60’s SATURDAY

Dylan, 1963 – Times They are A’Changin’
The Who – Can’t Explain 1965

Twilight Time – The Platters (1958)
[youtube

A modest contribution. A collection. Save the mouse clicks to the other SUPER contributions!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS5CaH3DH1A

1965 Revisited

A Bit of Fred
My Friend, Now Dead

On the radio of my father’s car the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction…” from the album Out of My Head played. While two high school dates along with Fred and I cruised along, the girls came from afar, Kittanning, PA. “So special” they were. Her name was Nell in the front seat beside me, an official and endorsed boundary by her sister (my 10th grade English teacher) and my mother, both named Georgia. My mother knew my teacher from doing her hair at my mother’s beauty salon. That is how the blind date was set up.

The girls were down for the summer and we were up for fun. I drove a 1957 Chrysler New Yorker, with a push button transmission, a 401 hemi and giant tail fins on the dirt road along side Poquito Bayou in Shalimar, Florida. Fred and our new found friends had already heard the song, released recently. If ‘exuberance is beauty’, then Fred was a 10 as he sang along to the lyrics. Where were you when you first heard it? In 1966 I would hear the anthem played live in San Bernardino, California during a performance by the iconic band.

The Summer of 65 Fred and I felt alive…with our parent’s fast cars with AM radios and the joy of seeking our future. We felt like we had pulled a coup d’état that night infiltrating the secret lives of Teachers…and females.

Fred had his own apartment that summer behind his family’s home. We would hang out frequently, drinking an illegal beer now and then. Fred had an amazing love of knives. He juggled throwing knives for fun. We competed in knife throwing contests, he was good and my equal or better, with a blade.

When I recall Fred, he is always happy and always leading me and others onto the kind of person we wish to be. I have a picture from Jr. High of Fred and I making a play on the W. C. Pryor Junior High School’s basketball court; it had been published in the Playground Daily News. Fred had my back and I have his every Memorial Day.

GASSMAN, FRED ALLEN Compiled by Task Force Omega Inc

http://www.taskforceomegainc.org

SYNOPSIS: MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG) was a joint service unconventional warfare task force engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast Asia. The 5th Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG through Special Operations Augmentation (SOA) that provided their “cover” while under secret orders to MACV-SOG. These teams performed highly classified, deep penetration missions of strategic reconnaissance and interdiction that were called, depending on the location and time frame, “Shining Brass,” “Salem House,” “Daniel Boone” or “Prairie Fire” missions

On 5 October 1970, SSgt. David A. Davidson, team leader and Sgt. Fred A. Gassman, assistant team leader, were assigned as rifleman to a joint American and Vietnamese reconnaissance patrol, code named “RT Fer De Lance.” The team was inserted into the extremely rugged and isolated jungle-covered mountains approximately 70 miles west-southwest of DaNang, South Vietnam; and 12 miles west of the Lao/South Vietnamese border, Salavan Province, Laos…

http://www.taskforceomegainc.org/g356.html?fbclid=IwAR3w0YB6XVIUfjX4C-1xSKkKmgm9K0fcNyDP4XB08QM4D3SaHuhtDBumyEs

One more for to rock your socks right off. Duane Eddy compilation. Most famous ones first.