the rix mix

I recall the comparisons with Eisenhower & Nixon; Kennedy's youth & vitality, good looks, TV presence, intellect. With a Republican dad setting the tone at home, Kennedy was not greeted with enthusiasm. JFK was a child of privilege, & Joseph Kennedy, Sr. had a terrible rep - there was no romanticizing him. The New Frontier & Camelot stuff didn't make much of an  impression on me. I disliked the folk music thing happening at the time - a lot of words & silly people playing banjos  Most rock & roll was pretty crappy. I wasn't looking forward to being a teenager.

The few years between Kennedy's Inauguration & assassination were  a period of transition for me - I  entered  puberty. & when I came though that passage, Kennedy was gone & the Beatles were here.

Despite television, rock & roll, baby boomers, the spread of suburbia, & the civil rights movement, 1960 probably wasn't all that different from 1950 for most middle-class Americans, & there was good reason to expect the Sixties would flow by in the same more-or-less orderly manner - just a torch being passed. By 1970, much about America was unrecognizable to me, I didn't like it.