Now, 50 years later, I'm not so sure I'm better off. After a 25 year career in the Navy and a 15 year second career as a defense contractor, I have retired. Not rich, but comfy. Raised 4 kids through college who are now raising their own families. I have 6 TV's in my house, 3 computers and a GPS in each if my cars. Over 200 channels on the cable box; only a dozen or so are worth sitting in front of. My local newspaper is 50 % advertising and tilts to the left. I'm on my fifth cell phone and only use about 5% of its functions. My annual taxes are roughly 8 times my father's 1962 annual salary.
If I could, I would go back to 1962 in a heartbeat.
I would go back, too. Things weren’t perfect, but a whole lot better than they are today.
If we would have been told what American society would be like in 2012, we never would have believed it. Glad I won’t be here in another 50 years but I dread it for my children (and grandchildren if any).
On this day in 1962 I was preparing to depart Clark Air Base in the Philippine Islands. I was one day short of my 20th birthday.
We didn't lock the house EVER.
Then, right around that time, black and white realtors alike started "blockbusting." (The king of the black realtors was Isaac Haggins. Sumbitch's family is still in business.) They would call up every house on the street and say, "You know, the neighborhood it changing fast. You really want to sell your house now while you can still get something for it. In five years, it will be worth nothing."
If worked. "For Sale" signs outnumbered the dandelions.
Anyway, we sold our house to a nice black couple. The realtor asked for the keys and my dad's jaw dropped. Keys? He had to put new locks on the doors because no one knew where the keys were from when they first bought the house.
“The next year, I stuffed envelopes for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign and there weren’t any television attack ads.”
Hmm... how about “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.....KABOOM!”
Anyway, I was thirteen in 1962 and a kid’s life was as described elsewhere on this thread, near Green Bay WI where there was lots of fishing in the summer & and hockey played on any patch of ice in the winter.
Then the JFK assassination the following year, on my birthday. World turned upside down in an instant.
Today I have one cellphone (my wife’s), one TV for news & info, we share a laptop & I refuse to buy a digital cam. I listen to Rush & Glenn on my 1968 Zenith Trans-Oceanic. My car is not fully broken in until I’ve driven it for at least ten years. The only ancient feature missing from our kitchen is Betty Furness.
I-phone? What’s an I-phone?
“The next year, I stuffed envelopes for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign and there weren’t any television attack ads.”
You might want to look up Daisy Ad, one of the big factors in his defeat.
That came in 1964 with LBJ having Goldwater nuking a little girl picking a flower.
Those wouldn't show up until 1964.
Much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k
"Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
That would be Landslide Lyndon Johnson, the fourth worst president, after the incumbent, Wilson, and the first President Johnson. (Well, OK, maybe Jimmy and the Idiot on the Dime fit in there somewhere. We've had some very bad presidents!)