Fifty Years of 'American Graffiti'

Once upon a time, America held the dreams and ambitions of the world in its roaring chrome and neon-lit soda jerks, blasted through the atmosphere with flames on its heels and grease in its hair, shot through the night on roll-stitched vinyl bench seats, Lucky Strikes, gauzy skirts, and letterman’s sweaters. It was The American Century — the dawn of the Space Age colliding with sock hop sweethearts, a crooning Sinatra dueled radio dials with Bill Haley and his Comets, and suburban sprawl jutted against the Blackboard Jungle. America was coming of age. By the early 1960s, the country enjoyed a confidence that launched a thousand dreams before it turned a corner mid-decade and found itself lost in a fun-house mirror of unrest, unsure of itself, disoriented in the midst of rapid change, and leaving people asking, “Where we you in ’62?”