It Was the Fifties, Man

Harry Truman is out and everybody likes Ike,

The Dodgers pull out a miraculous Series win.

I trick out my black, red and chrome Shelby bike,

People are still judged by the color of their skin.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Sitting in school, first row, sixth desk back,

Forty naughty boys in white shirts and blue ties,

Step out of line, Miss Langin gives your face a smack,

Poor old lady doesn’t know, in a year, she dies.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Lying in bed dreaming young boy dreams,

Flipping baseball cards, a hundred at a time,

Block-long Cadillacs, chocolate egg creams,

Superman comics still cost only a dime.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Watch American Bandstand on black and white TV,

Justine and Bob dancing around so slow,

The Salk vaccine makes polio a bad memory

Senator McCarthy proves how low a man can go.

It was the Fifties, Man.

At Cape Canaveral we shoot ‘Explorer’ into space,

In Korea, 33,000 men die for freedom in the snow,

Rosa Parks sits down and stands up for her race,

Elvis shakes it up on the Ed Sullivan show.

It was the Fifties, Man.

Castro rules in Cuba, the Cold War rages,

Watson and Crick describe double-helix DNA,

Blondie and Dagwood rule the funny pages,

We had fags, homos and queers, but nobody was gay.

It was the Fifties, Man. 

It was good and it was bad, right and yet so wrong,

Two cars in every garage, but hatreds barely contained,

What ever it was, it was my childhood song,

And I will sing it, with joy unrestrained.

It was the Fifties, Man.

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