1965 - I turn one

Jane Ann McLachlan had this great idea for a blog challenge for the month of October to do one day for each of the first 25 years of your life. This is year two.

In 1965 the Dow closed the year at 969

Inflation was at 1.59%

Average cost of a new house: $13,600

Average income: $6450

Gasoline: $0.31 a gallon

Movie ticket: $1.25

The Voting Rights Act becomes law, guaranteeing African-Americans the right to vote.

World’s 1st Skateboard Championship was held in California.  They just became a fad in 1950s and actually 1965 marks a low point in skateboarding, but even so, the 1^st championships were held and even televised on ABC.  It wasn’t until the early 70s that I finally got one of these, costing several layers of skin.

The St Louis Arch is completed.

Medicare is created.

Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

Major Edward H. White II becomes the second human to walk in space during the flight of Gemini 4.

Soviet Lunar 7 crashes on the moon.

The mini skirt debuts.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is released.  Damn, I had no idea it was this old.  Great book, one of the all-time classics in Science Fiction.

The debut of Lost in Space.

The Astrodome opens.

Rolling Stones release “Satisfaction.”  Bob Dylan releases “Like a rolling Stone.”  Jeff Beck replaced Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds.

J K Rowling was born.

 

My brother was born.  I have a half-brother from my dad’s first marriage that I didn’t grow up with, but only one sibling from both of my parents.  I have a very vague recollection of him coming home from the hospital as that was a banner day in the household.  I was barely one, and it is the only memory I have from that year.  He is almost exactly one year younger than me, and he has always been a better brother to me than I was to him.  We were very close when we were young, prior to me going off to Junior High school.  We fought occasionally but never hit above the neck (until much later, two fist fights in High school) Somewhere around the age of 12 I realized that I pretty much took for granted that my little brother always did everything I asked him to do and it was an epiphany to me.  I released him from his self-appointed obligation and from that point forward we slowly drifted apart.  When I went off to Junior High my circle of friends changed and I didn’t really want him hanging around us.  In hindsight, it’s one of the things I wish I could change about my life.   The following year he went to the same school and fell in with a rougher crowd and the gulf between us widened.  It has never been an insurmountable gulf, we always communicated, and I never stopped loving him, but we just didn’t hang out anymore, at least it became a rare event.  We shared a bedroom into tweener age, not because we didn’t have space but because he wanted to share a room with his big brother.  I see that now with my own boys, the younger sort of idolizes his big brother who is six years older.  Eventually I managed to get him out into his own room.  It may have been necessary for teenage boys to inevitably require that kind of privacy, but again on hindsight I regret pushing him away.  When we were kids he never got me in trouble even if he had something on me.  Wish I could say the same, I’m sure I got him in trouble more than once, for small stuff.  Never big stuff though, I had his back for the bigger things, but I could be petty as a kid. 

Our lives have been on a bit of a parallel course with both of us going off to be in the military at young ages, but I was commissioned at 21 and my brother waited too long to get his degree to make that an option.   He has a degree in computer science now and has a great job.  I love and respect him, but we are very different both outer appearance and in the things we like.  He took after my father, dark complexion and dark eyes.  He never had any trouble getting the interest of attractive women. Me?  I took after my mom’s side, lighter skin, freckles and light colored hair with hazel eyes.  I always had to work a little harder it seemed to me to catch the eye of an attractive lady.  Don’t ask me how I landed my wife, I still haven’t figured that one out.  I very much overachieved, but at the age of one none of that was on my mind.

You can see the year I was born here.

Clear Ether!