However, for a white kid in a small town, life was cool. It was totally safe, and we were all allowed to roam as we pleased. TV had already started making inroads on socializing, but there were no cell phones, of course. School shootings and stabbings never happened. If you wanted to have a fight, there was a designated area to do it in after school, complete with an audience. In fact, if you were on a sports team or even PE and got into an altercation, the coach would pull out two sets of boxing gloves and let you and your enemy go at it.

Few houses or businesses had air conditioning, nor were many cars air conditioned, though that started to change by the mid 60's. I don't think we had dial phones until around 1963. Before that when you picked up a phone an operator would eventually come on line and say "Number please." You then gave her the number you wanted to call and she completed the call. For a call outside the area, you had be transferred to a long distance operator. Many phones, including ours, were "party lines," which meant that a couple of your neighbors could listen in, or vice versa. Few people had automatic washers and dryers, so you could see a lot of laundry hanging out to dry. Some in town still used out houses, and had no indoor plumbing. My rural cousins had no indoor plumbing or electric power until around 1964.

Teen age amusement consisted of playing sports, either formally or informally, riding around town in your parents' car (if they had one), or your car, if you were one of the truly fortunate. "Dating" was common, as was "going steady." A date usually consisted of going to a school or church function, driving around town, or going to a movie. We hoped any of those events would turn out to be the foreplay to screwing our brains out on a car seat while parked on the gravel road behind the golf course. Sometimes this happened.

School was easy. There were no AP classes and no high school calculus in our little burg. So far as I know, studying for the SAT had not yet been invented. I had to drive 100 miles to take it, leaving home around 5 a.m. Not the best test prep. College was optional, with only about half my HS class going. I never heard anyone talk about college application anxiety. We didn't have a guidance counsellor, so I picked three colleges to apply to, more or less at random, though I was recruited by one of them (National Merit Scholarship).

School discipline was excellent, and enforced by paddling. A significant infraction led to a trip to see the 300 lb. foot ball coach who could lift you off your feet with his massive paddle, made of a board with holes drilled in it.

The draft was a brooding omnipresence. If you didn't go to college, you risked being drafted at age 18 - in fact, it was virtually guaranteed unless you had a physical defect. We couldn't vote until 21, but being drafted was a different matter. We heard vague talk of some place called "Viet Nam" where people were being shipped. Nobody I knew thought or discussed politics at all. We heard our parents talk about how terrible it was that a Catholic (JFK) had been elected, and many celebrated when he was killed, though among my generation there was general grief over the assassination. Adults all seemed to have jobs of some kind - my parents worked in a factory. In spite of the lack of government welfare programs, no one seemed to be starving. Older people typically went to live their kids at some point. It was pretty much expected. Very few people were divorced. Divorce was stigmatizing, and I can remember only two friends with divorced parents.

Most teenagers had part time jobs of some kind. I worked a few days a week in a movie theater all through high school.

College life was interesting. Near the end of my undergrad years, and in my first year of grad school, opposition to the Viet Nam War eclipsed everything - even civil rights issues. We had riots and sit ins galore. Classes were suspended in 1970 after the Cambodian invasion when the faculty went on strike. We had no graduation speaker that year to protest the war.

Affirmative action was just getting started when I began college in 1965. My class had very few minorities and only 5% were women (this was at MIT). Women were still being told they had to be nurses, not doctors, and were not generally admitted in large numbers to law school. There were still many single sex colleges around the country - many of them in the Boston area.

Drugs were pretty available on campus. I was never a drug user, but there were many into weed, LSD, shrooms, and even heroin. I never knew a coke user, though. Alcohol was universal, of course. Even though it was supposedly the era of "free love," I found that it took a lot of work to get laid. I gather it is easier today than back then, or maybe it was just my general lack of good game. I don't remember any of my friends being overloaded with sex partners, either, though. Maybe we were just too geeky.

For college males in the 60's, not getting drafted was a universal concern. In 1969 Nixon did away with student deferments for graduate students and instituted a lottery. I drew a low number and no physical problems, so I ended up having to leave grad school at MIT with an S.M. in order to serve (another long story). I knew several people who left the country, generally for Canada, to avoid military service, and others who harmed themselves in some way to avoid service. I only knew one person who was killed in Viet Nam, and another who was badly injured. I was not a political activist during my college years, but SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was ascending, and many were committed to the cause of opposing the war and insuring civil rights for minorities. The SDS used to claim they were being infiltrated by the FBI. I thought they were paranoid, but it turns out they were right.

There was great conflict in the country over the Viet Nam war and the civil rights revolution. On the night Bobby Kennedy was killed I stopped for gas and the attendant (no self serve in those days) said, "Son of bitch got what he deserved."

Cars of the era were terrible by comparison with modern vehicles. They were works of art, but they never ran well, broke down a lot, got atrocious gas mileage, and had poor brakes and no safety features at all until the late 60's.

There was no airline security. You just got on the plane and flew - no metal detectors, no x-rays, no searches, no ID's. On the shuttle flights up and down the coast you just got on. Then a stewardess rolled a cart down the aisle and collected your money. There were no computerized reservation systems, so everything was done manually and often screwed up. Airfares were regulated, so the rates were all the same among airlines. They tried to compete with service, so the food tended to be good. You even got free drinks and a little pack of 4 cigarettes and an accompanying book of matches. Students could fly standby for half fare on most airlines.

Smoking was everywhere - on the plane, in the libraries, in meeting rooms, in class, during exams. I remember the outcry when TWA banned pipe and cigar smoking on its flights.

Most American cities were shitholes. Boston, for example, was run down and crappy. Everything was dirty and depressing. NYC was really bad, and probably bottomed out in the early 70's. There was a lot of talk at the time about how cities were doomed, and the population was going to be distributed throughout suburban type enclaves.

The fear of nuclear war with the Soviets carried over from the 50's, but the hysteria about it seemed to have evaporated, except for the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when it seems we did come very close to a nuclear conflict.

There was not nearly so much "stuff" as we have today. I lived in a college room with no media device except for a portable radio. I couldn't afford a stereo system, but many of my friends had elaborate sound systems with huge speakers. Music was either FM radio or vinyl, of course. Reel to reel tape existed, but tape was not used a lot by anyone I knew.

I could go on and on, but this is too much already.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3881375&forum_id=2#35321462)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3881375&forum_id=2#35321616)

Certainly there were people living in the community with untreated mental illness. Our next door neighbors ended up sleeping in their yard in recliners because the house was too full of trash. One of them was institutionalized eventually, but only after years of aberrant behavior.

In college there was a psychiatrist who was popular because he was good at creating creating draft exemptions for people. We had numerous suicides. Most people with problems just pushed on as best they could. One close friend was hospitalized during grad school. Another drank himself to death.

Not sure I am being responsive to your question.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3881375&forum_id=2#35321612)

I presume it's due to the war, but my question is: why/how was the male influence so strong? Schools today are almost uniformly feminine, which has had terrible results for generations of males.

This is amazingly healthy -->

"In fact, if you were on a sports team or even PE and got into an altercation, the coach would pull out two sets of boxing gloves and let you and your enemy go at it."

...but it would get anyone fired in today's politicized (read: rabidly liberal and anti-male) schools.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3881375&forum_id=2#39458114)

Can you describe some of the ways Boston was run down and crappy?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3881375&forum_id=2#35479746)