1965
Previous parts are not required to enjoy this part, not even partially...
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| Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay
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"There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air."
-Robert Zimmerman
Dear Gentlereaders,
In September 1965, "the sixties" (I use quotes because the early sixties were pretty much a continuation of the 1950s) were picking up steam and your semi-humble correspondent was a 12-year-old straight, white, toxic male awash in adolescent hormones.
Yet again I'm reminded of how lucky I was to have the childhood I did, a revelation triggered by this series of self-indulgent columns (Me, the Early Years).
In my last...
{Wait-wait-wait. Why 1965?}
I had a copy of an article from the L.A. Times saved, that I can't find, that provides an accurate and detailed explanation in my semi-humble opinion. It's still available, but unfortunately, the L.A. Times and the article in question are securely locked away behind a paywall.
As I explained in my last column, How to Save the World, which is not part of this series, I wrote about how I got lost/overwhelmed trying to accurately describe what America was like in 1965 (which, it turns out, would require a book), how quickly things got turned upside down, and how quickly the utopian dreams of some individuals, mostly kids, turned to shyte. So, I'm not going down that road again
{Kids?}
Yeah, Dana, kids, it was a modern-day Children's Crusade. "Don't trust anyone over thirty," said Jack Weinberg, now 84. (Follow the link to his Wikipedia page if you're interested in the fact that "fake news" was already alive and well in 1964. Mr. Weinberg was deliberately quoted out of context to sell newspapers. Ain'tcha glad we don't do that sort of thing anymore?)
Nowadays science tells us that the brain of the average H. sapien doesn't mature till the age of 25, something car insurance companies figured out multiple decades ago. Personally, I maintain that thirty is a more accurate number, but considering I'm over 70 you should take that with a grain of salt even though I've never yelled at anyone to get off my lawn.
"If you remember the sixties, you really weren't there" is a quote, according to Wikipedia, that should be attributed to one Charles Fleisher, "Actor - standup comedian - musician - writer," as opposed to one of the various and sundry famous stoners people attribute it to.
I was there, and I do remember. but I was just a working-class kid attending a traditional Catholic grade school located in a traditional working-class neighborhood that was located in a typical American, urban manufacturing hub (Pittsburgh) that hadn't started rusting yet when things got rolling (see what I did there?).
I didn't smoke weed for the first time till after I graduated from high school (as I said, lucky, but I wish it hadn't been till after I had turned 25), and I remember the brief era we now call the "swingin' sixties" fairly clearly considering it was longer ago than I care to acknowledge.
I'm so old that alcohol consumption when I was in high school, much less grade school, was relatively rare, drug use even more so, although the seeds had been planted (see what I did there?). I'm led to believe this was not the case in larger, hipper, cities like San Francisco, L.A., and New York, not that I'm saying this has anything to do with their current problems, which have since spread/are spreading to no shortage of other parts of America.
From my perspective, the sixties lasted from about 1965 to roughly 1975. By then Disco (thump, thump, thump, thump), Discos, and leisure suits were everywhere. Fortunately, this era didn't last either and it led to the musical high point of Western Civilization — Rap and Hip-Hop — that we still enjoy today.
For the record (see what I did there): Many people who were also there say that shortly after Wookstock (1969) everything started going downhill.
Historical perspective: The Cowboy era lasted about 30 years, depending on who you ask.
{I seem to remember that at the last editorial meeting, it was decided that this column was going to be about seventh grade, possibly eighth.}
It's early September, 1965. Me and mine are now living on the corner of 18th and Carson Street, Sou'side, Pittsburgh, Pencilvain-i-a. My four older siblings had either moved on or shortly would be. I'm embarrassed to say the details are fuzzy so I'm going to dodge said details to avoid offending anyone. In my defense...
{You spend a lot of time defending yourself.}
In my defense, a gap of almost six years between the first four kids and the last three made it seem like we were two combined families "back in the day," at least in my recollections. I associate Mum, Dad, Mark, Marty, and Mike with that oddly constructed apartment above an empty storefront and behind the offices of a drunken dentist (a dentist who was a drunk?) that's now a parking lot.
Behind an unlocked door on Carson Street which had the name of the dentist painted on it in time-faded letters, there was a steep set of steps to our front door at the top. Alternatively, you could make a left turn at the top of the stairs and go down a short hallway to the dentist's office.
I suspect that nowadays it wouldn't be legal as there was no back door. Well, there was, but it opened onto a small porch from which another set of steep steps descended into a small backyard that was more like an enclosed courtyard.
See, there were buildings on either side and a mostly empty two-car garage with a dirt floor between us and the alley that ran behind our domicile (my parents never owned a car, not even after we moved to the 'burbs). This meant that in the event of an emergency, there was a "man door" and a garage door between us and the alley.
I had figured out a way to (more or less) safely climb over the top of the garage and descend into the alley that was faster than having to deal with the doors and that scary, unlit garage with a dirt floor. Besides, it was fun.
Speaking of dirt, Mum was surprised that Mike, Marty, and I didn't get nearly as dirty when we were out and about in our corner of what I didn't realize (at first) was a fairly wealthy Pittsburgh suburb (Hampton Township) a year later. They had somehow managed to find, and buy, their first and last quite modest house (to put it mildly) in what was probably the oldest part of Hampton, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
My point is that we would get so dirty playing in the streets and playgrounds of the Burgh Mum would sometimes have us strip down to our underwear in the summer in that "courtyard" that provided shelter from prying eyes, and hose us down to keep that dirt from becoming a ring around the bathtub.
I can't speak for my baby brothers, one dead and the other...never mind, (love ya dude, even if you're unlikely to read this) but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't swear to it, and I have no memory of us ever having a shower, only a bathtub, even after we moved to the 'burbs. I know for a fact we never had more than one bathroom.
{What's any of this got to do with seventh and/or eighth grade?}
Hey, I'm painting word pictures here, don't interfere with the artiste! I serve my muse and she informs me we may not even get to seventh grade in this missive, much less eighth. To quote Isaac Asimov, "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers."
(Which, dear gentlereaders, is this old geezer's way of putting a positive spin on the fact that my columns are basically heavily edited stream-of-consciousness so they will make some sense.)
{You're equating yourself with Isaac Asimov?}
Except for the fact he was a genius, "wrote or edited over 500 books" and had world-class mutton chops, sure.
Back to September 1965. There was a new show on TV called Gidget that was loosely based on a hit movie released in 1959 of the same name starring Sally Field, who was 18 at the time. This Gidget, like the Gidget in the movie, was a cute, all-American, virginal, teen next door type obsessed with boys, and since she lived in California, surfing.
The movie version, featuring "teenage star" Sandra Dee, and a collection of heartthrobs who self-identified as male, was the first of several "beach party" movies that were wildly popular in the early sixties.
I saw most, if not all of those movies at the Arcade, a neighborhood movie theater featuring second-run movies and first-run B films, It was 35c for a double feature with previews and a cartoon in between (and no commercials) for kids 12 and under on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
All the boys/girls (men/women?) in those movies wore modest bathing suits (particularly as compared to what is considered normal nowadays) although some lived modestly unconventional lifestyles and occasional naughtiness was occasionally implied (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). The television version of Gidget was even more unrealistic. It only ran for a year, but that was because it was competing with The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the top ten most unrealistic TV shows of all time.
As mentioned above, the early sixties were pretty much a continuation of the 1950s.
Nowadays, Sally Field says she traveled to Mexico when she was 17 to have an abortion.
{Yikes! Too much information.}
I agree...talk to Mx. Fields.
Right, wrong, or indifferent, this was America in 1965 and I had a firm, if not entirely realistic foundation to stand on before things got weird. I remember a whole different America, the one that for all its flaws and problems appeared to be on the right track.
In my admittedly small world:
God wasn't dead just yet. Men and women got married before having kids, or at least before their first one was due. Having a child "out of wedlock" was a disgrace and various and sundry arrangements were made so that everyone involved could pretend it wasn't happening and minimize embarrassment.
Dads worked hard for the money. Moms worked hard to run the household and raise the kids. There were plenty of jobs available for dads more concerned with paying their own way than following their passion.
The "hidden tax" (inflation) and the national debt had not yet destroyed the value of the dollar.
America had just passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 so the abomination that was Jim Crow would be resolved in minute. Sister Mary McGillicuddy and her colleagues went out of their way to make sure we understood how important this was, and how important it was to know what was going on in the world so we could be good citizens who voted intelligently when we grew up.
I knew what equal opportunity was, but I wouldn't encounter the phrase equality of outcome ("equity," Socialism, Communism, and/or Marxism) till decades later. In fact, I was taught that Communism was downright evil. Given that by the end of the century, it was responsible for 100,000,000 or so premature deaths, apparently, this was correct.
{You don't capitalize socialism or communism, they're common nouns.}
I'm aware, but I tend to capitalize all sorts of words that aren't supposed to be. I have a clause in my Poetic License that allows me to do so.
We were going to land on the Moon before the decade was over, mostly because, as George Mallory said about climbing Mount Everest, "it was there."
I could go on (and on). I could also go on (and on) about how naive an attitude this was and explore all the stuff that was and is wrong with America. However, given that there's no shortage of people (a veritable industry) making a living by doing this nowadays I see no need.
I'm just trying to describe what life was like for a 12-year-old kid with minimal privilege, in America, in 1965, was like. I think I was lucky because many, if not most 12-year-old kids born nowadays, would be lucky to have a childhood that was a bit more like mine, with a little less social media and a lot less access to hardcore porn.
{Seventh grade?}
Next time, I promise.
Colonel Cranky
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