For an oral history, my parents are not a good option right now- they're still living (both 84), but they're preparing for a major event in about a week- my mom has cancer on a kidney. I'll be going to Winston-Salem myself to be with the family. Surgery at her age is a risky undertaking, so it's a little scary. But it also makes this reminiscence more poignant to me.

What I thought I'd do instead, rather than impose on them, is to speak on their behalf. I feel like I was in tune with them enough during the Sixties, when they we're raising me (1960) and my younger brother (1965) to do so.

My parents bought the house that they still live in in 1963. It cost $18,000, and the mortgage payments were $72 a month. If that sounds like a bargain (and it was), keep in mind that my dad made $1 per hour at the time. I personally remember gasoline being 18 cents a gallon. Those were the days...

They bought me my very first record (an archaic term now)- it was a 45rpm of The Beatle's “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. That was probably my mom's choice. My dad bought “Ballad of the Green Beret”, (one of our lesson songs).

For lack of a better term, my parents were conservative Democrats. There weren't any controversial subjects discussed at the dinner table. Remember Leave it to Beaver? That was how our dinners went. To be honest, I don't think my parents were very activist or mentally invested into the issues of the era. There wasn't a lot of revolution going on in Sixties semi-rural NC. They worked, kept house, paid bills, went to church, raised two sons... that was their world. I see our family as a very typical working class example from the era.