What did the 60s look like?

Here's what they looked like sometime in 1968 or so. The blogger is on the far right, sporting a smokin' polyester Beatles-style Edwardian suit, while his younger brothers feature shorts and black knee socks. All are wearing Buster Brown shoes. And if isn't obvious, my dad was trying to save money in those days by cutting our hair. And there's no easier haircut to administer than a buzz cut.

This picture was taken at our maternal grandmother's house - I am not sure of the occasion; might have been Easter or something, or maybe one of my dozens of cousins (I have over 60 of them on my mother's side - like I've said, I'm pretty Catholic) was getting married. This image was taken with my father's early Polaroid camera, which was a complicated contraption that led him to bat about .500 on getting good pictures; that's one reason why it's all wrinkled and gooey, besides the usual ravages of time that have caused it to fade. A lot of images that we see from that era are similarly distorted, of course, but not simply because of the technological limitations of film in that era. There are any number of people who want to believe things about the 1960s that simply aren't true. These days you are much more likely to see pictures of flowing-haired hippies and psychedelic outfits whenever this era is mentioned. It's worth remembering that a lot of people looked like my brothers and I did then. It may be a crinkled picture, but it's a more accurate one.