Life in the 50's

I was thinking about how life has changed since I was a youngster. I remember walking with my mother on Main Street in Fitchburg and going into Woolworth's Five and Ten. This store was always fun because it had a counter with stools where you could get a sandwich or a frappe. I remember seeing Freddy Place deliver ice to the stores on Main Street. Freddy the Iceman was about 5' tall and he would carry large chunks of ice to the store for that was how they keep things cold. My mother would walk us down to Trap Falls and we would pick up a bus to drive to Fitchburg. There was less need for a car because many products were delivered to the home. We had bread men, milkmen as well as a man from Barney Rosen who would bring clothes to your house. On Saturdays we would sometimes go to the movies in Fitchburg. There were several movie houses but the Fitchburg Theatre and the Saxon were generally the places we would use. The movies cost about 50 cents and you could watch the movie again for free because they didn't ask you to leave at the end of the movie. When I was about 12 I remember that the Saturday movie was generally a science fiction with titles like The Brain Eaters or The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I had many nightmares over this last movie.
Television was black and white with screens about 20 inches. Color TV didn't begin until about 1960 and in the beginning there were very few color shows other than Bonanza or Walt Disney. TV only had three channels and it wasn't on 24 hours a day. I remember the first TV I ever saw was in Townsend while visiting one of my mother's friends. The screen was about 5 inches and it was round. The images on the screen was very fuzzy with shadows. The wonder of it all!

My favorite Christmas was waking up and seeing a Silver 3 speed Schwinn bicycle in our living room. There were two of them for my brother Bobby also received one.