The '60's

[Linda Y]

For some reason this made me cry. Yes, I remember every single thing on it.
http://moreoldfortyfives.com:80/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

[SandyMM]

What a great site! I love the 3 compartment TV dinners! :-) What a change from the beginning to the end of that decade! I was in elementary school when it started and college when it ended! Worked for a $1.15/hr at my first job at a Burger King where the hamburgers were 18¢ and the fries were 15¢. Drove a beat-up '57 MGA to school my senior year. Passed up 22¢/gallon gas at Hess because it was too cheap and besides my dad worked for a subsidiary of Gulf. I watched my distant cousin circle the Earth, stood on the bank of the estuary separating the Saturn rocket topped with Apollo 13 as it was struck by lightening on take-off, got accused of being a 'hippie' when I came home from college in brand-new-stand-up-in-a-corner-by-themselves Levi jeans and a short-sleeve college sweatshirt, watched Ed Sullivan present the Beatles for the first time (on black and white TV), flipped between channels on our first color TV to see color commercials.... oh - the memories....

Thanks!

[CarolU]

Yes, I remember the 60's. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane and they should have left it at that. I could have done without the negative spin they put on changes. Life wasn't perfect then either.

I do miss 10 cent onion rings and 6 GOOD burgers for a $1...and 24 cent/gallon gas.

[SandyMM]

I forwarded this link to my son - he loved it! He's only 20, but he was struck by several points that were made - gotta love a young man that figures it out so young.

[motorgypsy]

Interesting but seriously biased. We were in college and then new parents and teachers. In 1965 I made $4000 a year teaching high school.

And party lines on the telephone?? No way. We have private lines as early as 1945.

Some HUGE breakthroughs in and around that time - the birth control pill and antibiotics. Jet planes. the hydrogen bomb and space travel were in that era.

Things I would bring back - kids playing outside all the time in the neighborhood. There are just so many people on the planet now. We're so crowded and this means more bad people per square mile. We LIVED outside. The original McDonald's french fries from real potatoes cut up and fried at the restaurant. REAL Kentucky fried chicken and real masked potatoes and lumpy chicken gravy. Oh my gosh it was good! Socializing at the local drive in restaurant - a very safe place to chat with guys from school. They would climb in the back seat of the girls' cars, talk, eat french fries and drink sweet tea, get back out and we'd all go home.
Cruising down town after a football game. The police hated it but it was so much fun! Reading and playing board games and cards. Being able to ride the bus anywhere we wanted to go for very little money.

Things I hated - riding to school on my bike in the winter in a skirt. It was sooo cold. Not being able to wear pants much at all. They just weren't allowed. Mowing the lawn with a rotary push mower and having to cut the remaining sprigs with scissors. The push power mowers weren't a lot better but they cut better anyway. Not being able to get my own pony and horse and not having transportation to go to a barn.

Illegitimacy - there was plenty of it - we weren't called the silent generation for nothing. The girls parents sent her to live with an aunt or something and the baby was adopted. Or there were other options that weren't talked about. The girl had no choice. She had no way to make a living on her own with a new baby and no husband.

Automobiles were death traps. Most didn't have seat belts. No airbags, no collapsing steering columns, no engine mounts to keep the engine from being rammed into your chest. We were told in a high school assembly that 1 out of 4 of us would be killed in an auto accident before our I think 25th reunion. We knew a number of auto fatalities personally.

Drugs - alcohol and smoking were the drugs of the early 60's. Many of us have still never smoked marijuana a single time in our lives but most of the boys drank alcohol and bought alcohol long before it was legal.

Battered women pretty much stayed married for a very long time. Divorce was just too much of a stigma and many women had no way to make a living. The courts did not award enough money for women like this to even have a minimal amount of money so if their family was not sympathetic they were beaten and even killed and it was hushed up for the most part.

The extended family had pretty much been broken up by this time so families no longer had grandmother and grandfather, aunts and uncles to help out, babysit and so on. It was hard on stay at home moms because they were so isolated.

So today many things are better and some things are worse.

THANKS for sharing the memories.:biggrin:

[SandyMM]

good things about the 60s..... We weren't 'rich', but it didn't matter. we were far more self-sufficient. If I wanted a new dress (rarely... LOLOL), I babysat for strangers to make enough money for a pattern and material, then sewed it myself on my grandmothers treadle Singer. I even recovered the cushions on our white vinyl sectional couch - twice - with the treadle machine.

I rode my bike to school, all over the neighborhood at night, and all the way to the nearest 'mall' (more like the first strip shopping center), and to the movie theater in downtown Ft. Lauderdale - didn't lock it and paid for Saturday morning admission with 6 RC bottles caps. "Hoods" smoked on the corner next to school, but one of them has his name on "The Wall" - he volunteered to join the Marines.

None of my friends grew up doing drugs, drinking, or smoking. None of us got pregnant. An exciting night out meant 10-12 friends all went out together to a church function or the movies and ice cream afterwards. Holidays were for families and friends to meet on South Beach across from Bahia Mar before daybreak to make sure we got tables and grills.

I never had a horse back then except the imaginary one I kept tied and saddled to the porch - just in case... ;) But my dad never missed a chance to take us to take us to see horses owned by his customers when he could... and he slipped me the money to buy my first saddle - without letting my mom know...

It was tough back then - the schools in Ft. Lauderdale closed when temps hit 40° because there was no heat in the classrooms - I guess all of us Midwest transplants didn't think it was necessary.

We played outside and a Mayflower packing box or an empty refrigerator crate was good for weeks of imaginative play until rain eventually melted them...

Nobody's parents bought them a new car just because they made to their 16th birthday without dying or getting pregnant....

I love life now - but I sure had fun back then... Well, except for that big ol' gator that used to crawl through the backyard at night off Griffin Rd....

[motorgypsy]

My dad almost took a job in Lauderdale in '57. We might have even known one another back then if he had:biggrin:. Of course you would have been that bratty little kid I babysat hehehe.

When I was really small - like 6 - we were allowed to ride the bus all over Columbia Ohio. But when we moved to Norfolk VA we weren't allowed to go any further than the nearest shopping center as teens. GRRRRR. Very annoying. Mom was worried about those rowdy sailors:v:

I did forget to mention that these were the days of segregation in the southeast. We had black students that lived right next door to our high school who had to walk several miles to go to school. Even at the time it seemed wrong to me. We taught the first year our schools in SC were integrated. But that's another story. We were actually very lucky because we had a lot of kids at our school whose parents had been in the air force and the only prejudice they had was officers vs not an officer. Color wasn't noticed at all and things went very smoothly. No national guard there. Of course we were in a new school and every kid in the system that had been kicked out of another high school was sent to us so we did have some serious thugs.

If you think thugs and gangs are a new thing check out the movie "Blackboard Jungle". I saw it probably in 1955 or earlier. Admittedly more knives and less guns but still very bad stuff.

[CarolU]

Your mom was right to protect you Nancy. My sister was grabbed and nearly raped (she escaped) in the 60's. They gave the young man a choice, go to jail or join the military. He joined the Marines - and made a career of it.

I also remember violence, gangs, "rumbles" and knife fights. Having to wear dresses to school, even on snowy cold days when your legs turned purple. I remember car seats were like a bucket that hung over the back of the front seat. There were no seat belts. Children that were born out of wedlock were called "bastards" and treated like lepers.

[motorgypsy]

And that too. And a husband couldn't be prosecuted for raping his wife and date rape was the girl's fault - she should have known better than to "dress like that, get herself into that situation" etc etc.

Another thing though - we generally didn't get caught for doing the "smaller naught thing". Kids outran police when they were speeding, snuck out at night just for the heck of it, bought alcohol illegally and drove dad's car far further than they were supposed to and then drove backwards to get rid of the excess mileage. It was just fun doing things you weren't supposed to. When we were kids we would climb out the bedroom window and go around to the living room window and watch TV through the window after our required bed time. We thought we were being so bad. We did get caught some time later but so much later there was no point in punishing us.:biggrin:

[PasoVicki]

Since this was a video, I couldn't see it (darn slow dial-up), but I can respond to this:

And party lines on the telephone?? No way. We have private lines as early as 1945.


There may not have been party lines where you lived -- but there were still party lines. I lived in a little rural town in the midwest in the early 60s, and we had one.

It's sad that kids today don't have the freedom we had back then.

[Soltera]

Feel like I'm sitting around the campfire with the village elders, learning at their knees. I was born in the early 60's, but wouldn't have many of your memories, anyway, having been raised mostly on AF bases here and there, overseas and in country. It was the 50s until the 70s.

Great conversation, though, and a great thread. Thank you!

[SandyMM]

Feel like I'm sitting around the campfire with the village elders, learning at their knees.
:mad2: Hey-hey-hey - who you callin' 'elder'....????? LOLOLOLOL :v:

[SandyMM]

I guess someone could focus on the bad times, but there were so many good things then and now - I prefer the positive...

Although walking uphill both ways in the snow _was_ my favorite complaint about the old days... Oh wait... I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale.... WooHoo!!!! :v:

[motorgypsy]

That was my mom and dad who walked the ten miles through the snow. I only rode a bike one mile in a skirt in below freezing weather.

For me the number one thing kids today don't have is "spare time" to just hang out and do nothing. The stimulus of today's world is unreal. I'm very glad I'm not the parent of underage kids right now. I'd go nuts.

And the freedom kids had - especially the boys back then was amazing. No cell phones. No pagers. Sure you got in trouble when you got home late or someone saw you where you weren't supposed to be but today kids even have GPS's tracking them in their cell phones and on their cars. Less freedom in the name of safety.

I had great fun until the 9th grade and then from college on life was for the most part really interesting even though it was very challenging and of course not always good. But I never feared for my next meal because we've always had a safety net. People who have one can't imagine what it would be like to have no one.

A friend of mine was sleeping under an overpass at age 13 after her mom and dad split and neither wanted her. She lied about her age, got two jobs, put herself through high school and college. This was in the late 70's. I can't even imagine surviving what she did.

I just consider myself incredibly lucky:v:

And the silent generation doesn't tell the "really good stuff";)

[CarolU]

Well, date rape didn't happen often. In the early 60's 'good girls' didn't "DO IT" and the boys knew better then to expect it. In the late 60's love was free...so everybody did it! I do think that "free love" is where most date rape came from, girls/women lost the option of saying "No." Guys expected it after buying dinner and a movie.

We had party lines on the ranch in the 70's and 80's. Eight families to the line and two families shared a ring...one had a single ring and the other had a double. You always watched what you said on the phone then.

[motorgypsy]

I found out by accident in the cases I know about. In most cases the girl never told anyone until much later if ever but you'd be surprised the statistics that come up on anonymous surveys. Colleges actually have had meetings with freshman on the subject for a number of years. In half the cases I found out about alcohol was a factor. Two were college and three were late high school age. All were steady dating the guy and all of them broke off the relationship with him at some point in time. None of the parents ever found out and no legal action was ever taken but it was very traumatic for the girls because all five were very serious about the young man and all had trust issues later - some quite serious.

Some fond memories - spending the summer going swimming every day. Diving and just hanging out with friends. Even at the "advanced age" of 46 my mom could swim and dive like a mermaid. All the kids would just stand and gape when she got on that diving board. Touring with the college band and playing in the symphony. Lots of good friends and great music. Camping in state parks with family. No motor homes then. Just a tent with no floor and a couple of sheets and a quilt. Playing in the swamp at the end of the street and actually getting to watch a turtle hatching. Making our own bows and arrows and playing cowboys and indians. Rollar skating for miles with our dog to pull us if we got tired - which we rarely did. No school because it snowed. Lots of fun sledding with a real flexy flyer just like the one in the smithsonian museum. Still have it too.:biggrin:

[SandyMM]

-Red lipstick penny candy
-A real 'English racer' bicycle for Christmas
-Jr and sr high school band
-Learning to fish on the river behind the school P.E. fields in gym class
-blue gymsuits and aerosol deodorant
-school dances
-wrap-around skirts with matching bandanas
-Villager dresses with the pleats in the front
-The 'cool' boys in high school wore socks that matched their button down oxford shirt colors....
-penny loafers, Weegians (sp?), Hushpuppies
-dungarees
-spending an entire summer designing a 'city' in the backyard made entirely of cardboard boxes
-collecting and turning in glass soft drink bottles for 2¢ apiece for pocket money
-babysitting for 50¢/hr
-swinging by the knees on the top crossbar of the swingset (my mom just closed the curtains and didn't look)
-catching minnows in the canal behind our house one summer with my mom's deep fry basket - which I dropped in 10 feet of alligator-infested canal water!
-water-skiing on the State Rd 84 canal - coral rock banks on both sides and the occasional alligator - no problem...
-fishing in the 'Bombing Range' on the edge of the Everglades
-learning to drive in a '57 MGA on the runway of the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station - yeah - _that_ Naval Air runway - same one the Avengers took off from years before
-shooting off model rockets from that runway into the empty field 1/4 mile away which - years later - became the Dolphins training camp in Davie.....

I LOVED THE 60s!!!!!!! :v::v::v::v::v::v::v::v:

[aynot]

Oh, WOW, Sandy! Your last post really brings back some good memories!

The blue gym suits... LOL! I remember those well.
We used to ride our horses several miles one way to the local market for an ice cream sandwich on those hot summer days. Then we'd gallop all the way back home. Poor horses... :(

Party lines... we had one well into the late sixties. Every time we'd pick up the phone to make a call, an old lady on our road named "Pearl" would be yakking away.... and she kept on yakking until she felt like ending the conversation.

Cat Stevens, The Beatles, fresh Rhubarb... horses, dirtbikes, our first color TV....

Good memories. :)

Tonya

[CarolU]

Yeah, we had blue gym suits too!

Penny candy was a penny...or less. Candy bars were a nickel and the BIG ones a dime.

I remember walking to the store, about a mile each way.
Selling lemonade next to the road for 5 cents/glass.
Endless summer days and playing until dark.
Gas was 24/cents a gallon - and you had service, got your windows washed, a tumbler and green stamps with a fill up. Sinclair gave away little green dinosaurs.
We could camp anywhere without reservations.
We had a camper off the first production line of campers and used to draw crowds to see it when we'd go places.
When we got our first color TV Lyndon Johnson was green. We didn't care, it was color!
My oldest sister loved Bobby Vinton and I loved Davey Jones.
We had no air conditioning, so would drive up the canyon and camp on hot summer nights. Dad would drive us back to the city so he could go to work and we'd wake up in the driveway.
Flavored wax lips at Halloween
Candy cigarettes
Paragoric - YUK
Cod Liver Oil - YUK YUK
Tonka trucks in sand piles
Tree huts and Tarzan swings
The first moon walk (still have the newspaper with this story)

[Soltera]

:mad2: Hey-hey-hey - who you callin' 'elder'....????? LOLOLOLOL :v:


LOL With a thread like this, you can't fool even me. I'm proud to have all of you as elders! :v: For relative newbies, it's the whole point!

I had a light blue gym suit in the early 70's. Progress, I guess. LOL
Life was different on fenced, guarded, overseas US air bases. Safer for me, but my older brother and sister HATED IT!!!!! :rolleyes:

[SandyMM]

And what _were_ those summer thingy's called that were one piece, step -in, elastic legs and waist, 'spaghetti' ties at the shoulders.... Like 'onesies' for pre-teens back then.... :v:

Oh - here's another one....

gum wrapper 'chains'!