Born in 1953

If you were born in 1953, the first thing that happened was that the Korean War ended—an armistice in July that felt more like exhaustion than victory, but brought the boys home just the same. Eisenhower was in the White House, calm and grandfatherly, and the country settled into a particular contented prosperity. The TV dinner made its debut at Swanson, a tray of turkey and mashed potatoes you could heat in the oven while watching *I Love Lucy*, and it felt like the future arriving in a foil pan.

The first color television sets reached the market, though at over a thousand dollars almost nobody could afford one. Chevrolet unveiled the Corvette in a swirl of chrome and white, the first American sports car, and Playboy hit the newsstands with Marilyn Monroe smiling from the cover. *From Here to Eternity* swept the Oscars.

Patti Page, Eddie Fisher, and the Four Aces were on every radio. The McCarthy hearings were poisoning the air in Washington, but on the back porch the fathers were grilling the first backyard charcoal steaks on new Webers and the subdivisions were filling up with children—more children than anyone had ever seen—all of them watching Howdy Doody and drinking Ovaltine and growing up in the most prosperous country the world had ever produced.