Lyndon B. Johnson was president fifty years ago, in 1967. Nelson Rockefeller was our governor. Jake Javits and Robert F. Kennedy were our senators, and Bobby was in his last full year of life. The same was true for Martin Luther King, who in 1967 came out squarely against the war in Vietnam. This was the year that the tide started to turn, as the number of troops went up, but millions took to the streets in opposition. Muhammad Ali refused induction, and was stripped of his boxing titles. Eugene McCarthy challenged Johnson for the next year’s presidential nomination.

*Race riots in Buffalo, Newark, Minneapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Washington made a counterpoint to the “Summer of Love,” with Be-Ins from coast to coast.

*The Supreme Court ruled that people could marry anyone they wanted, of whatever race. Thurgood Marshall became the first African American on the Supreme Court.

*Ronald Reagan became governor of California, and Lester Maddox became governor of Georgia. Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia. Biafra seceded from Nigeria, touching off a civil war. Israel made a pre-emptive strike against its neighbors, thrashing them in the Six-Day War.

*Charlie Chaplin and Spencer Tracy died, each one shortly after releasing his final film. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was formed, and Expo 67 opened in Canada. The Torrey Canyon oil spill was a grim herald of things to come. China set off its first h-bomb. Three Apollo astronauts died in a fire on the launching pad.

*America’s population hit 200 million, and the first successful heart transplant was made. Meg Cabot, Kurt Cobain, Neil Gorsuch, and Faith Hill were born. Deaths for the year included Jack Ruby, Henry Luce, Nelson Eddy, Alice B. Toklas, Konrad Adenauer, Langston Hughes, Jayne Mansfield, Carl Sandburg, Henry Kaiser, Hugo Gernsback, and Woody Guthrie.

*“Cadillac” Smith was a state senator. Steuben County had a Board of Supervisors, rather than a county legislature. The hospital in Corning opened a new building, and so did the congregational church, and so did Central Baptist Church. Pinnacle Country Club opened, overlooking Addison. Fire gutted the Wagner Hotel in Bath. Watson Homestead celebrated its tenth anniversary. Curtiss Museum and the Finger Lakes Trail were just starting to make their mark.

*If you shopped on Liberty Street in Bath you could get shoes at Orr’s, Castle’s or Triangle. You could shop at Western Auto, W. T. Grant, Grand Union, or Montgomery Ward, eat at the Chat-A-Whyle, take in a movie at Babcock Theater. On summer nights you might patronize Bath Drive-In, or the Starlite between Hornell and Arkport. Or you might just sit out in the yard with your transistor radio.

*Odds are that you (or your mother) collected S&H Green Stamps, or Plaid Stamps if you went to A&P. On TV you might have watched Captain Kangaroo, or Ironside, or Star Trek, or Laugh-In. On your record player you might have spun the new Beatles LP, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. The Monkees spent ten of the 52 weeks of 1967 at the top of the charts… compared to four for Bobbie Gentry, four for the Box Tops (who?), and just three for the Beatles!