Sydney and Paul, 1969
This month, the news is full of the John F. Kennedy years – not only of his assassination on November 22, 1963, but of the years before and after. “The Sixties.” The years of the counterculture revolution “in social norms, clothing, music, drugs, formalities and schooling” – or so says Wikipedia.
For me, it was the first full decade of my adulthood. I began teaching in 1961 at a salary of just over $4,000 a year. The good news was that, by then, (at least in the Hayward Unified School District) there was no differentiation on the salary schedule between women and men or between elementary and secondary teachers.
By the mid-sixties, women teachers were allowed to wear mini-skirts IF they could “bend over, touch their toes, and a husband or good friend standing behind them could not see anything untoward” instructed my school principal. By the late sixties, we were told we could wear pants suits but not “trousers without matching jackets.” Levis or blue jeans would not be a possibility for another ten years – for men or women.
Sydney at her state-of-the-art Electric Portable Typewriter, 1960s
It was a time when our children could still play outside all day, checking in at lunchtime and again at dinner. We sat down together at for evening meals and watched Ed Sullivan every Sunday night on our black and white television. And, yes, we saw the famous introduction of the Beatles in early February 1964 and I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. Of course, by then I was a ‘matronly’ 27 years old and hardly fit into the hysterical teeny-bopper class of fans.
It was during the Sixties that I became acquainted with Ansel Adams and Imogene Cunningham, rubbed elbows with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and met (briefly over cocktails) Bob Dylan. It was during the Sixties that I lived in a now-iconic Eichler house, drove an early model VW Bug, and considered myself a little old to go to a Janice Joplin concert or to attend any of Bill Graham’s rock extravaganzas at the Fillmore Auditorium. And it was in the Sixties that my first books were published.
So many happy memories punctuated by so much horror – the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King; the Sharon Tate Murders, our escalating involvement in Viet Nam. There were Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides and the March on Washington, the Bay of Pigs, the Tet Offensive, and the Summer of Love. As Dickens so famously said about an earlier period in history, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Maybe.
You painted a picture of those days in words. It all came back so clearly. Just a few years younger than you, I was still in school during those days. I clearly remember exactly where I was when I first learned of President Kennedy’s assassination. School was dismissed early that day and we all spent the next few days glued to our televisions; wanting all the latest information.
I also remember the first time the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. I was upset because the girls screamed so loudly you couldn’t hear them sing!
I lived in the country, so if we weren’t in school, we were out playing in the yard or the woods. I have never again felt as free as I did then.
Ah, well. Thanks for the memories!
Beautifully written, Sydney. Those days in the sixties are filled with many memories for me also, and I agree with the words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….”I appreciate, very much, your final word, Maybe.