The 1960's  

School, The Navy, Marriage, Marriage.  

What can you say about the sixties? Busy, busy, busy.  Got out of high school and went into the Navy just in time for the "Beach Boys" era.  I was stationed in southern California most of the time.  As a New Yorker, I shied away from the beach scene.  

While I was in the Navy, most others my age were in their driveways under their cars, or taking something to be "chromed."  I wasn't into that.  I spent the early sixties on the "black" side of a small California town.   Port Hueneme (pronounced WHY-NEE-MEE) had maybe 5000 residents.  It's a "Navy" town due to the fact that there are 2 Naval Bases right there - the Seabee base and Point Mugu (the Pacific Missile Range.)  Right next door is Oxnard, California.  (1963 pop. 40,000)  And then there was Oxnard Air Force Base (a SAC base) right outside of town.  They have a railroad track that divides the town in half just like in the movies.  Here, you can actually be from the wrong side of the tracks!

Across town there was dancing and there were women!  That's all I needed to have a good time.  I learned to 'smoke' all over again!  There was no war yet.  The racial unrest which characterized the 60's was only just starting.  In 1962 I spent a weekend in Watts (before the riots) attending a friend's sister's wedding at a Baptist church.  This was my first Baptist church experience.  I stayed over for the night at the home of a black friend.  As a picky eater, I would never even think of experimenting with someone else's eggs.   But, at breakfast, his mother served me before I could say a polite "no thanks".  That was my very first encounter with "over-easy" eggs.  I ate them that way for the rest of my life!  

For me there never was a Viet Nam war.  I was out and a "veteran" by the time they started shooting real bullets.