The nostalgia is misplaced. They were not the good old days. We practiced air raid drills while the USA and USSR set off nuclear weapons as "tests." Negroes were beaten in the streets for attempting to register to vote. Churches were bombed by racial segregationists. Cops beat "confessions" out of "suspects" before the Miranda decision. A national conscription system put millions of unwilling young men into the armed forces, a clear case of involuntary servitude. Political vigilantes sought out "com-symps" and "pinkos" and other "subversives". Polio was a likelihood. Looking stuff up in the library took ages. At least one child molester worked the ice cream truck in my neighborhood. Feel free to vote Down here, too, because in my neighborhood, I got beat up a few times not so much for being smarter than everyone else as much as for making it clear...

I lived in the country so we didn't have street lights. We just made sure we where home in time to put on our Mickey Mouse ears and watch Mickey Mouse Club on the black and white tv. Other than that we were outside, at the beach, riding horses, playing cowboys and indians or whatever else we dreamed up. In other words, we had FUN.