by Vincent LeVine

Created on: March 12, 2010   Last Updated: March 16, 2010

"There are places I remember, All my life, though some have changed..."

As a kid growing up in rural America during the 60s, I was proud to be an American. My father had inexpensively framed glossy pictures of John F. Kennedy hanging on our walls, one with him shaking the young Senator’s hand before he became the President of the United States. We lived in an apartment in Foxboro, MA and when JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, we wept as a family.

I remember the pride we had in union labels boasting “Made in USA” and the completely different reaction when a label read “Made in Japan” or China, or Taiwan. Many Americans were not willing to forget Pearl Harbor and some unkindly turned Japan into an exaggerated two syllable word to express their feelings.

Schwinn bicycles were popular then and still made in Chicago. American-made automobiles filled every driveway; keys left in their ignitions not to be lost, and kid-packed station wagons ruled the local roads.

House front doors were left unlocked, keypad security systems were not needed and did not exist. (It may have been on one hot, muggy Saturday night, the 9th of August 1969, that Charles Manson scared America into locking their front doors…)

 "I know I'll often stop and think about them..."

Most kids in my neighborhood had large pieces of ¾ ” plywood mounted vertically on the edge of the roofs over their single car, manually operated garage doors, with bright orange rims bolted to them for shooting hoops. The garage door stayed up anytime you played to avoid broken window glass, which was common to garage doors then.

We rode our bikes to playgrounds miles away to play baseball for hours on end, gloves hanging off the bottom of our chromed handlebars, near the stem, talking casually while weaving across lightly trafficked roads on route.

"There is no one compares with you..."

Televisions were small, 13-16”, black and white, with cabinet mounted controls and even with perfectly positioned rabbit ear antennas, were only capable of picking up a few local channels. We got by. We saw The Beatles live on The Ed Sullivan Show, which aired every Sunday night.

The Fab Four’s first appearance on February 9, 1964 was viewed by 74 million Americans (40%) and later called the start of the “British Invasion”, and that music became the defining soundtrack for the decade.

Our family Doctor, Vincent P. Ryan, made house calls. He came right

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