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Getting new school books every year - the used ones went to the African American schools.
Well, that explains it. Having attended the by then mostly African American DC public school system in the 70s, I always wondered why our deteriorating history textbooks ended with JFK still alive.
As far as the Vietnam war. My first husband managed to stay out of the draft, first because he was a college student and second because we had a baby. At the same time, the man who would become husband #2, only stayed out because he had a good lottery number.
Just to clarify your post, I doubt they used the lottery system in the 60's.
I believe they only used the lottery system the end of the draft in the early 70's.
Phones were usually rotary and black. We still had a party line.
Seatbelts in cars were often non-existent and their use was optional...many, if not most did not use them. It was very common to see children standing on the hump in the rear floorboard looking over the front seat, or smaller children sleeping on the ledge behind the back seat and rear window. (The hump was the driveline--most cars, front-wheel drive today, don't have them.)
Cars were almost always American. If they were foreign, it was almost always European. I don't know that I ever saw a Japanese car until the 1970s. (Japanese products were widely thought of as just being junk.)
We only had one car. Most families had one car. We did get a second one in 1969.
Cities were smoggier.
Candy cigarettes were just dandy.
The World Series came on in the day time. We would hollow out a book, put a small transistor radio in it, and run an earplug up our shirtsleeves to listen during class at school. If you were caught, your radio was gone.
Teachers gave whippin's--they didn't need the principal to do it. Then you got one at home for getting in trouble at school.
Mom was usually home when you got home from school.
In a span of 7 years during the 1960s (1963-1970), dad was gone 4 of them to Vietnam.
I remember separate drinking fountains, restrooms, and train cars.
The first color tv I saw in a home was in 1967. It got 2 channels.
The tv remote control was the children...
Saturday mornings was the only day you could see cartoons.
We had nuclear bomb drills...and they were serious. Duck and cover.
During the Cuban Missile Crises, dad sent us to the coast of Oregon, out of range of the nukes in Cuba, and upwind of likely Russian nuke strikes.
It seemed the world was going mad with the race riots, the Chicago riots, the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination, the Manson murders, Kent State, etc.
When we were kids, we'd disappear from home during the daytime and roam, often until (or just after) dark. Nothing to do indoors, so we went and played in the neighborhood. No adult oversight. No play dates. No structure, no organization other than what we came up with. If we had a problem, parents, police or lawyers were not consulted--we solved it. And we survived.
We ate food made from scratch and not mixes. Whole milk. I remember the first margarine I had. It was awful.
Eating out was a rare, rare treat. We usually only did it if we were travelling. I can remember my parents going out one time for an anniversary...special, special!
I went to the movies on Saturdays with a quarter. 10 cent admission, 15 cents for popcorn and a drink. A Baby Ruth was 5 cents. And, we got to see a cartoon, and a double-feature!
I only went to the first grade for 2-4 months--I don't remember. Heck, EVERYONE that year only went that long. My school district refused to open in protest of a desegregation order. I don't know if parents pressured them to open or if the courts did. I didn't even know about that until mom told me when I was in high school. I'd never been to school before, so I didn't know there was anything unusual about school that year.
It was cool to roll your jeans up into a cuff in the early '60s.
I got into a fist-fight at the playground and a cop broke it up. Guess what? We weren't sent to therapy, arrested nor were our parents told or DHS called, but that cop scared us so bad that we didn't do it again. Well, we didn't do it THERE.
I used to hang out at the local fire station as a kid and was never run off because of liability reasons.
There were quite a few people around who had polio.
We didn't go to school with "retarded" kids. They went somewhere else. Mainstream meant the strongest part of the river.
The sixties were enjoyable for me...but I've been pretty happy no matter WHEN I was...
I turned 18 the day President Kennedy was shot. The 60's were an incredible time to 'come of age'. Tumultuous, with Civil Rights still an ongoing battle in the South and the Vietnam War growing in importance almost daily.
The music was terrific, however. And the Beatles came along at exactly the right time for us (by the way, it was always the Beatles over the Stones), and the music seemed to just get better and better as the decade progressed.
1968 might have been the worst year in recent memory, and 1969 wasn't much better. There were times during those years where we were losing several hundred dead a month in Vietnam.
I went on active military duty in 1969, just about the time the civil unrest in the country was reaching a fever pitch. It was a ugly time to live in many respects, but it was never, ever boring. And there was always the music. And the mini-skirts.
My childhood was in the 1960s, living in Chicago (the city, a neighborhood called Cragin). So I can give you those memories. Some of the big events of that era did impinge on my kid life...like I can recall when Kennedy was shot, a very early memory, and I can recall a race riot in my neighborhood, about a block from our flat, back in 1966. It was because of an open housing march. I recall the 1968 riots, too (on TV) and a lot of excitment or nervousness about that. And us driving around the riot area after it had all settled down.
And yes, i do remember lava lamps. One of our neighbors had one, it was so cool! They had leopard or zebra skin rugs or upholstery too. Furniture was still modern back then...sort of kitchy modern. Pole lamps, kidney tables, Danish modern, teak. For radio we had this big Grundig/Majestic thing in laquered wood with a record player and the tuner got shortwave. TV was black and white. My grandparents eventually got a colored TV. We didn't get one until much later. Back then, later 1960s, they started to have UHF, where the channels came in sort of fuzzy and had high numbers, like Channel 44 and Channel 36. FM radio was for ethnic programming (we listend to German on Sundays) or this heavily orchestrated "beautiful music" stuff.
I think at the end of the decade there was that fad for "Mediterreanean" furniture, copies of this heavy carved Spanish stuff.
Lots of things to say. Good point upthread about the black rotary phones. The number had letters in it for the exchange. NAtional 2-5861. MOhawk 4-4100, etc. Zip codes had just been introduced and they had the cartoon Zip Code man telling you to use them. Other things...lots of afternoon kids cartoon shows on TV in Chicago back then. Someone mentioned Garfield Goose. There were others. TV..Sunday was Ed Sullivan & Disney, Saturday was Lawrence Welk. Big TV events where the beauty pagents, Wizard of Oz, and the space program, which pre-empted regularly scheduled programming. And those Civil Defense tests (on radio, too).
Since I lived in an older neighborhood we still had corner stores. You could get candy there, like someone said, but the one by us also had a butcher and I was sent there on errands. It was just around the block. I passed it by walking to school...you could walk home for lunch (in time for half of Bozos Circus).
There was also a bakery (with fresh bread and pastries), barber, drug store, hardware store, and even a toy store in walking distance on the busy street (Fullerton Avenue). And also a small five and dime. and a small department store and a soda fountain/grill on Grand/Armitage (other busy streets). Lots of corner taverns, too. But for major groceries there was the IGA and later A&P.
I grew up in a two-flat + basement apartment with my grandparents, parents, and uncle & aunt. My grandparents didnt have a car (my grandfather walked to work) and the men drove theirs to work. So during the summer we were dependent on the CTA to get around. We took the bus shopping...Six Corners and Belmont & Central, and sometimes the bus to the L to the Loop for the downtown department stores. That was special, though. Usually it was those two neighborhood shopping districts, which seemed to have a full complement of stores + a neighborhood movie theatre. It was pretty easy to get around on the bus. I also recall that there was a news stand, sort of a shack where this guy sold papers, near our stop on Fullerton.
During weekends we'd drive out to the new shopping centers. Harlem & Irving Plaza was one, the other was Winston Hills. These were just big strip centers, but seemed pretty new and modern. Malls came later. The first indoor one I remember was Randhurst way out there beyond Mount Prospect? The first outdoor one I remember was Oak Brook, or was it Golf Mill?
Suburbia was new and fresh. We'd go house-hunting out into the cornfields to look at new subdivisions like Weathersfield (in what is now Schaumburg) and Hoffman Estates, or Streamwood, or Woodridge out in the western suburbs. These places are all built up now. But I remember that Schaumburg area back then...wide, wide open farmland and raw new subdivisions.
Living in the city, recreation was at the park, or you could go swimming in the lake, for us it was either North Avenue beach or Montrose Beach, with its horseshoe pier and Nike site (missle site to protect the city from Communist attack). Summer weekends also might have meant a trip out to Lake Geneva for a picnic and swimming in the ice water. Cheap fun.
But since we are in the fall there was all the leaves. I recall out in the suburbs they still burned leaves though I dont think so in the city.
Anyway, enough. Not sure what you are looking for here?
I grew up by kennedy airport in queens ny.any trouble was handled by the neighborhood no police were ever involved.that went for all the wellknown gangsters to.they were gangsters but they were not the tough guys in the neighborhood.
The 60's. We had an Irish Catholic Man wh*re for President but everyone chose to believe in Camelot. I frequently had sex in the back of my VW van that I had to park on a hill because the starter would usually not work. I put what turned out to be valuable baseball cards on the spokes of my bike using wooden clothes pins. A HUGE dill pickle cost a nickle at the picture show. Married couples on TV slept in seperate beds and they couldnt say the word pregnant. There was no speed limit. Certain girls used to "go visit relatives" for several months after fooling around with the boys. I inhaled.
So were you one of those celebrating the assassination of the 'Irish Catholic Man-*****'? And what does his religion have to do with anything?
JFK was the first Catholic President! It mattered to alot of people back then. We need another George Wallace dont we?
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