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The year, 1962

Posted by DavidLD (A) on March 10, 2007 at 06:38:46

...And every family worth its salt now has a walnut-grained console stereo, complete with AM-FM, 4-speed record changer (including 16 2/3 rpm which supposedly plays books recorded on vinyl tho I never actually seen one of those) with ceramic "turnover" cartridge. For the kids, the 45-rpm single is the MP3 player of the time, and most kids have a mono phono in their room for playing big stacks of 45's (I don't recall ever hearing a stereo 45) containing the popular radio hits of the day and costing a dollar each. These were the MP3 players of the day.

Mom and dad had a bunch of Lawrence Welk 33 1/3's, some polka albums and interestingly a couple of violin albums by Fritz Kreisler (is that the right spelling?) Plus, of course, the mandatory copy of "Clair de Lune" and these went on the "record player" (changer? much later terminology) nearly every Sunday afternoon.

The TV set was still black and white 21-inch, and it would be several years before color showed up in any numbers. Some dumb debate was going on, the broadcasters werent interested in broadcasting in color until more people had color sets, and people weren't willing to buy color sets until more programs were broadcast. Someplace along the line Disney decided to move their show from CBS broadcasting entirely in B&W (CBS was a heel dug in B&W stalwart) to NBC, and rename it "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" (the World is a carousel of COOOLOR!). NBC, which somehow now owned RCA, decided it might make good sense to put on more color shows as a means of getting people to buy those new-fangled color RCA sets that cost $700 and up not $250 to $300 for a decent B&W. All of this more or less started around 1962, but it was 1965-67 before color really took off big time.

As a Freshman in college 1965, the girl's dorm lounge (they weren't called "women" until nearly a decade later) had a new RCA color set, and the girls invited the boys (College boys were not referred to as men until some time later either) over to the lounge to watch "Bonanza" in color on Sunday eves.("The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC" cut to multicolored peakock." Bum pud dud dumb pum pud pu da dumb dumb paaam paaam" as a branding iron burns a hole with yellow fire in title on screen) You can guess how I spent my Sunday eves in College.

Back to 1962: A big family party was out on the then-new concrete patio. It was the 60s before the big open charcoal grille became popular, and of course everyone threw parties on the outdoor conctete patio and grilled burgers using sometimes hard-to-start charcoal. The other necessity at these parties was potato chips served from a plastic chip 'n dip set with some goofy-looking white dip with tiny chunks of anemic looking green onion mixed in it from the dip container in the set. Once enough thin potato chips broke in this gunk, thicker "ripple" chips that wouldn't break when dipping eventually showed up but were not commonplace until the late 60s. At showers and weddings, chip 'n dip sets suitable for these patio parties were all the rage. And, of course, Golden Glow salad. "Golden Glow" salad despite its name used lime jello as its base, to which was added shredded carrots (that was the golden glow I guess) , and unexplainably sometimes, a can of green (English) peas. People collected copper "Jello" molds for setting these up. You would then take a large plate covered with a few leaves from the outside of an iceberg lettuce head (Iceberg was "it" tho is was decades before the term iceberg came into use to describe a head of lettuce and serving salad "greens" was decades off), Put bottom of the the jelled mold in a pan of hot water for a few seconds, and then plop out the green Jello, carrot and green pea mass onto the lettuce leaf-covered plate. To complete the look, this was served with a side of Kraft (widemouth jar) salad dressing, which once you had taken your piece of the salad, you would plop the salad dressing on top.

So, the standard Sunday evening party menu was

1. Golden Glow Salad (see recipe above)

2. Charcoal-grilled burger on buns (interestingly only ketsup as a topping--it was much later when putting lettuce, tomato, cheese and mustard came along--and only as a consequence of the fact that the newfangled fast-food restaurants were starting to do this. In 1962 ketchup (probably called catsup then) was the appropriate hamburger condiment whereas mustard belonged on hot dogs. You didn't put catsup on hot dogs or mustard on hamburgers (NOT burgers) or god forbid mix the two together.

3. Potato chips with a gloppy semi-solid white dip served from a chip 'n dip set (it was much later when more liquid dips first appeared, and things like salsa and corn chips were unheard of as side dishes.)

4. thin strips of Kosher-style dill pickle ("Kosher" meant a little garlic and seemed to have nothing to do with Kosher meats). For the less adventurous non-Kosher dills were generally available too. Most people didnt slice the pickle in thin circles to put them on the burger...they ate the strip as a side item with the burger.

5. Sliced watermelon for dessert.

Generally Koolaid or lemonade was served as a beverage, not beer or soda pop. Adventurous hostesses mixed lemonade WITH the red, orange or green Koolaid for an extra zing. The idea of serving canned beer and canned pop from an ice-filled styrofoam chest was nearly a decade off.

Afterward, you would go indoors to catch the final minutes of the Ed Sullivan show.

What's odd is that we all went to these parties and felt as if we had been royally entertained. We felt like we had it all! We weren't poor or in any way second class. What I describe is just the way everyone did it. People competed for attention in the neighborhood based on the complexity of their Golden Glow salad molds, but the recipes varied little.

David

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