Describing the 21st Century to someone in 1950s Phoenix


Since I enjoy time-traveling, today I'm wondering what questions that someone in 1950s would ask of me if I suddenly appeared there from the 21st Century.

As I write this, it's almost the year 2020, which has got to sound pretty futuristic to someone in the 1950s. I suppose that they would have a lot of questions for me, beginning with why I'm not wearing a silver jumpsuit.

Silver jumpsuits in "The Forbidden Planet" (1956)

It seems as if every movie that I've ever seen from the 1950s, and the comic books, that shows the future shows everyone dressed in jumpsuits, usually all silver. I can't help but think that my wearing Levis blue jeans would come as a bit of a disappointment to someone in the 1950s. I guess I could show them that the rivets were taken off of the back pockets, but that's not much of a change. There is some sort of stretchy material in them to make them more comfortable, but it probably wouldn't get a gasp of amazement from them.

I suppose that they would imagine that traffic problems would be long-gone, either with flying cars or jet-packs. I could mention that more freeways are being built, and maybe that would be impressive. Maybe not. If they asked me about dogs I guess I'd have to tell them that there are special parks where they can run around off-leash, but otherwise people have to walk behind them with a plastic bag in their pocket. Say, I could mention that the buildings are taller! And the doors of grocery stores do open automatically for you!

I'm sure that my dental work would impress them, if they're interested in that. I got a couple of crowns last year, and they look like natural teeth, not the fillings that I had before. Well, that's not exactly flying cars and jet packs, but it's something.

I guess I could talk about the internet, or the popularity of cat videos on YouTube. How about Google Street View?


Image at the top of this post: Cheese n Stuff in the 1950s, 5042 N. Central, Phoenix, Arizona.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more