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From a child of the 50's: UHF TV didn't come along until the 60's, for all practical purposes. The outdoor antennas were generally yagi type, with a number of parallel elements of decreasing length on a 4-5' center bar, or a beam/dipole-type that had one side looking like a X and the other side straight, usually on a 36" +/- to 5' long spreader bar. Got mounted on roofs and strapped to chimneys. Apartment houses and buildings would sometimes become veritable forests of TV antennas. And they all need to point the same direction (usually the spreader bar points at the station). Out in the country, there were few if any, and those that did exist were usually on tall towers. Gasoline--don't forget Sinclair ("dinosaur") and Gulf, the various Standard Oil derivatives--it was broken up and ESSO was not necessarily the name on the sign--in the SW it was Humble, for example. I remember home-owned drive-ins with curb service vastly outnumbering any chains you can think of. A&P everywhere until Safeway sued under Sherman, then Safeways everywhere (I could make a comment on hypocrisy here, but I won't). Dime stores: Kresge, Mott's, Woolworth, M.E. Moses. And in virtually every small town at least in the SW, a Western Auto affiliate store. And if you're doing TX and probably a few other states as well, the bank was locally owned with no branches (illegal). And nothing but beer joints in wet counties in TX--liquor by the drink was illegal. Pizza was a non-entity. Detached 1-car garages. Local soft drink signs. Lots of RC/Pepsi/Nehi/Dr. Pepper signs in the SW. And lots of wires and company-owned private phone booths along the tracks, usually at every siding and sometimes in between. Radio was just beginning to get accepted on the RR. Hope this helps.
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