A very rosy picture.
And very very white.
I was born in 1960. I remember everything in the film.
I remember whenever it looked like Pa Cartwright had a new love interest, us kids would yell at the screen...RUN! All his wives DIE!!!!
I remember Elvis in his twenties, being guardian of his 14 year old girlfriend...and we all went ewwwwwww.
I remember Mrs. Craddock up the street when she'd been beaten up by her husband for the umpteenth time, and the cops telling her that she needed to stop pushing his buttons and be a better wife.
I remember old Mr. Pearson two doors up molesting little girls, and the whole neighborhood being hush hush about it to avoid scandal.
I remember when the first black family moved into the neighborhood when I was six, and how little Natalie and I became the bestest friends ever...for the three months they lived there before the family got tired of the hate mail and phone calls and moved away.
I remember how the neighborhood moms who had jobs either out of necessity or talent were looked down on, and us kids made fun of.
I remember that there was no toilet in the Brady kids bathroom. That may have accounted for Greg being kind of a douche.
And then I remember that at the end of the 60's being sent to Hillis Elementary...They bussed in some of the black kids from the East Side. Some black teachers came with them. I remember Cultural Awareness programs. I remember every last kid, white and black and yellow, all wearing dashikis, and learning about the other sides of American History, and music, and food.
And I remember our gym teacher, Mr. Crase, and how he kept telling the girls that sports was for them, too...and to never give up or we'd never get into astronaut training.
So I don't think the end of the sixties was the end of innocence...more like the beginning of enlightenment.
