We attach our knowledge of historical events to where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. I was working on the Topeka Daily Capital on one of my weekend shifts (I was teaching at Kansas University in those days) when the Teletype informed us that President Harry Truman had set aside the text of his speech and declared that he wouldn’t be a candidate for re-election in 1952. So, we had to “replate” the front page.

I was in Ogden, Utah, without a summer job, and I was carefully following every movement in the Democratic and Republican conventions. I was visiting in the Twin Cities when the Minnesota River was rising and flowing into the Mississippi, for flood time. And I was at home watching much of the Senate investigation into crime when about all we could see was the hands of crime boss Frank Costello.

Most of the years I have known have been memorable, but 1952, the year of the happenings I just mentioned, seemed especially memorable. I went into my second year as a KU faculty member. The students were lively, and quite liberal, and they hated Sen. Joseph McCarthy, were lukewarm about Dwight Eisenhower, and greatly admired Adlai Stevenson. They liked Truman and thought he was a better president than the hotshot columnists were saying.

I think of 1952 as being more like the ’40s than the ’50s. Occasionally I heard someone say “R and B,” but rock ‘n’ roll hadn’t really arrived. The biggest recordings were LeRoy Anderson’s “Blue Tango,” Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune,” and Ella Mae Morse’s “Blacksmith Blues.” Elvis hadn’t arrived. We heard “It Takes Two to Tango,” “Anywhere I Wander” (from the “Hans Christian Andersen” movie), “Wish You Were Here,” Mario Lanza on “Because You’re Mine,” Jo Stafford’s “Jambalaya,” Johnnie Ray’s “The Little White Cloud That Cried,” “Kiss of Fire,” the Mills Brothers’ “Glow Worm,” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”

I’ve mentioned the election. We knew that Truman was out. Estes Kefauver wanted the job. Stevenson was reluctant, too reluctant. The big Republican contest was between Eisenhower and “Mr. Republican,” Robert Taft of Ohio. Moderates wanted Ike, and the party lifted an Irving Berlin song and made it “I Like Ike.” Shortly before the election Jim Robinson, Capital state editor, and I took a World Almanac and gave every possible state to Ike and concluded that Stevenson would win. Some calculators.

I remember news because I spent time on the Capital copy desk, in a newsroom that had no air conditioning and had open windows that admitted little green bugs. The bosses gave us little pots with candles to attract the bugs. I read copy on the speech of Ike’s running mate, Richard Nixon, about a fund scandal. You remember that dog Checkers. There were stories about the war in Korea, and Truman seizing the steel mills in a strike, and the high court declaring the seizure unconstitutional.

Eisenhower got religion, and the press recorded where the great man went to church each Sunday. Frankie Laine sang, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows.” We read about the crime hearings, and fears of the hydrogen bomb. Bill Mauldin and Herblock drew cartoons about the bomb. There was an atomic test on Eniwetok Atoll, and earthquakes in California, worst since the early century big ones. And a June heat wave, and we drove west in our worthless Plymouth with all the car windows open.

Puerto Rico became a commonwealth. A postage stamp noted 500 years of the Gutenberg Bible. A hypnotized woman said she was Bridey Murphy of the 19th century. There were do-it-yourself paint kits. Truman played Mozart’s Ninth Sonata on TV, courtesy of James Caesar Petrillo.

On Broadway “Wish You Were Here” was a hit, and there were “Dial M for Murder” and “The Seven Year Itch.” “Porgy and Bess” was on a triumphal world tour. Movies included “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” Chaplin’s “Limelight,” “Viva Zapata,” “This Is Cinerama,” the great “High Noon,” “The Greatest Show on Earth,” “The Quiet Man,” “Come Back, Little Sheba,” and that fabulous musical, “Singin’ in the Rain.”

“The Old Man and the Sea” and “East of Eden” were hot books, and “Giant,” and “The Power of Positive Thinking.” And on TV we had “Victory at Sea,” George Gobel, Art Linkletter, Red Buttons, “Ding Dong School” and “Dragnet.”

Calder Pickett is a professor emeritus of journalism at Kansas University. His column appears Sundays in the Journal-World.