1954 was a personal transition year for me.
I had just graduated from Seattle's John Marshall Junior High and entered Ballard High School as a sophomore, where I would spend the next three years. My time here as a reporter on the school newspaper helped to prepare me for my career as a writer in the years to come.

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In the world outside of Seattle this was the year that U. S. Senator Joseph McCarthy began hearings into alleged Communists in the army. The hearings, which were televised, showed to the American people the true nature of McCarthy's investigation. McCarthy soon went into decline.

And this year racial segregation was ruled unconstitutional in public schools by the U.S. Supreme Court.

French forces, under the command of General Navarre, decided that holding Dien Bien Phu, a valley post in Western Vietnam, was a major strategic objective. The French fortified the position with over 30,000 soldiers. On March 15, the Viet Minh began their assault. On May 7, Dien Bien Phu fell, and with it so did French hopes of victory in Vietnam.

In 1954 Nautilus Submarine Launched Before a crowd of 12,000, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower christened the nation's first atomic-powered submarine, the "Nautilus." Atomic powered submarines would soon revolutionize the Navy and warfare.

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Loren Eisley once wrote that the place where you grew up tends to shape your life. I would have to agree. Growing uo in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest has had a definite imp;act on my life and my writing. My CyberSurfers young adult book series takes place in the Northwest as do several of my TV scripts. You will also find these looks back into history have a particular northwest flavor.

In the early 1950's, a burger, shake and fries was already an American classic. But people who hungered for this classic meal usually had to sit down and wait. America was on the move, and almost everyone was using a car to get from place to place. But for most people, there simply wasn't time to stop and eat at a roadside diner, besides, it was too expensive. What was needed was a place where you could park easily, get good food in a hurry, and pay a lot less.

On January 28, 1954, Dick's Drive-in opened on 45th Street NE in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood. This was across the street from my Grandmother's house where I once lived. It occupies a vacant lot that had been a special playground in my early years.

When Dick's opened in Seattle it was clearly in a class by itself. Since then, most of the national chains have built fast food restaurants all over the city, but when the people of Seattle hunger for burgers, fries, and shakes, Dick's is still their first choice. Why? Because after 40-plus years, Dick's still serves up the best food, at the best price, in the shortest time. Whether the year is 1954, 1994, or 2004 or beyond, that is still a formula for success, and a formula that should keep Dick's food in Seattle's hearts, minds, and mouths for decades to come. Whenever I return to Seattle, this is one of my favorite eating places.

The Igloo, a Lost Seattle Landmark

The Igloo, a diner and drive-in restaurant at the southeast corner of 6th Avenue and Denny Way, operated from late 1940 until sometime in 1954. It featured a distinctive twin-domed design intended, like much vernacular commercial architecture of its period, to grab the attention and business of passing motorists. The Igloo was established by Ralph Grossman and Ernie Hughes, and later managed by Sander's Fountain Lunches.

Knowing that diner clientele of the era were predominantly male, Grossman and Hughes scoured the city looking for attractive young women to work as waitresses and carhops. Visiting downtown office buildings and local movie theatres, they persuaded a bevy of pretty, but underpaid, usherettes and elevator operators to come and work at the new diner. Like former Igloo waitress Irene Wilson, many jumped at the chance for better pay and a more enjoyable job.

Carhops at the Igloo wore short flared skirts, a white jacket and white cowboy boots and served orders on trays that hooked to customers' half-open car windows. During the wintertime, they wore fashionable ski togs from Nordstrom's department store. Dining room waitresses sported aprons festooned with blue dots while tending to as many as 70 customers at a time.

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In 1954 in the world of entertainment this was the year of several classic sci-fi movies. Walt Disney gave us 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre and James Mason as Captain Nemo.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon arrived on local movie screens in full 3-D, starring Richard Carlson as the bold young hero-scientist in yet another sci-fi film, a role he would repeat many times in films like Magnetic Monster and the classic It Came From Outer Space.

THEM! were spawned out of the nuclear tests in Nevada. Giant ants seeking to destroy any one unlucky enough to get in their path. It took James Arness (an alien invader himself in The Thing from Another World)and James Whitmore to rally the troops and stop THEM! The film remains exciting today.

Other movies of note this year included John Wayne in The High and the Mighty and Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock. Ava Gardner was The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart, who was also in The Caine Mutiny.

On radio it was the year of the final broadcast of The Shadow. I had spent many a lazy Sunday afternoon in front of my radio enthralled by the man who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and had learned the mysterious secret to cloud their minds so they could not see him. We also heard the last broadcast of Sky King.

It was appropriate that this was the first year that TV sets outsold radios. An era was passing. This year saw the itroduction of George Gobel to TV audiences. I remember rushing home after a Friday afternoon footbsll gsmr (Ballard won) to catch the first show. This year also show the first Caesar's Hour show and that gritty (for the time) cop show, The Lineup, starring Lee Marvin and Tom Tully. And there was Tonight with Steve Allen and (who can forget) Lassie.

Also ending this year was the newspaper comic strip, Beyond Mars, written by Jack Williamson, and set in his Seetee Ship background of frontier life in the asteroid belt. I remember anxiously waiting every week for the national edition of the New York Sunday Post to arrive at the local newsstand. A treasure to be purchased for a few cents.

In the world of books this was the year that Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man arrived in a Signet paperback. It was my favorite reading material during study hall period at Ballard High School. It was my pleasure to briefly meet Bester some years later (at a sci-fi convention, I think) and several years after that (when I had moved to Los Angeles) to re-introduce him to another friend, Don Richardson, a director who had worked with Bester back in those ancient days when TV shows were live. This was the year that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction published a three-part serial by Robert A. Heinlein, "Star Lummox," later published as The Star Beast in his wonderful series of juveniles. Many years later, Mel Gilden and I would use this novel as the inspiration for our first Star Trek: Deep Space Nine young adult novel, The Pet. And this was the year the Doubleday published, in hardcover, The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, the first of his robot detective books.

In the world of books beyond science fiction this year saw the publication of Ian Flemmings' first James Bond adventure, Casino Royale. J.R.R. Tolkien published the first two novels in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Evan Hunter wrote Blackboard Jungle and Willian Golding gave us Lord of the Flies.

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The strange tale of the last independent auto manufacturer in America.

American Motors was formed from the merger of Nash and Hudson in 1954, and ended with the merger of AMC into Chrysler in 1987. Most people, if they think of American Motors at all, remember it as a failure that couldn't compete effectively with the Big 3 and the imports. But it is perhaps more accurate to think of AMC as a scrappy survivor: the last American Independent, the company that outlived Packard, Studebaker, Kaiser, Auburn, Cord, Dusenberg, and all the rest.