I’ve just finished reading the first book I wrote, almost fifty years ago, Loose Change, Three Women of the Sixties. I hadn’t looked at it in decades and was nervous I’d find it embarrassing. And dated.

To my relief, I was surprised at how smoothly it reads. I especially enjoyed the return, in its pages, to my childhood years in L.A., which was then considered a remote part of the country, “the West.”  In the L.A. of my childhood, I knew most of my neighbors. All the kids played together outside on Orange Street, on which there was little traffic.

Once a week, a man named “Mr. Stern” would come around with his truck loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables. My mother left our back door unlocked, in case she wasn’t home when Mr. Stern arrived. He would walk in the back door, go to the kitchen and open the refrigerator, as my mother had instructed him to do, and see what she was missing from her usual order. He’d leave new fruit in the bowl and new vegetables in the fridge and my mother would pay him the next time she saw him.

In my teenage years, I spent almost every weekend at the beach, where each high school in the city had its territory. The boys would show off, riding waves, and the girls would sit on the sand, protecting their hairdos, in their newest two-piece bathing suits, holding silver sun reflectors under the chin to make their faces tan fast. (We paid for that, of course, decades later) The entire time I was growing up, I did not own a coat. Just sweaters and an occasional jacket for what was considered “winter.”

I remember the drive-in restaurant, Dolores, which our family would go to as a treat, (and was later a teen hangout known as “D.L.’s”) The waiter would fasten a tray to the window on the driver’s side and bring out our double-decker burgers and Susie Q fries. I ask myself, now, what was the point of eating in the car?

On Sundays while we were young, our father took my sister and me to Beverly Ponyland, at the corner of Beverly Blvd. and La Cienega, which is now the site of an eight-story shopping mall. But back then, on that corner was a small amusement park and a string of ponies for kids to ride. The wrangler, whom we believed was a real cowboy, because of his hat, would hoist us up on the saddle, then lead the horse to one of three concentric rings. In the innermost ring, the horses had been trained to walk slowly, carrying an ecstatic (or screaming) two-year-old. The second ring was for the horse to walk slightly faster, and the outside ring—our delight—was for trotting. The wrangler would give the horse a thump on the rear and off he’d trot, with us waving and shouting, “Look, Daddy!”

As soon as we got our learner’s permit to drive, at fifteen, we would cruise in cars on Hollywood Blvd, preferably in a convertible, flirting with strange guys in their convertibles. I remember, though, not feeling happy about my body. I was too tall; in one year of junior high, I grew from 5’2” to 5’8.”  I was taken to our family doctor, Dr. Furer. His patients were mostly Jewish but no one seemed to think his name was unfortunate. He gave me weekly hormone shots supposed to close my “growth centers,” but I continued growing to be 5’10.”

I did not cover those specific memories in Loose Change, which begins when I and my friend Susie were “rushing” to be accepted by a sorority for Jewish girls at U.C. Berkeley. The Gentile sororities would not consider us, and we did not question that, although subsequent generations did. Now the sororities are required to accept at least several pledges of different faiths and races.

My close friends and I only stayed in the sorority for two years. Then we went to Europe—part of the great wave of students going to study or travel there—and when we returned, feeling more sophisticated, we rented an apartment off campus.

Recently, in the nation-wide demonstrations against President Trump, there did not seem to be many young people protesting. The majority seemed in their late thirties and older. Perhaps this was because it was summer and colleges were on recess, but still… I wondered why younger people were not involved.

The generation of kids who came of age in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s were not just involved; we led the demonstrations. At Berkeley, in 1964, my friends and I participated in the march for civil rights at the Sheraton Palace in San Francisco, which had an unspoken policy of not hiring Negroes. The demonstration was a must for everyone we knew. We walked round and round the hotel, carrying signs and chanting for hours, and then one of the protest leaders, a young black woman, Tracy Sims, announced over a megaphone: “We are going inside now—to stop the hotel from doing business as usual.”  She said we were going to sit down in the lobby, thousands of us. She cried out, “Are you willing to get arrested for what you believe in?” People shouted, “Yes!” but my friends and I looked at each other and mouthed, “No.” My father had warned me, “Don’t sign anything, and don’t get arrested, it could ruin your future.” We began walking back to our car, watching as police hustled hundreds of young people into paddy wagons.

We were proud, though, that we had been there. We were showing that no longer would young people be “apathetic.” That was the 1950’s. We were the Sixties generation. We were…Committed.

NOTE – When I speak of the Sixties Generation, it’s about the group who identified with progressive ideas and actions. It does not include people like Donald Trump and George W. Bush who were born then but swam in an opposite stream. As we asked then, “Which side are you on?”