The World of 1957: The Year I Was Born
by Article gives a brief overview of what it was like to live in 1957.
When I say, “1957”, what images come to mind? Do you recall images from your own studies or from your own life? And, recalling those images, do you suppose your images are exactly the same as everyone else’s? That is both the beauty and the beast of history. For the moment, try to set your images on the back burner and try to tune into mine.
I was born early in the morning on May 12, 1957, nearly half way into the year. I knew nothing of World War II, the war that ended barely 12 years earlier, or the baby boom that followed, but, there I was – a blank slate. Born the fourth and last child of a failed marriage that ended in divorce court the December before, I was cast into an all female household as the nation was about to enter the turbulent 60’s, leaving the innocence of the 50’s behind.
Although I really don’t remember, 1957 was the year of Sputnik, the world’s first manmade satellite, The Frisbee, the world’s first flying disc, and, of course, the 1957 Chevrolet Belair, one of the sweetest looking cars of all time. To set the stage and get your mind thinking in my 1957 sort of way, check this out: The average price of a new house was $12, 220.00, average rent was $90 a month, and the average annual income was $4,550.00. Assuming a 40 hour work week, and a 52 week year, that’s about 2080 hours a year. Using the $4550 annual income, that means the average hourly wage was about $2.18 an hour. Gas was twenty four cents a gallon, eggs were twenty eight cents a dozen and bacon was sixty cents a pound.
Elvis Presley purchased “Graceland” in 1957, “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss debuted, and Charleton Heston shined in, “The Ten Commadments”. Toyota sold its first car in America while Americans were paying an average of $2,749 for “big-finned” American cars from Detroit. On TV, viewers warmed up to “Perry Mason”, “Maverick” and a new show featuring Dick Clark called, “American Bandstand”.
This world of Slinkys and Hula Hoops was the world I was born into where almost no one had ever heard of Viet Nam. TVs were still all black and white using vacuum tubes instead of transistors, telephones were still connected to the wall and used dials on the face to connect, and segregation was still a big, big issue in Arkansas, among other places. In 1957, “Beatles” was still just the misspelling of the name of some insect, but that would change in seven short years. The “Leave it to Beaver” 50’s were about to be left behind and a whole new world was on the horizon. 
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