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Number One Hits of the Sixties

 

            
            
             The sixties was a decade unlike any other decade in our history.Just what were we thinking, or were we thinking at all? We had just finished the fifties which was full of war, then peace, returning veterans, G.I. Bills, new suburbs, employment boom, baby boom and our cars were decorated with tail fins that competed with one another for style and size. The car boom was on, the baby boom was on, business was booming and there were boom boxes everywhere. (Did you know that the first boombox was invented in 1923?) (The compact disc is now old enough to drink. The first compact disc was turned out by Sony in 1982. If my math is correct, That should make it 21 years old.) It's impossible to imagine President Harding walking around the White House grounds with a boom box on his shoulders.
             Anyway, enough trivia, now back to the sixties. The sixties erupted with the "Age of Aquarius," Camelot and the Flower Child Freedom Movement, freedom of love and a freedom of self-expression in our personal appearance. The hippie movement was upon us, bell bottoms were below us and hair was everywhere on top of us. The sixties could almost be defined as the "Age of Hair." Women wore long hair, women wore short hair and men wore long hair. If a man wore the traditional short haircut, he was pointed to as being square, it was definitely not cool.
             The Age of Camelot and the Kennedy dream team in the White House, came to a halt on a dreary November day, the Great Society took over with civil rights, voting rights and equal opportunity rights. Lady Bird had her great beautification program. Billboards were torn down, limited with new standards, scrap yards were fenced from public view, trees were planted and interstates were spiffed up.
             Stanley Kubrick taught us to "Love the Bomb," Bob Dylan taught us to love one another and Cassius Clay taught us to love poetry.
             The "Age of Aquarius" was the birth of the silent majority, the Newport Folk Festival, Woodstock, I Have a Dream, Altamont, love-ins, sit-ins, love-outs, protests, the Beatles, Presidential debates, hijacking, Etch-A-Sketch, Wal-Mart and man visiting the moon.


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