The Official 60's Site-The Sixties With Eva Pasco

Not Even Oreos Are Sacred
Those of us who grew up in the Sixties loved our Oreos--sweet white creme filling sandwiched between two circular chocolate pieces. Over 491 billion Oreos have been sold since Nabisco's cookie monster debuted in 1912, making it the best selling cookie in the USA.
Once Considered Hip
For Goodness' sake I got the Hippy Hippy Shakes, the contagious lyrics to "Hippy Hippy Shake" written and recorded by Chan Romero in 1959, and made popular by the Beatles in 1963, makes a perfect intro for things once considered hip in the Sixties. It was once considered hip to watch NBC's Hullabaoo (1965-66), a musical variety show for the leading pop acts of the time, and its ABC competition, Shindig, hosted by a different celebrity each week.
Comic Genius
Whenever I became bedridden with bouts of the measles, chickenpox, or influenza, I got hooked on Archie Comics. The Archie Comics is one of the most successful, longest running brands in the history of the comic industry. Its characters were created by publisher/editor John L. Goldwater.
Winter Break
As youngsters across the land rejoice in no more books or teacher’s dirty looks, I look back to my own winter breaks during my childhood of the Sixties at a five room ranch in the picturesque country setting on Angell Rd. Bearing in mind that video games, DVD players, and computers were not at our fingertips to fritter away the time, allow me to escort you through a typical winter vacation of one week duration.
Sweet on Valentine's Day
In the 1960s when Baby Boomers were coming of age, and many aspired to the notion that marriage could be put off in order to enjoy the single life, it was a "swinger's" paradise, attested by singles apartment complexes springing up, starting in California.
In My Shoes
As a youngster in the Sixties, stepping out into the world in my shoes, I have a fond recollection of having worn and worn out a few pairs of brown and white saddle Oxfords. Since I wore them to school, my mother frequently applied white shoe polish to the leather to keep them groomed.
The Early Sixties Moments
In the early Sixties I’d approached double digit birthdays. During those brief interludes where my nose wasn’t serially immersed inside a Nancy Drew mystery, I enjoyed other relatively sedentary activities.
Saturday Morning Jammies Session
During the Sixties we sure got a lion’s share of "sugar, sugar" shored on each heaping tablespoon shoveled from of our bowls: Fruit Loops—who can forget Toucan Sam, the mascot for loopy loops. Alpha-Bits—"Loveable Truly," the mailman character on the box; my sister and I would slurp the milk from our spoon and spill the letters onto the table, seeing what words we could form.
Talkin bout My Generation
I’m talkin’ 'bout Dick and Jane reading series: I’m talkin’ 'bout those elementary school days of reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic when we sat behind our desks, part of the straight-and-narrow row, a strategic plan so we’d be visible to our teacher who clearly ruled the roost and didn’t put up with any shenanigans.
Eddie, Keesa me Goo' Night
During the 60s, Topo Gigio made more than fifty appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show aired live 8-9 p.m. EST from CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York City, renamed The Ed Sullivan Theater on the occasion of the program's 20th anniversary.
Sixties Reminiscing the Missing
At 11:59 p.m. on December 31st, millions of people around the world will focus on the Waterford Crystal Times Square New year's Eve Ball as it begins its descent. In the span of a minute, we are in suspension, about to cross over time's threshold into a nebulous area of hope, challenges, and dreams.
The Ghost of Christmas Past - Sixties Past
Ebenezer Scrooge’s memorable, miserable, miserly line, “What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer” subsequently rattled Marley’s chains and provoked ghostly visits conjuring up the past, present, and future. I am whisking up the Ghost of Christmas Past-- Sixties Past
March of the Retro Toys
Just as we’d dashed through the snow o’er the hills of adolescence in the Sixties, my sister and I entertained visions of sugarplums in anticipation of the toys we wanted for Christmas.
Hi Yo Silver
Tunneling through the tinsel toward Christmases past, Sixties past, Agent Orange collides with Elivs’s “Blue Christmas.” The early Sixties embraced all things futuristic, and Christmas was no exception. Hi-Yo, Silver!
Cry Fowl-Foul
The Contaminated Canned Cranberry Caper
Just a year shy of the Sixties, on November 9, 1959 when I was an impressionable eight year old--The Contaminated Canned Cranberry Caper cowered me. You see, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that some cranberries grown in Oregon and Washington State had been found contaminated with aminotriazole, a weed killer found to cause cancer in rats.
Light My Fire
The season of autumn stirs such homespun nostalgia for the colorful foliage on trees aligning the neighborhood streets, dipping apples in caramel, baking pumpkin pies, raking, and ultimately disposing of knee deep leaves surrendered by those mighty oaks.
Taxidermy Twist
My own childhood twist of the macabre did not involve scary hay rides or stepping inside the likes of the Munster Mansion on 1313 Mockingbird Lane, but rather a Taxidermy Twist into a shop where animals are skinned, tanned, and placed over a polyurethane form.
Dancing Squarely
In the US, instructions were enclosed with every record sold: "Imagine you are stubbing out a cigarette with both feet whilst drying your back with a towel." Meantime, while I was in junior high, I dried my back with a towel after showering at the conclusion of gym.
The Western
I'm not whisking a Western omelet, praising the Best Western hotel chain, or stirring up tumbleweeds of sensitivity and sentimentality between two friends vis a vis BrokebackMountain. Instead, a big howdy to those major network "smoking guns" of the Sixties where you could spot the good guys by their white cowboy hats.
Roll Over Beethoven
Chuck Berry's 1956 hit recorded by the Beatles in 1963 for their British LP, With the Beatles, and released in the US of 1964 for the opening track of The Beatles' Second Album got ”My temperature risin" and me "Rollin' in arthritis," a Baby Boomer out of joint from what's been rollin' down the pike since the Sixties faded.
A Buck and A Quarter
I recollect inching forward in a line which snaked along the institutional green walls past the the lavatories and boiler room before being deposited inside the cafeteria, an emerald isle of green banquet tables spatially arrayed with napkins and silverware. A team of matronly hair netted cooks in immaculate white uniforms served us behind the kitchen counter,their scoopers raised in the air, ready to dole one or two scoops of sustenance on light plastic plates poised on our trays.
The Melt-Down
During those long hot summers of the Sixties, we'd pile up in the Plymouth Suburban station wagon or one of my dad's restored Bonnie & Clyde mobiles after dinner for a leisurely drive with no particular destination in mind. A prerequisite before takeoff: crank the windows all the way down so the breeze drafted by momentum plastered our hair back from our faces and made our eyes squint.
Big Wheel
My dad who braved snowstorms to get his girls what they wanted for Christmas while we gave Santa all the credit, pulled through again like a reindeer flying through the midnight clear. That Christmas a black Royce Union balanced on its kickstand in the living room.
Bazooka
The Topps Company developed Bazooka Bubble Gum after the end of World War II, its name a derivative of the musical instrument Bob Burns fashioned from two gas pipes and a funnel in the 1930s, as well as the armor-piercing weapon developed during the war. First introduced in 1953, Topps has developed more than 700 comics for the Bazooka Joe series.
Nickel and Dimin' It
In the Sixties, the five-and-dime store on every Main St. morphed into the large discount store you were apt to find in "strip malls" in the burbs, stripped of unique architecture and character, that’s for sure.
You Might Just Be A "Picnik"...
If the evolution-revolution of an anticonformist underground movement in American culture sprung the word "Beatnik," it makes perfect sense to coin the word Picnik in reference to those who sprawl over the ground or sit at a bench to feast on takeout from home.
A Dazzling Fourth
“The Times They Are a Changing” (Bob Dylan)--just one of the many protest or patriotic songs drummed up during the Sixties in response to the Vietnam War. Though times indeed have changed, we Americans salute our country’s 233rd birthday,
The French Connection
My own French Connection occured last period of my junior year at Lincoln Senior High--French III with Miss Bouquet (not her real name, of course). Though I could roll my gutteral r's and sound as though a clothespin pinched my nose when I spoke fluent French, the language did not make the French Connection for me or for the rest of Miss Bouquet's starry-eyed pupils. It was Mademoiselle Bouquet herself--tall, willowy, vivacious, and tres chic.
Red White and Blueberries
The Sixties were an idyllic time when you were more apt than not to sit down to family dinner spread over a red and white checkered tablecloth, feasting on a sumptuous repast of Southern fried chicken, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes smothered in giblet gravy followed by mom's homemade dessert--perchance, blueberry pie.
Dances with Quahogs
Friends of ours had a summer home in Wickford Cove, necessitating we visit during low tide and wait out the tide before leaving because the dirt road winding to their home would disappear. No matter to me because I spent many an adolescent Sixties summer day digging for quahogs, prime time during low tide.
Crescent Park
Nearly every Sixties summer Sunday my dad drove us to Crescent Park--not my choice, but my sister's. Polar opposites, she never got her fill of thrills on the adult rides my father accompanied her on, whereas I was always too chicken to take a ride on the wild side. The Whip and Dodge Ems were more my speed.
At The Ranch
Before you get the notion I'm going to drawl about roping cattle or saddling up at the "Flat Broke Ranch," I'm not steering you there by a longhorn shot. Instead, I'm rustling up a few memories growing up during the Sixties inside a one-level, five room ranch house in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
The Wringer
We live during a time when Ma Bell would have shuddered over how the telephone gave rise to cell phones so technologically advanced as to spawn such aberrant behaviors as "sextexting" nude photos.
Towing The Line
Time to grab a canvas bag filled with clothespins, throw it on top of the load, and let's tow the line...the outdoor clotheslines in our backyards which enabled our neighbors to network throughout the Sixties.
The End of the Line
From "The Wringer" to "Towing the Line," comes "The End of the Line"--a fitting title for the grand finale of our laundry trilogy.
Tisket-a-Tasket Tiki Tacky
A child of the Sixties, my family's celebration of Easter was hard-boiled in traditions. However, Peter Cottontail hopping down our bunny trail and an egg scavenger hunt were not our basket case. That's not to say my parents weren't warm and fuzzy. They just didn't walk on eggshells when it came to fostering a belief in the Easter Bunny, though we never lacked for chocolate marshmallow and solid chocolate bunnies. Ultimately, Easter was to dye for.
SPIN IT and WIN IT
634-5789"...not my telephone number, but a song title whose words were crooned in a raspy voice by Wilson Pickett circa 1965. While 1965 was historically significant for the growing Anti-War movement; civil unrest with rioting, looting, and arson; the first year mandated health warnings appeared on cigarette packs; the debut of the mini skirt; the Beatles' release of four new albums including Help...I became a winner!
DIVISION 10
The year 1969 has afforded me much to write about, allowing me to revisit my year as a freshman at Rhode Island College yet once more. The summer prior to, my mother bequeathed me her '66 blue Chevy Nova coupe fully loaded, undoctored save for my touch of baby moon hubcaps. The price for regular gasoline was $.35 per gallon in '69
Those Oldies But Goodies
Peering down Memory Lane of the Sixties, I see "those oldies but goodies" delivered right to our door in the neighborhood sticks.
Requiem for Mom & Pop Stores
Before my family moved into our custom-built home in Lincoln, we lived in a tenement for a few months. This temporary lodging happened to be practically right next door to Walker's Market on the corner of Douglas and Mineral Spring Avenue. Hard to believe this barn red clapboard structure had aisles wide enough to stroll a shopping cart.
A Few of My Favorite Things
Rodgers&Hammerstein's timeless lyrics of brown paper packages tied up with strings prompted a seasonal memory jog to dredge up a few of my favorite things. Mind you, as 1960 rolled down the living room carpet where our Christmas tree stood in front of the picture window, I was a 9 year old--one of those girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes. This disclosure alone should prove illuminating as any jaunty gold star placed on the pinnacle of a tree.
A Graveyard Smash
Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers' "Monster Mash" caught on in a flash with its release in 1962. You might say Pickett's Transylvanian twist was a blood tansfusion infused by his father, a theater manager, who distilled in his son a love of horror films.
A Senior Moment
The year 1969 is most memorable to me as my last year at Lincoln Senior High, and the start of my freshman year at Rhode Island College. Though I can now appreciate the challenging spirit of the Sixties, you might say it eluded me while living through the decade.
A Sixties Summer
Who would have thought a metal folding chair would impact my recollection of Summer in the 60s? That's right...a cold, shallow, beige chair with a set of jaws to spawn its own macabre tale
Fra-Gee-Lay
Perhaps more memorable to me than Ralphie's Daisy Red Ryder BB gun in A Christmas Story (1983), is that bizarre leg lamp, so evocative of nylon stockings during the sixties. Fragile or Fra-Gee-Lay, are what they were.
Home Ick
Spiraling down Jefferson Airplane's Go Ask Alice when she's ten feet tall looking glass of the sixties, I find myself winding along the linoleum corridors, a seventh grader at Lincoln Junior High.
Lickin' 'o the Green
Though there will always be spills in "Aisle 2" of our nation's supermarkets, B.B. King's '69 song title spills all: The Thrill is Gone...the thrill of collecting and hording S&H Green Stamps.
M-m-m, Burgers
As hamburger prices increased anywhere from 45 - 55 cents, we ventured to the Hillsgrove section of Warwick, Rhode Island where the first burger joint selling beef on a bun for 15 cents took a stand-- Burger Chef. This new fast food establishment's meagre offerings included: burgers already prepared with mustard, ketchup, and onions; fries; Coke; vanilla shakes.
The Bubble Flip
One of the popular hairdos of the Sixties decade was that of the Bubble Flip--no simple undertaking indeed! In order to achieve the "look," serious commitment was a major requirement.
A Riveting Revolution
Since the Sixties were a prime time of protest against the Vietnam War, and advocation of equal rights be they Gay, Student, or Civil--why not equality for women while we were at it? Empowered Daughters of the Riveters revolted against male supremacy in a capitalistic society where discrimination in wages and promotions ran rampant.
A Tribute to Twiggy
Twiggy allowed me to become a trendsetter my freshman year of high school. While most of my teen peers were ironing their long hair straight after the Beatles made landfall in America, it became Greaser passe for me to backcomb or rat tease my hair to dizzying heights.
Auld Lang Syne 1969
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Not 1969…the year which closed the lid on the Sixties without smothering its cultural revolution. 1969 rose to prominence as the year I graduated high school during a time students were tracked as college prep, business, or "generally lost."
Day Trippin'
My fondest recollections growing up in the Sixties settle upon those day trips taken during my father's two-week summer vacation. Thinking back, it was hardly a vacation for my parents. My mom would load the picnic cooler with utensils and food staples road-ready for my father to cook on the portable stove at a campground enroute to our destination
Fallout from the Sixties
As a child growing up in the Sixties, the Cold War was as palpable a dark cloud as the mushroom blast over Hiroshima. StilI fresh in my mind are clips of Nikita Kruschev banging his shoe on a lecturn while delivering the line, "We will bury you!"
How I Spent My Sweet Sixteenth Summer Vacation
In 1967, I took my first job under the umbrella of summer temp. Capitol Heel Lining occupied a large part of the old Wanskuk Mill complex on Branch Avenue, Providence. Like an aging sage, the mill's wisdom trickled through those walls to teach me lessons in life I've never forgotten.
Judy, Judy, Judy...
The price of a first class postage stamp in 1960 was 4 cents; school bus drivers did not run the gauntlet of background checks prior to getting hired; no one made a big deal out of things where it concerned children--perhaps they should have; people in the boonies opened their door after dark when they heard a knock...and, most importantly, Judy deserved a citation for using her head...
Love Love Love
The Beatles spearheaded the British Invasion by wanting to hold our hand, loving us yeah yeah yeah, and assuring us all we need is love. However, a honey-toned, Brazilian chanteuse named Astrud Gilberto who made her professional singing debut with "The Girl from Ipanema" in 1963, bossa novaed love in the proper perspective as the daring decade of the Sixties emerged. Her quavery voice subtely and realistically bemoaned the complexity of love hitherto hushed behind closed bedroom doors of the conservative fifties.
My Scoop on Alley Oop
"There's a man in the funny papers we all know"--Alley Oop, the comic strip caveman created by V.T. Hamlin in 1932. This Stone Age, though not stoned, Neanderthal was immortalized in 1960 through the screwball lyrics sung by the Hollywood Argyles-- really Gary Paxton with a multitrack solo since he was already under contract with another label as "Flip" of "Skip and Flip."
On The Cusp
So, in spirit, our nation's 44th prez is not quite a boomer though he's not your sterotypically cynical Gen Xer either. That puts him on the cusp... 1969 was a pivotol year on the cusp of ending the counter-cultural Sixties while approaching the oppositional Seventies. That same year I became a freshman at Rhode Island College , embarking on an intellectual journey driven by idealism. During September's inaugural convocation held inside Roberts Hall, I bonded with fellow classmates, strangers who paired by chance on the auditorium's stage. I happened to lock hands with a lanky, longhaired dude named Dennis. We swooned to the Youngbloods’ lyrical illusion of idealism: :
The Christmas Conspiracy
During the Capitol years 1962-65, our ultimate all American summer band, the Beach Boys, produced their hit holiday singles, "The Man with all the Toys" and "Little Saint Nick." I had believed in Santa Claus up until 1961, a youngster hanging onto visions of sugar plums while practically sledding into a double digit year.
The Fantastic Umbrella Factory
Where have all the Hippies gone? A native Rhode Islander, one of my favorite places to visit along the coast was The Fantastic Umbrella Factory, a small farm with a cluster of drafty, dilapidated, and musty barns owned by Hippies.
The Hippie Movement's Drift on Fragrance
A lifelong fragrance afficionado who flits from one femme fatale fume to another to achieve an olfactory high, my hip hip hurray to the Hippie Movement's profound influence on "smelling good" is long overdue.
The Locomotion of Lava Lamps
Though I've yet to possess a lava lamp, I've always been meaning to. Its unpredictable kaleidoscopic fluidity never fails to capture and hold my attention. The lamp's resurgence in popularity from its limelight during the sixties heats up the locomotion all over again.
Two Backseat Barbarians
I shake my head and marvel how any of us children of the Sixties could have turned out fine as I mind travel down my own memory lane...
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
The Sixties were a time when "going green" implied "tis the season to put up your Christmas tree." We weren't privy to the tagging and cutting traditions of tree farms, or inquisitive about their pest management/soil conservation practices. We hadn't given a fleeting thought to recycling through composting, chipping, or muching either.
Zapruder Effect
JFK's assassination and the sequence of events to follow would leave imprints in our minds impervious to heat, moisture, or chemical breakdown--the Zapruder Effect.

The Sixties With Eva Pasco

Author of "Underlying Notes"

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