The pictures that are in the post are magical in a number of ways. For me, growing up in the 60's was a joy.

The pictures don't show all the cigarette butts on the ground. If one was 65 years old you were likely at death's door, sure some lived longer, but life was pretty tough. Smoking=lung cancer, and a lot of people smoked. When you went to family gatherings, if people had farming relatives, inevitably there was some farmer that had lost an arm in a thrashing machine accident or similar. Rivers burned, air in many large urban areas was awful. Cars were not very safe, people still drove cars with solid steering columns and no seat belts. The interstate highway system was quite incomplete and travel took a lot of time. A trip to Europe was an almost never experience or at most once per lifetime thing. If you traveled you had to stock up on traveler's checks before you went. A trip to Australia or New Zealand, are you kidding? People got 2 weeks of vacation at most. Cancer or Heart disease, if you had either good luck. 1966-1970 probably averaged 500,000 US troops per year in Viet Nam. If you were a minority in the US south, or anywhere in the US, what was your opportunity? People were still building bomb shelters in their backyards. Everyone over 65 had dentures. Most people only had an image of the world from the pictures in National Geographic. Weather forecasting beyond the day before was non existent. If your parents called grandma and grandpa, 3 minutes on the phone was about $ 2.65: no wonder that everyone had a sand timer next to the phone.

Being a kid in the suburbs in the 1960's was great for me. In so many ways ideal, The Beach Boys were young, not geezers, and we had the 1970's to look forward to. Plus halter tops were about to appear.