1950's Los Angeles
Was it normal for families in the '50s to have 2 cars? I know that's an odd question, just something I wonder about on occassion when I watch either The Hours or Mona Lisa Smile.
shareMy family lived in Los Angeles in the 50s and they didn't...depending on the family's income level, just like today.
"Adultery makes a party go such a swing!" Naomi——Skins.
LA might have been different but 2 cars was not the norm. I remember in the film, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Jennifer Jones driving Gregory Peck to the train station so he could commute to NYC. However, my Dad was a traveling salesman, though, so our second car was paid by the company.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
I noticed this too! But - one must remember how California was zoned, even then. It is causing us huge problems now, and definitely contributed to the crash in '08 when it was just making the oil companies cry to have only above a....say....ninety percent profit margin. Does anyone remember how hard they fought to keep the prices up? Poor dears, they won't sleep until we are at five dollars a gallon at least on a regular basis.
I am a California native. I LOVE my state. But I do hate what has been done to it over the last century, perhaps a little more. I remember the orange groves, the cows on the hills overlooking the sea, the delivery trucks with their gleaming glass windows inside of polished wood drawers that brought bakery goods and the milkman...
Apropos of nothing, I love the saying "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not really after you."
Well, we can translate that a million ways, and one way is to note the increasing distance a starter home was from where a family really wanted to live.
The fact that once they were there, unless they plugged their ears to all consumer advertising and darned their socks, grew their own veggies, and rationed their electricity, it was going to be near impossible to move on up, was not recognized.
Until the "big" (read:big enough to be faceless and not see the effects of their changes in employer loyalty) companies really came out and frankly said, "There's plenty more of you, you make too much and on certain weeks we fear you could almost make enough hours to qualify for benefits."
Then the big companies made it seem that the small companies were dying because of these "extras." They pushed up their borrowing rates, the gas prices, the amount groceries cost while breaking the retail clerks union (hardly the Teamsters) and finished by demanding that balloon payment NOW just after assuring each family they could borrow on their equity and have a house just like the ones they saw on TV.
Now most families CAN only afford one car when they need about THREE for all the working just to stay afloat.
I post about this a lot, but I wonder what will happen in my lifetime. I'm old enough to remember people happy with clotheslines and rose gardens and young enough to view all the job losses and increasing indifference with dismay.
But enough of my negative feelings; what I want to know is this...did they green screen in that one street or is it a Historical Places Street or a movie set or what? I know there are neighborhoods with a few unchanged houses, but where did they get that brand new spanking tract?
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