I was talking about the 1960’s! I consider the three best things to come from that decade to be rock music, integration and environmentalism.
Fruit tasted better.
Related to iron lungs…I had two (great) uncles, one who was in a wheelchair due to being stricken with polio, and another (born ~1900) who had a permanent brace on his leg and walked with crutches for 60+ years because he fractured it in his 30s and it was never set properly.
Unwanted male attention was very much a problem in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the etiquette rules of formal behavior and customs of chaperonage and sexual segregation arose from the need to prevent predatory male behavior.
California was that first US state to pass an anti-stalking law. In 1990!
You think environmentalism didn’t start before the EPA was formed? Or that Earth Day marked the very first time people started thinking about the environment? Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962.
The Save the Bay organization in San Francisco was founded in 1961. They (3 women, btw) got the CA legislature to form the SF Bay Conversation and Development Commission in 1965.
But you can trace the roots of the modern environmental movement much further back than that; at least to the early days of the 1900s and the commissioning of National Parks.
Even if a man killed you, it was viewed as “she probably asked for it.”
Bullshit.
And on the radio. If you want the latest news or weather, turn on the radio and wait for the hourly (or half-hourly) report.
1968: The year the first Whole Earth Catalog was published.
Anyone who thinks environmentalism didn’t exist in the 1960s wasn’t there. It wasn’t mainstream in the way it became later in the century, but it was there.
History of environmentalism:
The arricle starts with the 7th century. If you’re interested in just the US, start at the 18th century section, third paragraph (Benjamin Franklin).
Kids could sit in the front seat.
Kids could walk to school on their own or with friends - having a parent walk you to school was unheard of past Kindergarten. I’m not kidding, a few years ago my friend wouldn’t let her 12 year old daughter walk to school which was only a few blocks away by herself - she thought the one intersection was too busy.
Everything went into the garbage because recycling didn’t exist.
I used to ride my tricycle to kindergarten without parental supervision. It was just at the end of the street, but still not something you’re likely to see today.
Getting back to the environmental issue, while it’s true the EPA did not exist in the 60s, we had the Dept of the Interior going back to the mid 1800s. Not exactly the same, of course, but not devoid of environmental issues. Of course, lots of things were done more at the state and local level, as opposed to the federal level, back then. Indeed, the federal government is generally more powerful now than it was in the 1960s.
And 100% cotton. No 1% spandex. As god intended.
I’d just like to add that, other than a very few things (like the music), things were not better in the 60s. They were worse for women, for minorities, for gays, for religious minorities, for handicap people. Unless you were a straight, white male things were probably worse. The cars were worse (maybe some of the designs were better), the food sucked, the Vietnam War made the Iraq War look like a dodgeball game (well, maybe not quite, but the Vietnam War was a lot worse).
It was great that folks started questioning a lot of norms, but that was just the beginning.
Not really.
It depended on which paper arrived at your doorstep. Cities had multiple newspapers, and the papers were quite notorious for their political leanings. Your typical city had a paper which was strongly Republican, another strongly Democrat, plus papers pushing populist, socialist, labor, business causes, etc. etc.
What about free love? Or whatever it was called. (I was too young for that aspect of the 60s)
And here I thought Trey Parker came up with that in the 90’s.
It would be more accurate to say that young women started to be more open about their sexual relationships during that time period. “Free love” has always implied a certain amount of wanton promiscuity to me. Within a relatively short period of time, pre-marital cohabitation become something of a norm rather than a novelty although, in my case, my mother was incensed when my 28-year-old sister moved in with her fiance (and now husband of 33 years). She has forgiven them in the last year or two, however.
It was the wanton promiscuity that I was interested in…
I was born in 1960.
You got your toaster and other small appliances repaired instead of throwing them out and getting new ones.
You could make prank phone calls since there was no caller ID.
Hair dryers were little portable round machines with a hose and a plastic shower cap type cap. The hose coiled up inside the round case, the cap went on top of that, then there was a lid that latched.
Nobody I new had braces until the mid to late 70’s.
Dental care was infrequent and in our family, for emergencies. Seeing a doctor was fairly rare, too. Never heard of an ear infection.
You could smoke at work at your desk.
Newspapers were set on linotypes. My dad ran one until they started doing it on computers.
Transistor radios were pretty cool.
During the energy crisis we walked to school in the dark.
Milk was delivered to the box on the front porch a couple of times a week and “the egg lady” brought eggs on Saturday.
You could burn your trash in the back yard.
In high school I wore a size 18 and I was considered fat.
The Olympics were broadcast only on network TV (since that’s all there was) and they actually showed the events instead of human interest stories about the athletes with a few highlights.
We weren’t allowed to go trick-or-treating until *after *it got dark.
My grandpa shipped a table 600 miles to my mom via Greyhound bus.
I earned 50 cents an hour babysitting.
Soda cans had pop-tops that came off of the can when you opened them. I unearthed one in my driveway when I was shoveling snow last winter.
Suitcases were made of stiff cardboard.
We had ear infections now and then. My dad would just feed us penicillin. We also went to the dentist at least once a year.
And no wheels.