That’s what we were singing and dancing to in 1948, you will be amazed to know. It occurs to me that that year may have represented the apogee of American ascendancy on the world scene, which also may mean that we have generally been going downhill for the last 61 years. Anyone want to argue with me about that?

Truman, my favorite book du jour provides a handy list of a few things that happened that year. Having started shaving about then, I probably find it more interesting than you. Anyway, it was the year of

Green chewing gum,
Scrabble,
Cadillacs with obscene tail fins,
“An unimaginably daring new bathing suit,” the bikini, named after an atomic bomb test site,
Record economic prosperity; unemployment less than 4%,
Inflation increasing, but personal buying power increasing even faster,
Thirty-eight American medals at the Berlin Olympics,
200-inch telescope unveiled on Mt. Palomar,
Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in the Bell X-1,
That the transistor was developed,
Cortison and Aureomycin invented to treat rheumatoid arthritus,
Liquid hydrogen produced, making it possible to send men to the moon,
Duffy’s Tavern and the Jack Benny Show,
One family in eight owned a “television machine,”
The birth of the United States of Israel,
Christina’s World, popular portrait by Andrew Wyeth,
A new rendition by Pee Wee Hunt of “Twelfth Street Rag,”
Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate on Broadway,
Movies: The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Red Shoes, Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet,
Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead,
Alfred Kinsey: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,
New words: “whistle stop,” “Dixiecrat,” “red herring,”
94% of the people believed in God, according to polls.

Enough, already. It was a busy year.

Dave, which all this is making him feel very old. (Mebbe he is!)