Decade of change

Having been born in 1944, I have lived through a crapload of decades, and by far the most interesting and signifigant decade, personally, historically and culturally, has been the notorious 60's.

I was 15 at the start of the 1960's. Right from the get-go, the very first presidential debates were televised. It was Nixon versus Kennedy in what turned out to be the closest presidential election in our history. JFk's victory ushered in the era of Camelot.

1962 had personal signifigance: I graduated from Chicago Vocational High School and started at Southeast Junior College.

In January of 1963 I met a cute brunette with gorgeous brown eyes named Joyce Vargo, who would later become my wife. Of course we know what happened in November of 1963: the assassination of  President Kennedy.

February of 1964 brought the Beatles to America, and the band created a seismic shift in music, fashion
and pop culture in general. That summer Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington and civil rights legislation was passed into law.

In 1965 President Johnson signed the Medicare Act. In May I started my first real full time job at US Steel Southworks. Then in December of 1965 I received a draft notice, making me part of the first big troop callup of the Viet Nam war in January of 1966. Prior to that January, the army was drafting approximately 2 to 3 thousand men a month. That January the number exploded to 25,000.

1966 held many firsts. It was the first time I lived away from home; it was the first time I flew in an airplane. In March I married that beautiful brown-eyed girl I met in 1963. In June I left the USA for the first time, having been sent to Wiesbaden, Germany. And later that year I smoked my first joint along with a few of my fellow GI's.

1967 was marked by turbulence and civil unrest, riots and protest demonstrations over the Viet Nam war and racial tensions. Hippies became front page news and a worldwide phenomenon. Pot and LSD became the new buzzwords. 1967 was the year I dropped acid for the first time and smoked my first pipeful of hashhish. Two days before Christmas proved a mega-mega milestone for me: I received an honorable discharge from the army and returned home to my wife and the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

1968 saw 2 politcal assasinations: Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. On a personal note, Joyce and I moved into our first apartment, and I bought my first new car--a 1968 Mustang for the whopping price of $2800.00.

1968 saw the first man to walk on the moon, and later that year we got the news that Joyce was pregnant. The pride of our life, Craig, would arrive in August of 1970.

So that marked the end of a whirlwind of a decade branded with an unbelievable series of firsts and milestones, both good and bad, a decade unequalled in my lifetime.

The tackiest decade? the 70's!