Essay:Notes from the 1950s

A few notes from the 1950s
These are personal experiences of social conditions in the United States in the 1950s. They are generally limited to my personal situation and, while they are typical, are limited by that situation. I was born in 1942, my father was initially a school teacher, but not a very successful one, and by the time I was 7, he had leased a service station in. In 1954 we moved to where we lived in a modest suburb, but inside the city limits, near. There my father had great difficulty finding a job and ended up working as a janitor for a department store. My mother, who had been a school teacher, had limited freedom due to the responsibility of caring for my brother.

Working
I began working when I was 12, delivering papers. My first route included part of the Denver University campus; a year later I acquired the route in the neighborhood we lived in. At that time, having a paper route was, other than agricultural work, nearly the only exception to the child labor laws. Thus, although our family was poor, with low income aggravated by my father's obsession with saving money; I had money, quite a lot for a kid. I had time for school, and homework, but was not able to participate in after-school activities. So life-experience was lost, but also gained as I was a member of a work crew, which often spend considerable time together in the early afternoon as we waited for the papers to arrive. Much of that time was spent playing, tackle football without uniforms, which we played year round. Over the years, we became quite skilled, both at playing, and at not getting hurt. A few times we went on adventures in the early morning, getting up at 2 rather than 4 and, for example, going swimming in private pools or going bowling. The Denver Post, then, was an afternoon paper with a Sunday morning edition.

The laws in the United States provide that "Minors employed in the delivery of newspapers to consumers are exempt from Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) child labor provisions, as well as the wage and hours provisions." We were also considered independent contractors. Rich material here regarding both exploitation and the power of the media to ensure itself a cheap compliant work force. Not that I had any clue; I was happy to be able to work and have money.

Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations, § 570.124 Delivery of newspapers
"Section 13(d) of the Act provides an exemption from the child labor as well as the wage and hours provisions for employees engaged in the delivery of newspapers to the consumer. This provision applies to carriers engaged in making deliveries to the homes of subscribers or other consumers of newspapers (including shopping news). It also includes employees engaged in the street sale or delivery of newspapers to the consumer. However, employees engaged in hauling newspapers to drop stations, distributing centers, newsstands, etc., do not come within the exemption because they do not deliver to the consumer."

Ignorance
The 50s were the era of McCarthyism and I did read the paper and watch television, but, if my parents knew anything, which I doubt they did, they kept quiet, as did our teachers. We knew of Stalin and that he had the bomb, and that just about covered it; although the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 made a big impression. Using Molotov cocktails to destroy tanks seemed pretty cool. There was a clue, Colorado history was a required course on the curriculum in the 8th grade, and the Colorado Labor Wars were well covered. Something to think about, how the government could remove all the workers from a town as they did in Telluride, Colorado. When Eisenhower ran for re-election in 1956 a straw poll in our 7th grade class showed one person out of 30 for his Democratic opponent. Somewhere in there I read, I think, China's Red Army Marches by Agnes Smedley, or it might have been books by Anna Louise Strong. That got me interested; rural poverty and oppression I understood from stories my mother told about growing up in the San Luis Valley.