The time I wrote a whodunnit novel about women in small town America in 1953

I don’t know why I’m drawn to this time, but it’s fascinating. Post war but also in a war the US had no business being in. But I guess they love war, so there the young men were. The people my age were practically old timers. Moms with children the age of mine would be in their mid-30s. Men ran everything and women had almost no agency over their own lives or voice in what happened. Yes, women could vote. Yes, women worked, over 30% of working aged women worked, some were doctors and mathematicians and doctors. But mostly they worked in the exciting industries of canning, cotton mills, shop clerk, laundries and of course teachers.

Who were these women? There is very little written about them. There’s little on film from that era about that era. Most of the movies made during those years are highly stylized. There’s a lot of television, Lawrence Welk and Jack Benny and there’s I Love Lucy. Do you remember Leave it to Beaver? That didn’t come around until 1957.

So who was 1953? It was a time of McCarthyism. The Second Red Scare had settled across the country enough so that anyone who caused any sort of raised eyebrow might be cast under suspicion for being a communist. Particularly if you were fabulous in any way. There was real fear of homosexuality across small town America. Probably big town America too, but I know there were communities in NY, SF and in Europe. Otherwise most gay people just lived in the closet.

Corporal punishment was status quo. Of course you smacked your children, everyone did. Probably teachers smacked them too. The rules about teachers not smacking kids didn’t come from nowhere.

But there’s no records of that.

Speaking of records, 1953 was before Elvis so young white people in the US were still listening to Dean Martin and Johnny Ray and the Four Lads. The music of the era is fine but so boring and all sounds the same.

Women still gave birth in twilight sleep. A medical combo of morphine and scopolomine. Give her the scope, they’d say and inject the mother with a hypodermic needle and she’d fall asleep and not remember any of the birth. So easy.

Birth in general was a horrible practice. An letter written to Ladies Home Journal in 1952 about the dreadful experience mothers have in the delivery room prompted the magazine to do an expose on the birth experience and shined a light on the terrible experience women across the country reported. Being left on the table to labor alone. Mean nurses and doctors who finished their golf games before coming to the hospital. Terrible stuff.

So yeah. It was a great time in America.

And what would it be like to be a woman during this time? What if you were a woman who didn’t want to be married. Or if you had different opinions?

It’s interesting because when I look back at this time, I can see how far women have come, what leaps and bounds and yet still, no matter what, on the eve of this most important election, I can’t help but feel like it’s still, the men in charge. And when they lose the being in charge part, that’s when they freak out.

So I wrote a novel, Labor Days about it. I’ll post my elevator pitch after this so you can read about it.