Life in America 50 years ago

Contact lenses were very expensive and very uncomfortable. Soft contact lenses were extremely rare; most people who wore contact wore rigid contact lenses that could be easily lost or damaged (there are a number of scenes in film & tv from back then of people looking for lost contact lenses). People used to buy insurance to cover contact lens loss or damage.

TV and Movies
There was basically no home video. If you missed a movie in the cinema, you couldn't see it unless it was later broadcast on tv (and you happened to be home for the broadcast) or was brought back to the cinema for a re-release. (Classic films might periodically be shown in cinemas on special occasions.)

There were no Marvel Universe movies, no Pirates of the Caribbean live-action movies, no CGI animation like Shrek. For that matter, there weren't really any superhero movies yet (except for mid-1960s Batman and earlier movies with Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Aladdin, etc). The highest-grossing films weren't films that were targeted to teens and kids. (1970 had Love Story and Airport; 1971 had The French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, and Diamonds are Forever; 1972 had The Godfather; and 1973 had The Exorcist and The Towering Inferno.) Lucas and Spielberg hadn't re-defined the meaning of blockbuster yet.

In the US, in most areas there typically just 4 or 5 tv channels. You had to fiddle with the set-top antenna to get decent reception, and many houses and buildings had larger antennas on the roofs. (Not many people had cable tv.) Stations only broadcast until around midnight (or maybe 1:00 or 2:00am). There was no such thing as CNN and 24-hour news.

Food
Vegetarians were considered weirdos. "Vegan" was practically non-existent, and there was no "gluten-free" (outside of a tiny group of medical patients).

There was no such thing as "organic" in the average person's vocabulary. There were no GMOs. Pesticides were used, but nowhere near as intensively as today. Food was generally a lot healthier. But you couldn't get fresh produce flown in from half-way around the world, so no watermelons or strawberries in the middle of winter.

American-style "Chinese" food was about as exotic as food got in restaurants. Haute cuisine in a restaurant meant a narrow-range of heavy, and very expensive, old-style French food. Nobody ate sushi--most Americans had never heard of it, and most considered the very thought of eating raw fish revolting.

Most families did not have microwave ovens. High-tech was an electric percolator coffee-maker or a food-processor. "TV dinners"--frozen meals in aluminum trays that you would heat up in the oven--were a big thing.

International
Everyone in the US lived in fear of the constant threat of a nuclear attack from the Russians. It wasn't something the average person thought about every day, but the perceived threat was still there.

Starting at age 18, all men had to register for the military draft. (The US was still at war in Vietnam.) If your lottery number got called, and you couldn't weasel your way out of it like wealthy families did, you would be drafted and possibly sent to fight (and maybe to die) in the war.

Grandparents could remember having lived through the Great Depression and fought the Nazis or the Japanese (or, if they were older, they might even have lived through WWI).

Before the mid-1960s, US law barred most immigration from Asia and Africa. Most Americans, especially outside the largest metropolitan areas, had very little or no experience interacting with immigrants from Asia or Africa. "Racially mixed" or "interracial" usually meant something involving whites and blacks (called "Negroes" or "colored people" then--there was no "African American") in most parts of the country. Interracial marriage had been illegal in some states until 1967 when the Supreme Court struck down those laws.

There was no TSA (airport security theater). Friends and family who didn't have plane tickets often accompanied the departing passenger all the way to the gate at the airport, and met returning family at the gate when their flight arrived. There were metal detectors, but the screening was much lower-stress and the lines were a lot shorter.

Telephone answering machines were rare in homes. If someone called and you weren't home, they would have to keep calling back until they reached you.

Long-distance phone calls made for an occasion. "Long distance" meant from outside your area code--it could be just a few hundred miles across the state. If someone called "long distance," everyone would drop everything and rush to get to the phone, because the calls were so expensive.

In big cities in the US, public telephones were widely available. You would put coins in to pay for the calls. After every few minutes, as your time was expiring, the operator (or a recording) would ask for more money if you wanted to continue the call.

When you wanted to get some recorded music, you went to the records shop.

I think he must have meant it was easier to get away with murder. It's pretty easy to commit murder even now.


And FWIW, there's this:

www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved