Tag: 1950s

It’s Our First Anniversary!

Mister Boomer is celebrating one full year of postings! During that time, Mister B has been gratified to know that tens of thousands of visitors from all over the U.S. and Canada have stopped by to reminisce and recall our place in history.

It’s been Mister B’s mission to bring you entertaining and informative musings on the boomer age, our youth and the changing times we’ve witnessed by connecting personal recollections with historical events. In the course of our weekly postings, some writings have generated great enthusiasm, which reinforces Mister B’s notion that though we boomers differ in our economic and social backgrounds, we all share a great deal that is unique to our generation.

With a celebratory wink and a nod, here are Mister Boomer’s personal Top Ten favorite postings of his first year. If you missed them the first time around, have a look and jump-start memories of your own. If you recall reading them, visit again and see if you agree with Mister B that these are the cream of the crop!

10. There’s a Kind of Crush, All Over the Boomer World
Posted March 6, 2011
Coming of age in the 1960s wouldn’t be complete for a young boomer without recognizing the beautiful, strong, modern women that graced the TV screen. In this posting, Mister B relates his choices for top celebrity crushes.

9. Boomers Strike Solid Gold
Posted July 3, 2010
Music formed the soundtrack to our lives, and perhaps we owe it all to the advent of the transistor radio. Take a trip down the musical memory lane as Mister B recalls early 1960s music emanating from his personal battery-powered radio.

8. Musical Youth
Posted August 14, 2010
Music appreciation in our schools did not equate to our appreciation of the top 40 songs we were listening to on the radio and playing on our record players. What would happen if a teacher dared to cross the lines to use modern music in her class as a teaching tool? Mister B relates the disastrous results.

7. Home Delivery
Posted August 9, 2010
Of the many things that made our youth different than other generations, home delivery — especially of milk products — was one to which every boomer can ascribe a story. Here are Mister B’s stories of home delivery services in his neighborhood.

6. Boomers Heart Robots
Posted October 10, 2010
Robots were fun playthings at home, but also scary nightmares in movies. Mister B relates that dichotomy in our pop culture that made robots a metaphor for our times.

5. 8-Track Mind
Posted August 23, 2010
High on the list of boomer-time products that are now gone are 8-track tapes. For many of us, it was the first introduction to “music on demand” in our cars. Hated by some for its clunkiness, now the tapes can be rediscovered through the romantic prism of an age gone by.

4. The Final Frontier
Posted September 26, 2010
Perhaps nothing captured our young imaginations more in the fifties and early sixties than visions of space. Travel with Mister B on his journey, following the earliest space missions.

3. Which Cat Was the Coolest?
Posted July 18, 2010
On the surface, the boomer battle of Felix the Cat vs. Top Cat tends to fall along the lines of which decade you happen to be born in; those born in the fifties gravitate toward Felix, while early sixties boomer babies lean to the Top Cat camp. Nostalgia aside, explore the inner feline workings of these classic and smart cartoons and decide as an adult which side you are on.

2. Laughing Through the Cold War
Posted June 20, 2010
While many of us were too young to fully appreciate the meaning of total annihilation, we were able to do our share of laughing at the satire and comedy that it spawned. From Duck and Cover to Get Smart, Mister B enjoyed laughing through the Cold War.

1. See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet, Again?
Posted September 13, 2010.
Where would our country be, or where would we boomers be, without President Eisenhower’s vision for the building of the National Interstate Highway System? Mister B’s personal recollection of the building of the National Interstate Highway System in his neighborhood firmly links this boomer to the historic event that arguably was among the biggest changes in our lives. This is the essence to which misterboomer.com strives.

Thank you for visiting Mister Boomer and making this site a success. If you’ve had a chuckle, conjured a memory or learned a tidbit, tell your friends. As always, your comments are welcome. Here’s to looking forward to another exciting year of looking back!

Boomers’ Cars Breezed Along … Without Air Conditioning

As we approach another summer season, Mister Boomer was reminded by a recent conversation about how he and the neighborhood teens would describe the air conditioning in their cars. Some semblance of naming the vehicle make and model followed by “460” was cleverly voiced to describe the model number of the cooling unit (i.e., Ford Fairlane 460). What they were actually saying was, “four windows down at 60 miles per hour.” Of course, that meant turning the hand-cranks to open each of the windows before getting underway. It would be decades before power windows became standard equipment. In other words, when it came to air conditioning in cars, Mister B’s boomer-hood didn’t have it.

Car air conditioning was first seen in a 1939 Packard, but it really began in earnest when the Packard Motor Company offered factory-equipped air conditioning in some of their 1940 models. It consisted of a compressor stored in the trunk that circulated cooled air through tubes inside the car.

Though the timing would make car air conditioning a pre-boomer invention, lower-priced cars aimed at growing families didn’t feature air conditioning as a selling point until the prime boomer years of the 1950s. By 1953, Chrysler presented its Airtemp air conditioning system. It took Ford until 1956 before air conditioning was an option on most models. When the mid-50s rolled around, every auto manufacturer was offering air conditioning as an option on some, if not all, of its models.


Looking to increase their market share alongside Ford, Chrysler and GM, the American Motors Rambler was often associated with the most inexpensive cars available. Unfortunately, it was also considered among the ugliest. By 1958, the top-of-the-line Rambler Ambassador gave air conditioning as a standard feature to help differentiate it from its higher-priced competitors.


DeSoto was introduced by Chrysler in 1929, and sales continued until the disruption of auto manufacturing during World War II. After the war, Chrysler picked up where they left off, and several DeSoto models continued to sell until the recession of 1958. After a precipitous drop in sales that year, the brand never recovered and was dissolved by Chrysler less than two months after they introduced the 1961 models. DeSoto was yet another car model that disappeared in early boomer years, though many recall riding in them with parents or grandparents.

For Mister Boomer, air conditioning wasn’t present in any of his family’s cars until the 1970s. In fact, none of the neighborhood kids had air conditioning in their family cars either, except one. A family living near the Boomer household had a penchant for buying used Cadillacs. Mister Boomer had the occasional ride in their cars, marveling at the power windows and air conditioning while at the same time preferring the windows open since the father of the boomer neighbor liked to smoke cigars in his Cadillac. Car air conditioning in the 1960s may have cooled the air, but it wasn’t a good filter for cigar or cigarette smoke.

In Midwest car culture, most teens had their own vehicles between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. The very nature of buying inexpensive wheels meant teen boomers went for the most style available for the money instead of luxuries such as air conditioning. For Mister B, air conditioning controls never graced the all-metal dashboards of his early-years cars. Even when he was able to purchase his first new car years after college in the late 1970s, he did not equip it with air conditioning. The 460 model had been good enough for him for decades.

What car air conditioning memories come to mind for you, boomers? When was the first time you rode in an air conditioned car?