The world today is as far removed from 1961 as it was removed from 1901 in 1961. I know that in 1961 I considered 1901 to be almost B.C.

I was 5 years old. I didn't know there was a 1901, or a 1961 either.

Been here since the mid forties. Yeah, things are different now.

I was 6, did not know much then.

I was 11, and it is a far different world

I just showed up in 1961, August to be more specific.

It seems like another world, far, far away that time forgot. Except I do remember duck tails and bee hive hair
Hairdos..😊

I remember 1961. I was 15 that year and learned to drive a stick car, my father's 1961 Ford Falcon. I couldn't wait to get my license. Yes, the world was very different from today. The last surviving Civil War veteran died in 1959 and there were lots of WW 1 veterans around in 1961. The "War" - World War II - was a recent memory. I read a lot of books written by veterans, mostly fliers.

I wish I had written down all the stories I heard from old folks, and wish I had asked my relatives born in Eastern Europe in the 1800s about their lives there.

My uncle, born in 1903, bought a house in the 1930s built by a Civil War veteran when he came back from that conflict. It stands today, and I used to play in the old post and beam barn, which stood on the banks of the Morris Canal.

Now I'm one of those old folks.

I was 1 years old but over the years it's been a steady decline from what it was like in the 70's and even the 80's were better than today's time.

I showed up in 1961 as well, in April.

Take me back to 1961. Keep it there forever. No more of this modern day BS. Society has regressed into a cesspool.

I was around in 1961 but don't remember much as mom and I were still in the first trimester.

It wasn't all rosy back then. Back then, air raid drills had meaning.

1961/ yup.

I was two years old. If you were trying to cheer us old timers up, you failed...

I been re-watching the PBS series "Downton Abbey." It deals with a British family Matron, her children, and grandchildren pre and post WW1. The Matron and her children were from the Victorian era and lived currently Edwardian era. They are born with titles and live in Downton Abby, a 17th Century mansion, with a Butler, Lady's maid, Valet, Cook, Footmen, etc. After WW1 many of these old houses had to be sold because there were not enough people willing to serve and so much opportunity in private business. Very interesting. For those of us who grew up under Eisenhower, Nixon, Regan, Limbaugh and Trump, we have seen our country and it's culture spiral down the toilette. I have no hope of seeing a meaningful return to the old fashioned American values and culture of my grandparents (Edwardian era in America) and my Parents, born post WW1.

Two things I remember about 1961. It snowed 6 inches and Hurricane Carla.

From the year 1961.

It wasn't all an arm full of roses and a basket of kittens, The cold war was in full swing and Vietnam was smoldering. But, you could buy a can of Budweiser beer for .25 cents if you were 21 ... which i was.

L.W.

I was 23 & graduated college in 1961. Seen decades of change, but nothing even close to this current bullshit!!!

I was at a Boys' Ranch in lieu of Reform School.
A good experience..

I turned into a teenager in '61. Different times for sure, and still changing. I'd like to say for the better , but worse seems to be the trend.

I beat you by 6 months - Feb '61 for me.

1961, I remember it well. wish i didn't. Rio7

I thought it said 1861, I was gonna see what Ingwe thought.......

I arrived in the early part of Jan. '61 But I don't remember much...

Dale

I was senior in h.s. I knew everything. A year later I didnt. Back then I believed in government. Now I believe nothing that comes from a politician. Then I had hope for the futue. I still do, in Christ. For the country, I grieve.

1961 appears the same upside down. A buddy posted a picture on his website on April 1, of a 1961 penny he held upside down. He asked what is an upside down stamped penny worth?



Some fell for it!

Holy cow, I thought I was old, I was only 11 in sixth one!

Just for you.

In 1961 we were still America.

Was 10 years old then. Pretty much been down hill for the USA, since then.

I was five that year growing up on the Texas gulf coast. One of my earliest vivid memories was Hurricane Carla from September of 1961. The most intense recorded hurricane to make landfall. Anyone else remember her?

Carla

I didn’t come until early in ‘65...but is damn sad to read the responses here. The country is in Gods hands...it is likely reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah to Him.

I was 10 years old in 1961. Somewhere about that year I sold Christmas cards from some mail order company. Sold enough Christmas cards to earn a brand new Marlin 22 rifle. They sent it to me in the mail. I often think back and reflect on how things have changed. Not for the better.

Apt analogy.
Well said.
Sadly.

Oct. 10 for me. I feel like I lived through about the best period of America and am now watching it go down the toilet.

Remember ‘61 fairly well.

1961 - 23 years old, senior college year, our first daughter was born in May, and we were confident that a full and rewarding future lay before us. It did. Our world was full of opportunities, we were glad to leave PA and go far west, and made the most of the freedom to grow and be good at what we chose to do. There were no doubts abut our country and very few about our government back then. We were willing to take calculated and sensible risks to develop our careers and create opportunities for our girls. In retrospect, it was glorious.

Having experienced all of those blessings and rewards in a lifetime, it is amazing that- today - our government seems to be one of the biggest threats to freedom and the hope for a rich and rewarding future for our grand kids and little great ones. The sense of community with common values and goals, the confidence of what freedom will bring, the social landscape all have tilted and shifted - in a very poor and discouraging manner.

We worked too hard and contributed too much just to arrive at such a frustrating consequence - and we devote a bunch of time trying to figure what is best to do in hope of correction.

I was eating crayons and sticking forks in plugs.

I'd like to hear the rest of that story. Glad it worked out for you. Sometimes hardships instill good virtues in a man.

I've been schooled by the old truck drivers. Takes a man to drive a 1948 Mack coast to coast . Never mind the idiots today

End of May
I remember nothing of 61

I was riding around in Dads bag sommers around cambodia way in '61, i hit dirt in '63, and hell no it isn't the same, when obongo bathed the Capitol in shlt packer colors and they started calling bruce jenner 'her,' i knew we were forever fu-ked!

Feb of 83 for me


Nothing has changed.

Schit...maybe even got more old timey.

Dec 24th 61'

That's because the hi-line is in a time warp..... things don't progress there they regress....

I went 25 yrs between visits and nothing visually changed, literally

I retired from Johns-Manville just a little before that.

I was 10 in 1961 and with my grandfather I went to the Seattle World's fair and saw the space needle.

The space needle is still there. I saw it yesterday, with all the boarded up windows for antifa and BLM

My mom was in middle school

I was 15 in 61 and spent a couple weeks in Oakville Iowa visiting my Dad's mom. 2nd and last time I saw her..I learned what humidity was that summer.

Way too many doors left open there - I'm passing.

Headed out to H.S in my '48'Merc with the 56 Caddy under the hood.. Life was great. $3 in your pocket and you were rich. Gas 25cents a gallon. The drive-in was 50 cents and a hamburger ,fries and coke was 49cents. Hunted and fished on property that now is golf courses and condos. Laughed a bit when the last hurricane came through and flooded out a bunch of the posh homes in those areas. You would think folks would be a bit hesitate to build something in a place labeled on old topo maps as "Alligator Swamp". But what do I know.

Good stuff - I do understand. Some of my best times were driving our 1952 Mack LTL - supercharged big valve Cummins, jake brake, 3x5 double stick, conventional steering and brakes. Driving trucks like that is real work.

1961-First assignment after advanced training-Promoted to PFC

Bruce

I was 14, it was a great time to grow up. Pocket calculators were starting to come in. Slide rules still ruled.
In math they were trying to teach us about binary numbers. We didn't know why and really didn't care.

Mantle/Maris chasing the Babe

AND hurricane Carla

The first year I ever went to an NHRA drag race. The top fuel dragsters were usually above 9 second ET's then, but they smoked the tires almost to the finish line, fun to watch.

Vietnam and Cuba were in the news a lot.

My buddy and I shot his dad's .264 Win. mag. with a scope. The first year I had shot a rifle with a scope, it was a Redfield if remembering correctly.

It was the first year I went to a Mexican border town.

I was working in a grocery store after school and on weekends trying to save money to buy a used car when I got my license. Life seemed good from my perspective.

September for me. I was always one of the youngest in my class at school.

I was six years away from the draft watching Vietnam on TV news every night.

The world was very different then. The old neighborhoods in Chicago were pretty much segregated by nationalities. Germans, Poles, Italians. Being a first generation American it was great to hear stories of the old countries and why they came to America. The love of America and their fierce patriotism was remarkable. My folks came from Germany and my father and both of his brothers all fought against the Germans in WWII. There was no German-Americans in my family. Calling them a hyphenated American would get you, at the least, verbally abused.

Boy, did we eat good back then! Everyone had a mother or grandmother from the "old country" who made everything from scratch.

Most everyone went to church back then and that is where I see a huge difference in America today. Morality seems to be a forgotten idea and the country is reaping what has been sown.

I was 12 in 1961 and every single adult male I knew had served in the Second World War. A couple had been in Korea also. I remember them talking about where they had been—what they had done—with lots of funny stories about $hit that happens in the military. Nobody talked about Korea—I remember I thought that strange.
I remember one old neighbor pulled out his wallet and showed a group of guys a 3-day pass from Fort Riley, Kansas issued in 1917. Sittin around a fire listening to the foxhounds that ole guy got first pull on the jug—outta respect.

Born in 36, I'ts hell out there. ROADTRIP

I was 2 years old and we lived in a small 2 family house. I remember the owner worked nights and we weren’t allowed to make any noise during the day.

Same here... The 60s, IMHO, were good times (except for high school)...

Late 60's sucked. This country starting changing about that time.

I was 3, running around barefoot at the base of table mountain in Golden, Colorado. Red ants and clover were not my friend back then!

Yep. Scary. I was alive for the second half of '61.

I was nine, better time back then.

I was 3 years old, I remember when President Kennedy was shot in 63.

I remember both. I was a huge Mickey Mantle fan.

I was 6. Mother was sick alot with cancer about that time. She did make it. Brothers and sister were a lot older than me so hung out with the friend across the road. It was good on the farm in Iowa.

I was 4, times sure changed. And Not for the better.

I graduated high school in 1961. I took a job in a greenhouse /tree nursery for $20/week.Dawn to Dusk,6 days a week.Bought a 49 Plymouth coup for $50. Not the best of times. Later ,I started as an apprentice wiring houses for $1 an hour. I thought I was rich. That didn't last long as business slowed so I volunteered for the Air Force figuring I would serve in Vietnam. Damn government wouldn't take me, I flunked the physical. Things got tougher yet. They definitely were not the good old days

I had a sears roebuck portable transister radio. I was the coolist kid in the whole school.

Graduated grade school in '61, then won the Grand American Handicap (Sub Junior) that summer. Besides trap shooting, I was deeply fascinated with rockets and space. And flying. And writing. Those three kinda stuck.

It wasn't all 19-cent gasoline and '57 Chevys, though. Childhood friends had died of polio or scarlet fever. Mumps was rampant, and every kid I knew had contracted both measles and chicken pox. Nuclear war was very much on everyone's mind.

In 1960 they built I 80 through the heart of Idaho.

The state has been rapidly going down the toilet and only accelerating ever since.

Whole world has been accelerating downward sent then.

I was three years into the US Army and shooting with the AMU at Ft. Benning!

I was 12 years old, and living in a place almost exactly like Andy and Mayberry.

That would buy 4 packs of cigarettes or 4 gallons of gasoline in 1961. I was only making $0.65 an hour, I had to buy one tire a week to get a whole new set. Then one of them blew out, they were Armstrong brand, times were sort of difficult on people without experience until they became more established.

I was shooting on Service Rifle Team with AMU at Ft. Benning Ga.

Only 2 years old. I was 15 miles away from a B-52 crash that could have wiped out half the east coast. One of the 2 two h bomb core is still in the ground there. We ran to the basement of the old grade school when the bomb drills went off.

LOL! Was 5 y o. Was watching B-58’s and even still a few B-36’s flying out of Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth!!!

I’ve always thought that B-58 was a good lookin’ aircraft.

It was a bad azz! It was the first program dad worked on at then Convair in Cowtown. Mom and dad moved to Ft. Worth from Austin in ‘54. Mom my sis and I moved back in ‘69.

Two boys down the street from us dad was a B-58 jockey!

Started hunting small game a few miles outside of town about then with my younger brother...We walked down our residential streets with uncased shotguns and no one batted an eye..

I was on top of the world in 1961...just got my drivers license....wheeling around in my 1952 Willys Jeep pickup bought with my own summer earnings. Not much of a hit with the girls in my high school, but that put me right up there in the unpopular kids hierarchy. Old guys sometimes remember things differently from reality...but it seemed to me that everything was easier then. Jobs for kids with no skills were everywhere, seems like money went so much farther then, adults trusted kids to do adult jobs. At 16, I had an employer put me on a TD 18 dozer with a gang disc with 30 minutes training...and he paid me adult wages. At 18, I had a logger give me a chainsaw, 10 minutes of training, 25 gal of gas, a week's groceries..and told me, "I'll be back Friday afternoon, don't hurt yourself, and make your slash piles tight and high." It was the best of times and I was lucky to have lived in that time.

I graduated from high school in 1961. The preceding four
years were certainly some great years.

.. That got me thinking about being an 11 year old in 1961, listening to old folks talk about the early days of cars in the first years of the 20th century. When they were unreliable and expensive and some people actually said they couldn't replace the horse for reliability and cost factors. Nowadays when I hear folks bad mouth electric cars I think that must have been the type of rhetoric that was going around in the early 20th century about gas powered cars. Then I start to think about how old I am.

My wife was pregnant with our first child in 1961..

Indeed.
And it started in California.

I was 1 year old in 61.
When I was in elementary school there were almost no Mexicans in California.
One or two in my entire school.
In high school I had a friend that lived near a big salt marsh, I'd load up my truck with decoys and my shotgun go to school on Friday and duck hunt all weekend with him.
Today the SWAT Team would take me down for bringing a shotgun on school property.

I graduated high school in 62.

The class ahead of me, 61, are dropping like flies.

Geez Wabi! You know what that means!!!

i was around for about 3 months of it.

Afread so Bob.

I was only 3 but still remember that one. We lived in Bay City. Since then I’ve seen a lot. My study of history and my 63 years of life experience leads me to believe another bad storm is coming and it has nothing to do with weather.

Nothing to fear....

In soooooo many ways , life was exponentially better.
And in some ways it was not.

In 1961, I was 12 and was living in a logging camp on the north fork of the Clearwater river, in Idaho ,in the summer. An idyllic time for a boy. The big choice, each day,was whether I was going to fish the river or the creek. To change things up, I might climb up and pick berries or swim in the log pond. No TV, no phones. Going to town meant a 35 mile drive, over a winding , rough toad, to Pierce. The Lucky Lager truck delivered on alternate Fridays. Times were different for sure. Hard to believe that was sixty years ago. GD

Born in '58, every year before '63 is just a blur of memory. Seems to me that '63 was a sort of watershed year, both for me personally as I became somewhat aware of national events, and for the nation.

As a kid, I would have loved that. Maybe even more as an old guy.

1961 I was celebrating my 21st birthday on Guam, C-54 mechanic with the 79th Air Rescue Squadron at Anderson AFB. Have since been better places.

I saw Bobby Vee at the Old Cobblestone sing this about that time.

i spent a year there one month in 88 or so. can't imagine it was any better in 61.

Eight years old. Remember Micky Mantle, riding bikes, shooting .22s, being in a car wreck with Mom.

Those were simple times indeed. Not a care in the world.

BTW I still have that single shot bolt .22. Remington model 514 Shoots shorts, longs and long rifles. Grandpa gave it to me for Christmas.

this is a good topic for geezers. i am one. the 'good old days were ...when?