Friday, November 21, 2014

What I know about 1960

JFK was president  The Cold War, it was happening.  We sent the first of our U.S. troops to Vietnam. The Sexual Revolution, it had begun.  The Flintstones cartoon premiered.  Chubby Checker introduced us to the Twist.  France developed their own atomic bomb.  We were still 41 years away from 911.  And three days before Thanksgiving, Marlin and Jeannette welcomed their first baby, a girl.
(She had 10 half-siblings already!)
People didn't do much in the way of family planning back then, obviously.  By the time this photo was taken, my mother had 6 kids, and was on husband #3. My dad had 5 kids that he knew about and another one he did not... In the foreground you can see that either he, or she, was reading the newspaper when he took the photo. In the background you see a dresser that I remember traveled with us to Galveston and lived in my room while I was in high school.  And the subject shows a determined woman of 30, neatly dressed, looking at her new baby, me, with...what expression exactly?  Not happiness. Resignation?  Maybe just the weight of the world around her.





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