Old-time radio, the folk revival, the golden age of science fiction, steam railroads, baseball, the Western, and other genres color our images of the 1950s. But contrary to the countercultural myth that America during this period was a sterile, soulless society, culturally and intellectually empty, it was an introspective era of innovation and creativity, the seedtime of the sixties, the harbinger of which was the urban folk revival. The Best of Times presents a collection of essays, each followed by a related memoir, focusing on postwar popular culture, exploring topics that mark the era but are also nostalgic in themselves-the comforting continuity of long-running radio shows, train whistles that brought the sweet sorrow of distance to small-town nights, lazy summers of baseball, endless stretches of unknown lands to the West that once compelled the imagination, the heroes and vagabonds of folksong who roamed a simpler world, and dreams of alien civilizations on neighboring planets, deepened by the dawning reality of spaceflight. These pieces balance personal, cultural, and mythic nostalgia, recalling author Wyn Wachhorst's youth, the postwar era, and its dreams of a fabled West or Norman Rockwell's small-town America. Blending history, memoir, imagery, and analysis, this collection of essays offers poetic reflections on the nature of nostalgia and postwar America. The Best of Times Motifs from Postwar America By Wyn Wachhorst AuthorHouse Copyright © 2016 Wyn Wachhorst All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-5049-6314-5 Contents 1. A State of Mind, 1, Radio Days, 10, 2. The Nature of Nostalgia, 12, Motifs: Postwar America, 22, 3. Crossing the Wide Missouri, 23, Strange Attractor, 43, 4. The Romance of Spaceflight: Nostalgia for a Bygone Future, 46, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, 65, 5. Come Back, Shane! The National Nostalgia, 71, RoyRogers, 84, 6. The Last Locomotive, 86, Old George, 99, 7. Our Game, 104, Mythic Nostalgia, 116, 8. The Greatest Generation, 117, Pieces of the Past, 121, 9. The Romance of Extinction, 128, Fragments of Eden, 144, Reflections in a Rear View Mirror, 146, Lofty Days, 147, Detritus, 154, Goodbye to Gramma Watchie, 156, Appendix: On the Generational Theory of History, 159, Notes, 163, CHAPTER 1 A State of Mind The surrender of Japan and the assassination of President Kennedy bracket an era variously known as Pax Americana, Good Times, the Best Years, Happy Days — the American High. It was a time of solid families, effective schools, and reliable careers, a time when government and institutions were considered benign, streets were relatively safe, and America held most of the world's wealth and production. We lived in those years at the apogee, that weightless moment before an object shot into the sky begins to descend. Just as personal reminiscence returns most often to adolescence, our collective nostalgia is drawn repeatedly to the mid-twentieth century as the end of American innocence, the last days of a world intact. Contrary to the countercultural myth that America in the 1950s was a sterile, soulless society, culturally and intellectually empty, it was an introspective era of innovation and creativity, the seedtime of the sixties. While many writers and artists in the fifties catalyzed the naïve idealism of the next decade, theirs was a more introverted sensibility, lacking the pseudo-spirituality, political posturing, and hedonistic self-indulgence that colored the otherwise genuine issues of the sixties. The artistic and academic achievements of the fifties had a seriousness of purpose that make the decade look like fifth-century Athens compared to what came after. The countercultural rebellion of the sixties, presenting naïveté as idealism, narcissism as enlightenment, and elevating form over content in all the arts, conceived of freedom much as a bird might imagine its flight to be easier still in empty space. Though the counterculture is gone, too simplistic to survive the perspectives of aging, it seeded the cultural and educational catastrophe in which we now live. Rarely in history has a society had its beliefs about what is natural and proper so disrupted as did America in the sixties. In the wake of that collective identity crisis, politics has become increasingly polarized. As with all living organisms, the ills in social systems are complex, interwoven, and multilayered. An intelligent approach to the issues requires a balanced mind, applying the values of both left and right while adopting neither as ideological orthodoxy. But a person's opinion on one issue will usually foretell his stance on most other issues, and the polarization of parties widens to the point of inaction. Liberalism, once the bold social conscience resisting the ills of industrialization, has become a pathological crusade to neutralize every conceivable st