Totally Normal in the 1960s: 25 Outrageous Everyday Things That Would Shock Us Now

Welcome back to the Strange History Podcast, where we believe the past is a foreign country with shag carpeting, ashtrays in every room, and milk delivered to your door by a man who may or may not be your dad. I'm your host, Amy, and today we're hopping in our Dolorean and zipping back to the nineteen sixties, a decade filled with buttoned up fathers, overly medicated housewives, and an overwhelming societal trust in canned meats. Now, we've already covered the wild world of the nineteen seventies in a previous episode, But the sixties, oh honey, the sixties were where things really got strange.

It was a time when chain smoking your way through pregnancy was just motherhood, and ducking under your desk was considered a viable nuclear defense strategy. So grab your jello mold, adjust your bouffont, and prepare to be mildly shocked and seriously entertained. Here are twenty five things that were completely normal in the nineteen sixties but would have people calling HR, the CDC, and probably the FBI today. Totally normal in the sixties. In the nineteen sixties, children were sent to school looking like miniature funeral attendees.

Little boys wore neckties to kindergarten, and girls layers of stiff crinoline under itchy dresses even for gym class. If you forgot your bloomers, you just suffered through your graceful tumbling lesson while trying not to expose your underrus Corporal punishment wasn't just legal, it was branded into your elementary school culture. Teachers had names for their paddles, like Board of Education or Mister Discipline, and they displayed them like trophies. Misbehave in class and you might get publicly swatted, then sent home to be spanked again by your neighbor, your grandma, and probably the dog.

Church attendance was practically the law. Sunday mornings meant shoe, polish, clip tie, and enough aquinet to start a brushfire. You didn't just go to church, you were watched going to church, and if you skipped, your absence was whispered about over casseroles for weeks. The milkman was real, and he had keys to people's houses. No really, he would just waltz into your kitchen at six am, drop off the glass bottles, maybe pet the dog, and leave you trusted him because he wore a uniform and smiled politely.

The fact that so many people looked like the milkman will just leave that one alone. Doctors made house calls like polite vampires. They'd appear at your door with a leather bag, a fountain pen, and possibly a half smoked cigarette. Diagnoses were simple, you've got a bug or your livers angry, followed by a prescription written in handwriting that looked like hieroglyphics. Polio was still fresh in people's minds. You might see kids in iron braces, or remember lining up in school cafeterias for your vaccine, served on a sugar cube like a dystopian candy.

That's right, medicine came in cube form and was passed out like snacks. Somehow we survived. Smoking wasn't just accepted, It was classified. Men smoked camels or lucky strikes. Women smoked Virginia slims, long, slender, glamorous and designed to kill you elegantly. Cigarette ads told women they'd come a long way, baby, but they'd better stay thin and fashionable while doing it, and thinness. It was an obsession. Want to lose weight in the sixties just chain smoke, skip meals, and survive on grapefruit and shame.

Diet pills were handed out like tic TACs, and magazines openly published articles like is your waistline ruining your marriage? Cars had no airbags, no seat belts in the back, and dashboards made of steel and vengeance. Station wagons had rear face seats in the way back where kids would ride for hours making rude hand gestures to the car behind them. No one ever questioned it. If you were a pregnant woman working as a teacher or stewardess, you could be legally fired for showing the moment your belly betrayed you.

It was goodbye paycheck, Hello elastic waistband. Pregnant women were expected to vanish like secret agents until they re emerged six weeks post birth looking fresh as a daisy. Charm school was real and sometimes mandatory. Teenage girls learned how to walk with books on their heads, apply lipstick properly, and answer a phone in a tone that said I'm pretty but not intimidating. Meanwhile, boys were learning algebra. Welcome to equality nineteen sixties style. You could smoke indoors everywhere in theaters, on buses, in college dorm rooms, watching Mary Poppins while someone lit us a behind you was just part of the experience.

There was so much secondhand smoke, it's a miracle any of us have lungs. Home movies were silent, grainy, and deeply awkward. You'd set up the projector and sit through thirty minutes of blurry footage of your dad grilling shirtless and your sister crying over a sparkler. No sound, just the hum of the real and occasional comments like oh, that's the fourth of July. Remember that was the year Uncle Ed dropped the firecracker down his pants. Other parents could spank you seriously. If you were caught throwing rocks or mouthing off, your neighbor might give you a swat and then call your parents, who would also punish you.

It was community parenting with a side of mild assault. Nuclear war just another Tuesday. Schools held duck and cover drills where kids hid under wooden desks, like a wooden desk would stop a Soviet bomb fallout. Shelters were sold in catalogs like backyard sheds. Atomic anxiety was normal, Even marketed LSD was legal for a hot minute. Psychologists used it in therapy, college students took it as homework. Even Carrie Grant praised it for improving his self image. Imagine trying to pitch microdosing to your therapist today.

Oh sure, let me just write you a prescription for spiritual enlightenment. Playgrounds were lawsuits waiting to happen. Ten foot high monkey bars over concrete metal slides that doubled as waffle irons. They would get so hot in the sun, seesaws that could launch a child into orbit. You fell, you bled, you bled, you learned. It was the circle of playground life. Men wore hats all the time. Fedoras weren't stylish, they were standard issue. A man without a hat was either asleep or dead. You tipped your hat, doffed your hat, removed your hat indoors, and lost your hat to the wind like a romantic movie character.

At least once a week, stewardesses were chosen by height, weight, and beauty. They had to maintain their figure, stay unmarried, and wear full makeup while serving hot coffee at thirty thousand feet in turbulence. Want to unionize or gain five pounds? There's the door Some rural homes shared telephone lines called party lines. You'd pick up the phone and hear your neighbor already chatting. Privacy was optional. You learned who had gout, who was cheating, and which teenagers were sneaking out all before breakfast.

Saturday cartoons often featured violence, smoking, or wartime themes. Kids sat in their pajamas watching combat, then flipped over to bugs Bunny shooting someone in the face with a cannon. Parental controls the off switch. Food safety was pure guesswork. Defrost the chicken on the counter, sure, leave the mayonnaise based salad in the sun for seven hours? Why not? Meat thermometers were for fancy people. If it wasn't green or wiggling, it was good to go. And finally, doors were rarely locked. People left their homes wide open while they ran errands.

Neighbors walked in without knocking. Your mail was delivered inside the screen door. The whole town was basically one big communal living room, equal parts cozy and concerning. The nineteen sixties were a time of innocence, innovation, and absolutely zero safety standards. Whether you were drinking tab while watching missile drills or being spanked by a neighbor with a wooden spoon. One thing's for sure, it was a decade that did not believe in helmets or boundaries. Thanks for joining me on this wild ride through this decade, okay, one of history's weirdest decades.

If you enjoyed the show, please follow the Strange History podcast, leave us a rating, and tell your most nostalgic story, or just write the name of the show and shaving cream on your bathroom mirror nineteen sixties style. Until next time, lock your doors, wear your seat belt, and as always, keep it strange.

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