We Didn't Start The Fire ~ 1950 ~ Studebaker

We Didn't Start The Fire

sung by: Billy Joel

 

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye,"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen,

 Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye!

 

Chorus:

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

 

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev,
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez.

Chorus

 

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide, Oh-oh-oh.

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo.

Chorus

 

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Chorus

 

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shore,

 China's under martial law, Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore.

 

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire...

 

 

1950

Studebaker

 

 

 

 

     The Studebaker Company had been around long before the 1950's.  In fact, they got their start back in the mid 1700's when they came over to America from Holland and started a wagon making company.  It wasn't until the mid 1800's when the family moved to South Bend, Indiana that the family business really began to take off.  They helped make wagons for the Union Army during the Civil War and wagon sales increased as the west was opening up in America.  The Studebaker company even assisted in the war effort in WWI and WWII.  In 1874 they were known for being the "the largest vehicle house in the world" with 20 acres and it even expanded to around 100 acres near the beginning of the 1900's. 

 

     Their first automobile was produced around 1902 and it was an electric car.  A few years later they produced a gas powered car.  In fact, the second electric car produced was purchased by Thomas Edison himself.  The automobile's were produced in Detroit while the wagons were still produced in South Bend until they stopped making wagons altogether in 1920. 

 

 

 

     The 1950's model had a bullet nose style to them.  People joked saying the car looked like it was driving backwards. 

 

     The 1950's was the start of their financial decline and the beginning of the end to Studebakers.  The South Bend plant closed it doors forever in 1963 and in 1966 the last Studebaker car was made in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  What was once part of America's prominent past, (even creating several presidential buggies) is now just a memory of a time that once was. 

 

 

Sources:

http://www.studebakermuseum.org/p/about/history/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker