The 1950s

I watched Cry-Baby starring Johnny Depp on cable TV this afternoon, a John Waters film circa 1990 about the youth culture of the 1950s. It was filled with good music and a cute but corny story line. In other words, a good film for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Cry-Baby evoked memories of my own teen years during the 1950s. Born in 1940, I often look back fondly on the 1950s. I was born and raised in Berwyn, Illinois a Chicago suburb about 10 miles southwest of the Loop, the heart of downtown Chicago. I could walk two blocks to the Burliongton train station in South Berwyn and take the train to Union Station, a 12-minute ride by express train and a 17-minute ride on a local. Either way was fast.

Living in Los Angeles for the past 15 years, I really miss and appreciate Chicago's great transportation system.

In the mid and late 1950s, I went to my high school classes in the mornings at nearby Morton High School in Cicero, just east of Berwyn. Our school had 5,000 students, making it one of the largest in the nation. I liked Morton a lot, certain much much more than Fenwick, the Dominican high school in Oak Park that I attended for my first two years of high school. The teachers at Morton treated us like young men and women, not as the enemy, as some priests did at Fenwick. Fenwick had a good academic reputation because of its college prep curriculum, which I continued at Morton. I've always felt that I learned much more at Morton than I ever did at Fenwick.

Throughout high school, I worked part-time jobs. In my first two years, I continued my part-time job at MacNeal Memorial Hospital in Berwyn, not far from my home, a job I began in seventh grade. I worked as a tray boy for breakfast and dinner, and for lunch as well during the summer months. When I started high school in September 1954, I turned 14 and was aligible to work part-time as a dishwasher, which paid 75 cents per hour, compared with the 50- and 60-cents per hour I made during seventh and eighth grade. A year later, in 1955-1956, I was paid $1.00 per hour, thanks to the passage of minimum wage legisation.

In September 1956, I turned 16. I had saved nearly $1,000 during the four years I had been working at the hospital. A few weeks before my birthday, my dad and I went shopping for my first car. It only took a few minutes, because I had already spotted the car I wanted at a nearby used car lot on Ogden and Clinton Avenues. It was a beautiful, two-toned blue 1952 Mercury sports coupe with a continental wheel on the rear, dual exhaust, and a white-and-blue vinyl interior. It cost me $900.

I also began working part-time as a file clerk at Western Electric's Hawthorn plant in Cicero, where I started at $1.50 per hour. Because Morton was large, it offered classes on a split shift. Upperclassmen attended school from 7:45 a.m. to 12:20 p.m., while lowerclassmen started at 12:30 p.m. I worked at Western from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Beginning in my freshman year, I began going steady with Karen, who remained my girl friend until the end of my Junior Year. We went to dances and movies every weekend. Karen began wokring at Western in April 1956, because that's when she turned 16. When I started working there, Karen and I drove to school and then to work together. We always went out on weekends and sometimes during the week.

Life was very good in those days. But life can fool you when you least expect it.

In January 1957, my father died of Hodkins' Disease. He was three weeks shy of his 47th birthday.

It came as a complete and total surprise to me. I knew he had been ill for several years, and his swollen lymph glands were a sign that something was wrong. My mother knew what was wrong, but my father and her did not want to worry me. I remember going with my dad down to Michael Reese Hospital near the lakefront so he could receive radiation treatments. But it never occured to me that he had a fatal illness.

My father was laid out at the Herron Funeral home near our home. He was there for two nights before his funeral. There was a steady stream of visitors on both days, and evenings were especially busy. I had no idea my father had so many friends, but he sure did, and they all came by to pay their respects and say goodbye to him.

A few months later, Karen's father died, too. He also was in his late 40s. Our mothers became close friends and remained so for many years, even after Karen and I broke up in the summer of 1957.

During my high school years, I played saxophone, first alto and then tenor. I took lessons while I was at Fenwick and played in the marching band, which I did for the experience of playing and not because of any love of marching around in a uniform and playing marches.

During my senior year, some people I worked with at Western Electric took me to a nearby bar called Club Alibi. It was a typical Chicago bar with a three-piece group playing in the rear of the club. There was a small dance floor in front of the four-by-eight stage. I met the drummer, who led the band, and asked him if I could sit in sometime. He said, "Sure! Anytime." Besides the drummer, there was a tenor player and an electric piano player in the band. I ended up playing there on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Those were fun days.

I also worked on Monday, Tuesday and Sunday nights from 7-9 p.m. stocking the beer cooler at John's Liquor Store, a tavern near our home. I saved as much money as I could for college. I budgeted my time carefully, studying for a couple of hours after I got home from the liquor store, for a couple of hours on the nights I played at Club Alibi, and all day Saturdays and on Sunday afternoons.

During the spring, I learned that I had been accepted by the University of California at Santa Barbara, where my mother's relatives had recently moved. I looked forward to graduation and starting college in the fall.

Also that spring, recession hit our country. In May, I learned that Western Electric was cutting back on part-time employees and my job would end at the end of May.

What was worse was that my mother was laid off by Hotpoint, where she went to work in 1954 when she learned how sick my father was.

I tried without any luck to find work that summer. I stopped going to Club Alibi. I spent my days and night reading novels and brushing up on mathematics and physics because I planned to study both in college. That was a tough summer financially, and I appreciated my job at John's Liquor Store more than ever.

In late August, my dad's brother, Roy stopped by to pick up a couple of minnow buckets in our basement. He was surprised to learn I hadn't been working that summer. "Give me a call next year," Roy said. "I'll set you up with a good summer job at Cities Service Oil on Cicero Avenue." Roy worked next door at Mobil Oil. Executives at both places arranged for their sons and nephews to work at each other's plants. That turned out well because I made $3.00 to $3.25 per hour and worked there during my first two summers of college. I unloaded box cars and trucks. Good, hard, dusty work--just what the doctor ordered for those hot, humid, muggy Chicago summer days.