One of my granddaughters recently celebrated her 15th birthday. It’s hard to believe she’s 15 already, yet it’s harder to remember back to when I was 15.
I was 15 in 1961…..
- There were no iPhones, Facebook, Instagram, texting, face-time, Zoom, YouTubes, smart TV’s, Alexa, Amazon.com or Starbucks.
- “I did not know who I was supposed to be at fifteen." (Taylor Swift)
- I was a sophomore at Tomlinson Memorial High School in Cleveland, Tennessee.
- My Dad drove a Nash Rambler
- John F. Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States. “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”
- Alan Shepard became the first American in space
- The Movies to Watch included:
- 101 Dalmations
- King of Kings
- West Side Story
- The Parent Trap
- Minimum Wage was $1.15 per hour.
- Pampers disposable diapers were available for the first time
- Popular toys:
- LEGO Building Sets
- Ken Carson (Barbie’s boyfriend)
- Trolls
- Most popular TV shows:
- Wagon Train
- Bonanza
- Gunsmoke
- Hazel
- Perry Mason
- The Red Skelton Show
- The Andy Griffith Show
- Candid Camera
- World Series Champions: New York Yankees. (This made me smile because my son is an avid baseball and Yankees’ fan. He recalls, at the age of 15, going to his first professional baseball game in San Diego with the Padres.)
- Sprite made its debut
- The Berlin Wall was built, dividing East and West Germany
- The Viet Nam war began
- With all the Covid-19 going on today, here's an interesting fact from an article in The New Epidemics by Alan Phillips, December 2, 1961: “…It was their U. S. counterpart, the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, warning them that influenza had broken out of China. It looked like a new strain of group A flu virus (later confirmed and tagged A2) against which the world's population had no immunity. An epidemic seemed (and was) on its way…”
- A few hit songs:
- I Fall to Pieces, Patsy Cline
- The Lion Sleeps Tonight, The Tokens
- Hello Mary Lou, Ricky Nelson
- Moody River, Pat Boone
- I’ve been 15 five times.
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
(Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick)
