Born in 1954

If you were born in 1954, you arrived in a year when two things happened that cracked the country open. In May, the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, ruling school segregation unconstitutional—a ruling that the South received with fury and the North with incomplete understanding of what it would really require.

And that summer, McCarthy's televised Army hearings finally broke his spell; attorney Joseph Welch's "Have you no sense of decency?" landed like a thunderclap, and the whole country felt a toxic cloud begin to dissipate. Music was shifting too—Fats Domino and Chuck Berry were making records that white teenagers were finding ways to hear, and Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was just around the corner.

The new split-level ranch houses had picture windows and attached garages and Formica countertops in avocado or pink. The first Burger King opened in Miami, and the first McDonald's was already flipping burgers in San Bernardino. TV was king—*The Tonight Show* began its long run, and *Disneyland* the TV series previewed a magical California theme park nobody had ever seen anything like.

A postage stamp cost three cents. Gasoline was twenty-two cents a gallon. The drive-in lot on the edge of town was full every Friday night with teenagers sharing a six-pack of Nehi in the back seat, watching the screen, not watching the screen.