A woman who grew up in Duluth and knows that I grew up in Duluth approached me the other day and suggested that I should write a column about what it was like to grow up in Duluth when we grew up in Duluth.
(With the recent emphasis on local reporting, I thought I'd write a sentence containing "Duluth" four times, just to prove we mean it.)
The woman and I can recall the 1950s in Duluth,a decade so remote it qualifies as ancient history in most people's minds, like the decline and fall of the Roman Empire or the Punic Wars.
I think children of the '50s tend to romanticize the decade as a blissful post-World War II era when America was at peace (except for the Korean War, 1950-1953, but it was over before the '50s really got cranking). The decade is recalled as a time whenmen worked; women stayed home and cooked, cleaned, talked on the telephone and raised kids; TV and Elvis arrived, and, oh yes, "all the children were above average" (thank you Garrison Keillor).
Maybe the other kids were above average, but I sure wasn't. I was a daydreamer in school, always behind on my work, worried at report card time that my "marks" (now known as grades) would provoke stern warnings from 1) the teacher, and 2) my father. I don't remember what I was dreaming about, but whatever it was it sure beat schoolwork. I'm talking the early grades here. By high schoolI was worse -- dreaming almost exclusively about cars.
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Which brings us to some startling news reported last week in the New York Times: The V8 engine is on its way out, even on larger cars and many trucks. In short order, it will be considered somewhat of an oddity under the hoods of vehicles.
Whew. It took my breath away. If anything characterized the '50s, it was the V8 engine, first popularized by Ford in the 1930s and by the mid-1950s, offered by virtually every American make, the bigger and faster the better.
Chevrolet finally got a V8 in 1955, an event eagerly anticipated by most red-blooded teenage boys of that day who considered themselves "cool."
Being cool was important to youth in the '50s, even those of us who only aspired to it. I could never really bring off '50s cool, but the obituary column recently reported on the death of a Duluth guy I knew slightly then whom I recall as the embodiment of '50s cool. I didn't know him well; I admired his coolness from afar. He was what TV's "Happy Days" producershad in mind with the Fonz character.
He wore a black leather jacket and Levi's jeans turned up about an inch at the cuffs over engineer, or motorcycle, boots -- black calf-high pull-on boots with a silver-studded strap and buckle across the front. Brylcreemed hair slicked back in a DA (duck's behind) topped him off, and his personality matched the get-up. Hedidn't speak to you, he unsmilingly acknowledged you with a slight nod.
What? Out of space already, and I'm only halfway through the decade. Oh well -- nobody cares who fought the Punic Wars anyway. I don't even remember. I must have been daydreaming.
E-mail Jim Heffernan at vhef fernan@earthlink.net . For previous columns, go to duluthnewstribune.com.
