Ernestly ?!Ernestly ?!By ERNIE NEUFELD, Weyburn Review Associate Publisher
This column was written a few months ago, but repeatedly pre-empted by subjects with greater date-sensitivity. But being time-related to the year 2000 now drawing to a close, it had to be used now or never, and "never" seemed too much a waste of my time and effort.
About mid-20th century, outbreak of total war between the Soviet bloc and NATO nations seemed inevitable, and had since Allied and Red forces met in 1945 Germany more like the collision of a rock and a hard place than the felicitous joining of allies in a common cause.
In July of 1950, as I typeset early stories of the Korean conflict in the composing room of the Minneapolis Star-Trib, I was certain United Nations involvement in hostilities between two elements of the former sovereign nation of Korea was simply the catalyst of conditions pressing relentlessly to a preordained nuclear holocaust.
That development and my age at that time lent special significance for me and millions of others to a Time Magazine special produced recently as a millennium special, capsulizing the last century's mid-mark with highlights from its pages in the year 1950.
If I attempted to cram all the deserving excerpts into this space, I would not only go to jail for plagiarism, but might bore to death anyone under age 60, whose memory barely might be stirred by names and events familiar only from boring, repetitive adult conversations almost forgotten.
I may still do time for plagiarism, but perhaps in a worthwhile cause.
The Korean war dominated the news segment of the special, but I leave it to you to satisfy your own interest from other sources and devote my comments to items I found nostalgic and amusing. One such was a full-page full-color ad offering the glorious entertainment of television black and white for only $269.50 upward for a set fitting comfortably onto a bookshelf. (About the equivalent of an average 1950 month's wages.)
They didn't call it Coca-Cola Classic then, but the durable favorite was renewing its popularity beyond this continent. A Belgian visitor to Brussels "indignantly reported catching a man in the act of ordering Coke for himself and his innocent child." He warned: "A person who starts drinking Coca-Cola soon finds himself turning to other sinister habits."
Harry Truman was still president of the U.S., and in his State of the Union address predicted that if the escalation in prosperity continued, by the year 2000 the real income of the average family might well reach $12,450. May sound like peanuts now, but if you take inflation into account, the guess may have been optimistic. The term "Cold War" had already become part of the vernacular. A photo showed children in Portland, Oregon, practicing air-raid defense.
Senator Joe McCarthy was finding Reds hiding almost behind silver linings. Alger Hess was found guilty of perjury in a trial that effectively branded him as a spy.
Viet Nam (a strange name to most of us) appeared in the pages as a "new ally in the cold war."
Computers gained awed acknowledgment in a two-page spread. They were touted as "harbingers of a whole new science of communication and control." (If only they had known!) MIT professor Norbert Wiener predicted it would "devalue the brain as the first industrial revolution devalued the human arm." (I suppose it was too early to predict what television would do to our brains in the coming decades.)
Flying saucers were observed, pooh-poohed by some official sources, while at least one respected commentator found "something puzzling about the business."
Billy Graham was worth two pages in the capsule, as were poet Robert Frost and artist Pablo Picasso.
A new genre of popular music was ushered in with the popularity of folk songs such as "Good Night, Irene" and singers of the Burl Ives school.
The Cinema section celebrated people like Gloria Swanson, William Holden, young Marlon Brando and Theresa Wright. "Guys and Dolls" (a rerun of which I enjoyed on TV within the last fortnight) was an acclaimed musical, and Ernest Hemingway proved himself still to be "the champ" of writing with "Across the River and Into the Trees." "People" pages of the year featured newsmakers Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Elizabeth, Ava Gardner, Dizzy Dean and Frank Sinatra.
"Milestones" noted the passing of George Bernard Shaw with the terse opening sentence: "Methusaleh [sic] is dead." Eric Blair (George Orwell) also died.
Not saying I would like to relive all of 1950, but it was fun to be alive sort of.
My address (also listed on the Review's Website) is ernestly@pathcom.com.
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