Born in 1951

If you were born in 1951, you grew up in a country where the television antenna was becoming as common on the rooftop as the chimney. *I Love Lucy* debuted in October and was immediately the most talked-about show in the country—Lucy's face could convulse a whole room into helpless laughter, and Monday morning at the office was all about what she'd gotten into the previous night. Korea ground on through the year with brutal fighting and stalemate, and General MacArthur's spectacular firing by Truman was the kind of political drama that made people shout at each other across the dinner table.

But at the drive-in, things were easier: a carload of teenagers for a dollar and a speaker hooked over the window, watching *A Streetcar Named Desire* in the warm dark. Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, and the young Frank Sinatra were filling the jukeboxes. Television was swallowing the radio audience one family at a time.

The first Univac computer—filling an entire room at the Census Bureau—was computing election returns and making people vaguely uneasy about the future. A new Ford ran about $1,600, a gallon of gas was nineteen cents, and the suburban development with its curving cul-de-sacs and new schools was spreading outward from every city. The baby boom was in full swing, and the stations were filling up their afternoon schedules with cartoons for all those children arriving.