During the early '60s, Wade Hanna was the right age for the military draft. Like most other teenage American males at the time, Wade spent time carefully considering draft and enlistment options.
By the early '60s the South had become the center of the new Civil Rights Movement. Flash points of civil unrest throughout the South had already ignited. In 1955, a fourteen-year old Chicago resident, Emmett Till, while visiting family in Mississippi, was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. In October, 1962, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. The violence and riots that followed caused President Kennedy to send in 5,000 federal troops. In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and jailed during an anti-segregation protest in Birmingham, Alabama. In that same year, on June 12, Medgar Evers was murdered outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Throughout this time period, violent and non-violence demonstrations took place throughout the South. By the mid '60s Civil Rights and anti-war demonstrations had already started in other parts of the country.
As Morrow and Cronkite frequently pointed out, the U.S. was in the middle of the cold war with Russia. Most military historians put the start of the cold war at just after the end of the Korean conflict in July, 1953. By 1954 the Soviet Union had established the KGB, followed in 1955 by the establishment of the Warsaw Pact. The Russians launched Sputnik into orbit on October 4, 1957. In November of 1958 Khrushchev demanded withdrawal of U.S. troops in Berlin and threatened military confrontation.
Cuba was taken over by Fidel Castro in January 1959, and soon declared ties with the Soviet Union. In May of 1960, just before the Kennedy election, the Soviets announced the downing of a U.S. spy plane piloted by Gary Powers over Soviet territory. Tension throughout Central America and the Gulf of Mexico increased at an alarming rate, inspired by the buildup of Soviet military personnel and missile installations in Cuba.
The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, backed by the U.S., occurred in April 1961. The increased tension in Latin America lead to cold war tension in the region brought on by the new Cuban-Soviet alliance and Soviet military aid to Cuba which were suspected to include missiles.
Television was black & white and still somewhat experimental in both technology and programming. There was no cable for TV reception. Reception came through an antenna called, “rabbit ears” which sat on top of the TV console. Constant adjustment of the “ears” was required during many television programs, since reception was at best unreliable and often a mysterious phenomenon. Some individuals, usually adult males of the family, believed they had a special gift for “jiggling the ears” which could make images of random fuzz turn to clear screen images. This “gift” turned out to be questionable at best. Programs like the “Lone Ranger” on Saturday mornings always seemed clear when the chief jiggler was nowhere around.
The Hanna family watched more than just the evening news together. Another program the family watched was the Ed Sullivan Show. The Sullivan variety show featured among other things the changing trends in music capturing new directions in sounds and band groups. At times the Sullivan show was considered inappropriate, controversial, even vulgar by many parents as it brought the faces of new music groups already being heard on the radio right into the living room. Wade loved many types of music. As a young teenager he was on top of music changes while his parents lamented the loss of the big band and swing era.
Wade’s love of music would rarely place him far from a radio. These times of world and national tension would also record the birth of Rock and Roll. That sound and label started with Rock Around The Clock by Bill Hailey and the Comets who first recorded their hit in 1954. Wade was also fond of songs by Elvis Presley, The Four Aces, Johnnie Ray, the Four Lads, Bobby Darin, and Pat Boone. He even like some big band sounds, country and western music along with jazz.
It wouldn’t be until 1964 when the Beatles caused another change in musical direction for teenage youth in America. Wade and the local New Orleans radio stations were also playing Fats Domino, Buddy Holley, The Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a host of country music names.
Famous New Orleans Jazz, which had previously been confined to its cultural roots in the French Quarter, was exported to Chicago, St. Louis, New York and Europe. A few music legends like Pete Fountain and Al Hirt stayed in their night clubs in New Orleans while other jazz musicians spread their music far and wide of their New Orleans home.
During the '50s and '60s, there were no personal computers, no internet, no social media networks, digital watches, or cell phones. The closest thing to a mobile communication device was a pay phone, and every teenager knew from memory where all the pay phones in the neighborhood were located. The cost of a call from a pay phone was ten cents. This made it easy to “drop a dime” and stay in touch with home. For young people, curfew time was when the street lights came on. Long distant communication was still most often accomplished by a letter, which cost five cents to mail.
Movies were also a major part of the teenage culture, and New Orleans was no different than the rest of the country. Tickets ranged from 75 cents to a dollar fifty. Theaters and drive-ins featured movie options ranging from Vertigo, To Kill a Mockingbird, Singing in the Rain, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, West Side Story, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Beer was 40 cents a bottle and alcohol drinks were a dollar. Legal drinking age was generally ignored in New Orleans. The saying in New Orleans was, “If you can reach the bar we will serve you, no questions asked.” During this period you were able to get a drivers license at 15 years old if you knew people with the right Department of Motor Vehicles connections. The legal driving age was 16 but no one was checking.
Gasoline was 33 cents per gallon, the price of which included a live attendant pumping your gas, checking your oil and tires, and cleaning your windshield. Most car designs of the day had fins and aerodynamic front-ends which gave the impression that they could fly. Chrome was in, and the most popular teenage cars were Chevys and Fords. For a teenager to have a '57 Chevy was the pinnacle of being cool. The sticker price of a brand new 1957 Chevy two-door sedan with a V8 engine was around $1,800. Most teenagers and their parents couldn’t afford one and were content to drive older model cars. In the 1960s, like today, for a teenager old enough to drive, the automobile was an expression of freedom, a form of transportation, an entertainment center, and, on occasion, a bedroom. Drive-in theaters and burger joints were often preferred dating destinations for young couples with a car. With proper upgrades and adjustments, a car’s performance could be improved and souped-up versions of common sedans suddenly became racing machines.
Most drag racing started on quiet streets and included grudge matches to determine who had the fastest car. A gang element emerged in this street drag racing scene until the sport became organized and officially sanctioned drag strips started to appear. Organized drag strip racing started with the emergence of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). The NHRA set out timing and safety rules, car and engine classification categories, and started to organize what had been a random and increasingly dangerous street event. Officially sanctioned drag racing provided an alternative to street racing and got many racing cars off the streets. It also attracted a more professional crowd and diminished gang activity.