The sixties covered age 10 to 20 for me, that was a huge time period to stir up memories. So here is a list from early to late 60's.

Getting out of Junior High to see President Kennedy speak at a High School Football field in Great Falls, MT. A friend and I climbed a tree just outside of the stadium so we could actually see him. We probably would get shot doing that now.

The Beatles

My first driver's license, which made me legal, even though I had been driving farm vehicles for years, Farm kids drive early in life.

The smell of fresh cut alfalfa hay.

First kiss - thanks, Linda H.

Making out in the back seat of a car, thanks to quite a few girls that will remain nameless here.

First car - 1957 Chev Belair 2dr To think I sold it to go to college...

Going off to college in 1968

Mini Skirts and college girls who burned their bras, or just forgot to wear them.

I missed the first moon landing, was working on a fire lookout tower in the Bitterroot Wilderness summer of 1969.

Vietnam, student deferrment, then the first lottery. #325 Dropped the deferrment, was classified 1-A for a couple of years but never got drafted.

Dated a girl for a couple of years, who, 37 years later, became my wife.

Thirty-seven years later??? There must be a good story there.

Yes, NormaRae, its a great story. We dated for a couple of years, then I went on a mission. She got married to someone else while I was away. Fast forward those 37 years and we are both living in Utah, although neither of us knew it. We were both single, having gone through divorces. I had tried to find out where she was, but had no idea of her married last name. She had actually tried to find me also, but was looking in the wrong state.

By sheer coincidence she ran across an art gallery where I had previously exibited some photography. She saw my name and got my phone number, and called me. When we met and started sharing lives, we found out we had been living about 2 miles apart for the last 30 years, shopped the same grocery store, our kids had mutual friends, she worked with an attorney that I had contact with through my work, and at the time of the phone call we were living a mile from each other. Oh, and we both had left the LDS church behind.

Despite all of this, we never crossed paths until that phone call. 4 months later we were married.

That's just nuts.

That should have been a vignette on "When Harry Met Sally."

I was a city girl and remember going downtown. I would catch the bus and go downtown shopping or to the movies. The sidewalks were always full of people shopping or doing their business. I wish my kids could have experienced downtown before malls took over.

I remember the time I spent playing outside with neighborhood kids, especially during the summer.

Like you, the Beatles. I still love their music.

I love the time frame I grew up in, it was the best as far as I am concerned.

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go, downtown
When you've got worries all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help I know, downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk, where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose? The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So go
Downtown, things will be great when you're
Downtown, no finer place for sure
Downtown, every thing's waiting for you

recorded by Petula Clark in 1964

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx06XNfDvk0

Wow, that's crazy that you never ran into each other. That almost makes me believe that there really is a right time and place for everything.

my2cents do you still live in Montana?

No, have lived in Utah for too many years.

You oughta come back - it's great this time of year!

Ha! I remember all too well having to work on a ranch during a Montana blizzard. The last time I went to Montana in the winter was for my Dad's funeral.

I still get back in the summer about every other year. Those 2 days of summer each year are truly glorious - if you guess right.

Couldn't you have smelled fresh-cut hay before or after the 60s? I have. Just asking.

I should have stated that differently. Today, the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa immediately takes me back to the 60's. Its the trigger for some great memories of that time.

I knew what you meant. I was feeling a need to be a smart-ass after a previously galling thread. Whooosh. There. I'm better now. I appreciate exactly what you said, and really enjoyed the thread.

Smells bring us back. The smell of alfalfa brings me back to the day when the crop was grown out in the small desert town where I was raised. The irrigation turned out to be fossil water, and sadly it is gone now. It was a good time while it lasted. That 37 year thing is the most interesting thing I heard all day. It's just plain nuts.

I had so many things to choose from to post about the consequences of smartassing (to coin a word) that I couldn't choose just one. As a fellow smartass, though, I'm sure you know.

Okay, there is one that stands out:

It's always better to be a smartass than a dumb one.

Ahhh...the 60's...I remember it as if it were just yesterday...the veil was so thin...I was sitting in the pre-existent spirit world with my five siblings and thinking: "Man, I must have been a little more valiant than them...I get to be born as the middle child and "in the convenient!" Daddy won't be a member of elohim's true church in the 60's when my older siblings are born but he will be when I'm born in 1970 and shortly after my birth he'll be a cast out evil excommunicated mormon before my younger siblings are born! Isn't it great to know how much more special I am than they are! But...I'm still not as good as the glowingly white baby spirits on the cloud to the right. They get to be born to multi-generational members of the church with pioneer heritage...and thank elohim I'm not stuck sitting on that fence full of slivers on that dark cloud to the left...don't they know that will leave a dark mark on my skin and they will be a cursed people!?!"

Here's one of my most vivid memories of the 60s and it has to do with MORONS.

1969. I was 18. A bunch of friends and I decide to go to California, where one lived. We were all college students and one of us had a van. Nothing special, just a white van. We all went to Colorado State U., so our route took us through Salt Lake. While there, we decided to go see the temple, went into the museum and got ran out supposedly because one of us was eating an apple.

We had long hair and looked like hippies, though nothing too outrageous. Half the population our age looked like us.

We stopped in a little store there near the temple (I'm sure it's long gone) to get a few food provisions and the store clerk actually followed us around, watching us.

We then went to a park downtown to eat lunch. We left the van parked there on the street and walked over to some picnic tables about 100 feet away. Suddenly, we saw smoke coming from the van. We ran back to find a pile of newspapers under it that someone had lit on fire with gas which was pretty much raging at that point. We barely got it out before it caught the van. As it was, it scorched the side.

We got the message and left the City of Saints.

I also remember going into a downtown department store with holy underwear and wondering what the heck. Had no idea what it was all about.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2015 07:05PM by lostinutah.

I started driving tractors on our farm when I was about 9 and trucks at 10. Got my learners permit in 1962 at age 14 and Dad let me drive all the time with him, so by the time I took my test on my 16th birthday I had a couple thousand miles under my belt. That night I had my Dad's almost new '64 Chevy pickup all to myself (he was so trusting) and freedom and mirth ensued.

Ron Burr

Um. Kindergarten. That's what I remember of the sixties. Oh, and almost being abducted, but being rescued by my brother (by accident). And not understanding English. OK, there are more things I remember about the sixties, but not like you remember. Wish I could recollect all of those things.

How big my baby boom class was compared with the kids born in 45 and 46.

The change in rock and roll; loved Motown girl groups: the Marvelettes, Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.

JFK got killed and my history teacher acted like nothing had happened. Thanks, Mr. S. You taught me how to deal with upsetting things.

College was tough but I loved it.

British invasion. Rolling Stones.

Star Trek on TV. Run home every afternoon to see "Dark Shadows."

Wish I could do it all again.

Best music in history. "Cherish" by the Association.

Buying a ticket and getting on the airplane with no security
check at all. If I would have been carrying a gun in my
carry-on bag, it would not have been in violation of any rules
or laws.

My wife and I flew to Disneyland for our honeymoon. We had two carry on bags each. There was no security and no baggage check was required at the airport. There wasn't even a line when we showed our tickets and strolled onto the plane. Once in LA we stepped off the plane and caught a shuttle van to the Disney Hotel. No rental car was needed--the Hotel has monorail access to the park. Only the rich travel with that kind of ease today. Sigh...


And that was in 1991.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2015 12:38PM by donbagley.

Ovaltine in your milk with the chocolate crunchies floating on the top. (Recipe was changed later so no more crunchies).

As a girl, I only was allowed to wear dresses to school. But in the summer could wear a tank top or spagetti strap top and shorts. There was no such thing as "porn shoulders" then.

Penney candy. You could buy a lot of it with change you scrounged up by looking in the sofa or selling empty pop bottles.

Ice cream trucks in the summer with a cone for a nickel or dime.

Singing "Something tells me I'm into something goood. Oh yeah! Woke up this morning feelin fine..." on the school playground in harmony.

Got lots of requests to sing the song "Laurie". "Last night at the dance I met Laurie, so lovely and warm, an angel of a girl. Last night I fell in love with Laurie. Strange things happen in this world..."

Trick or treating till late at night with NO parents watching over us. Costumes were simple: a sheet for a ghost, dressing up in my mom's party dress with makeup. I do remember getting a plastic mask one year with eye holes and nose holes with an elastic string on back, my breath making the inside uncomfortably wet.

Playing outside all day and going across town if we wanted with parents not worrying about where we were. PlaYing night games like kick the can.

Older sis wore bouffant hair with blue eye shadow and a thick line of eyeliner. White lipstick.

Mom had her hair "done" once a week in an elaborate beehive.

We all slept in rollers if we wanted to curl our hair. Older sis used empty orange juice cans.

Everybody dressed up.

Gas was cheap. 25 cents a gallon?

Tv's were black and white (so were pictures). I remember when my cousins family got a color tv. That was so cool!

Banana bikes. I wanted one. Ended up with a Schwinn instead.

Love this thread! Thanks for the memories.

Also, remember seeing The Beatles singing on tv and wondering why all the girls in the audience were screaming and crying.

I'd forgotten about trick or treating. Nobody had parents that went with them. We stayed out half the night. We used pillow cases to collect our loot. Sometimes we'd have to go home and empty it so we could go out and get some more. It never occurred to us to go to the same house twice. We used to get homemade goodies, and loved them. Especially the carmel apples.

Best memory is meeting my wife in '65. Next best is marrying her in '68.

We were poor, and we lived in a old neighborhood that was about a mile from the city center. In the '60s, the nice Paramount theater downtown had free movies for kids in the summertime. The movies were sponsored by local companies. The admission was an empty milk carton, or an empty potato chip bag, or an RC cola bottle cap. If we didn't have any of those, we'd go to our corner store and find a discarded bottle cap in the old-style coke machines that had a bottle opener. We saw a lot of good old movies in that era, like Jerry Lewis comedies, Ray Harryhausen sci-fi's like Sinbad and "Jason and the Argonauts," westerns, etc. The movies were preceded by shorts, either cartoons like Tom & Jerry or the Pink Panther, or serials like Rocketman and Jungle Jim. It made us poor kids feel good that a fun thing like that was provided for free.

Drive-In movies were a big thing too. Often, a theater would have a $1.00 per carload deal. So our family of 6-8 could go in our 1957 Ford station wagon and see a double feature of Elvis, Martin & Lewis, John Wayne, or Vincent Price/Peter Lorre horror movies, "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb," etc. We kids would play on the playground that was right under the screen, but when that sarcophagus was opened, and that mummy opened his eyes, I ran back to the car as fast as I could go.

We lived a 4-hour drive from the Florida panhandle, so we'd go to the beaches several times in the summer. Our mother's family reunions were held in a state park just north of the gulf coast. We enjoyed swimming in the lake, playing softball with cousins, and eating picnic food.

Also in the '60s, one of our local TV stations carried syndicated sitcoms in the mornings. So in the summertime, I watched every episode of I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dick van Dyke, and Andy Griffith. Watching all those contributed a lot to my cultural education and helped to cultivate my sense of humor.

I loved to read adventure stories, so I collected most of the Tarzan novels, as well as most of the old Classics Illustrated comic book series. Whenever I could scrape together a quarter, I'd go to the local drugstore and buy another one. I bought about 155 of the 169-edition set, and I still have them and cherish them today.

As for music: In the early '60s, my older siblings listened to Elvis and Pat Boone. I have six older sisters, and the younger three were crazy about The Four Seasons when they came along. Then the British Invasion happened, and that changed music as well as pop culture in general. I bought Beatles bubble gum cards, and one schoolmate had a Beatle wig ('cuz no parent would actually let their son's hair grow that long.) The Beatles were so prolific that it seemed like they had a new song on the radio every week. I remember when numbers like "Thank You Girl" and "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" were new on the charts. And The Four Seasons answered with "Candy Girl" and "Rag Doll." Yes, I know that the Beach Boys were huge too, but they were California guys, and we were easterners, so we liked The Four Seasons better.

When I was in elementary school, I remember when our flag was raised to half-mast upon the deaths of Eisenhower, McArthur, and Churchill. I didn't know much about who they were at the time, but I figured they must have been important.

I was in the third grade when JFK was shot. Our school principal came to our room and whispered something to our teacher. She relayed to us the horrible news that "President Kennedy has been shot, and he is dead."

George Wallace was the governor for most of the '60s. My walk from school to home took me past the state capitol. I could walk down the hallway and say hello to Governor Wallace as he sat at his desk. Wallace was term-limited, so he ran his wife Lurleen for governor. She won, but she died of cancer shortly into her term. She was much beloved, and the line to see her body in the foyer of the capitol building was blocks long. After George Wallace was shot, we figured his political career was over, but he came back and was re-elected governor in 1982, with help from the black vote.

The route of the Selma-to-Montgomery march cut through my walk to school, just four blocks from our house. My father wouldn't let us go to school that day because he was afraid of trouble. My older sister worked the lunch counter at our neighborhood drugstore that was on the route, and she served coffee to marchers Danny Thomas and Charlton Heston. One of my older brothers was in the National Guard, and he stood guard on a street corner near the state capitol.

Vietnam: Two of my older brothers were in that era. They both joined the Seabees hoping to avoid Vietnam. The older one spent his time in the Aleutian Islands, but the younger one went to 'Nam. I remember when Walter Cronkite delivered his scathing criticism of the war, and LBJ's response "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the whole country." Shortly thereafter, LBJ said "I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination for re-election" yada yada. Imagine how different things would have gone if LBJ had just pulled our troops out a couple of years before.

But if he had, we wouldn't have had the protest movement or things like Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival. That was the era during which average citizens began voicing widespread opposition to something their government was doing that they felt was wrong.

That's pretty cool stuff. I think that so many good changes came from it all. And obviously I'm older than you. But that's cool. I'm probably better looking. But it's not a contest of course.

Or is it?