In case you missed them, here are some headlines from Sunday’s Washington Post:
“Twining Criticism Stirs NATO Clash”
“Bulgaria Reds Shift Politburo”
“Nixon Committee to Organize in District”
“Gay Clothes Put Sparkle in Young Eyes”
“Cosmopolitan Tehran Lacks Middle East Table: Hardest place to find a Middle Eastern restaurant in”
“Electronic Gadgets Shrinking to Specks”
An op-ed piece on “Wall Street Money and Politics”
“The Federal Diary: Efficiency Rises in 3 Agencies”
Confused? I pulled these headlines from the Sunday paper that was printed on December 13, 1959, the day I was born. I still have the actual paper my father bought at the Hilton at 16th and K Streets after he dropped my mother off at Georgetown University Hospital. That’s how things were done back then.
Fifty-one years later, that newspaper is all yellow and crackly around the edges, as am I. Still, I pull it out every year and marvel at how things have changed—and how they haven’t—since 1959.
Debbie Reynolds graced the cover of Parade, while Ann Sothern appeared on the cover of TV Week.
What is now the Style section was “For and About Women.”
One could buy a completely redecorated row house in Georgetown for $28,000 or rent a furnished luxury apartment at 2400 Pennsylvania Avenue for $160 a month. A house in Kensington, Md., where I live, went for $18,900.
District residents were enticed to do their shopping at Julius Garfinkel & Co., Woodward & Lothrop, Kann’s, Raleigh Haberdasher, Best & Co., Stein’s, G.C. Murphy Company and People’s Drug.
IBM took out a want ad for machine operators, offering complete training in Key Punch and Tab and Wiring. Another company advertised openings for “Ambitious Men (white).” Egads.
Before I put away this paper time capsule until next year, I thought you might enjoy a few images.
I’m betting many of you recall Washington in the 1950s. Does any of this stir a memory?
Word Nymph 
