Born in 1950

If you were born in 1950, you came in at the start of a decade that would define postwar America, though the early months felt far from celebratory. In June, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and America was at war again, barely five years after the last one ended. Fathers and older brothers were shipping out to Korea, and the draft notices were landing in mailboxes that had only just relaxed.

But alongside the anxiety, the prosperity was real and accelerating. Television had arrived in earnest—one in ten households had a set now—and *Your Show of Shows* with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca was the talk of every office on Monday morning. Patti Page was singing "Tennessee Waltz," which seemed to come from every open window that autumn.

You could buy a new house in Levittown for $7,990, and the supermarket had everything you needed in one gleaming, fluorescent-lit room. McCarthy was starting his hearings, and the word "Communist" was being thrown around like a grenade. But the Saturday matinee at the neighborhood Bijou was still twenty-five cents, a hot dog from a cart on the corner was a dime, and a kid with a quarter and a bicycle was the king of his universe.

The decade of drive-ins, TV dinners, and tail-fin cars was just cranking up.