Category: Wauvil

Christmas Day Dec. 25, 1962

12/25/2010

Christmas Eve 1962 on the farm in Wauvil

Christmas dinner was soup, roast duck with chestnut stuffing, red cooked cabbage and French fried potatoes. It was one of the best Christmas dinners ever. Then we lit the candles on the tree again and Papa Camenzind played his concertina.

Where were you in December 1962?

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A daily diary of a journey in 1962. Please post comments about where you were then on the Background page.

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

In the face of all of this, Pat, Judy and I blithely took off for Europe with the intention of traveling through Europe and North Africa until our money ran out. We had a travel guide and a book titled Europe on $5.00 a Day. Since we had all read The Ugly American in preparation for the trip, we thought we were very smart to buy a used Volkswagen with Dutch license plates. We dubbed the car "Louie" since a cute guy from Switzerland named Louie had helped us acquire it.

There was no such thing as a cell phone, a computer, Twitter or Facebook. Our parents didn't hear from us for weeks on end. We wrote regularly, but letters took forever to deliver and we only vaguely knew where we would be next. It was a very cold winter and we followed the sun.

Christmas Day Dec. 25, 1962

1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

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