

R.V. And an obscure person by the name of Willie Nelson. You know, in those days, Willie was very clean-cut, used to wear the dark suits and skinny ties, you know?  He tried to make it in the late-50’s, and people would just make fun of him then…    he had such a unique, high voice…    he was one of those, like Freddy Fender, who just had one of those unique voices…

But the Beatles were A-OK. Do you know what ruined the Beatles in the U.S.? I mean,  really?  I’ll tell you: It wasn’t the booze, it wasn’t the drugs, it wasn’t the women: it was when John Lennon made his “we’re bigger than Jesus Christ”  remark. Many Americans, especially those in the Bible Belt, just couldn’t understand that he was speaking in terms of the Beatles’ fame. They took him literally and very seriously. (The Beatles) really slit their own financial throats on that one; God knows how much money they lost with all the record-burnings that took place in the States.   

Another British phenomenon I remember was James Bond…      All us guys would try to look like him by dressing up in suits and ties.  (laughs). You know, people would dress up to go see James Bond back then?

DLB: Really?

RV: Yep, because it was an event. I mean, this was James Bond we’re talking about! 007. Everybody wanted to be 007.

DLB: Did you have a favorite Bond film?

RV. I’d have to say GOLDFINGER.

DLB. 1964. With Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore?  

RV.  Yeah. That’s before I even knew what “hot” was!!  The Bond girls. That’s what we guys we’re all thinking about. Before we even started dating, it was the Bond girls.   

DLB: But then sexuality was generally more subtle then,  too….    ?

DV: Our generation was where the Sexual Revolution started. And now we’re paying for it today with our own kids, with all the sexual freedoms they have.

DLB: What sort of fashions did you guys wear in the 60’s?

DV: I remember the guys started wearing this kind of…  suit…     

RV: I had this green silk, shiny shark-skin suit…

DV: You know, like the Beatles had in those pictures?   

RV:  With no collar and a skinny tie. The Nehru collar. It was cool.

DLB: That must have been one slick suit you had.

DV: The boys would wear these pointed shoes, with a low-cut ankle…    They were for fighting with. The guys would remove the heels, then turn up and fortify the toe with an extra flap of leather for strength. They were called “Tanjies”.

DLB: Tanjies?

DV. Yeah,  because they only came in tangerine-colored leather.     

DLB: They sound very much like what the British called “winkle-pickers”. You know, the sharp toe was like a tool for opening up clams…

DV: Then the Mexican guys started a trend of pegged khaki pants. Khakis and Tangerines.   

RV: But a lot of guys were still wearing the Western look…    the “kicker” look.

DLB: Revie, did you ever grow your hair long?

RV: No I didn’t, I always kept it clean. I always wanted to get along with my parents.

DV: Here,  look at these…  (shows some photographs from the 60’s) Here’s Revie’s sister, Marguerite, in the mid-60’s. (Photo of a beautiful suntanned young woman with an enormous beehive, frosted pink lips and sleeveless aqua blouse).

DLB: Wow, she looks like…

DV: Kim Novak.

DLB. Or Dusty Springfield. Gee, how many cans of hairspray did you go through in the 60’s?

DV: (laughs) All that Aqua-Net, it was called. Cans and cans.    

DLB: I’ll bet that’s why we now have a hole in the ozone layer. (all laugh)

RV: Here’s me in Vietnam. Age 19 or 20. I lived in this hole for months, living on MRE’s (Meals Ready-To-Eat). I learned how to make a gourmet meal out of cold ham chunks and lima beans. (color photo of a very tall, strapping young man in camouflage BDU’s in a deep sandbagged foxhole with 5 Marine buddies. Rifles and grim expressions all around. One young man sports a dangling cigarette. A beautiful, jagged purple mountain range is the backdrop). I’d give anything to know what became of all these guys…

Vietnam

DLB: You know, Vietnam really is a beautiful country, isn’t it?

RV: Absolutely beautiful. It’s a shame I couldn’t have toured it when I was there. Do you want to know what I was fighting for the whole time? Because it sure as hell wasn’t God and Country. It was this little girl right here (points to photo of an innocent, petite 17-year-old Diane, now his current wife of 35 years. In the snapshot, instead of a beehive, she sports a glossy, chestnut “geometric” 60’s bob, and a magenta polka dot mini-dress; no go-go boots, but some dainty leather sandals on bare feet).

DLB: Wow. Your look was very Mod. Very “Mary Quant”.

DV: Who’s Mary Quant?

Many thanks to Revard and Diane Vordenbaum for the fascinating insight into middle America in the 50s and 60s, and best of luck to them in the future.

Many thanks for the interview to: