Come Get These Memories of the Sixties

By Nancy McCarthy

Come Get These Memories of the Sixties

My gift to you is the remembering. Life is 99 percent memory and 1 percent now. This book is all about those of you who grew up with me as a teenager in the sixties. It is also specifically about Northwest Detroit and the Isaac Newton Grade School and the Cooley High School kids. It also encompasses a lot of the surrounding area of Detroit.
We were white kids in a middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhood that knew the same teachers and hangouts. We experienced the same times of newswar, racial unrest, space exploration, and the confusion we faced through it all. We could forget about it when we played the music. The Motown Sound, the rock and roll, and the folk music were all about us and the world we lived in.
Come and take a stroll with me through the sixties. Remember the cars, the TV programs, and the people you hung out with. I hope that when you are reading this, you see something of yourself in it. It is a progression through the years and how one girl grew up through that time while experiencing the ups and downs of life and forever searching for the elusive love of her lifethe man of her dreams.
I would imagine that this book would appeal to anyone that lived anywhere during those years and was a teenager. The music was American. We shared it. The cars were American. We shared those and everything else that came to pass during that time.
Maybe todays youth that are interested in history, music, and inspiration will find something of interest here also. As unique as we think we are, we all have a lot in common. We are human, subject to growing and learning every day.
Thank you to those who played roles in the history of this story, and thank you to my family and friends who have encouraged me over the years to write a book. Well, here it is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503593381

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Copyright © 2015 by Nancy McCarthy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/14/2015

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One 1960, He’ll Have to Go by Jim Reeves

Chapter Two 1961, Tossin’ and Turnin’ by Bobby Lewis

Chapter Three 1962, I Can’t Stop Loving You by Ray Charles

Chapter Four 1963, Fingertips Part 2 by Little Stevie Wonder

Chapter Five 1964, I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles

Chapter Six 1965, I Can’t Help Myself by the Four Tops

Chapter Seven 1966, The Ballad of the Green Berets by Barry Sadler

Chapter Eight 1967, Light My Fire by the Doors

Chapter Nine 1968, Baby, Now That I’ve Found You by the Foundations

Chapter Ten 1969, I Can’t Get Next to You by the Temptations

PREFACE

W e all wonder what the purpose is that we are put on this earth. Is it to achieve some great, life-changing event, discovery, or invention? Maybe it is a moment in time to assassinate an evil entity that has caused horrible terror and pain to people. Perhaps to live a life that sets a great example for those of us to follow. Most of us aren’t sure of what it is we are supposed to be doing. It’s hard to imagine that some of us are just fluff, minor agents in the really important stuff of life. Maybe we have had a walk-through part that has slightly influenced one of the major agents at work in the world. I have always believed that there is some important role I am supposed to be playing, nothing earth-shattering or even newsworthy but possibly very important to people that my life has touched. Now that I’m older, I’m even surer of this, which leaves me wondering why some things have happened to me in my life. A grand plan or just incidental? Only God knows, which brings up a lot of other purpose questions.

It does seem to have a lot to do with the music. Either we pick it by our favorites, or it shapes us with its sound and lyrics. It confirms who we think we are. We all must have a lot of the same questions and thoughts on life; you can tell by the arts. We can go to a gallery and see an abstract that reflects our mood, or we can read a book and think of ourselves in that situation. The real thing for me is the music. It either reflects my mood or makes choices for me. I can still hear the music. It is like having a diary on a jukebox in my head.

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all the musicians and singers of all the incredibly great music of the sixties. It sparks our memories and evokes sentiment of all the times of our lives. Other generations have their music as well, but for those of us that were teenagers in the sixties, we shared our lives with you, and we learned to live and love and recuperate from lost love in the sounds of the times that you provided. It helped us to forget about some of the bad things that were going on and to embrace those things that worked to make the United States the greatest place on earth. It was the backdrop of our lives. Thanks for the memories.

CHAPTER ONE

1960, He’ll Have to Go by Jim Reeves

I think it is important for all of us to know that this decade started out with Emily Post dying. This is probably what killed her. We embraced bad attitudes, terrible behaviors, horrible fashion, and the music. What more could I say? Who else could we blame? Poor Emily. Where could you go from a background of Lady and the Tramp in the 1950s to Psycho in 1960? We went from Harriet Nelson on TV to women’s rights to not being housewives. There were guys like Elvis singing songs like It’s Now or Never that might have started the sexual revolution. John Kennedy and the whole Camelot thing were a big boost to the younger set, and they did get into office and made huge history. Jackie got Emily Post right, but the rest of us? Not so much. We wanted women’s rights, racial equality, and to be ourselves, whoever that was, not who Emily told us to be.

The upcoming sixties decade brought changes to most of what we believed about family, religion, business, and politics. As personal freedom expanded, marriage took a serious hit. The sexual revolution and the new drug culture made young people shrink from the possibility that someone was always watching them, so church lost popularity. The economy expanded as people bought more cars and stuff that needed a second income to support. Women picked up part-time and even full-time work and then, to the thrill of business, had more to spend in the stores. Politics? We elected the youngest (inexperienced?) Catholic guy we could find and then headed through the sixties with assassination, uprisings, sit-ins, and war. It affected me and my family as I am sure it affected you.

But it was really mirrored by the music and the huge business it became. On January 25, in Washington, DC, the National Association of Broadcasters reacted to the payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accepted money for playing particular records. I did not care.

In February, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworths lunch counter. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggered many similar nonviolent protests throughout the southern United States, and six months later, the original four protesters were served lunch at the same counter. That bothered me a little, but what could I do?

Wild One by Bobby Rydell, that’s who Jean turned into. Or maybe Devil or Angel by Bobby Vee. You decide. It was a great time to be a teenager!

The life expectancy in February of 1960 was 69.7 years old, but I had just turned thirteen and, like every teenager, was hooked on rock and roll and thought I was immortal. We were all about the music since the fifties when rock and roll started. Because I had a brother that was five years older than I was, I had already been exposed to Bill Haley and His Comets and Elvis. I loved it all, especially Chuck Berry. When Maybellene hit the radio in 1955 (much to my mother’s dismay), I knew all the words and could sing it as fast as he did. I had every album he recorded by the early sixties. Whether it was country, rock, or movie music, it shaped our lives, set our moods, and twanged our personalities, and at thirteen, I was on the cutting edge.

Among My Souvenirs by Connie Francis

On my birthday, we had a nice dinner with a birthday cake. Mom always baked great cakes, pies, and cookies. She was a Betty Crocker generation girl. It was a Wednesday, so not a big deal over being thirteen, but then Mom never made a big deal over birthdays other than baking a cake. At least this year, I didn’t have to be embarrassed to death by opening a gift and finding bras and a garter belt and nylons. Oh, and a sanitary belt, even though it had all come in very handy in the past year. This year, there was a big box in the dining room that was gift wrapped so I had no clue as to what it was. There were smaller boxes too, so probably one from all members of the family, Mom and Dad, Adam and Martin. The suspense was killing me.

I paced looking out the window to the street, waiting for the car to appear. Finally, I heard Dad’s car pull up in the driveway, home from work. He always looked so tired when he came home. We didn’t bother him too much with anything right away. He wore his gray work jacket and pants with an open-collar white shirt. Mom had bought him a big, heavy three-quarter-length gray coat, but I don’t remember him wearing it. Dad was a foreman at a company that made and installed huge factory furnaces. Mom always said he was important where he worked, and it sometimes made him sick. I waited for him to get his coat off and settle into his chair and light a cigarette. He looked at me expectantly because I was standing there, waiting.

It’s my birthday today, Dad, I said, because maybe he forgot.

Yep! Happy birthday, Cookie, he replied.

I got a birthday card with a handkerchief in it from Grandma. I showed him the card and hanky.

That was nice of her, huh? Dad said with his slight Scottish accent, which wasn’t nearly as strong as his mother, Grandma Robertson’s.

I thought that Grandma sent all the kids cards with hankies but later discovered that that wasn’t true. As an adult, I learned not to say to my twenty other cousins that I received cards, gifts, and letters from her because I was the only one, I think, and I have treasured them. I thought I was Grandma’s favorite, maybe because they had lived with us so much while I was young. My mother always told everyone that Adam was Gram’s favorite, but I knew better.

Let me read the newspaper here before dinner, okay?

That was my dismissal to leave him sitting behind the paper with a thin trail of smoke rising up behind it.

Mom called out and asked me to look after Martin so she could finish dinner. I took him in the back bedroom and found some toys to entertain him with. He was the cutest kid. He resembled Spanky from the TV program The Little Rascals and laughed just like him. He was pretty good-natured and easy to take care of. After my brother Donald, who was eighteen months younger than me, Mom waited eight years to have another baby. Donald had been born severely impaired, and Mom had him made a ward of the state and put in an institution when he was four. They called him retarded. He only had the mental capacity of a baby and was always in diapers and lying in bed. There were a lot of difficult feelings regarding Donald; I had loved him so much. It was all somewhat eased up in the family by Martin’s arrival. He was perfect—smart, healthy, and very happy. And spoiled. You couldn’t help it. At night, someone had to sit with him in the bedroom till he fell asleep. Every night, I sang him to sleep. I had always sung to my brother Donald too. His favorite was the song from the TV show The Mickey Mouse Club. I don’t think I had a great voice, but they must have liked it. Donald would hold my hand and rub my fingers. He did that till he was sixteen. The music sparked a memory for him, I think. My singing wasn’t anywhere near as good as Adam’s.

I could hear my brother Adam playing his guitar in the basement. He was a natural, everyone said. He could pick up any song he heard on the radio right away on the guitar. He was playing Running Bear by Johnny Preston, one of my favorites, but he would never ask me to sing with him. There was a five-year difference between him and me, and although I loved him—almost worshiped him—I also had a healthy fear of him. He played with a group of guys from church and anytime anyone asked him to. He was the family Elvis, Pat Boone, and Frank Sinatra all in one. It would be years before we came to be on the same page as brother and sister. We lived in different worlds. We had a picture taken of Adam, Martin, and me in front of the fireplace that year, and we were spitting images of each other. Same color or light brown hair, same face shape, and same smile.

An hour later, Mom must have had an instinct as to when it was okay to tell him dinner was ready. She called out to us that we should come to the kitchen. There wasn’t an awful lot you could do to arrange furniture in the kitchen. The end of the table was against the wall, and Dad sat by the wall with Mom next to him. Adam sat across the table from Dad, and I sat across from Mom. Martin was still in a high chair at the end of the table so Mom and I could help him with his food. He wouldn’t turn three until next month, March. We were having my favorite, spaghetti and meatballs. Our dinners were always very quiet, with little talking. Dad didn’t like conversation at the dinner table. He said he couldn’t digest his food with a lot of noise going on. Mom and Adam were the only ones that got away with talking. Maybe my voice was irritating.

You Got What It Takes by Marv Johnson

Adam would be graduating from high school in June and had been on the varsity football team. We were all very proud of him. Even though he had bullied, teased, and harassed me through my childhood, I still worshipped him and worried about his welfare. If, on a rare occasion, the perfect son got into trouble, I would worry that he would get the belt from Dad as he did years ago when we lived on the lake. It had been a mistake then and never happened again. There was talk now that he might get a scholarship to college for football, as his team had gone to the city championships in the fall. He and Mom talked, almost in a whisper, about the mail he had received.

What was the envelope from Idaho University about, Adam? Mom asked.

It said they are considering me for a position on their team in the fall this year and would like me to come and see their campus, Adam said without looking up from his plate.

Is that how that happens? They have you come out to Idaho? Do they pay for the trip? Mom questioned.

I don’t know, Mom, and I don’t know if I want to go all the way to Idaho. I don’t even know what classes I would want to take, Adam replied.

Dad didn’t look up or join into the conversation.

Adam had not been a high–grade point average student in school. His crowning glory was football. I don’t know if Dad was disappointed because he had gone to Cass Tech when he got here from Scotland and then had gone on to the technical college. My uncles always bragged about how smart their youngest brother, Don, was. I don’t remember either Mom or Dad criticizing Adam for his academics. He was such an exemplary son. How could they? But I think Adam was concerned about even getting a scholarship to college and having to keep up his grades. I thought he was capable of anything and everything. I’m just not sure he did.

Finally, dinner was finished, the candles were lit, the song was sung, and the cake and ice cream were eaten. Mom and I cleaned up the kitchen, and I finally got to open my gifts.

I grabbed the biggest box and ripped the birthday paper off it. I got a record player. I was so happy! It was a big, gray portable box with a hinged lid and a handle. I also got a record case to hold maybe twenty-five of the forty-five RPM Records and a sweater from Mom and a new purse from Martin. Dad gave me money and took me to a record store in Redford a few days later to buy records for my new phonograph.

It was not a long ride from our house, but I remember it well. The record store was at Seven Mile and Grand River. I didn’t spend a lot of time with my dad, especially alone. He was most often at work or asleep on the couch. The window was always open partway in the car because he smoked, which meant the person in the passenger or backseat always had a cold draft. He had never sat in those places that I knew of, so he probably didn’t know that. No one would ever consider telling or even asking him to close the window; he was the boss. When we got to the record shop, he sat in the car outside, waiting for me, listening to the radio, and smoking. He was probably listening to a talk show or hockey, but Mom says he liked music, and maybe that’s why he took me to the store that day.

When I opened the door to the record store, I heard He’ll Have to Go by Jim Reeves playing on the overhead speakers. I could see people in the little soundproof booths listening to music. Some had faraway looks in their eyes while some of the girls had their heads back and their eyes closed, lost in the music. I never worked up the nerve to go into a booth, but I always wanted to. It seemed like I was not old enough or not cool enough or something. I found the top 100 hits and started going through the racks, finding Running Bear by Johnny Preston, Teen Angel by Mark Dinning, and I’m Sorry by Brenda Lee. All the music was about finding love and losing love; that’s all we were about in those days. My reverie was broken by the door dinging every time someone walked into the store, and it dinged often. Every person in that record store was looking for that special artist or song that defined who they were. Mine were all love songs.

The movies of the day echoed the same thing. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and then they make up and get married and live happily ever after. The King and I from 1956 with Yul Brynner was one of my favorites. I imagined myself as Deborah Kerr, the nanny to the king. In the privacy of my bedroom or the basement, I would put on a full dress of Mom’s and waltz around with my invisible Yul, laughing and singing with my head tossed back and my mouth open in a silent laughter. That movie also nourished my desire to be a teacher. I would line up all my dolls and read them stories. To be a nanny to