(A Child’s View Of) The Eisenhower Years

You’re on your way back home in a brand new station wagon
A pile of rolling chrome, ten miles to the gallon
Your mother puts her make-up on, you watch her crunch the gears
It’s a child’s view of the Eisenhower years

Your father knows what’s best, no one to upstage him
He thinks he’s so well dressed, finds new things to outrage him
Elvis on the television, G.I.s in Korea
It’s a child’s view of the Eisenhower years

I don’t mind the innocence so much
In fact it’s charming
The comedians have got a certain touch
That’s quite disarming
Even though the aliens from space
Haunt the weekend matinees
Super heroes keep the citizenry safe

There’s a beep in the sky in 1957
A metal ball that flies through Soviet heaven
Papers shout the headlines, politicians fan the fears
It’s a child’s view of the Eisenhower years

I don’t mind the innocence so much
In fact it’s charming
And the girls in their hoop skirts
Have got a style that quite disarming
Even thought the neighbourhood is new
Everybody looks like you
At the soda fountain and the school-yard too

See the baseball fly out across the diamond
Jimmy Jones and I, we’ve both got good timing
To be born into a greased back world
All hips and teenage sneers

It’s a child’s view of the Eisenhower years