The
NostalgiaPage |
When
we look back across the decades that have passed since high school, we
sometimes forget some of the little(and big) events that took
place back
in the mid-60s. It's easy in today's fast paced life and economy
to lose some of the polish off those little edges that made our high
school times so
memorable. Here are a few
topics to bring back reminders. Feel free to write
me
about more topics you recall and those will
be
included
here too.
At
the bottom of this list, find and play You're Older Than Dirt with
yourchildren, or grandchildren.
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Overview of events and music:
Here's some reflections from back in the 1950's that Skip Massey sent in -
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HUMOR & HISTORY
A Wonderful YouTube page has been shared by classmate Arlene Mooney Trenholm in October 2017. It's full of interesting stuff.
www.youtube-nocookie.com/QoDXTAaEzY?rel+0
Great thoughts from Ellen
Morrissey
1909 Ford Model R
Show this to your children and/or grandchildren
THE YEAR 1909
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1909.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1909 :
************ ********* *********
The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles
Of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year ..
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per
year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and
$4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of
which
Were condemned in the press AND the government as
'substandard. '
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used
Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
Entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only
30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea
Hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day..
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high
school..
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the
counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said,
'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the
stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'
( Shocking? DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least
One full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE !
U.S.A. !
I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing
it myself.
>From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD
- all in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND
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NATIONAL NEWS
- Probably without a doubt, that dark
November
day in 1963 will stand out first and foremost. We were near the end of
the school day, and Mr. Vail suddenly turned on the PA system in all
the classrooms so that we could
hear live broadcasts regarding the assassination of President Kennedy.
That was an ominous foreboding of more things yet
to come.
- In February of 1965, Malcolm X
was assassinated at the Harlem Audubon Ballroom as he gave a speech.
- The Watts riots in the Los Angeles
suburb left 34 dead.
- Sir Winston Churchill died.
- Nat King Cole died.
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OTHER LESS-DREARY
NEWS
FROM 1965
- There were 194,300,000 people in America
then, compared to 306,579,221 (June 3, 3009) and gaining one every 7
seconds, and speeding up. Non-white births and unmarried births
outnumber married couples.
- Ralph Nader published "Unsafe at Any Speed"and
slowly became a household name -- for a while
- The St. Louis Arch was completed
- The miniskirt, designed by Mary Quant
first appeared in London and then spread across the Western world
- Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola merged to
formPepsi-Co. Inc.
- Sony introduced the first "Betamax"
videotape record
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CLASSMEMORABILIA
- Jeff Burgess writes:"We
did
the dance "Clap, Clap, Bow" at the annual May Day festivities ont he
playground. It was held every May Day and all the parents were invited.
We did The Mexican Hat Dance for 1st grade and "Ball n the Jack" for
2nd. Lynn Dame and I were "featured" in the center of the circle for
The
Mexican Hat Dance. The 6th grade got to do the actual May Pole Dance.
Unfortunately, the "old" Four Corners was torn down after we finished
2nd grade and a new school was built on Ferrante Ave. For some reason
they discontinued the May Day events. So I have been eternally
frustrated having never gotten to dance around the May Pole."
- Some of the great old cars included that
1958 Black Chevy that George Maniatty drove, at other times, Al Jenest
was at the wheel. John Taylor had a classic 1957 Triumph TR3.
- Then there was Grise's 1953 green and red
Jeep that just may have had something to do with the installation of
the
largest Christmas tree ever in the lobby of GHS's auditorium.

- Mo Taylor used to motor around in a gigantic 1957 DeSoto -- biggest tailfins in
the
world! Bill Buck had a big-mama Chrysler too.
- Bill Phelps tore up the streets around in a
'56
Chevy (green with a white hood - affectionately known as "Big White
Eagle"
- Randi Kinner was notorious for
driving around in an old blue Hillman, way over-filled with classmates
- How about band, cheerleader and team
bus stops after away football and basketball games at Flavorland Ice
Cream Parlor at the north end of Northampton on Route 5.
- Speaking of food, remember the fried clams
at Denny's (our own Denny Smith's, not the chain)
- Or the lakeside pizza at Robestelli's,
and of course the nearly haunted house somewhere out in the fields of
Gill (was it really Gill
- A&W Root Beer Drive-in need we say
more! Some towns still have them!
- Shirley Brightman recalls that there
were dress codes for school. Girls could not wear pants.
Worse,pantyhose was not prevalent so the ladies had a variety
of undergarments holding up their nylons. Even worse, getting
frozen red legs walking to and from school (uphill both ways) because
it's cold with no pants! Guys too, blue jeans were a no-no unless
you were in the vocational program
- Speaking of
the Dress Code, do you remember Madras Day, shortly
before graduation? Rich Shortell recalls it well and sent along a
clip from the Greenfield Recorder -- although our own Exponent
covered it complete with photo

Here's Tom Purple, Karen Kelsey, Norma Hornado and Rob Pratt
being totally cool. Don't miss the madras stripes along the guys
pant legs.
- Greenfield wouldn't have been Greenfield
for
us without the summer Greenfield Military Band concerts in Shattuck
Park,
and ice skating at Highland Pond
- Then there were the dances: first Friday nights at the Yand HT. Bill Seretta, Rick
Richardson (who had sort of a band) and Phil Grise set up dances at the
(then) recently abandoned Weldon Hotel
- Similarly, some of the musicians in
the class would gather for Jam Sessions and just general fun times,
recalls Gerry May
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CLASSROOM
&TEACHER MEMORIES
- There were endless stimulating
political discussions in Mr. James O'Neil's class, along with his
plastic Democratic elephant. And listening to him say "Guadalupe
Hidalgo", or noting how Audrey Bullard always spoke in such
"dulcet-tones"
- Then there was the Sociology
class gatherings at Ms. Davenport's house to discuss all the issues
that
could not be discussed in school - it was only the mid-60's after all.
And remember, as Jeff Burgess
adds "Miss Davenport's sociology class in was the first social science
spinoff course to be offered at GHS......pretty "radical" for
Greenfield!" [Guess we all should reflect on the non-fiction book, The Conservative Rebel which is a
history of Greenfield.]
- How about that seemingly endless hike -
what was that German term? - that Mrs. Metzroth's intern, Shirley
Pottern led us on -- all the way to the Leyden Glen from GHS! Talk
about
crueland unusual punishment!!
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TELEVISION, MOVIES, BROADWAY
Favorite television shows in 1964-65 included
the following:
- Batman
- Bonanza
- Rawhide
- Hogan's Heroes
- Andy Griffith Show and lest we forget,
- Days of Our Lives premiered in 1965
- The Sound of Music won the Academy
Award
for Best Picture
- Doctor Zhivago
- Fiddler on the Roof opened 9/22/64
- Help!
- Flight of the Phoenix
- Thunderball
- The Great Race
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MUSICALHITS
- Back In My Arms Again
-Supremes
- Downtown - Petula Clark
- Eight Days a Week - Beatles
- Help! - Beatles
- Get Off My Cloud -
RollingStones
- (I Can't Get
No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
- Hang On Sloopy - McCoys
- Help Me Rhonda - Beach Boys
- I Can't Help Myself -
FourTops
- I Got You Babe -
Sonny& Cher
- Bob Dylan was
still strictly acoustic, 'till '66
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BIRTHS in 1965
- Charlie Sheen (Carlos Irwin Estevez)
- Sherilyn Fenn
- Will Smith
- Robert Downey Jr.
- Brooke Shields
- Sarah Jessica Parker
- Scott Thompson (Carrot Top)
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PRICES in 1965
- Median Household
Income$6,900
- New House $13,600
- New Car $2,614
- Monthly Rent $118
- Gasoline $.30 per gallon
- 1st Class Postage Stamp 5 cents
- 2nd Class Postage Stamp 2 cents
- Harvard Tuition $1,760 per year
- Sugar 5 lb $.55
- Milk $1.05 gallon
- Eggs (from a local farmer) $.35
- Hamburger $.42 per pound
- Bread $.21 a loaf
- McDonalds goodies
- Burgers 17 cents
- Fries 11 cents
- Milk Shakes 9 cents
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TECHNOLOGICAL
CHANGES
- Microwave ovens weren't
sold
for home use until 1967
- We used slide rules
in math,
not hand-held calculators (early
1970's) or computers (mid1980's)
- Music was strictly vinyl
recordings. Eight-track tapes didn't
appear until the late 1960's, followed by cassettes. CD's, while invented in 1965 by
James
Russell, didn't get marketed until 1980 when Philips began mass
manufacturing the equipment. Then too, the now-ubiquitous CDs didn't
really show up for widespread home use as many albums became available
until the mid 1980's.
- Color television
wascoming
on strong in 1965, after all, the first color broadcast of the
Tourament
of Roses Parade took place in 1954 -- not that we saw it, or even saw
any television that far back! More of us saw Disney'sWonderful World of
Color beginning in 1961. By 1965, many folks had color TVs in
their homes and some of the major network programming (only 3 networks
then - yet those three had vastly more independent news
presentation than we get today from two dozen network sources!) was
routinely broacast in color. In 1966, NBC went full color with
its
broadcasts - afirst, with CBS and ABC soon to follow suit.
- Hard to believe, but the
Internet wouldn't sow any roots for a few more years -
until1969 as the ARPANET with the US Defense Dept. And
even then, it took until 1993 for the WorldWideWeb to get off the
ground.
- Cell phones? Hah!
Many of us still had one black, rotary-dial telephone that was on a
party line when we graduated high school. But did you know
cellphone technology first started around our birth -- 1947
as portable 2-way radios? In 1973 the first real 'cell
phone'was in prototype phase. By 1978 Chicago had 2000 trial
customers. In 1982 the FCC permitted the selling of cell networks
as we now know it so that by 1987 there were over a million customers.
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SPORTS
- Arthur Ashe became thefirst Black to play
on the U.S. Davis Cup Tennis Team
- LA Dodgers won the WorldSeries
- NCAA Basketball was won byUCLA
- Gary Player won the U.S.Golf Open
- Football Champs were theGreenbay Packers
and the Buffalo Bills
- Jim Clark won the Indy 500at 150.7 mph
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YOU'REOLDER-THAN-DIRT
QUIZ
Count all the ones that
you remember- not the ones you were told about! Ratings at the bottom:
1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles
5. Coffee shops with table side jukeboxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (PRescott 3-6633)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers
If you remembered 0-5 =
You'restill young
Remembered 6-10 = You
aregetting older
Remembered 11-15 = Don't
tellyour age
If you remembered 16-25
=You're older than dirt!
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