1968

1968
Woodbine Avenue

Overbrook

Philadelphia, PA

My age: 12- 13

School- Merion Mercy Academy- 8^th grade.  I hated school. I had lots of academic failure. And I wasn't comfortable being around some many of my rich classmates.  I couldn't compete with their bragging about their social status.

Work: - I began to babysit for the neighbors. Sometimes I would have five or six kids under my charge. I was paid $1/hour.  It seemed like a fortune to me.

Movies

• The Graduate 
• Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - this movie was very controversial.
• Bonnie and Clyde 
• Valley of the Dolls 
• The Odd Couple 
• Planet of the Apes - I never watched this movie.
• Rosemary's Baby- the Catholic Church banned this movie.  I watched it for the first time a few years ago and today, it seems ridiculous. 

Music

• The Rolling Stones 
• The Supremes 
• The Beatles with -- " Hey Jude " 
• Aretha Franklin 
• Gary Puckett and The Union Gap 
• The Grateful Dead 
• The Monkees 
• Simon and Garfunkel -- " Mrs Robinson " 
• The Beach Boys - I was never a fan of this group.
• The Bee Gees 
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience 
• Cream 
• The Doors -- " Hello I Love You " 
• Pink Floyd
• Moody Blues 
• Bobby Goldsboro -- " Honey " 
• Marvin Gaye -- " I heard it through the Grapevine " 
• David Bowie- I didn't like Bowie until much later in life.

News events

• Dr. Christian Barnard performs the first successful heart transplant.
• US Explodes experimental hydrogen Bomb. 
• The Emergency 911 Telephone service is started in the USA which provides a single number for reporting emergencies and is manned 24 hrs per day 365 days per year
• ATM First Philadelphia Bank installs the first automated teller machine in the U.S.
• Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray. 
• U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated at the age of 42 
• President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.  There were lots of race riots around this time and I was afraid. 
• Anti Vietnam War protests throughout the western world . North Vietnam and Viet Cong troops launch the Tet offensive. Vietnam US soldiers massacred men, women and children in My Lai. President Lyndon Johnson orders an end to the bombing of North Vietnam.  This war was dreadful and shameful. 
• China celebrated 20 years of communist rule by Mao Tse-tung.  And most of the world was oblivious of what was going on with the Cultural Revolution.
• President Johnson announced he would not run for another term of office.  I was from a Republican family so we were pleased with this announcement. The Republican delegates chose Richard M. Nixon, as the presidential nominee and Spiro Agnew as the Vice Presidential nominee.The Democrats chose sitting Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the Presidential nominee and Senator Edmund S. Muskie for Vice President.
• Pope Paul VI banned Catholics from using the contraceptive pill for birth control.  But I don't think many Catholics got the message because families quickly went from 8-10 kids per family to 2-3 kids. 
• Population in Europe reached 455 million.
• Pierre Elliott Trudeau becomes the Prime Minister of Canada.  I think he was the first foreign minister that I paid any attention.
• Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy marred and this moment was filled with gossip.  What did she see in that ugly, old man.
• Hong Kong Flu pandemic begins in Hong Kong.
• Black power salute is seen on Television worldwide after the gold and bronze medalists in Olympics show salute during medal ceremony in Mexico City, Mexico 
• The first Big Mac goes on sale in McDonalds .  I don't remember the first time I went to McDonald's but I remember that I loved the concept. 
• The Beatles create Apple Records and record "Hey Jude" as the first single on the label .  I loved this song but it is too long.
•  "60 Minutes" shown for the first time  and it continues to be popular today.
• The musical Hair opened in London featuring nudity and drugs and the world was shocked.

Family and friends

I had a seizure.  I woke up to find I was in a seated position and my parents were frantically trying to get my shoes on.  They rushed me to the hospital where I spent two days being tested. And then we never talked about it.

MLK is Murdered

MLK is Murdered

APRIL 4, 1968

Philadelphia, PA

I am 12 years old and sitting at home with my family, watching television.  Our show is interrupted for a special announcement: Martin Luther King had just been shot and killed.  My mother gasped, in horror,  and we sit and watch a nation erupt right before us.  I have heard of King but I am not completely aware of his work, his mission and his views on white people.  The television media offers me an overdose of the violence and riots in Chicago, LA, Detroit and in the South.  It looks to me as if Black people are out to harm white people. These scenes on the TV scare me.

My mother now worries about my father who is teaching a night class at Drexel University.  She wants him to get home.  And he does finally arrive, earlier than usual.  He is unsettled about this murder.  “As soon as I heard, I just dismissed class.  I told everyone to just get home right away,” he tells my mother.  “I got in my car and I didn’t stop.  I didn’t stop for any red light.  I just figured, if a cop saw me, I would let him follow me home and I would just pay the ticket.  I was not going to hang around in that black neighborhood and get beaten up,” he says with a tone of relief.

For the next few days, we are bombarded with TV coverage of riots, louting, gun shots, police, tear gas, anger and broken cities and I fear that Black people are going to come to our house and hurt us.

First Kiss

FIRST KISS

I am in 7^th grade and my cousin invited me to her house for the weekend.  We are going to a boy/girl party, my first boy-girl party.  I am nervous. I don’t know anyone and I don’t know what to expect.  I am slightly afraid to go.

There are cigarettes offered but I don’t want to try that.  I am afraid to smoke.  So I make up some lame excuse that works. I am left alone.

Then a game of “spin the bottle” starts up. And I am afraid of that too. But I have already said “no” to cigarettes. So I don’t feel comfortable saying no to this activity as well.  I don’t want to seem like a complete dork. So I join the girls’ side of the circle. And hold my breathe with each spin.

Each time the bottle stops, we screech in nervousness and laughter.  Heartless, judgment comments about the boy or girl are made without edit. Our thoughtlessness camouflages our own lack of confidence and our glaring insecurities.

The bottle finally points to me and I have to kiss the boy with the long, blonde bangs. My heart races widely.  There is a roar of laughter and I take the position of a sprinter, ready to make a quick dash to the center of the circle.

Someone shouts, “you have to kiss’.  And the boy starts to move towards me.  I leap up and we meet in the middle. We kiss and it is quick, hard and unpleasant.  Our teeth click together.  But it is now over.  My first kiss.  I have finally crossed that line. I can now go back to my friends at school on Monday and show off a little.

“Oh yea, I’ve kissed boys before,” I can now brag with some confidence.  I am one step closer to the world of adulthood.