Born in 1940

If you were born in 1940, you came into an America that was slowly finding its footing again after the long, grinding decade of the Depression. Walk into any diner on Main Street and you'd find a blue-plate special for thirty-five cents, the counter stools turning with factory workers and farmers whose hands were finally steadying after years of hardship. Everyone was humming Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," and on Saturday nights, the local ballroom was packed with couples doing the jitterbug till midnight.

The radio was the heartbeat of the home—families gathered around the Philco console every evening for Jack Benny or *Fibber McGee and Molly*, laughing together in the amber lamplight. Over in Europe, something terrible was stirring, and the newsreels before the feature at the Bijou were starting to look darker, but America was officially staying out of it for now. Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term, and the arguments at the barbershop were lively.

Gas was eleven cents a gallon, a new Ford V8 ran you around $700, and the World's Fair in New York had just dazzled everyone with its vision of "The World of Tomorrow." Kids were out on their Schwinn bikes until the streetlights came on, trading baseball cards and listening for the Lone Ranger on the kitchen radio. It was an America poised on the edge of something enormous, not quite knowing what lay ahead.