Month: February 2017

Our Mom was a country girl. Her upbringing included horses and country music. As with a lot of people of that generation, she passed down to us kids superstitions and idiosyncrasies of her genealogy. I once spent an entire 6 months walking to school avoiding cracks in the sidewalks, because she shared with us  ” to step on a crack, you break your mother’s back”.     My brother LB1 (little brother one) and I had discussed this possible misfortune and decided that we would not be able to take up the slack if this happened. Another strange tradition was to throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder if someone spilled the shaker. We were told it had something to do with luck, or lack there of. Black cats and broken mirrors were something to be avoided at all costs around our house. Also, if one us had an itchy nose, it was a foregone conclusion that unannounced company was on the way. As we got older we began to question the validity of these practices but to this day I would never walk under an out stretched ladder or open an umbrella inside.

Mom had simple tastes and  one of them was Country & Western music and the Grand Ole Opry. The biggest stumbling block in her enjoyment of this venue was our Dad,  he couldn’t stand either. As such, Mom was not allowed to play that type of stuff on our radio in the kitchen. In her usual simplistic logic, that actually meant he didn’t want to hear it. By logical deduction, what he couldn’t hear, wouldn’t hurt him. So, after he left for work, the radio instantly began sharing with us and the neighbors, the latest Hank Williams ballads. Looking back on this time, I think she was the happiest. She was in complete charge of her domain as she sang along with the radio and washed the daily dishes. LB1 and I were not exactly sworn to secrecy but we were bribed a lot. Favorite pies and cookies seemed to appear mysteriously about the time Dad was due home for work. It really didn’t matter to us that the radio dial had to be returned to its strategic placement on his favorite station before 5:00 in the evening, but it was amusing to watch the ploy at work. 

Another idiosyncrasy that became my personal nemesis, was her occasional use of the letter” a “when an “o”was appropriate.  For example, for supper we might be having “carn” with our mashed potatoes or Roy Rogers “harse” was named Trigger. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but as the oldest child I deemed it my duty to correct her every time she did it.       It never seemed to rankle Dad, and my little brothers appeared  oblivious to the problem. To her credit, when corrected, she would smile at me, pronounce it correctly and offer me a bowl of ice cream. I would give anything  today to hear her tell me that carn on the cob was on the menu for dinner.

Aside from the occasional fracturing of the English language and her seemingly unending quest to get me to 300 pounds by feeding me every dessert possible, our Mom, took seriously, her responsibility of raising us kids right. We had our mouth washed out with soap when caught uttering an occasional curse word. We also were made to swallow Vicks Menthol-Rub at the first sign of a chest cold. However, the all time most annoying practice, was to be made to go outside to a bush and break off a switch to be whacked with. This was not a common practice but was awarded after all other punishment was rendered useless. To be sent to get a switch was as much mental as it was physical in it’s intention. While walking outside to find a small tree the perpetrator was given time to think about his dastardly deed. Upon return without a branch of acceptable size, the trip would have to be repeated. Once Mom approved of the acceptability of the instrument, a couple of quick whacks were applied on the behind of our blue jeans. It never really hurt much but what came next was the coup d’ e tat. We had to go to bed with out supper.  How come it never happened on ham & beans night?  It always seemed to work out on fried chicken and mashed potato night. A few evenings of missing mom’s fried chicken was successful at making me even want to kiss LB2, just to show I could get along with everyone.

Perhaps the most distinguishing thing about Mom’s appearance was her smile. When it showed up on her face a dimple appeared on her right cheek. The broader the smile the deeper the dimple. Mom’s gone now, but she left behind some enduring memories. Her straight forward desire to do what was right no matter the cost and her dedication to her children and their welfare, became her legacy. But, the thing I treasure the most , happens when I look in the mirror and smile and my mom’s dimple appears on my right cheek.

The prospect of getting drafted and being sent to Vietnam hung over the mid sixties like a smog that wouldn’t disipate. The National Guard and Reserve enlistments were at an all time high. There were waiting lists to gain entry. College enrollment by 1966 was a must for any 18 year old male who wanted nothing to do with the military. As long as full time status was achieved on campus, a 1-S deferment was assigned to the student. This allowed all young men of draft age to avoid military service until graduating from College. By prolonging enlistment it was hoped that the mess in Vietnam would be over. Surprise, it lasted for ten years and the guys that completed their studies and then were drafted, most often, were given leadership positions. The irony in this maneuver was that they became more desirable targets for the enemy once in combat.

Another way to obtain a permanent deferment was to become a Father. It had long been tradition for high school sweethearts  to get married in the summer after high school graduation. These were still the days when women stayed home to raise children and guys went to work. There were a lot of manufacturing  jobs in our town to be had.  Most were associated with General Motors in some way. A lot of guys had jobs waiting for them the day they graduated. Their father’s were able to make that happen due to their employment in those factories.  A good job with benefits, a new wife and the prospect of going to Vietnam got a lot of families off to an early start.

Another alternative deferment was known universally by its classification, 4-F. This little achievement was permanent and generally awarded due to a physical abnormality. Having fallen arches was one of the most common. It became known as “flat feet”. There many ways that a heretofore non disclosed aliment became an asset to these eighteen year old males. Deformed toes, being too short, poor eyesight, one leg longer than the other and being too skinny are to name a few. These are all legitimate genetic hindrances that often qualified for 4-F status. As the war continued to drag on, more creative ways to avoid service began to crop up. The one that seemed to make the most sense to the perpetrator, but the least sense to everyone else, was to chop off one’s trigger finger.  Many people had been known to lead normal productive lives with nine and one half fingers. While the logic of the action had a certain sense to it, it more often than not, called the sanity of the individual in to question. Either way, it usually accomplished its intention of obtaining a permanent deferment.

In my case, going for the student deferment seemed to make the most sense. It was 1967 and if I was lucky it would be 1972 before it became a priority for me. So off to college I went, high school sweetheart in tow. We both enrolled on the same campus, she on a scholarship and me working , to pay my way. We both lived at home and settled into a head in the sand type of existence whenever Vietnam was mentioned. We married during the following winter and I dropped out for Spring Quarter to work full time. With a baby on the way my 1-S deferment seemed of little consequence. When the baby I arrived I would slip into a permanent deferment as a Father. My plans were working out just fine.

 It was 1968 and the “North Vietnamese Tet Offensive” had just occurred in February of that year. This military attack had caught the US military temporarily off guard. The resulting decision was to ratchet up enlistments for the nineteen year males in the United States. Things were going to be OK for me because we now had a beautiful baby girl to lavish our attention upon. In fact I introduced her to friends as my little deferment so often they thought that was her name. Unbeknownst to us the deferment laws were being rewritten to disallow a second deferment without a legal petition to the draft board. Oblivious to this nugget of knowledge, I continued with plans for my wife to stay in school and I continued to work full time. 

It was a beautiful April day when a phone call came for me at work. It was my wife informing me that in the morning mail I had received a letter from the US Government.  It was my draft notice and I was to report for induction in 90 days. There was to be no more evading this elephant in the room. The Vietnam War had just knocked on my door. The rest of that year is a blur concluding with my arrival in Bien Hoa, Vietnam on December 9th,  1969. I was a newly minted Private First Class in the United States Army. This began a new chapter in my life’s saga.  It was also the beginning of an experience that changed me forever. For the rest of my life, my experience in Viet Nam was never more than a few seconds away in my thoughts. For better or worse I lived through it.

As I look back almost fifty years, I try to remember mostly the good things about living in the sixties. And when people mention the Summer of 1968 and all the turmoil of that summer, I tell them about that beautiful baby girl that was ” My little Deferment”.

I was proud of the street I lived on. It was a main through fare. The city bus route had three different stops on it. It was the dividing line between two school districts. The kids that lived across  the street went to a different Jr High School than we did. If you continued driving west on our street for a few blocks you were soon in the country.  At the beginning of the street sat a Service Station across from our neighborhood grocery store.

Service Stations in the sixties were places of amazing activity for teenage boys. This was a place where everything automobile happened. There were gas pumps manned by attendants that filled your gas tank, checked your oil level and washed your windows while you were waiting in your car. Inside the building were service bays where repairs were done or tires were fixed. Patching tires was a hold over habit from the forties when rubber was rationed for the war effort. Many tires at the time were not sealed on the rim as they are today. The air was held in a rubber balloon inside the tire and was subject to patching when something punctured the outside casing. When tire manufacturing became more commercially acceptable as to price, Service Stations became the local dealers. This was where a lot of young men got part time jobs after school. It was a good place to work and in the slow time they could work on their jalopies. 

There were still not a great deal of used cars available in our town in the early sixties, so young guys built their own. Out at the edge of most towns were these magnificent piles of steel and iron known as junk yards. They had parts of old cars everywhere. Most of this junk was from the 1920’s and 1930’s and parts were no longer available. During World War II automobile manufacturing plants were converted to making stuff for the War. No automobiles were manufactured in the US from 1942 until 1946 for public consumption. So by the time everyone got a chance to buy a new car it was well into the fifties before there was any availability. In the mean time, folks just kept patching up the older cars. When they quit running, there wasn’t much left of them so it was off to the junk yard for the final resting place. This virtually eliminated any cheap used cars for 16 year old kids with very little or no capitol.

Necessity, being the Mother of Invention gave these young men an idea. Why not take the pieces of several cars and modify them to make these old pieces of  junk run again? Thus the Jalopy was born. No one is quite sure where the term originates but there were sure a lot of them around when I was growing up. Virtually every backyard or garage on my street had one under construction. The mechanics at Service Stations became the experts at these conversions. Many of these  men had learned how to make things last while service in the Army.  Safety laws pertaining to home made motor vehicles were non-existent. From these crude inventions came the next logical step, Hot-Rods.  Big engines and tires with light weight bodies and no restrictions gave birth to drag racing. From there it was just a matter of time before local ordinances started to pop up. However, for a while in that brief shining moment known as the early sixties, Jalopies ruled the school yards and country roads. Cars made from Junk that no one wanted.  Leave it up to American teenage ingenuity to spawn a whole new cottage industry.

Being a new kid in school is tough. Moving from a big city school to a small country school is tougher. Becoming a Freshman in High School and being both was a challenge.

In the summer of my eighth grade year after my sister was born, my parents needed a bigger house for four kids. I found one two streets over but it seems a brand new house was in the plans. I never dreamed that my whole life was about to change. The house that they purchased was to be built in a new school district, in the country.

From my standpoint, this was completely unnecessary. There were lots of perfectly good, bigger houses in our neighborhood. I was on the Jr High Basketball team and was sure I would play in the ninth grade. My Girlfriend lived only six blocks away. Our Church was over three streets and up 5 blocks. My part time job at Pizza King was on the same street as my house. My best friend lived up the alley and over one street. My fish bowl existence was about to spring a leak.

My arguments fell on deaf ears, we were moving. That August we packed up and moved about 5 miles straight west into a County school district. As far as I was concerned it was like moving to Siberia. What made matters worse was I had to start a new school in three weeks as a Freshman in High School.  On top of all the other insults, I was going to have  to ride a School Bus to get there and it was yellow!  Being cool had two chances, Slim and None and Slim just left town.

The first day was a blur of introductions and stares. I was staring at them and they were staring at me. On the second day I realized that a cute blond girl in the front row went to school with me in elementary school. She approached me after class with a smile and an observation. “You will like it here, it doesn’t take long”. That was easy for her to say, she was already here and besides, girls grouped together and protected each other. Then I found out that I was one of only four new kids in the Freshman class.  Great I was in the minority of the minority.

Days became weeks and the thaw in human relations had begun. The first inroads were on the School Bus, it was actually kind of fun. The bus driver played current music on the radio while we sang along and it seemed to be the catalyst for a good mood while riding to school.

It helped that we were generally seated in our classes alphabetically. As I arrived to each new class,  the same two girls were there, smiling and waiting to be my bookends. There was some kind of security in that, one or the other of them always had an extra pencil to replace the one that I had forgotten. We became friends and they helped me navigate the social waters of a new school. After the first month, the teachers began to pronounce my name correctly, finally, which helped to abate the snickers and giggles that inevitably came when my name was pronounced. Not only was I new, a Freshman, a boy,  from a city school;  my name was hard to pronounce.  My Mom was sensitive to my plight when I returned home from school and tried to assuage my suffering with brownies and cake. She assured me that I would fit in soon.

I’m not sure when soon arrived but it did eventually. I tried out for the Freshman basketball team and became a member. In Indiana that’s tantamount to winning the lottery. My bookends, introduced me around and vouched for my likability. The guys invited me to hang out after school. The girls  began to become even more attractive than the city girls. Most of all, the school population was more friendly as a whole. It was still true that  a lot of kids in my class had gone to school together since first grade but that only created a sense of security for them. It was out of that security that they were not apprehensive to accept new ideas and people. It was not long before I was one of the group and dating the Chemistry teacher’s daughter.

As I look back on that experience from over fifty years ago, I am so thankful that my Mom & Dad built that new house where they did. Those friendships continue to last to this day,   and I eventually married the chemistry teacher’s daughter.

It has been written so many times over the years that the 1960’s were a much more simple time. I beg to differ. Consider the History changing events than occurred.

The assassinations of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King certainly are at the top of the list. The Vietnam War began in 1964 and lasted into the next decade. The Beatles as a group, began and ended during the sixties. Protests in the streets as well as the burning of bras and draft cards sprang up with the Hippie movement. Culturally, we came in to the sixties looking like a clone of our parents and left the decade with radically different views. We began with Pat Boone as our top selling musical artist and exited listening to The Grateful Dead. Teenage guys in 1960  were wearing pegged pants and girls were wearing Poodle skirts. In 1969 guys were wearing bell bottoms and girls were wearing mini skirts. Our literature was upended with the readings from Mao and Orwell. Playboy magazine became mainstream.  Babies born out of wedlock became an acceptable practice.  Marijuana was in, moonshine was out. In short, our parents lost control of our upbringing. 

It wasn’t their fault, who could have forecast the change? Our folks had been born in the twenties and thirties and had seen wide spread Depression and  two Wars. Their attitude by and large, was not to rock the boat. If the boat leaked, patch it.  If it was too small, make due. Those of us growing up in the 1960’s did not experience the phenomena of “doing with out”. Our entire life was an exercise of our parents making a better life for us. They, collectively wanted more for us than they had. Consequently when we rejected the values that they had instilled, a cataclysmic cultural split opened up. Some families were never able to bridge the gap.  For me personally, my father never understood the need for me to get the answer to the question , why? It was because he said so and no further explanation was ever forthcoming. It was pretty apparent by the time I was sixteen that going to Vietnam was a real possibility. I really wanted an answer to the question, why?

Being caught off guard by your children is not an uncommon experience. But, being blindsided by culture must have been an over whelming experience. It seemed that every where one looked in the mid-sixties things were changing. Parenting practices that worked for our Grandparents were ineffective. To a certain degree, we as a generation began to raise ourselves.

This is when the generational train went off the tracks.  At 16 years old we were not equipped with enough maturity to make life changing decisions. However, in some cases it was the only alternative, because some parents gave up. My parents did not and to their credit they kept trying. Since I was the oldest, I think my Parents knew they were in for the long haul. There were a lot of shouting matches and I got grounded a lot, but I always knew they loved me. Other kids I knew were not as lucky as I was and they became part of this alternative generation that began to drift away. Like an Iceberg that has broken away from its base, these kids got lost. Drug use got some of them, the hippie culture took some, early parenthood snagged some, but most of them drifted for the rest of the decade. Living from job to job, home to home and paycheck to paycheck became their existence. You can still recognize some of them today fifty years later. 

So, the next time you hear the sixties were a much simpler time. Take pause and offer up the thought, ” I beg to differ, I was growing up then”.

Belonging to a Church meant a lot more than just regular attendance in our family. As a young teenager, I had three mandatory appearances that my Mom expected me to attend. We began our week with Sunday Morning Service and Sunday Evening Youth Group and stopped by after school on Wednesday for mid week kids activities. Monday night Boy Scout meetings were also held  there. I was at Church more often during the week than some kids had gone to school. In those days our Church is where a lot of adult meetings were held,  such as civic service groups and neighborhood fund-raiser planning sessions. The building was a busy place, with activity some times, until late in the evening. Just being near this activity made me feel plugged in. Besides the School building,  there was no busier place than our Church. We didn’t have to have meetings and spend money on outreach programs. The community was coming to us. It was the feeling of our congregation that the more the building was  available during the week , the more comfortable folks would feel when coming on Sunday Mornings. They were right.

Sunday Morning Service was my link to the past. The wooden pews we gathered in had welcomed families for generations. The pine planked floor creaked when we walked on it  and sunlight streamed through the hundred year old stained glass windows as we were seated  by the ushers.  Hymnals  showed their wear, after the funeral home routinely replaced the cardboard fans next to them.  The Bibles we used were embossed with gold lettering remembering deceased members and their families. My world outside was moving faster every day, but here in this cocoon of spirituality everything stopped for an hour. I didn’t know it then, but my foundation and my core, were being formed in this place. Here sitting with my family, praying, singing and listening I was being molded by God. 

However, as a typical teenager, while God was at work, my mind would sometimes wander. Occasionally, during the service, we were directed to stand to sing. I would often still be seated  while my mind was focused on the Saturday night sock hop. My Dad would pop me on the back of the head to return me to reality. Upon returning to awareness, it seemed that the entire congregation would be staring at me. Once on my feet my  brothers would giggle, my Mom would grin and my Dad would act like he didn’t know me. When you are a teenager, being cool is the first thing you think about in the morning.  However, achieving cool was really hard to accomplish some days.

Sunday Evening Youth Group meetings were co-educational and that was the only benefit I needed, to achieve perfect attendance. Our Youth Leaders were aware of the possibly of hormonal volatility at  such a gathering and were ever vigilant for the occasional hand-holding. This was an exercise that was forbidden. So, like many inventive ideas that were born out of necessity, we had to be creative.  Long table cloths helped during the dinner meal. The positioning of one’s coat over a lap was a good old stand-by.  Best of all, sitting in the last row during  lesson time was the most desirable seat so as to escape detection.  All of this creative positioning was probably obvious to the Youth leaders but the increase in attendance was enough to loosen the enforcement of some of the rules. 

Church participation was in our family DNA. My Dad served at different times as Sunday School Superintendent, Usher, as Chairman of the Finance Committee, was on the Building Committee and acted as Scoutmaster. My Mom was in the Methodist Women’s club, on the  Bereavement Committee, in the Welcome Club, was a Sunday School Teacher, and helped keep up the attendance pads. I was in the Choir, President of the Youth Group, on the Building Committee, and gave an occasional Youth Perspective sermon. Little Brother number one was as active as I was and was even a Janitor for a while. We literally grew up serving in the Church. While I was not aware of it then, we were learning that, the more your serve, the more you are served. That is a life lesson that not everyone learns. I was very fortunate to have parents that took me along on the ride of a Life Well Lived.           Thanks , Mom & Dad

I first heard them on my transistor radio. The Disc Jockey announced them as the “Latest Singing Sensation from England”. I was fourteen years old and music was my constant companion. If I wasn’t listening to it, I was singing it. It was constantly playing and replaying in head. The name of the musical group was The Beatles.

I had heard a few other English groups but this sound was different. It was hard to pinpoint why. The harmony was good but that wasn’t all of it. The drummer was strong but there was more. The two lead signers sang an octave apart into the same microphone which was different but not unique. Then I watched them on the Ed Sullivan Show on television. They were incredible. They were the whole entertainment package for a teenager. The first thing you noticed was their hair, it was so long, and it was styled. The next impression was the way they were dressed, all alike, in suits and ties and boots.  They were wearing “Beatle Boots”, which had heels, a zipper on the side and were covering their ankle part way up the leg. Most importantly they were having a great time on stage. The music was good but not great, but it was delivered in such a fashion that you wanted to hear more.

A cultural change unlike anything since Elvis Presley was about to unfold, and I wanted to be right in the middle of it. I wanted it all, the hair, the boots, and the cool clothes. There was a problem standing in the way. America was stuck in the middle of a 1950’s hangover. I still dressed like my Dad did when he was growing up and got my haircut in a Flat-top like I did when I was ten. More over, America was not ready for change and my Dad was firmly at the head of that list. To make matters worse, school administrators were on that list as well.

Almost immediately, Beatle wigs became available and were quickly outlawed at school. Beatle Boots sprang up at shoe stores with the hard to attain price of $60.00. (In some places you could buy a car for that.) Beatle Jackets were all the rage and showing up everywhere. Barbers were caught off guard. Most young men under the age of 16 were not getting their regular bi-monthly haircut. Things were changing fast and the magazines of the day were fanning the flames. Look and Life carried dozens of photo-shoots of John, Paul, George & Ringo. The “Lads from Liverpool” were almost everywhere overnight. Teenagers from all over the country, deluged record stores for anything from the Beatles. Their first Album “Introducing the Beatles” was Number One on the American Billboard charts before it was released.

All of a sudden, a cultural  wall became apparent between parents and their children. Most parents were sure that this “fad” would soon pass. Most kids were afraid that they were getting left out of being on the cutting edge of cool. My Dad was not sure how he had gotten caught up in this tidal wave of change and he didn’t like it. First of all, I was told if I wanted Beatle Boots I had to buy them myself. So I got a job at a shoe store and bought them. Then I was told that if I wanted to wear a Beatle wig , it had to be approved by the school. It wasn’t, so I wore the wig on the weekends everywhere I went. If I wanted a Beatle Jacket, all of my allowance money would be put toward its purchase. So I forfeited my allowance.  It is hard to explain how exciting this phenomena was for a fourteen year music fanatic. I went to sleep every night listening to the radio and dreaming of becoming a singer.

As the months turned onto years The Beatles grew up and so did I. They experimented with drugs , I did not. They took years off between recordings, I went to college. They lived on their laurels, I went  to work to support a family. Unbeknownst to the world, change was waiting for a vehicle to arrive in. The 1950’s were over and needed to be put to bed. The Beatles tucked that decade in and let the 1960’s horse out of the barn. For those of us who were there for the ride, we will never forget the exhilaration.

 

During 1962 and 1963, I delivered both the morning and evening newspaper  in our neighborhood. As such, I was out on the streets at different times of day. I always enjoyed watching our part of the city wake up.  In the morning I was out between    5 :00 and 7:00 every day. I became familiar with the routines of most of my neighbors. In those days, the City Bus was the preferred mode of travel for the early risers. It stopped at the corner of our street every 30 minutes. While I was not aware of where most fathers worked, I was cognizant that almost every one carried a lunch box with them, accompanied by a thermos jug. Also most men carried the morning newspaper under their arm, to read on the bus on the way to work. This behooved me to get the delivery to these gentlemen before they left. It was not always the easiest route and in some cases necessitated doubling back down some alleys to get it there on time. If I was late occasionally to these destinations, I heard about it when I made my weekly collection stop on Friday evening. It was my responsibility and I was never offended at the requests. Other Dad’s drove the family car to work or participated in a Car Pool. Almost everyone, picked one or more co workers up on the way , in exchange for participation in the cost of gasoline. I do not remember anyone on my route having more than one car per family.

Sometimes our Mom “kept the car” for the day and Dad caught a ride with friends. Truth be told, our Mom was not a very good driver. In her defense, the shifter on the steering column was a three speed manual shift. She also had, on most occasions , at least three kids in the car, that were not secured with seat belts. Any passive restraint ideas for children were still on the drawing boards of automobile design engineers. So most of the time any kids in the back seat usually stood up, holding on to the front seat. This certainly was not the safest method of travel but at least we could see out the windows. In the event of an unexpected quick stop, many children got a bump on the head or a black eye, bouncing off the dashboard or back seat. We did however, get were we were going without too many bruises, because the speed of the car rarely exceeded 30 miles per hour.

During my afternoon deliveries I would watch as the men return home, almost to the minute at the same time every day.  Routine was  the rule  of the early sixties.  Most families welcomed the routine. There was security in routine. A great number of these men had participated in World War II as well as the Korean War.  It had now been ten years since America had been involved in any widespread conflict and daily routine was a welcome agenda. We were beginning to prosper as a nation and many of the Veterans were glad to be a part of it. We were able to dream about our individual futures again.

I certainly did my fair share of dreaming. I had lots of time to dream while riding my bike during the pre-dawn hours.  I watched these families on my route participate in the American Dream of raising a family and owning a home. I watched men get up every morning, before sunrise, to earn a living. I watched them come home in the evening to participate as  Scout Masters and Coaches and Sunday School Teachers. I knew not then ,about their sacrifice or combat experiences, but almost all of them had their own special story. The uniqueness of the working man of the fifties and sixties was the solitude and dignity by which they led their lives. They were not loud or demanding. They were thankful that they had a chance to do their part.  At eleven years old I was not aware of it, but I was rubbing shoulders with greatness. As I became a Father, I was always  thankful for the role models in my neighborhood, when I was growing up in the sixties.