History Lessons (alternately, ch-ch-ch-ch-changes)

Today's post will discuss some of the things we ran across in 1967-68 that were a little different than the way things were 50 years later. We'll also review a few historical moments. Let's start with the culture at the time. 1967 was the Summer of Love, with the Monterey Pop Festival taking place in June on the west coast, the song "San Francisco (Be sure to wear flowers in your hair)" climbing the charts, and the hippie subculture gaining a foothold in many large cities, most notably San Francisco. That cultural phenomenon was clearly present in Los Angeles as evidenced by the various mentions of hippies in Mom's letters, especially the earlier ones. My small-town Texas parents definitely went through a bit of culture shock being exposed to all that, which gave us some entertaining reading on more than one occasion. Closely related to that cultural movement, and no doubt somewhat of a driver of it, was the escalation of the Viet Nam war in 1967. Protests against the war were also escalating, including marches that often turned violent. A Peace March scheduled to pass within a few blocks of our apartment on August 6, 1967 made my parents nervous enough to leave the area that day and make our first of many visits to Knott's Berry Farm. The military draft was also in effect at the time, and we got to see the impact of that on a young family in a letter one of Mom's friends wrote to her. Another bit of civil unrest during this time was the race riots that were occurring all over the country. (Look up "long, hot summer of 1967.") We moved to L. A. only three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, and two years after the famous riots in the L. A. neighborhood of Watts. So when Dad found out Mom and I had unintentionally driven through Watts one day, he was understandably upset. Technology has obviously advanced a bit in the past 50 years. Some things that were relatively new at the time, with a certain "wow" factor, are either taken for granted today or have almost disappeared entirely. For instance, Dad spent a lot of money to purchase a Polaroid camera while we were there. Polaroid instant pictures were a good alternative to waiting days to have film developed and they gave people nearly instant gratification. But today, given how easy it is for anyone to take a digital picture and see it (and share it) instantly, for free, Polaroid film doesn't have much of a chance although it does have a certain nostalgic charm to it. Polaroid instant cameras are still available, although with slightly different technology. Another thing that wasn't commonplace in 1967 that we take for granted now is color TV. We had a black and white television set in our apartment, and one of the letters mentioned my parents' friends, the Dirrs, inviting us over to watch a TV special on their color television one night. Mom mentioned that she hoped we could buy a color TV when we got back to Texas, and I'm pretty sure we did before the end of the year. As previously noted, 1972 was the first year in which more color television sets were sold in the US than black-and-white sets. Also in the area of technology, something important was happening in the late 1960s that I don't think was mentioned in any of the letters although there were a few front page newspaper articles about it while we were in L. A. That was the race to the moon. The Apollo program was in its early stages, having yet to launch a manned spaceflight, yet we found our apartment in L. A. exactly two years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. The changes in technology in the past 50 years have certainly changed the way we communicate. In 1967, long before the internet was even a gleam in Al Gore's eye, there was no such thing as email. This was also long before mobile phones of any type were available, so there were no cell phones either, which meant no texting. No cell phones. No internet. No email. No texting. So how did people communicate? Well, people communicated the old fashioned way, via letters and phone calls using telephones connected to landlines. To make matters worse, the telephone companies charged extra for long distance calls outside of your local area, so most people, especially those who were pinching pennies, just didn't make a lot of long distance phone calls and tended to rely more on letters. We know letters were the primary method of communication between Mom and my grandmother. Letters at the time could go via ground, or you could pay a few cents more for airmail if you wanted faster delivery. All but one of Mom's letters was sent via airmail, and even with that we could see on a few occasions where the lag between sending and receiving caused some communication issues that wouldn't occur today. We have grown so accustomed to nearly instant communication these days that it's hard to imagine having to wait several days, perhaps more than a week, to have someone reply to a question. We did learn about one method of almost instant communication that was occasionally used back then, and that was the telegram. When my grandmother made her flight plans to visit us she sent a telegram because sending an airmail letter would have taken too long. Strangely enough, we also learned that Western Union continued their telegram service until 2006. Speaking of letters, we also learned the use of zip codes was somewhat new in 1967. Although Mom grew up in the house my grandmother was still living in, she didn't even know my grandmother's zip code when she started writing letters. It took her several months to get to the point where she always remembered to include the zip code when addressing the envelope, but she ended up doing it consistently. Not only was it nearly impossible to communicate as quickly as we do now, it was also difficult to get stuff as quickly. We moved to L. A. six years before the first overnight delivery service, Federal Express, began operations. People in 1967 probably didn't see much of a need for overnight deliveries, and they definitely would have been amazed that in the future you could even get same day delivery of some items. During our stay in L. A. we also ran across a few things that seem totally out of place today and have since been changed for the better, often with the prodding of the legal system. The first notable event was the search for an apartment in Los Angeles when my parents found it difficult to find an apartment building that would allow children. This was before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, so that was a perfectly legal practice at the time. The next incident that comes to mind was my encounter with a pay toilet when I was unable to pay. Fortunately pay toilets were banned in most places in the US in the 1970s and are rarely seen today. We learned that car seats were not very common in the late 1960s and certainly were not required by law. On a related note, I don't think any of the letters mentioned seat belts, but seat belts were not even required equipment for all seating positions in passenger cars until 1968, and wearing seat belts wasn't mandated by law until the mid 1980s. For most people it's weird to even think about not wearing a seatbelt today. Another more recent change in the area of child safety was the design of playground equipment. I haven't done any research on that, but the playground equipment I played on in Griffith Park would be viewed as quite archaic and hazardous today. Another item related to health and safety that was mentioned many times during the first half of our stay was the smog. Say what you will about California's environmental regulations, but they seem to have greatly improved the smog situation over the past 50 years. It was really sad reading Mom's description of how the smog affected us. Even if people who were living there got used to it, you know it had to have a negative effect on people's respiratory systems and who knows what else. If you want really bad smog today you can go to some big cities in China. We also learned that the medical guidelines regarding the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy have changed in the past 50 years, since Mom did not abstain early on in her pregnancy. In the world of sports there was a lot going on, although in most cases Mom just mentioned it as an aside, leaving me to do the research to figure out what game she was talking about. (You're welcome.) The most important thing from a historical perspective was the rise of OJ Simpson to national prominence as a junior running back for the USC Trojans. I really wish I could ask my dad what his thoughts were while watching college football's "Game of the Century" between USC and UCLA, especially OJ Simpson's touchdown run that is considered one of college football's best plays ever. The same goes for college basketball's "Game of the Century" between UCLA and The University of Houston two months later, which Mom and Dad both watched intently with friends while I played on the floor with coloring books and dominoes. Finally, since we were so close to Hollywood, it's only natural that the world of entertainment was featured in one way or another in many of the letters and diary entries. Mom and I saw a scene from the 1968 movie "The Party" being filmed, we saw a Shasta root beer commercial being filmed, and we attended tapings of Let's Make a Deal (with Monty Hall) and Art Linkletter's House Party. Our friends the Dirrs appeared on The Newlywed Game with Bob Eubanks, and Mom and I got to see Dean Martin's dressing room, including the toilet, as part of an NBC studio tour. And some television history was mentioned in one of the letters, too. That was the final episode of "The Fugitive" television series, the most watched TV show of all time until the world found out who shot J. R. Ewing 12 years later. In tomorrow's post I'll try to fill in a few gaps and tie up some loose ends.

November 13, 1967: Movie tour deal

Letter postmarked November 13, 1967:

The CCZCC is now at 3.

Dear Mother and Mike,

Well, here it is Sunday afternoon - a lazy one at that! David Wayne is watching television, as usual, and he just finished giving Snappy a bath. Dave has gone to the store to buy some Vel dishwashing liquid and I'm sitting here waiting to do guess what - wash dishes. Due to yesterday's activities, we decided just to stay home today.

[Apparently you really are supposed to bathe a pet turtle or tortoise, according to this WikiHow article: https://www.wikihow.com/Bathe-a-Turtle. Before reading that article I would not have guessed that tortoises drink through their anus.]

[The Vel brand of dishwashing liquid was retired in 2002. That's too bad, because it was marVELous as you can see in this commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de8x4gQz3x0]

Now that I've got your curiosity up (I hope) I'll tell you what we did on Saturday. We got up much earlier than usual, dressed, drank coffee, fed David Wayne, and somehow managed to pick up Gene and Suzie on time - then off to NBC. We had tickets to attend the "Let's Make a Deal" show. I don't know whether you've ever seen this one or not, but it's wild. Everyone that wants to be in the show wears some kind of crazy costume - some were way out! Suzie and I loved the program, but, naturally, our stuff-shirt husbands were not impressed. We had Gene and Suzie over to eat supper last night and they stayed until about 11:30 which was really late for us, but we had a lot of fun.

[Yeah, I can see my dad not really getting into the craziness of Let's Make a Deal. Mom would have loved the people-watching, though.]

Saturday wouldn't have worn me out so much if it hadn't followed Friday. Suzie picked me and David Wayne up at 8:00 AM, then we went to NBC and got the tickets for the Saturday show. We were going on the tour at NBC, but we had some time to kill so we went to the Hollywood Bowl. We walked way up to the top and I got a sore muscle in my right leg. I was very impressed with the Hollywood Bowl.

The NBC tour was very good. I'm not saying that I understood everything, but I enjoyed seeing the cameras, stages, props, wardrobe, makeup room, etc. I can even say that I've been in Dean Martin's dressing room and seen his commode and bar - how about that! David Wayne was the only child on the tour, so he got a lot of welcome attention. Our guide even gave him some color film of Jerry Lewis and the NBC peacock. Oh, yes, we got to see the costumes form the "Alice in Wonderland" special which really impressed David Wayne. I was impressed (I sure am using that word a lot, kinda like Aunt Sara's "elegant") with the place where they make props and sets.

[Dean Martin would have been doing "The Dean Martin Show" at the time, which aired weekly from 1965 through 1974.]

[I remember having the film with the NBC peacock, but I have no idea what happened to it, which is a shame if it had Jerry Lewis, too.]

After the tour we paid a small fortune at Grauman's Chinese Theater to see Walt Disney's "The Jungle Book." We sure paid a lot for atmosphere ($2.50 for adults and $1.25 for children). The show that comes before "Jungle Book" is called "Charlie, The Lonesome Cougar" and it is just as good as the main feature. I couldn't really adequately describe the shows, other than to say it was another Walt Disney production all the way. David Wayne laughed until I thought he was going to be sick.

[$2.50 in 1967 purchased about as much as $18 in 2017. Wow, that is a lot to see a movie, although it was a double feature. Per IMDB, here's the storyline for the cougar movie: "When a cougar raised by a group of loggers in the Pacific Northwest reverts to its natural instincts, the consequence could threaten its life." So we saw one movie about a cougar raised by humans, and another movie about a human raised by wolves.]

I'm sorry that your work is so demanding right now. I know that it can really tire you out. Also, I'm sorry Taffy is causing such a problem in the cold weather, but it is a comfort to me that you are taking such good care of her.

Mother, I applaud you for grounding Mike, even though it sounds like he still goes quite a bit. I have a new method of punishment for my little one - television off and he sits in the corner. Boy, does that get him. David Wayne is much more active than Mike was as a child and sometimes I just don't know how to handle him. But this "corner business" will work for awhile - I hope.

[I don't recall ever being told to go sit in the corner, so I guess either it stopped working or I just quit misbehaving.]

I'm anxious for news about Steven Wayne and his mother. Who does the baby look like? Did Linda have any trouble? Is she alright now? Tell me all! And did you get the check okay? Oh, yes, what does Mike think of his new nephew? Did he sit by the bassinet all day when he first saw the little one?

David Wayne refuses to acknowledge that he and his cousin have the same middle name. I told him but he said, "My name is just David Jennings - like my daddy's." David Wayne has really surprised me by not asking any questions about how you get babies. Last night we were watching a movie, "The New Interns," and they showed a scene of a baby being born. I thought to myself, "Oh brother, here come the questions." His reaction: "Did I get spanked when I was a baby?" And that was all. I think he must still be trying to figure out why fish don't get seasick.

["The New Interns" was a 1964 movie that had quite the cast of future TV stars (some uncredited), including Kojak, Jeannie, Mary Ann, Hogan, and The Robot from Lost in Space.]

I will close as I am way behind on letters to answer. I need to write Wayne and Linda, Myrna, Patsy, and the Jennings. Write me soon and just tell Mr. Rigler to go jump in the lake or go run into another door.

[Isn't it nice that people don't have to worry about writing letters any more? Just put your life on Facebook and whoever wants to can read all about it and look at the pictures. You may have to send an occasional email to friends and family who aren't on Facebook, but at least you can send the same email to multiple people and just tailor it a little for each recipient.]

[I believe Mr. Rigler was my grandmother's boss at the time where she worked, which was the Journalism Department at TWU in Denton.]

Love,Linda

P. S. - Mike, instead of writing love letters to Ann during study hall (and I know you don't study), drop us a line or at least send David Wayne a post card.

[Now I think we might know why Uncle Mike got grounded.]

September 10, 1967: Busch Hippies

Diary entry for September 10, 1967:

Got a late start today. Went to Busch Gardens. It was too hot and too crowded. Couldn't ride monorail because of long line. We went on boat ride and saw a few birds. Left early.

Next, we got a watermelon and went to Griffith Park. Saw and heard hippies. David Wayne played on park equipment. Then on way [home] we drove down Hollywood Blvd. Saw Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Having gotten home from Disneyland at midnight last night, it's no wonder we got a late start today. That's a bummer about Busch Gardens being too crowded. I still need a bank from there, too.

This visit to Busch Gardens is what I was alluding to in the post on the September 3, 1967 diary entry, when I mentioned a future event that made me think Mom backed off on the alcohol consumption after she found out she was pregnant. She always liked to tell the story about how much Dad enjoyed this particular visit to Busch Gardens because they gave each adult visitor a free beer after going through the tour of the brewery. Since my grandmother didn't drink alcohol and Mom couldn't drink any because she was pregnant, Dad was very happy to get two extra beers at the end of the brewery tour. Anyone who knew my dad would have no doubts about the truthiness of that story.

I think Mom had previously mentioned that the hippies infiltrate Griffith Park on the weekends, so we were apparently victims of that today. Unfortunately there is no mention of whether or not I brought my guns with me.

Sunday didn't turn out quite as well as Saturday, but at least we tried and Nana got to see a little bit of Hollywood. We'll see what adventures unfold this coming week.

August 4, 1967: Stars?

Diary entry for August 4, 1967:

Walked to store. At night we drove around - mainly Hollywood Blvd.

Good, we're finally out exploring a little more. No mention of the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, unfortunately. Maybe we'll do some more this weekend.