60s Table of Contents

Sept. 26, 1960. We watched the first televised presidential debate, Kennedy vs. Nixon, together. Mom and Dad and Chip and me. We wanted Kennedy …

What seems so important, and so different, about the sixties was the overwhelming sense that we were part of an unprecedented worldwide movement that …

January 20, 1961. Three days after I’d turned 13. We watched JFK’s inauguration speech on a black and white television that Miss Alexander brought …

Just a few months later, April of 1961, a US-sponsored invasion of Cuba failed. A force of Cuban exiles landed in Cuba at the …

Mom cried the day dad brought home a used 1960 dark red Oldsmobile Super 88 convertible. “Frank, you bought a red convertible,” she cried, …

Jan. 21, 1962. We spent two freezing hours trapped alongside an icy snow-covered highway down Merced River while Dad struggled, under the car, going …

Mom also cried bitterly, off and on for days, when a new neighbor planted trees across the street. Mom knew they would eventually block …

I mentioned wooden skis and cable bindings in this story from the fifties. In 1962 those wooden skis and cable bindings failed me as …

I was 15 at Rainbow Lake. Ten days in the high Sierra living in a tent by the side of an alpine lake nestled …

1964. The year of the Beatles, Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech. The year I also began protesting the Vietnam War, racial segregation, …

Worst job ever: selling encyclopedias door to door. Or, in my case, not selling encyclopedias, door to door. You may not be aware of …

The summer of 1966 changed my life completely. Magic for me, black magic to my parents. Finishing high school, followed by a magical summer, …

Through August of 1966 I evolved from Catholic High School kid to the Trinity Alps to Haight Ashbury hippie. In September I devolved into …

In early July, 1967, I sat at breakfast in the dining car of the Orient Express train from Paris to Salzburg, Austria. The train …