The 60s

 This is from an interview with my mother on the 60s, going point by point using the list supplied on the class blog.
 

• Poor family, on "welfare" which meant they got a commodities shipment once a month - a great big box of groceries: dried egg yokes Velveeta cheese, flour, sugar, stuff like that. Free "lunch" at school. Every morning, the teacher would hold roll-call, and students had to answer by saying hot or cold - cold meant you brought your own lunch from home, and hot meant you were buying the school lunch. But neither applied, because she was getting free lunch because she was on welfare. But that didn't matter, because the teacher would never call her name. When they lined up for lunch, she had to go to the end because she was getting it free. 
•  She lived in a rural small town, her dad worked in the city, which was about a 45 minute to an hour drive away. There was no person of color in her whole grade school, except there was a girl who was half-Japanese, and her brother. They never saw a black person. She was likely over twelve before she even saw a black person in real life. Very white. As for religion, mostly Lutheran and Catholic, she was Baptist and felt really out of place. People used racial slurs without even batting an eye. Her brothers would call people "wops," or "Jews," or they would say "you're trying to Jew me," which meant you were trying to finagle someone's money. 
• Her brothers knew they had to keep away from cops, and not be a hoodlum, not engage in any petty crimes. They knew that if they were going to make it, they had to make it on their own.   
• No supervision from parents. You could go out an run around whenever you wanted. In the summer she would leave at 10:00 in the morning and walk to her friend's house, which was two miles away. She would call her up, and they would meet halfway, go home, or go to the beach, get candy at the store, and wouldn't be back until suppertime. The girls had dolls and the guys had army guys, balls, they would play with sticks, and BB-Guns. The boys never really considered college - she and one of her sisters were really the only ones who considered college. There was a boys bedroom and a boys bedroom - with nine children, three guys were in one room, two boys in another, and all the girls in one room. Dating was a big deal; most people dated in high school, all her siblings dated in high school. On of her sister's dated in Junior High and got married at 16. 
• Her sisters had Ricky Nelson posters, but they weren't really into the Beatles, but they had posters of the Everly Brothers too. As for TV shows, they had Laugh-In - a "variety show," - music and comedy acts for an hour. It was apparently the funny one, with cutting-edge comedy no one else was doing. Goldy Hawn was there - she would dress in go-go boots and go-go skirts. The Mamas and the Papas were huge towards the end of the sixties. 
• Adults, for fun, would just go to the bar, unless you were a Christian, in which case you didn't do anything. Fishing and picnics were huge. The young'uns watched Tarzan every Saturday night, but at the same time everyone had a bath, so they missed fifteen minutes of the movie. The teenagers would have keggers, illegal beer parties. There were dances, too, every Saturday night at the Community Center. 
• Everyone was, surprise, surprise, afraid of nuclear bombs and Communists. The draft too. Not really much hope or aspiration in her town. Just get married, have a family, die. 
• She remembers when JFK was assassinated - she was at school, and they announced it over the PA. They wheeled a TV into every room and let them watch the news coverage. She remembers the funeral coverage. Her brother Dan was drafted and went to Vietnam, her brother Dave joined the Navy so she wouldn't have to get drafted, and the Navy didn't see much action in Vietnam. Her brother got drafted, but he didn't pass his physical, so he got sent back home. As for favorite objects, they had a good collection of cheap trolls, with the sticky-uppy hair.