Interesting post, Larc. Although I wasn't alive at the time, your recollections are similar to those I used to hear from my parents. My mother was brought up as a JW and she had to endure many things, including the work being banned in Australia during WW2. She was baptised as a teenager in her own bath-tub (no public assemblies during the ban).
My dad said during the 50s they used to have the quotas written up on the blackboard at the front of the Hall (often a rented community hall) so they knew what the Society expected them to do each month. My parents courted during the 50s. They never had chaperones, but my mother was still a virgin when they wed. Later, when my mother became pregnant with my sister, she was looked down on for having children in the "last days". Little did my mum know that 38 years later she would be not only a mother, but a grandmother too!
From these and other stories they talked about, I have gathered the impression that being a JW 40 or 50 years ago was much different to today. It was a different era back then, and the witnesses were stricter in some areas, yet laxer in others.
I wonder how things will be 50 years from now?