In 1947, the year Matty and I slid onto this earth, the war was two years done.
And gone.
General Electric ran full-page ads announcing the technological wonder of "electronic television," a communications meteor soon to be slamming into the human race and changing everything.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco had health news, reporting that in "a recent Nationwide survey: More Doctors Smoke Camels than any other cigarette." So, see....
I was born August 3rd.
The next day, as it happened, Life magazine ran a cover feature on "Renaissance Venice: Fourth in a series on the history of Western culture." America was looking outward. Confidently. Eagerly. During the war, newspapers had carried campaign maps by the thousands. U.S. readers got a refresher course in world geography. Radio news broadcast events taking place far away, in places with exotic names; you could hear the difference. The far away became familiar. The U.S., introspective during the Depression, was curious now about the world at large. Education was on a rampage. Life readers wanted to know more about what they'd fought for, this Western civilization they'd ostensibly saved.
Had the long encounter with death provoked a nationwide lust for life, too?
American bedrooms were sizzling. Bed boards beat the walls like tom-toms, have a child, have a child, have a child; and Baby Boom nests filled. And would continue filling for another 15 years.
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The immediate big problem? Making more nests.
In 1949, William J. Levitt opened a modest sales office on Long Island and found more than a thousand couples lined up that first sunny morning to buy his basic four-room house. On a 1,500-acre ex-potato field 17,500 homes would sprout, assembled by efficiency experts.
Review by Boston University Professor of Humanities, Robert Wexelblatt: "One of the most extraordinary autobiographies I've ever encountered. It is unimpeachably honest, insightful, intimate, touching.... An exceptional book."