Baby-Boomer Phart

I learned to walk wearing red leather Mary Janes.

The little red shoes were my first real pair of shoes. Maybe my aunt gave them to me because the top grossing film in 1948 was The Red Shoes. More than likely, according to my mother, aunt Arlene gave them to me because they were bright and shiny and cute. Ed Sullivan, a former journalist and host of The Ed Sullivan Show, was also into shoes. He talked about them--every Sunday night. Sullivan pronounced show as shoe, and the quote of the year was: "Tonight, we have a really big shoe!"

When Harry Truman--a Missouri boy--was elected the 33rd president three months after I was born, I wasn't wearing those shoes yet. I was still in crocheted booties, several months away from walking, and totally oblivious to the Chicago Tribune headline of November 3: Dewey Defeats Truman!

Later, Give-Em-Hell Harry was quoted in the Tribune as saying: "This is one for the books!" He was right, it has been one for the books! That newspaper (pictured above) with its famous journalistic screw up brought $950 at an auction 10 years later. Imagine what it's worth today.

Although Scrabble made its way onto the toy shelves before I reached my first birthday, my toys were metal rattles and soft stuffed animals. It was 17 years after the daring bikini made fashion history (or scandal) that I wore one, much to my father's horror. Although, the bikini of 1948 required a lot more fabric than the bikini (or is it thong?) seen on beaches today.

I've lived through two major recessions in American history, and the older I get the more I realize the impact of those recessions. I pay attention to how expensive things are today. In 1948, I didn't pay attention to much except my little world, I sure wasn't aware of this:

Yearly USA inflation: 7.74%

Average cost of a new house: $7,700

Average yearly wages: $2,950

Gallon of gas: 16 cents

Average cost of a new car: $1,250

Loaf of bread: 14 cents

Lb of hamburger: 45 cents

Movie ticket 60 cents

(From: The People History)

Although my parents were fans of big bands and swing music, rock and roll--or an early version--was born in 1948.

In his Britannia Blog, Gregory McNamee states: "Rock and roll had many midwives. The first, and arguably most important, was another product of 1948, when the California instrument maker Leo Fender released the first mass-produced electric guitar."

There was no going back to big bands and swing music.

The rock was rolling.

Several musicians who would later become influential to music trends in the 1960s shared my birth year: James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne and Alice Cooper (pictured above).

The events, issues, inventions and cultural changes of 1948 undoubtably had some effect on me; the fact that I was born in 1948 certainly had an effect on me.

I came of age in the 1960s.

I was a young high school student and later college student during The Age of Aquarius. Everything was protested; the establishment and most American ideology was being questioned. We were overwhelmed and angry about America's involvement in a conflict in southeast Asia. We hipped Woodstock. We rebelled. We discovered grass wasn't just something dads mowed on Sunday afternoons. We wore funky clothes and Jesus sandals. We were hungry for liberal philosophies, beliefs and values. We rallied against social injustices and racial unrest.

It was a riotous decade of change. The sixties decade has been described by historians as the decade that resulted in the most significant changes in our history. And most of us born in 1948 changed with the upheaval of those times.

My little red shoes were long forgotten--they had been replaced by psychedelic tie-dyed Keds.