1965

1965 was a big year for Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. On April 9th the Peanuts gang appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Then on December 9th, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on TV. I'd have to say that Peanuts was my favorite comic strip growing up, although Pogo was a close second.

On December 3rd, the Beatles' Rubber Soul was released. But at the age of 2, I was probably still totally unaware of the Beatles' existence.

I'm going to ascribe my earliest memory to 1965. I would have been just over two years old. We always spent Christmases in Lebanon TN with my mom's parents. I have the very vaguest of memories of my maternal grandfather...just some sort of awareness of his presence. But is this based more on an old photograph than any actual memory? It's impossible to say.

But I remember his hunting dog Zeb. My grandmother loved to play Parcheesi, and I'm thinking that for Christmas in 1965, someone got a new Parcheesi game. But Zeb chewed one of the little cups that you're supposed to put the dice in, in order to roll them. That's my earliest memory: That Zeb had chewed one of the Parcheesi cups. That and, as I say, the vaguest of memories of the presence of my grandfather.