Rural Youth Culture of the 1950s & 1960s

Television

Vern Brown

Vern: "Well, as many people my age might remember, there was Gene Autry and Captain Midnight and a bunch of those kid programs. Well, they weren't so kiddish, they were teenage programs I guess. So I used to try to get home from school and organize my schedule so I could listen to those programs, and it was Captain Midnight and Yukon King."

Dawn Benson

Dawn: "The first thing I really remember, paying attention to that I can remember it was President Kennedy's inauguration, which would've been January '61. But I'm sure the TV was—I know the TV was there before that, but I don't remember shows at that time."

Annegine Vipond

Jodi: "When do you remember first having TV? Or do you always remember having TV?"

Annegine: "Yeah. I always remember having TV, originally black and white. And then we got a color wheel that it was connected to the TV, and then we had a rotary dial that we could change the antenna location and it would go because it click, click, click, so many clicks this way or so many clicks the other way. We usually only got two channels, if I remember, channel seven and a PBS-type channel. And, yeah, what else did you—"

Jodi: "Favorite programs when you were a kid."

Annegine: "I loved the cartoon Betty Boop. We always had to argue over who got to watch cartoons. We didn't watch a lot of TV, but then it was always Walt Disney was on or Bonanza was a big one. That was always, I think, on Sunday nights we could come home and watch that. And a little later in life, we always watched the Bob Hope USO show. That's when he toured to all the troops all over. That was a biggie. Let me see what else."

Sports

Linda Krogsrud

Linda: "Oh, I'm sure. I remember Friday Night Fights, we always had to watch Friday Night Fights. Dad liked to watch the boxing. And so we would watch that every Friday night."

Thomas Harren

Seth: "Tell me about the Gophers going to the Rose Bowl. Was that 1960?"

Tom: "It was either '60 or '61. I think they went two years in a row. They changed the rules. Before that, they couldn't do that. Yeah. That was exciting. I mean, I think people really followed that closely. I can remember seeing on TV at some show that had the All-American football team on it, and there were two Minnesota Gophers on it. I think Bobby Bell and Sandy Stephens. I think were the two that were on. And we're all proud of that."

Music

Joe Riley

Joe: "Well, listening to music, of course. And I still listen to a lot of the same music I listen to in 1965. I like country western and the Johnny Cashs and all that, Tammy Wynettes and the Loretta Lynns and the Dolly Partons and all of them, that's what I still listen to. Of course, growing up at that time, we weren't listening to the country western, but we listened to a lot of Beatles, a lot of the Oak Ridge Boys and Everly Brothers, and that was the music we listened to."

Dawn Benson

Dawn: "Well, I can definitely remember the Beatles, of course, and Mr. Bojangles, I don't know why that one sticks in my mind. Not even sure where that fits in my time period, but even though I was in band and choir, it wasn't like it was music was something I just enjoyed listening to just for itself, so it was more of whatever my friends were listening to was fine. The only concert I really went to was Lightfoot. All of a sudden, I lost the first name. Anyway, he wrote the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald when I was in college, and we went—my roommates and I went down to hear. I hate that brain Freeze. Anyway, Lightfoot was his last name. And so that—it wasn't like I really sought out the music for myself, I would listen to whatever anybody else was listening to." [missing name is Gordon Lightfoot]"

Annegine Vipond

Jodi: "Did you listen to the radio a lot then?"

Annegine: "It was on, always listening to the Herman Show, the Birthday Show with Willie Martin, who was that time there was quite a list of birthdays of that, and just music in general. I mean, I know my mom always had on the waltzes and the polkas and we liked that music, too."

Carol Swenson

Carol: "No, I wasn't at Woodstock, but I very easily could have been. It was all the popular bands of that time period. We listened to Cat Stevens and James Taylor and Carole King, and you name it, we were listening to that music and still do. Bruce Springsteen just emerged at that time period. And I can remember a good friend was a radio announcer for the KUMM. And Davey was always playing Bruce Springsteen because he said, he's going to be big, he's going to be popular. And the Beatles, obviously. And I don't know, maybe it was 10th or 11th grade science. I don't know why we were talking about popular music, but one of my classmates announced that—got into an argument with the teacher and you didn't really argue with this particular teacher about whether or not the Beatles were just a flash point or were they going to stick around. And Patty was insistent that they were going to be around for a long time, and Mrs. Anderson was going, no, no, no. So, yeah, all of that."