The Time of my Life

It was July, 1964. I was an Air Force veteran, had just graduated college, and was going to get married in August. The New York Mets were playing in their third season - their first at Shea Stadium - and I was a crazy fan. (They finished 10th, 40 games out.) The All-Star game was at Shea; by the rules, every team had to send one player. The Yankees, of course, had several - here's one, posing with the Mets' lone representative. You know the Yankee, but I'm not going to tell you the Met, you'll have to guess!
NASA's Project Mercury 'The Right Stuff,' remember? had evolved into Project Gemini, but a 2-man Gemini flight wasn't scheduled until 1965.
I had a summer job as a camp counselor/swimming instructor at Bungalow Acres, a day camp in Mt. Freedom, NJ. Part of the job was ferrying 8 Newark kids to and from camp. I was lent a '59 Mercury station wagon to do the job. Getting my charges up to camp by 8am was a huge pain in the ass, but the ride back became a legendary piece of business we all looked forward to.
Everyone was tired, there was no A/C in the car, but I started a routine that the kids latched onto with enthusiasm - it was against camp rules and probably illegal, but I  jury-rigged everyone's bathing suits to door handles and the radio antenna and we flapped like geese and arrived home with dry suits!
But the big fun was the radio. FM radio was feeling its oats, and loud, static-free music was still a thrill. The kids would sing along with most tunes (they were 9 to 11 year olds) but they waited anxiously for the Four Seasons, first, because everybody lived next door to them (figuratively) and second, they were HOT. When their big '64 hit came on, that Mercury ROCKED! (Click 'Mercury' --Top of your lungs, now - remember, you're 10 years old!)