The Changes in My Lifetime, Part 3

 Next Mosaic Moments - August 26

 

Before the final entry in my "Changes" series, a gallery of random photos I've been accumulating over the last few weeks.

 

A spring flowing out of a tree

 

 Below, the tallest bridge in the world - completed 2004:

Millau Viaduct, Southern France

 ADDENDUM to Changes, Parts 1 & 2:

Probably because it did not affect me personally (I was far from working age when the war ended), I forgot a truly seminal change brought about by WWII: Women working outside the home. Women who took over men's jobs, including factory assembly lines, during the war, did not all return home with a sigh of relief. In fact, many discovered they liked getting paid for their hard work! This was a truly significant change in our culture. Sorry I missed it the first time around. By the time I was married in the early Sixties, I was providing most of the after-school transportation for our neighborhood because I was just about the only mother at home (where I worked part-time as editor for the educational publishing company my husband ran,  in addition being head of the Audio-Visual Department at Yale).

  

THE CHANGES IN MY LIFETIME, Part 3

The Sixties - with a peek at the Seventies

 In 1947, after skimping on fabric during the war years, Paris designers plunged hemlines to calf-length, where they stayed until the advent of that era of rebellion, the Sixties. Just as the Twenties had seen women hike skirt-lengths and cut hair that had been worn long for millennia, so now came the great rebellion against the innocence of the Fifties. Against the conservative attitudes, conservative dress, conservative speech. The need for peace that my generation had embraced was scorned by those only a decade younger, those with no memory of living through a War. As for me . . .

 1. On Tour with The Sound of Music. In the fall of 1960, I had my own small rebellion, giving up my music teaching position to move to NYC and audition for musicals. I was among the lucky ones, being chosen almost immediately for the National Company of The Sound of Music, with Florence Henderson starring in the role made famous by Mary Martin. Imagine, two months in NYC and I was employed by Rodgers & Hammerstein, and about to go on the road, traveling across the country by train, each of us with our own roomette, our hotel accommodations also paid by R&H! As was my entry fee into Musicians Local 802 (NYC) as, in addition to singing in the chorus, I directed off-stage music, played piano for on-the-road rehearsals, and trained replacements. In short, an experience I will never forget.

2. Marriage. In December 1962, I gave it all up for marriage, a choice every performer has to make at some time or other. I never regretted my decision, though I was very glad I had dared to try for the upper echelons of the music  profession and truly enjoyed being part of it.

3. Mini-skirts. Skirts kept getting shorter and shorter, until they finally bared more anatomy than had been seen anywhere but on a South Sea island. There was also a growing tendency to flout the family values that had been so important for so long, a tendency which somehow led to the free-spirited Flower Children of the Seventies finding their way to a different kind of rebellion. And sadly, becoming forever notorious because of their rabid opposition to the Vietnam War. 

4.  The Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was begun the same year I was married. The Russian Bear was on the rise and demonstrating its might. "The Cold War" became a term known to everyone.

5. Assassination. I was alone in our apartment in downtown New Haven when Walter Cronkite announced that John F. Kennedy had been shot. I will never forget the moment he took off his glasses, laid them down, and informed us that Kennedy had died, plunging the country into a period of mourning even more intense than the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the waning days of WWII.

6.  Diapers.  As any mother of three children in three years knows, I lost around five years of my life in the mid-sixties, but if there's one thing that stands out in my mind, it's washing diapers - yes, genuine cloth diapers. "Pampers" did not make their appearance until my youngest was about two. A change instantly embraced by mothers (& fathers) everywhere. You cannot imagine the struggle necessary to carry a full diaper pail, dump the disgusting water in the toilet, then get the diapers into the washing machine. (At least we had washing machines and were not forced to wash them all by hand, as was true for eons in the past.)

7. The Vietnam War. Although we first sent troops to the long-running Vietnam War c. 1964, the horror of this far-distant war did not seem to truly affect the general public until the Seventies. Perhaps we had simply come to accept our role as Policeman to the World; and sadly, the myth of our infallibility.             

8.  The Moon Landing (1969). The Sixties ended on a truly spectacular note. Although we were likely spurred on by our rivalry with Russia, who had launched a satellite (Sputnik) into orbit before we did, it was worth every bit of effort put into it. The entire world sat transfixed as the capsule descended those last few feet before settling on the surface of the moon. Wow! Just talking about it still gives me the shivers. It is sad, sad, sad that we were spooked into giving it all up. More than fifty years have passed, and we still haven't made it back to the surface of the moon.

The Seventies 

I was going to stop with the Sixties, but the horror of the Vietnam War should never go unspoken. Or the disgrace of many of our citizens who condemned the men who fought instead of the government officials who sent them into the jungles to fight, die, or return home to be reviled by their own countrymen.

The Vietnam War - Rest in Peace

May God Forgive Us All  & Grant Rest to Our Troops, so many of whom suffered wounds that have lasted a lifetime.

On the Happier Side of the Seventies . . .

Travel - USSR. In the early 70s I traveled 10,000 miles in the USSR, from Moscow to Soviet Central Asia (Uzbekistan & Kazhakstan including the fabled Samarkand), and on to Irkurtsk on Lake Baikal in Siberia, then north by bush plane to Bratsk, almost on the Arctic Circle. And finally, back to St. Petersburg, which was still called Leningrad at that time. 

Travel - Peru.  Only a year or so later, I was off to Peru with a group of Yalies, touring all the best-known archeological sites of the time, including, of course, Machu Picchu. (Where we stayed in the inn directly on site. Just roll out of bed and climb the path to one of the greatest archeological sites in the world—discovered in 1911 by a Yalie, of course.) A year later I went back to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, this time with my husband as I didn't want him to miss these special wonders of Peru.

Finale.  The Sorrowful Seventies gave way to the gaudy hedonism of the Eighties—another diametrical switch, as so frequently happens in history. (And yes, this was the beginning of the Computer Age for the average citizen. I had my first word processor in 1981; PCs with 8 K appeared c. 1982.)

The Seventies do not deserve to be remembered except by historians, and since most of my readers have some recollection of the Eighties, this seems a good place to stop.

Thanks for sticking with these moments of nostalgia. I'll end as did the movie cartoons of my childhood, with Porky Pig saying,

"That's All, Folks!" 

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Featured this week - a Thriller in Need of More Love:

Mention of my trips to Peru reminded me of a favorite book of mine that never caught the attention of most of my readers. Yes, it's more Thriller than Mystery, and about as far from Regency England as you can get, but, hey, Peru is such a great setting, not to mention Europe and good old Florida. So if anyone would like to take a vicarious adventure on the Inca Trail with a Floridian Miss Fixit and an intriguing international colleague . . .

 

Weddings and murder do not mix well. When things begin to go wrong for her family's Fantasy Wedding & Vacation business, trouble-shooter Laine Halliday gets more of a challenge than she bargained for, even with the aid of a mystery man she finds on the Inca Trail in Peru.

Author's Note: Only a few of my Golden Beach books have cross-over characters, but all share the idyllic setting of an actual Gulf Coast community, whose residents would prefer to keep its real name a secret.

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For a link to Blair's website, click here. 

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)