Note to the Reader
Remember 1965 or 1966? If you’re a millennial, no. You weren’t born yet. If you’re a boomer, developments of the 1960’s are part of your history. You know about them now: Medicare brought into existence, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act signed into law, racial unrest like the Watts riots, and Vietnam—who could forget? But if you were only 17 years old then and female, you probably weren’t tuned in to social upheaval and a war far away. Those were just topics in social studies classes.
If you had been me, for example, a guidance counselor from Heaven would have rescued you from Mr. Asshole, the chemistry teacher from Hell. “The Beaver Shots Club” and “Ro’s Red Light District” were organizations that would have commanded your full attention. You’d have been consumed with not being fat and have fallen hard for a young man in a kilt. You’d have become confidant to an outsider athlete in a basketball uniform. Those were big things. But all the seismic movements of the times, of the 60’s—even when you weren’t thinking about them—they’d have rolled into your life soundlessly like a low pressure system before a storm and by the end of 1966, you’d have witnessed lightning strike. If you had been me.
The fact is, all you’d need to know about life you’d have learned that year.
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A high school English teacher whose North Star was Mark Twain would have given you a blank diary in 1965, just before your senior year, just before you moved, and he’d have promised amazing adventures like the ones Huckleberry Finn had. You wouldn’t have known how he could make such a strange prediction, but since you trusted him, you’d have kept the diary.
And 50 years later, about time for a 50th high school reunion, you’d have decluttered your basement trying to find a yearbook. You’d have come across 60’s items of little value: transistor radios, a stereo tape deck, butane cigarette lighters, pogo sticks, a Polaroid camera, Barbie Doll’s trendy cousin Francie, and National Geographic magazines. Nothing of great value. But you’d have found one true treasure.
You’d have found the diary.