In 1954, Elvis Presley began his music career. Maybe my mom hummed a few of his songs to her growing son. His first hit single was “That’s All Right.” By 1955, “Heartbreak Hotel” would launch a string of hits that included “Hound Dog”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, “Love Me Tender”, Too Much”, “All Shook Up”, “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “Don’t”, “Hard Headed Woman” and “A Big Hunk o’ Love”. I don’t recall Elvis being a big influence in our household. I don’t think we even had a record player. It’s interesting that when Elvis joined the Army in 1958 and was stationed in West Germany, the East German government was concerned that his music might actually lure their youth away from Communism. 

The word “Communism” was causing panic with more and more by Americans, intensified when the Communist Party was outlawed in the U.S. back in 1954. The phenomenon known as the “Red Scare,” and it’s advocate, Senator Joe McCarthy, spread fear of Communist espionage, drawing on events like “the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1953), the trial of Alger Hiss, the Iron Curtain (1945–1992) around Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapon test in 1949 (RDS-1)—surprised the American public, influencing popular opinion about U.S. National Security, which, in turn, was connected to the fear that the Soviet Union would hydrogen-bomb the United States.” I was just an innocent child when all of this was happening. Neighbors were starting to build bomb shelters.

We did not have a bomb shelter at our home but were stocked-up on supplies just in case. I was probably just graduating from a crib to a bed when all of this was going on. However, American lives were about to be changed in another way by the Germans, as the first electric drip brew coffeemaker was patented and named the Wi-go-mat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann. Fortunately, coffee became much more popular than Communism, but soon there would be other things to worry about.