Sat July 16, 2011
Bull Market Boomers
Our entire lives, all seventeen or eighteen years, had been spent in a bull market. Bull markets are the result of positive social mood. And so, with a lifetime of positive reinforcement, we thought eighteen boom years in a near row, was perfectly normal.
Our parents were Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation. The War was over, American had won, the party would seemingly never end. Ike, the very symbol of the US Victory, presided over the manufacturing juggernaut that had produced the Allied Victory. Televisions, washing machines, the passenger jet airplane, air conditioning, America was a production line of labor saving devices. Made in Japan was a negative moniker for most of that era; who imagined that would change?
The culture was like no other, and why not? Separated by two giant oceans from the rest of the world’s problems, we could afford the luxury of self-indulgence. Foreign countries were, well, foreign. In grade school Mexico was still called ‘Old Mexico.’ America was not bordered by other countries but two time warps. In our minds, Mexico was rooted in a sort of 1830s California nostalgia. One could still see people using burrows pulling carts for transportation. Canada was some hazy French and British blend of the Royal Canadian Mountie, with great scenery to boot.
A Cuban, Desi Arnaz, invented the television sit-com. Unimaginably perfect families like the Nelsons were on display. Mom stayed home, after all, this was still an era when Father Knew Best . Vaudeville made the move to television. George Burns and his buddies wore sport coats and neckties around the house on the weekend. Gracie wore a pearl necklace and a dress. And they thanked us for inviting them into our homes for a half an hour.
Such a positive mind set spawned lots of positive cultural events. Little Richard ‘invented’ Rock ‘n Roll. In the space of a few weeks in 1955 we stopped listening to our parents music and adopted our own. The purity of the event didn’t last long but for a time, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and rockabilly Carl Perkins ‘shook up’ the staid music establishment of the Gisele McKenzies.
Pop reached a crescendo in the 1960s. In an ode to the profligate American use of cheap energy, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Ripchords, all sang to the glories of the big V-8 American automobile. It was a first and last, a zenith never to be heard again. Who’s singing about cars these days?
Musicals went form Broadway to the big screen. Hollywood, fearful that the new medium of television would shut down movie attendance, rolled out new versions of Technicolor, Todd AO, and Cinemascope, all the better to brighten our world. Walt Disney invented the ‘theme park.’ We experienced our first national marketing blitzes. First it was Davy Crockett (King of the Wild Frontier) and then the Hula-hoop. Bull markets after all are marked by zany antics, each trying to outdo the other. It was hedonism on display.
Cowboys were the heart and soul of the action movie. From Roy Rogers and Gene Autry to Fess Parker to John Wayne, we couldn’t get enough of the Great American Hero. Television responded to the demand producing Maverick, Cheyenne, Broncho Lane, Colt .45 (imagine a television series today named after a revolver), Sugarfoot, Josh Randall, the Lawman, and Paladin. Shucks, the cowboy finally went Ozzie and Harriet with Bonanza. We no longer had to fantasize in black and white, GE brought the colorful West that Never Was right into the Sunday Night Living Room.
There were social disruptions to be sure but in a bull market all news is bullish. And so Ike banished Governor Wallace from that school room door . Civil unrest was at hand but like Old Mexico, hardly a real concern for most of us.
A Cold War caused both sides to frivolously spend lots of time and money on useless projects. A DEW line of Northern Radar Stations was built as our Distant Early Warning system against them unruly Russkies coming over the Pole after us. SAC, TAC, and other pointless military adventures were the order of the day. Sputnik would be the early warning system that our education system was even then in some decline.
Green energy was decades away. Instead America feasted on the abundance of the ordinary carbon based variety. Rock Hudson and Liz Taylor portrayed the Giant fantasy down the road in Marfa. Yep right out the dining room window, oil pump jacks shared the pasture with fat cattle. Life was good in Texas.
Dennis Elam is a graduate of the Andrews High Class of 1966
Their 45th Class Reunion is July 22-23, this is the first of several reminisces on that era.
