I've been puzzled over this nostalgia for the 1950s. I was born early in that decade (yeah, I'm OLD). I drank from a whites-only water fountain and went to a segregated school. My husband saw a black man hanging from a tree. Gays were closeted. My mother spent a day a week boiling water over a fire in the yard to wash our clothes. If my father hadn't hunted and fished, we would have been hungry. People lost their professions over their political beliefs. Not to burst your bubble, but whether the 1950s were a great time depends on your point of view. Manners hid a dark underbelly where it was accepted that wives and children could be abused.

Thanks for an interesting discussion.