This past summer, the Clearfield County Historical Society came across this early 1960’s era photo of kids doing the Limbo Rock at what looks to be a YMCA dance or party.
It was apparently taken at the 1960 era YMCA building that was razed a few years ago. The magnificent new YMCA stands on the same site along Clearfield Borough’s Second Street.
Nostalgia has made many who grew up in the early 1960’s think that it has become a lost age of innocence.
Things may have seemed simpler and happier then, but those years saw the ever-present Cold War with the real possibility of nuclear war, the passionate struggle against segregation with the Civil Rights movement hitting its stride and the horrific tragedy of President Kennedy’s assassination.
Nevertheless, life went on. Some of the kids and teens in the photo look surprised or bewildered to see a camera suddenly pointed at them, as they prepared to bend over backwards to go under the limbo stick.
Who wouldn’t? But they are doing what kids and teens have always done well, getting together and having a good time. How many of them today, nearly 60 years later, could bend so easily?
If any reader recognizes someone in the photo, he or she should contact gantnews.com or clearfieldcountyhistoricalsociety.org.
The photo is presented in honor of Ernest Evans, aka, Chubby Checker!