The Spectacular Sixties: wow, what a decade going from a kid of 12 years old to that of being 22 years old, married, and with 3.5 years of service in the Coast Guard, all in the spectacular 60's.

We went through so many events in the '60's it is hard to remember them all. The Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, JFK's assassination and the Vietnam War were sobering events and we were so unprepared for them at our age. Great music made it easier to cope, from the sounds of Motown, Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Roy Orbison, and Four Seasons to the British invasion led by the Beatles in 1964 to the psychedelic stuff of the later 60's.

For most of the gents, our female counterparts made life so much more interesting, and young love was so wonderful at the time and so nice to reflect back on regardless of how many years have passed.

I grew up in the western part of the Palm Springs section of Hialeah, Florida, during this time and we were on the western edge of civilization in Northwest Dade County, with farms, cattle ranches and undeveloped land all the way to the Everglades. It was a great place to grow up and we had an inordinate amount of fun in junior and senior high schools. Most of the guys I grew up with either ended up in college or in the military (Thank You for serving, all Vietnam Era Veterans!) due to the escalating war and the diligent Betty Gribble at the Selective Service draft board in downtown Miami. When college or military years ended we came back to Hialeah to find the population changing with the influx of refugees from Cuba and virtually everyone we grew up with had moved out or would move in the future for Broward County to the north or upstate or to other states. I often wonder what life would be like if most of the folks they grew up with had remained in the same area for a lifetime.