Jim Gaffigan on summer memories, ’50s style

To be clear, I mean the 1950s.

I know we were so divided as a nation this summer it felt like the 1850s, but I’m talking about the boring, old 1950s.

Like most of you, my family and I spent way too much time on screens this summer, but otherwise, we lived like we were a boring, generic 1950s family!

I realized it when I was taking my sons on their weekly “fun trip” to the car wash. Yes, going to the car wash was like Disney World for my young sons. Because for all intents and purposes, Disney World or amusement parks didn’t exist in the summer of 2020.

It wasn’t just the kids that were living in the ’50s this summer. For most of us, the most exciting – dare I say, dangerous! – form of entertainment this summer was attending a thing called a drive-in. Yes, that movie “American Graffiti” was not a nostalgic nod; it was a foreshadowing of what the summer of 2020 would be like.

Face it: This summer, it was the ’50s. The most fun many of us had involved baking, gardening, or walking. I’m kind of surprised Netflix didn’t announce a reboot of “The Lawrence Welk Show.”

Like Ward Cleaver, the highlight of my day would be having dinner with my family. Pre-pandemic, I used to struggle and juggle my schedule to ensure that I could have dinner with my family every night at 6 p.m. This summer, every day, I spent most of my time preparing and cooking dinner for my family. Why? Because it was the 1950s!

Wait, if I was preparing and serving my family … I was a 1950s suburban housewife? I was Betty Draper! (I can see the resemblance.)

Don’t worry: The 1950s were followed by the ’60s, and they were very peaceful. Right?       

See also: 

• Week 1: Family life under lockdown
• Week 2: Life in quarantine is like a sitcom
• Week 3: Spring arrives!
• Week 4: Lessons of “distance learning”
• Week 5: Kids, quarantine and sanity are not compatible
• Week 6: Consuming all news, all the time
• Week 7: Jim Gaffigan discovers he misses strangers
• Week 8: On sharing dinner with the masses
• Week 9: On living in unprecedented times
• Week 10: Are we REALLY all in this together?
• Week 11: On not knowing what comes next
• Jim Gaffigan on what dads REALLY want on Father’s Day
• Jim Gaffigan on getting the whole lockdown thing wrong
• 2020, please turn your notifications off
• Jim Gaffigan on his first drive-in standup show
• On living in a time warp
• On acquiring a green thumb
• Back to (home) school

For more info: 

• jimgaffigan.com
• Follow @JimGaffigan on Twitter
• Watch “Dinner with the Gaffigans” on YouTube

Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: Emanuele Secci.