I think this is a nice site to look at to discover what life was like for guys like me who were in high school in the early 50's.
http://www.centex.net/~elliott/1958.html
Take a look at the news from Iraq in 1958. I'd forgotten that. I was in the Army from 1956-59 and hadn't any idea about world politics. I was inches away from being posted to Teheran as a radio repair specialist before being shipped to Germany with the 4th Armored Division! We relieved the 2nd Armored Div (Elvis Presely's outfit)which was rotating back to the US. Life is funny. In my post military professional career I was picked to work in my compan's new rep office in Tehran in the 70's, but things went south with the Shah, and I moved to Canada instead and never regretted it.
