The Way It Was

Check out this picture of a fallout shelter circa 1960 which to me defines just about everything I DON’T miss about family life in the early 1960:The father: humorless. No doubt bossy.The mother: smiling in as pretty a way as she can muster as the wife of this glum autocrat.The kids: as blank-looking as three empty chalkboards. Maybe it was life under Dad’s roof that did this to them, or the Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard rule some of us remember so well. All I know is I look at this picture and I THANK GOD I married a man nothing like this man and that my kids were far from being dead-in-the-eyes but rather were frisky and outspoken.I look at it and think, No wonder the Youth Movement blossomed, seeded in  this kind of soil and basically  blew the roof off a scant six or seven years later.