[Urbane Guerrilla]

As a wee tad of about five, I remember Meeker, Colorado as not having direct dial in 1961-63: you lifted the receiver, the operator would say, "Number please," and you'd give her all seven digits and she'd connect you. I don't know what you did to dial out of town, but that was the local procedure. Meeker was not a big town, and our street didn't get asphalt until right about the middle of our stay.

Leaping to another comment, having grown up in the sixties myself, my experience says Tim Leary was a dope. Too, I'd have trouble awarding the "foul decade" prize to any decade I've inhabited -- too much good on the other end of the seesaw from too much bad. The Seventies did have some spectacular stupidities. Perhaps the dumbest of these was disco: dumb music doesn't make it.