Looking back

And so ends 2015.  As with most years in recent memory, it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What was it like 50 years ago, back when another year ended not with a bang?  The year my eldest nephew (now 50!) was born?

Well, let's see. In 1965, LBJ was ramping up the American presence in Vietnam, with an increase of American troops from 75,000 to an incredible 125,000.  (They reached just under 550,000 three years later.)  The student deferment status of II-S was worth its weight in gold.

The Dow ended the year at 969 (it will end 2015 at about 17,500).  An average new home cost $13,600.  Gas sold for 31 cents per gallon, which included full service (gas pumped, oil and water checked, tires inflated, windshields washed).  Average new car cost $2,650.  Average rent was $118 per month.  Loaf of bread would cost you 21 cents.

But, of course, if you were an average worker, you earned an average salary of only $6,450.

Until 1965, our coins were 90 percent silver.  I began hoarding silver half dollars in that year, as did many other people.  The half dollar, silver or otherwise, which had until then been as common as the quarter, soon became hard to find.

The five top-grossing movies (not necessarily the five best movies) were The Sound of Music, Dr. Zhivago, Thunderball, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and That Darn Cat! (!).

The book published in 1965 that I'm most likely to remember was Frank Herbert's Dune.  But the New York Times listed only three best selling works of fiction for the year:  Saul Bellow's Herzog, Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase, and James Michener's The Source.

Fiddler on the Roof grabbed most of the Tony Awards, including best musical.

Nineteen sixty-five was the year of best-selling hits by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher -- it was clearly a transitional year between the old pop music and the new rock.  But the absolute top hit of the year, the best selling song on the charts?  That would be, of course, Wooly Bully, by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

I was living a monastic life in 1965.  My Selective Service II-S status in hand, perched on a chair in my dorm room, studying Differential Equations, Functions of Complex Variables, Advanced Mechanics, and Electricity and Magnetism -- an unpromising beginning for a future blogger.  It was also the year of my second round trip jet flight (Seattle to Los Angeles), of yet another summer working as a chemical lab analyst, and the year I realized I really needed to learn to ski. 

It was a different world, 1965 was, but it doesn't feel that different now when I call it to mind.   It seems, as the cliché runs, "just like yesterday"!