What was the 20th century like Part 3

The difference between the 1950s and the 1960s was "Night and Day". For me, the day was the 1960s. But, that also could be that I was 12 in 1960 and 21 in 1970 too.

But, I wasn't happy at all in some ways in the 1950s. Why? Because I sort of felt more like a slave more than anything else. However, in the 1960s I started to spread my wings and fly like an Eagle.

And this was great in some ways and not so great in other ways.

The good part is that I didn't have to go to the Viet Nam war and die. The good part is that girls liked me a lot especially after age 15 but this I found also more confusing in some ways than anything else.
Why Confusing? Because getting a lot of attention from females can be really good or really bad or both. But, mostly it isn't neutral.

Anyway, that is a completely different story. We are now talking about the 1960s. What changed?
The Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Then the Cuban Nuclear Missile Crisis where we all just about died in nukes in the U.S. and Cuba and Russia. That was kind of scary. Then President Kennedy was assassinated by likely Russia and the Mafia working together. Then our government covered it all up because they didn't want a nuclear war with Russia. Then khrushchev lost power in Russia soon after Kennedy was assassinated. (I don't think this was any coincidence by the way) because I believe khrushchev paid the Mafia and helped them assassinate both Kennedy and Oswald so there could be no witnesses left that anyone could find.

Then the American people totally lost faith in the U.S. government and this lack of faith remains to this day. Trust in government went from about 75% when Kennedy was president to about 11% trust today after they lied to us all about Kennedy. Because no one believed what we were told about the assassinations of Kennedy and his brother and Martin Luther King. At the very least the head of the FBI likely had something to do with Martin Luther King's assassination.

Next, when Kennedy died he left some soldiers in Viet Nam and then LBJ added to them which only created the worst mess we had seen since the Korean War in the early 1950s.

For me personally, the Viet Nam war was physically okay just for me because I wasn't drafted and neither was my cousin who became a Lawyer and worked in the Vista program in Los Angeles which was a lot then like the Peace Core only inside the U.S. So, neither of us had to fight in the Viet Nam War which we are grateful for.

But, my best high school Friend got a jet engine certificate at Glendale College in Los Angeles County and joined the Air Force so he wouldn't have to be drafted as an infantryman and die over there like 50,000 American boys did with more my age born in 1948 than any other age.
He was sent to Thailand to repair jet engines on fighters and bigger planes during the war. He wasn't the same when he returned from there just like most guys that went over there were never the same as they were when they left. You mostly couldn't recognize them when they came back they had changed so much.

I helped bury my friend in Bakersfield in 2011 when he had a military funeral from being a veteran of the Viet Nam war in the Air Force. So, he is now buried in a military Cemetery in Bakersfield. I couldn't speak most of the day I was so upset about what happened to him. It is my belief that he got early senile dementia from what happened to him in the Viet Nam war while serving in Thailand.

Before he left we were surfers and he raced his cars like 56 Chevy's and Fords. I also helped him work on his 1940 Ford Coupe and other cars he put slicks on and hopped up the engines too for street racing. He was a great car mechanic for creating race cars and we also raced across the desert in his Converted VW with the front and rear fenders off and bigger tires which changed it into a dune buggy.

This was all possible then because we were working after school a lot then from about age 10 or 12 and could afford to buy our own cars and motorcycles because then cars and motorcycles cost about 1/5 or less compared to minimum wage than now in the 1960s. Minimum wage was around a dollar an hour and gas was about 17 cents a gallon some places in 1969. A used car might be 400 to 800 dollars. For example, when I was 16 I bought an 8 year old 1956 Ford Station wagon as my surf wagon for 800 dollars. In fact a brand new VW Bug was only 800 dollars back then. Even in 1968 when I was programming computers I paid only $3500 for a brand new 1968 Camaro then when I was 20. Working in computers I was making 3 to 5 times the minimum wage then at age 20. If you were capable then you could do almost anything good with your life. The same is not true now though here in the U.S. But, it is still true in Canada.