The Year You Arrived: 1957

A book in three parts, one for each kind of memory

The first part is about 1957 itself. The person turning seventy was a baby that year and remembers none of it, so this part tells rather than asks. It covers the delivery room, what things cost, the inside of the house, the cars on the street, what was on TV, what was playing, the sporting year, the news and what the country expected of a child born that year.

The second part covers roughly 1962 to 1979, the years they were there for. The tone changes. It stops explaining and starts asking. Where were you on November 22, 1963? What did your bicycle look like? Did you sit in a gas line in 1973, the year you turned sixteen?

The third part sets 1957 next to today, with the arithmetic done properly. Then comes the almanac, one page per month, and the blank pages.

Prices you can check, month by month

Most books about a year give one price for each item. One number hides the year. Eggs averaged 57.3 cents a dozen in 1957, but they cost 47.9 cents in June and 69.5 cents in October. Coffee fell almost every month. A one-ounce chocolate bar cost 4.5 cents in all twelve.

The food prices in this book were read out of the original 1959 Bureau of Labor Statistics bulletin, city by city and month by month. That is why the almanac can give the prices recorded in the weeks someone was born, not an average.

We also like what the book will not say. It names three widely repeated 1957 numbers that did not survive checking. It leaves out the average price of a new car, because no reliable national figure exists for that year.

The year in headlines, told with care

1957 was a year of hard news, and the book does not soften it. Nine Black students walked into Central High in Little Rock under federal escort on September 25. On October 4, Sputnik went up. On December 6, the Vanguard rocket rose about four feet and exploded on live TV.

It also holds the lighter side. The Cat in the Hat came out in March. Elvis was filmed from the waist up in January and topped the store chart four times that year. The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series in seven games.

The chapters set these side by side, the way the papers did. In July the country cheered Althea Gibson at Wimbledon. In September it took the 101st Airborne to get nine teenagers through a school door.

The blank pages are the point

Near the end there are pages with nothing on them but questions. The day itself. The first house. The people. School. The first record, the first car, the first job and what it paid. What they thought seventy would feel like.

No archive holds those answers. The book's advice to the giver is simple: sit down together, read the questions out, and write while they talk. People who will not write things down will often talk happily while somebody else does.

The last page is for the person turning seventy to write something back to whoever gave them the book.

We publish this book under the Nancy Whitaker pen name. If you are still choosing a gift, our page on 70th birthday gift ideas for someone born in 1957 compares the options in plain words.