I didn't have to wear makeup, a bra or shave my legs. Boys were just friends who had short hair and wore different types of clothing.
I had a blue bicycle, a transistor radio and a cassette tape recorder. I loved "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and wanted to be a spy when I grew up.
Vacations with my parents were still fun. We had a pickup with a camper shell that had a bed, and that's where I rode, with my dog and an endless supply of reading material. After all, I had my own library card.
My family wasn't rich, nor were we poor. My parents worked and we had nice things. We'd moved into a new house in 1964, and we had a color TV, a fridge with an icemaker, and a garbage disposal. High tech!
We lived in the last house on the street, and in the open field next door that was a mound of dirt. After the winter rains, a nice round depression appeared in the mound, and through the imaginations of all the neighborhood kids, it became the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
In the summer we'd all stay out late, playing at the school across the street, riding our bikes through the corridors and trying to shoot baskets by the glow of the nightlights. Sometimes bats would fly over and we'd run screaming towards the streetlights.
In the fall it rained again, and the fields behind our houses turned into fields of ponds. We'd take off our shoes and socks and splash through the water, never telling our parents. The creek behind the school would run, after being dry all summer, and again, we'd take off our shoes and socks and splash through the water, and again no one ever told their parents.
It was good to be ten. We were living in the Space Age. My parents liked to watch westerns on TV, but I pish-poshed at anything "old fashioned". Who would want to wear all those clothes? We had mini-skirts and go-go boots. "Mod" was everything.
We had four channels on that color TV, not including the educational channel, because we only watched that at school when we had to. TV was captured by a huge antennae on top of Cow Mountain and rebroadcast on VHF across the valley. Tuning those channels in was an art form. There were fifty-six minutes to an hour show.
There was no designated hitter.
And now I am ten years older than my mother was in 1966, and yet, despite her best efforts, I am not nearly as grown-up and mature as she was then.
But nowadays there are so many things we didn't have back then. Microwaves, satellite TV, the Internet, cell phones, and of course, no Star Wars. Would I trade all that to be ten again? Sure would. After all, I'd have it all to look forward to!
