The 60s, Part I: Memories of an American Catholic Boy

Seems the fog in my mind thickens as I log each new year, but these things I can still see:

• Lots of “shoo-be-doo-be-doo” songs on the radio (no Beatles yet)


• on the menu at the barber shop: crew cuts…or…an “Ivy League”


• Dad’s white sox and loafers...and strong, hairy arms


• Aunts biting (yes, aunts…not ants) the fat on my cheeks (they were driven by love…which I didn’t understand then…but do now)


• The Hi-fi belting out The Tokens’ doowop classic “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”


• Me singing along: “a whim-a-way…a whim a way”


• Woolworth’s photo booth


• Jack & Jackie


• The milkman, who, while we all slept, left us milk (all kinds of colors, too) and juice, cookies and other goodies. Kids on the block used the metal milk boxes outside their front doors to store baseball gloves (never baseball cards or the gum that came with the cards)


• A man who came with his very own floor-wax machine—sometimes he gave us rides on it while he polished our floors


• A man who sharpened things for a living. He drove a truck down the neighborhood streets, gonging his bell for people to bring out their knives


• Sunday morning: waking up to the smell of bacon and finding pressed outfits, shined shoes, bowties, socks -- all ready for church


• Mom's white gloves & a hat with fake, blue flowers on top
• Sunday afternoon: The smell of whiskey and cigarettes...the aroma that came with kissing Aunt Gert & Uncle Dennis

Some stuff happening that I wasn’t aware of:

• the brink of nuclear destruction…Castro/Cuba/Kruschev…the Berlin Wall


• Americans suffering indignities -- barred from sitting at a café lunch counter, voting, attending school with white kids
• the Ku Klux Klan
• the Boston Strangler