The Day I Arrived

Have you ever looked up what the #1 song was on the day you were born?  Compared the price of milk, eggs, bread, and gas from then and now? 

A couple of nights ago I went down a nostalgia rabbit hole.  I don’t even remember exactly what I was looking for.  I think I wanted to know what the weather was like the day I was born or something.  I didn’t find that, but here are some of the things I did find.

This one I already knew and it’s always kind of upset me that The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton was the number one song the day I was born.  It’s not on my playlist.  It couldn’t be further from what is on my playlist.  It held the number one spot for about 6 weeks.  What I remember most about that song is the drum beat, and these two rhyming lines: “took a little trip” and “mighty Mississipp”.

I’d never heard of the box office hit from July 3, 1959, The Beat Generation (aka This Rebel Age).  I found it on YouTube.  Sometime when I’ve got a spare hour and a half, I might watch it.

TV shows?  My husband will appreciate this.  Westerns were hot!  Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel.  Just to mix things up a little bit, Perry Mason and The Ed Sullivan Show were also on that 1959 black-and-white TV with the antenna on top.  What’s My Line? debuted that summer.

Mom and Dad’s brand-spankin’-new-blue-and-white Chevy Impala sold for just south of three grand. 

The average income was about $5,000 per year. 

There were only 49 states.  That made me feel really old.  Hawaii didn’t become a state until later in the summer of ’59.

I did some more random searches and that’s when I came across something really interesting—The Story City Herald.  Okay, so it was probably only interesting to me because I was born there and lived there until I was almost 5.  I never knew the newspaper existed.  I even found copies online.  Apparently, it was distributed every Thursday, so the closest one to my birthday was July 2, 1959.

They were advertising the big Independence Day celebration.  The Legion was sponsoring a parade.  The swimming pool opened that weekend.  Two things I didn’t know Story City had: a pool and a newspaper.  Also, they were accepting County Fair entries. 

My Mom’s doctor had an ad in the paper.  That was kind of cool, both seeing the ad and realizing I still remembered his name.

Ladie’s dresses: $3.99

Perms:  $5.00

Men’s sport shirts: $2.95

Socks and ties: $1.00-$1.50

In the classified ads there was a used Westinghouse Dishwasher for $95.  That seemed pricey to me.  At least it did after I got over the fact that dishwashers existed in 1959.  I had no idea.

I also looked at the job listings.  The first one I saw: “Woman Wanted.”  That made me laugh.  The ad was for a housekeeper.  Of course.

Back to this appliance thing.  It got me thinking about what appliances Mom and Dad owned.  I remember the refrigerator.  It had the rounded doors that show up on HGTV once in a while when they’re going for a retro design.  I don’t remember a washer and dryer.  There had to be a washer, because I don’t remember seeing a rock or a creek.

Mom and my grandma, who lived with us, hung a lot of stuff outside on the clothesline and inside on drying racks in the winter, so it’s possible we didn’t have a dryer.  I remember how mad Mom would get when those darn mulberry-eating birds would poop on her clean sheets. 

Grandma did a lot of ironing.  She had a 7-Up bottle with a sprinkler cap on it.  She would sprinkle the clothes, put them in a big plastic bag, and freeze them.  Later she’d take them out and iron everything.  I mean, she ironed the sheets.  I swear I even saw her iron underwear. 

I learned a couple of new words during my search.  Forenoon, as in “The sale will take place in the forenoon and afternoon.”

I also found out that a “canned picnic,” which sold for a very reasonable $1.89, is not an entire picnic in a can.  I was bummed.  In the very fine print it said: “Dubuque, cooked, defatted, boneless…” Ham.

I would like to go back in time to stock up on the 49-cent Betty Crocker Angel Food cake mixes.  That’s a great deal! 

In 1959, July 3^rd was on a Friday, just like this year.

Speaking of this year, time to come back out of the rabbit hole.  It was a fun trip, though.  If you want a history lesson simply look up the day your own story began.