I missed my landmark Kilgore High School reunion that was held in September. I didn’t want to be seen with that wrinkled bunch of women and bald men from the class of 1969. Ha! Our slogan was “We like whiskey; we like wine; we’re the class of ’69.” We thought we were so clever and so on the edge!! Anyway, I recently received a video about those good ole days, and I enjoyed seeing some of the things that I had long forgotten that made us who we are today.
In so many ways, it was a much simpler time, an easy time to grow up, at least until the Vietnam War took some of those unlucky enough to draw the low draft numbers and the psychedelic craze overwhelmed others. And we were the first generation to learn in school how to “duck and cover” for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to worry about bomb shelters.
But every generation has its downside, and all in all, I think we were lucky. Very few of the kids in my class came from single homes. Our neighbors watched out for us, and we never considered walking around late at night or venturing out alone to be dangerous.
We had a party line telephone until I was at least 10; then we got our private line and a few years later I was one of the lucky girls to get a “princess” phone. With the party line we had a certain ring which we knew was ours that distinguished our call from the neighbors’ calls. Only trouble was that we had an older neighbor who was “challenged to say the least,” which was not what we called it in those days, and for her pastime she listened to all our calls. But then I listened to hers too. Hey, it was just what you did when you had a party line!
When we weren’t doing that, we were watching Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver and Alfred Hitchcock on TV. If it were a very special event like Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon the year I graduated then we used our new TV trays, but most nights we were expected to eat supper together in the kitchen. Dinner was Sunday at noon. Remember watching The Millionaire? I really did think any day he was coming to my door! Then there was I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke and Bonanza. And don’t forget American Bandstand. How else could we ever learn to “twist and shout?”
We were the Beatles first followers, and the Rolling Stones hit the charts as well. The best part was that we could listen to them on our 8-track players in the house, but especially in the car. One of my friends had a 1965 GTO. Now that was way too cool, but mostly we drove around in our parents’ cars that we filled up for 50 cents right before we went home. We convinced ourselves that our parents didn’t know we had driven around town for four hours. The odometer never crossed our minds. See, we were way too cool, too. After all, who wouldn’t be in go-go boots and mini-skirts, and paisley shirts and bell-bottom jeans?
We had a drive-in movie theater that charged a $1.00 a car load to watch Cool Hand Luke and Dr. Zhivago, and we never went that we didn’t sneak a couple of extra people in the trunk, whether we needed to or not. Often we forgot to take the speaker off the window where it was clipped on to hear the movie and would accidentally drive away, only to have to go back and hang it up, wires dangling. Of course, it didn’t work for the next person, but it all equaled out over time because inevitably you would get your turn at the broken speaker and have to drive around looking for another space.
We weren’t angels, but we were pretty good kids. We diagrammed sentences just like our teachers expected, and passed P.E. because otherwise you didn’t graduate. We truly believed that father did know best and that you might get your “jaws slapped” if you sassed your mother. Do I have any regrets? Yes, I never did get that lava lamp I wanted!!