`DECADE OF THE C'S': CONFORMITY, CONSERVATISM, CREW CUT

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Sociol~ogists looking back at the 1950s could well call it the decade of the "Cs." It was, after all, the decade that America witnessed the new conformity, conservatism, a Communist scare, a Cold War, censorship, common sense, Chuck Berry, corporate power, crinolined skirts, Perry Como, crewcuts, Davy Crockett, cocktail parties, and commuting.

In deliberating the "Nifty Fifties," some camps look at it with scornful distaste. Norman Mailer, not one to be reserved in his opinion, called it "one of the worst decades in the history of man." Comedian Mort Sahl, with a dose of cynicism, said of it, "I'm the intellectual voice of the era, which is a good measure of the era."

Others reminisce the image of an age of innocence with untarnished heroes before the bedlam of the next generation stormed in. Simon and Garfunkel later asked: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

Some happenings of the '50s might seem outrageous. For instance:

Monogram canceled a movie about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, since Hiawatha, a peacemaker, might be viewed as a Communist sympathizer.

William Saroyan wrote the music to Rosemary Clooney's "Come On-a My House" on a bet with a relative.

Levittown, N.Y., mandated that lawns be cut at least weekly and laundry washed on specific days.

The 1915 movie classic "Birth of a Nation" was barred in Maryland as "morally bad and crime inciting."

Mississippi voters approved a state constitutional amendment to avoid desegregation by closing public schools if there is no other way.

HEW Secretary Oveta Culp Hobby adamantly opposed free distribution of the Salk vaccine to poor children, claiming the move would be socialized medicine.

A Connecticut psychiatrist said rock 'n' roll is a "communicable disease" and Boston clergy try to ban all of it from local airwaves. The Everly Brothers' innocuous "Wake Up Little Susie" was banned.

But under the veneer of civility and attempts to enforce conformity, an undercurrent was swelling. The Madison-Avenue-promoted Pepsi generation had an underground counterpart, the Beat Generation. Disillusioned with the American dream of conformity, its members looked to Alan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A young, southern minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, said that after 90 years civil rights are due and started campaigning for them.

The catatonic mode was about to burst into a cataclysmic boil; tension between government rhetoric and the people's reality started to stretch tenuously thin.

"There was a feeling of something getting ready to bloom," is how the Rev. Pat Wissman of Cape Girardeau described the decade prior to the '60s. "But it was very quiet; you could not put your finger on it."

The passiveness of the '50s eventually gave way to the passion of the '60s. "Then, it bloomed in the '60s," he said. "People found personal freedom. They were looking for the poetry of life rather than the work-day world. They looked for more joy in life."

Wissman now heads the Newman Center Campus Ministry on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. The Cape Girardeau native was graduated from high school in 1956.

"Conformity was very important then," Wissman said. "Nobody knew anything else. It took awhile for the non-conformists to make an impact. It was a `square' decade; most people were square, including me."

If one were to paint a picture of the decade, it could be with one paintbrush and one color. "The decade was monochromatic," he said. People were satisfied with ordinary things. The country was taking a big breath after going through World War II and the Great Depression before that."

The concept of family, with father bringing home the bacon, mother staying at home and frying it, and an average 2.3 children around the dinner table, has been evolving since then. Wissman said some people in the 1960s wistfully looked for a utopian universal family lifestyle in communal living as an alternative. "The traditional nuclear family concept may change to the idea of planetary family," he said. "But a lot of shackles need to be broken before that can be attained."

In its relaxation response to the prior years of turmoil, the country focused on family matters and business expansion. World War II veterans were coming into their 30s and enjoyed a favorable business climate. "Many entrepreneurs started new businesses then," Wissman pointed out. "The atmosphere was not so cut-throat and cold-hearted as it is now, since deregulation. In the 1950s there was a feeling you could get involved in the American dream and accomplish something."

Walter Joe ("Doc") Ford of Cape Girardeau said he and other students at the time stayed busy while in school working at part-time jobs. "I worked for my uncle at Kassel's Jewelry as a janitor through high school," he said. "I was a curb-hop at Wimpy's Drive-In, a helper at St. Mary's Truck Line, and worked for my father at the funeral home (now Ford and Sons Funeral Home). We never got bored."

Ford, a 1953 graduate of Central High School, said, otherwise, he was involved in athletics. "I played baseball and basketball almost every night, and worked," Ford said. "That's about all there was to do.

"It was a simpler time then, and with a slower pace. I don't know if it was better, just different."

With availability of cars, high school students found new mobility and, as a result, a wider spectrum of friends and new meeting places. Although few students had cars of their own, more were able to borrow the family car. Drive-in restaurants became hangouts and "cruising" became in vogue.

"If someone had or could borrow a car, we would be cruising Broadway and going to the drive-ins: Pfister's and Buck Thompson's on West Broadway; Wimpy's at Cape Rock Drive and 61, and the Blue Hole on South Sprigg," he said.

Teenagers piled into cars and went from Cape Girardeau to the Jackson swimming pool, the skating ring at what used to be Ancell, now Scott City, "and some dives we weren't supposed to go to," Ford recalled. Dance halls north and south of town were popular meeting spots. In town, they saw movies at the Rialto, Esquire and Broadway Theaters, or went to teen town downtown.

"Bud Thompson's drive-in on West Broadway was the meeting place for the guys in athletics," recalled Ford.