Tell me about the '60s (vanity)

[6ppc]

Riding single speed bikes with no helmet and occasional road rash (really nasty when it happens on loose gravel!).

Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Apollo 8, 11 and 13.

Building model airplanes.

Cuban missle crisis and me puzzling about why my dad was so frightened.

My dad built a fallout shelter and I wanted a war to start so we could use it.

[rhombus]

There's another quality about today's generation...they have always been so connected to the point where I sometimes think some of them are afraid to be alone. Always with a cellphone in the ear...always cable television with hundreds of channels...always the Internet with loads of sites....always some store somewhere open... There's a Joni Mitchell song quote about getting crazy from too much choice. Boy is that the case now.

[sionnsar]

No calculators.

I had several slide rules (stick and round), plus the occasional cheap Japanese metal "calculator".

[mandingo republican]

The real 60s started after 67 and continued up to 1980 - it is said that the night John Lennon was killed was the last day of the 1960s. After that came the Reagan era and everything from hair styles, political thinking, to music changed overnight. If you don't believe me look at old high school year books to look at the differences in men's hair styles. Up to 1980 men still wore big bushy hair, mustaches and big beards that came out of the late 60s. Prior to 68 America was still high on the victory of WW2 and the boom that followed, people went to ballgames in suits and ladies were treated differently. 1960 to 1967 was the age of innocence of the 60s - a 1950s Father Knows best aesthetic still prevailed to a point although you had MOD and groovy Austin powers type folk they weren't the drugged out spaced out hippies we all know - Women still took care of themselves in grooming - it was like Janis Joplin who also changed the female look. It was the hippies and the drug infested Beatles period where every thing started to go Hell. The communists in the West also had a lot to do with the downfall of values - the downfall that continues till this day

[surrey]

When my son was little (he's now 31) he asked me if the world had color when I was a child. He assumed that because TV was black and white everything in the world was black and white.

[mandingo republican]

The real 60s started after 67 and continued up to 1980 - it is said that the night John Lennon was killed was the last day of the 1960s. After that came the Reagan era and everything from hair styles, political thinking, to music changed overnight. If you don't believe me look at old high school year books to look at the differences in men's hair styles. Up to 1980 men still wore big bushy hair, mustaches and big beards that came out of the late 60s. Prior to 68 America was still high on the victory of WW2 and the boom that followed, people went to ballgames in suits and ladies were treated differently. 1960 to 1967 was the age of innocence of the 60s - a 1950s Father Knows best aesthetic still prevailed to a point although you had MOD and groovy Austin powers type folk they weren't the drugged out spaced out hippies we all know - Women still took care of themselves in grooming - it was like Janis Joplin who also changed the female look. It was the hippies and the drug infested Beatles period where every thing started to go Hell. The communists in the West also had a lot to do with the downfall of values - the downfall that continues till this day

[4yearlurker]

I remember the first FM station was called The "underground station". WMMR.

Me and my brother had our 8-track laying right on the drive shaft hump in the middle of the car. We wore out the Beatles "Hey Jude" tape.

[Miss Didi]

TV dinners sucked.

I kinda dug the Swanson's turkey because it came with apple cobbler (which was pretty tasteless but we were kids).

Remember those little wax bottles filled with colored liquid you would drink and then chew the wax?

[alice_in_bubbaland]

"Lawrence Welk still had a TV show and my grandparents insisted on watching it on Sunday nights."

Yep, my Grandparents also loved "Ted Mack's Amature Hour", Sunday dinners were a torture for us kids.

[mc5cents]

A pack of Cigarettes was 30 cents and they sold them to minors. :-)

I can remember when cigarettes were sold in army/navy surplus stores for 1.90 a carton. The cigarette machines (remember them?) would charge you .25 cents a pack and some would give you change in the pack if the sign on the machine said .23cents. No kidding, they would pack 2 pennies into the pack. Just about everybody smoked in those days.

[Chi-townChief]

Being asked to pray in a public school is what still amazes me.

[i_dont_chat]

I'd love to contribute, but I was in an alcoholic blackout -- the whole 60s. It's all a blur.

[Alouette]

Cut class with my friends and went over to Canada.

We used to sneak smokes in our favorite teacher's firetrap stairwell office, but he didn't care because he smoked in there too.

[Howlin]

I remember when they changed the pledge, do you? (Really showing my age here!)

[Professional Engineer]

Would you believe Kirk was a missionary?

[alice_in_bubbaland]

So did I, girls version though, with a gold speckled seat and a big white basket on the front. :)

[Miss Didi]

I forgot about S&H trading stamps! My Mom would get them from the grocery store, she had books and books of stamps. That's where we got most of our small appliances and of course the plaid round beverage cooler for family trips to Jones Beach.

My sister and I would paste them in the books the minute my mother came home from grocery shopping. We'd save up and get my parents an anniversary present like an electric can opener that we thought was SO cool of us.

[surrey]

Because most Moms stayed home and didn't drive, everything came to the neighborhood. We had the milkman, knife sharpener, Fuller Brush guy, the Dugan man(he brought bread and baked goods, Mister Softy,Good Humor and we even had trucks that came down the street that were rides.

[samanella]

Women went to college to get their "Mrs." degree.

I couldn't wear pants to class in college - only to gym class, covered up with a raincoat.

We had to stop singing "Dixie" at the football games -- and you wore a dress and heels to the game.

Seat belts were optional.

Parents successfully grounded their children when they were bad...with no back talk.

You were allowed to discipline children in schools. And parents were allowed to spank at home.

Evolution of Southern beach music and the shag....m-m-m-m - great memories there.

[TET1968]

Microwave ovens
Race riots in Chicago and York, PA.
Americans walked on the moon.
Plymouths had push button drives
The Ford Mustang had it's debut
We all watched American Bandstand
Girls teased their hair,chewed gum and wore tight sweaters.
We almost went to War with Russia over arms to Cuba.
Buddhist priests were setting themselves on fire
The Berlin Wall went up and Germans were shot in the back trying to escape.
The Beatles pushed back the percussion arts a thousand years.
Disco was actually listened to.
The Tet Offensive
John F. Kennedy assassinated
Robert F.Kennedy assassinated
Martin Luther King assassinated
Color TV offered one show in color "Flipper".