Lil'Mouse Jill is hosting this week and she wants to know what happened in the world the day we were born!
March 25, 1962 must have been a pretty quiet day. Not much was going on.
If you were my parents, and not busy with me and the hospital, you might have had a day like this:
JFK was president and other than still dealing with the fallout of okaying the resumption of above-ground nuclear testing, he probably had his feet up much of the day.
If they were reading the newspaper, they might have read a column written by Eleanor Roosevelt entitled "My Day" about her encounter with an elderly Korean gentleman.
Perhaps they were getting ready to do their taxes - the median family income was $6000 a year. A new house cost $15,000. The car? $2,500. (Of course, being newlyweds, my parents were actually renting an apartment above someone's house.)
Driving home from work, the number one song on the radio that day was Connie Francis' Don't Break the Heart that Loves You.
In the evening, they may have settled down with your TV dinner to watch their brand new $400 color TV set. First, Lassie (Lassie and the Eagle) followed by the Bob Hope Show - with Dorothy Lamour, Janis Page, and Frank Sinatra as guests.
After a glass of warm milk, bed and a book. From the NYTimes Bestseller list, they could have chosen Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Chairman of the Bored by Edward Streeter or maybe The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins.
Of course, none of that really happened. They were driving into town to have me instead!
16 comments:
1962??? Gee, you're old! Ha, ha...I can say that 'cause my birthday is only a couple of years after.
Interesting trivia.
J.
Sounds like all was right with the world back then. I was a sophamore in high school.
Now you are taking me back. I started my nurse training in Jan 1962.
I had been a fan of Connie Francis as a teenager. I loved Harold Robbins novels-always borrowed them off a friend.
thanks for playing. gee, a house for 15 grand sounds good right about now. sign me up!
wow... you did VERY WELL!
I love that you included what was on TV Re: Bob Hope show (I betcha I watched it with my parents, ha ha)
I guess I didn't dig deep enough!
Great post, Sayre! I tried to find out what was popular on the radio and TV, and at the movies. I couldn't find out - I'm sure the info is somewhere. My mom says that she remembers the song "Rhinestone Cowboy" getting a lot of airplay when she was expecting me. We lived in SW Virginia at the time :-) Happy FM!
Well aren't you just an original Miss Smartypants! Love this interpretation of a Fun Monday assignment. The thing I enjoy about Fun Mondays is the challenge of making a topic your own, which you did so well in this post, Sayre. I've got to get back in the FM groove. In the meantime, I have something posted that you may find interesting if you are a bit of a celebrity and all their foibles watcher.
BTW, in the late 60s my annual teaching salary in Florida was $6500. I felt so rich!
You brave chickie-pie! Revealing the YEAR!!
PS
Bethany was sitting in my lap yesterday as I checked up on you. She saw your heading and said in her very sweet li'l 3-year-old voice, "I wanna hear that water!" "Me, too," I told her. "Me, too."
Kisses!
You were born on March 25! My youngest son was born on that day. My oldest was born on Florida Cracker's birthday. Small, small world!
Leon Country teachers started at $3,750 in 1961 so we were glad to get $4,100 teaching at the prison. We had moved to the little house out in the country when you were born ($40/month and it was a stretch). I was always looking for ways to make money at home--stuffing envelopes, making cheap purses, etc. Our TV was a small B&W Silvertone, and when the picture tube died, we listened to the sound only. The Cuban missle crisis lead to your Dad trying to build a bomb shelter in the back yard. Scary times. We had a few chickens, and at times eggs were all we had to eat. A bag of corn meal turned out to have weavels, so we made "Dog cake" for the animals with corn meal and eggs, and I learned how to float the bugs out so we could have cornbread for ourselves. We had next to nothing, but we never felt "Poor", and those early days were some of our happiest.
Wow Aunt Mom, I never knew you were a teacher... awesome! And I never knew how hard things were for you guys back then.
Great post SCR. It's cool to know how much "things" cost ALL the way back in 1962.
Signed your cousin born 1963!
I wish we could go back to simpler times like that.
My Aunt used to babysit for Harper Lee when she was little. She grew up with Harper Lee and Truman Capote and she used to say "That Truman was one odd duck" LOL
Connie Francis? In Quincy the big hits were Green-Green, Walk Right in. We played a lot of Chuck Berry.I had to work nights and weekends at WCNH to pay for your Momma's doctor's bills. We drove a VW Kombi--a delivery van. Noisy as hell and unstable. $ 15,000 houses are fine, but realize I made $ 1.75 per hour as a DJ. As for Kennedy's feet up. Hardly, the Cold War was at its peak. The possibility of wholesale nuclear war was very real. Dean Rusk said of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "We were eyebasll to eyeball and the other guy blinked." Dad
What a great way to describe an empty set!
All that great stuff going on and they chose to go to the hospital and give birth!
Get out of here!!
I don't have a clue what was happening when I was born. I think there must have been a lot of sleeping going on.
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