For those over 50

[The Lone Liberal]

What did it mean? What did the 60s mean to you?



"If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there"

[burrowowl]

1. I mentioned that song

on SmirkingChimp about sending flowers to the people getting married and another SmirkingChimpster posted the song. I loved that song.

[mopinko]

2. not quite 50, but

sex and drugs and rock and roll. seriously, tho, i think women went from not being able to say yes, to not being able to say no. music was great, tho. stayed away from the hard drugs. lost some friends to it.

[MaineDem]

19. The men were pretty free with the lovin', too

Don't single out the women. :)

[mopinko]

34. you missed the point

once the pill was invented, we didn't get to say no anymore. this went double if you smoked dope.

[SheilaT]

3. About five years ago my husband and I

were in San Francisco on vacation, and at one point, driving across the Bay Bridge, that song came on just as we got on the bridge, and carried us all the way across. It was a gorgeous summer day, and we had the sun-roof open, a perfect day, lovely memory.

[greatauntoftriplets]

4. The 1960s were heaven and hell, mixed into a tumultous decade.

This is stream of consciousness and not necessarily in any logical order -- my mind is bent, LOL.

I escaped grade school, went to high school and got hassled by the nuns for rolling my skirt too high, lost my virginity (happily and willingly), guys I knew went to Vietnam, tried to smoke and hated it, tutored a girl in French at high school to the point where she passed and felt really good, first learned about Jim Crow laws (early 1960s) and decided I wanted to be a freedom rider (parents said I was too young at age 12), even earlier rooted for Kennedy as an 11-year-old), Jack Kennedy killed, Martin Luther King killed, Malcom X killed, Bobby Kennedy killed, Johnson elected, Tet offensive, horrendous death counts from Vietnam until they stopped publishing them, Nixon elected, my sister got married and I was maid of honor, went into a New Orleans strip joint.

God, I could go on for hours, but it is my bedtime. I am old!

[MaineDem]

20. Everything you said!

It was a coming of age. Those years have shaped my thinking to this day.

I remember being in Washington Square in NYC in the summer of '68 supposedly attending a high school conference (HAH) and people were handing out flyers for a march in Chicago. There was a caricature of Humphrey and I was really tempted to go. Of course getting from Maine to Chicago for a high school student was a problem. Besides my parents said no. :D But that gives me a slight connection to the '68 convention that I remember very well.

Time it was, oh what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidences

The music puts me right back in those days.

[aquart]

5. It meant high school. College. War protests.

It meant that any leader who stood up was shot and killed.

It meant friends doing desperate things to evade the draft.

It meant seeing the VietNam drug scandal among our soldiers broken across two full pages of the New York Post with my ex-boyfriend's name in the by-line.

The trial of Queens College's arrested peaceful protestors. (An arrest which caused us to seize the campus.) I remember a boy with a toothbrush sticking up from the vest pocket of his jacket asking me to kiss him, because he was going to jail. So I did and he did.

Sheltered commuter students sitting in a classroom after word had spread about the Kent State shootings, seriously discussing how you make a Molotov cocktail. Because we didn't know if we were next.

Being caught sitting peacefully in a bus, waiting to leave, while the police cleared the emptying field around the Washington Monument with gas, which soaked into our clothes and stayed there, causing us to feel pepper in our throats and cough all the way home.

It meant watching the 1968 convention in Chicago gavel to gavel, seeing the folds in the McCarthy posters because they'd had to be smuggled in, watching Dan Rather knocked to the ground, and hearing the passionate anger in Walter Cronkite's voice, around 2am, as he told anyone in America who was still awake just what kind of act that was.

And, of course, be-ins in Central Park.

[mikehiggins]

6. The sixties were cool

I grew up in the Eisenhower years and was fifteen when JFK was elected. I cannot describe to you how BORING that time was. I was a freshman in college when I first heard "She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" and I made the driver stop the car so I could hear it clearly on the AM radio. I knew at that moment that something was happening there, but I didn't know what it was...

The best music.

The best sex.

The best drugs.

The best leaders (though the wrong ones got killed. I'd trade three Nixons for one RFK, and give change to boot)

We had a lot that sucked and a lot that ruled; VietNam for example, the Civil Rights Movement for another.

We had everything except AIDS.

It ended, of course, as everything does.

But it was one hell of a ride...

[JasonDeter]

7. LSD and THC

Tetrahydrocannabinol, a little white pill that packed the punch of a dozen joints...helps you go to sleep after the LSD trip.

[plaguepuppy]

23. That's OK,

I'll take the dozen joints!

[kskiska]

8. I got married young, had 2 kids, and missed out on the 60s

I must have been in a coma, far removed from the Vietnam War and protests. I finally divorced and woke up in the 70s, joined NOW, and attended consciousness-raising groups. It seems now that if I'd been in on the action in the 60s, I'd probably have ended up in the Weather Underground or something.

[RebelOne]

18. Same here.

Got married when still a teenager, had 2 kids and completely skipped the 60s.

[roguevalley]

9. It meant there were no limits, that all things were possible and if

you wanted the world in a certain way, you could get it through selfless work and association. The war politicized everyone, poverty was supposed to be gone through the Great Society, women and men were working out what it meant to see each other as equals and Martin Luther King was showing us freedom was imperative no matter the cost.

It was a time of hope and possibilities, when all the ideas that are taken for granted now were radical and new and being formulated. The peace corps was a possibility along with college and work when you graduated and the moon was in reach. It was a time of great men and women thinking great things along with hatred, intolerance and war.

It was the most amazing amalgamation of extremes that I've ever seen.

[greatauntoftriplets]

10. And I don't regret a goddamned thing I did during the 1960s.

And there were many I omitted. :)

[mykpart]

11. Great music, great people.

Young people who cared about what goes on in the world. I think we did change it for the better. We were willing to sacrifice for what we believed. Nobody is willing to go to jail or give up anything in order to protest injustice or boycott unethical businesses. I wish there were young people today so committed to what was the right loving thing to do. I still love the philosophy of allowing everyone to do their own thing. It's why I'm a Democrat.

[Odessey]

12. I don't have very good memories of the 60's

I was in elementery school/jr. high in the 60's. I must have lived a somewhat insulated life in the small town in NY that my family was living in. I loved the Monkees, I hated the music the older kids were listening too. I remember my aunt and her sister packing cookies and other goodies and things for a brother and boyfriend who were in Vietnam. I do remember hearing about protesting on TV and hating the protesters because the guys I knew who were soldiers were really nice people. My family enjoyed the Bob Hope specials when he entertained the troops. My parents were very strong Democrats and supported President Kennedy and his decision to stay in Vietnam and President Johnson even when the war escalated. They also STRONGLY supported the men in uniform. To this day, I still dislike the 'hippies' of the time because, in my young mind, they were nasty people who hated our troops. They say they just hated the war but loved our troops, but a lot of the guys were spit on and called names when they came back. Meanwhile, the 'sexual revolution' happened and it was not necessarily a good thing. By the time I got into high school in the 70's, boys expected more from girls that they didn't before (if ya know what I mean) ;-) The only good thing that came out of the 60's was the Civil Rights Movement and the space program. The 60's were the catalyst that started a good many of the societal problems we have today. Changes needed to happen, but the pendulum swung too far the other way.

Now, if you want to talk 70's, I have much happier memories! (except for the disco of the late 70's!) I was in high school/college then. I'd never go back to the 60's, but I'd repeat the 70's in a heartbeat!

[VOX]

13. The stories of hippies "spitting" on troops are urban folklore...

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Did_protesters_spit_050803.htm
<snip>
Jerry Lembcke, an associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross and a Vietnam combat veteran, has written a well documented book, "The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam" (New York University Press, 1998) that thoroughly debunks the tales of protesters "spitting upon" Vietnam vets. Lembcke conducted extensive research to ascertain that there were no contemporaneous news reports or police complaints lodged to substantiate the claims that began appearing in the media about 1991. The perpetuation of such myths only blocks the healing of Vietnam veterans from our "culture of victimization," and it serves the agenda of those pro-war forces who place fear and intimidation in the path of open debate on the pressing issues of the moment.

[jonnyblitz]

21. I read that book. It's a good one. n/t

[plaguepuppy]

22. Thanks for that link

I am so tired of hearing that crap. I was involved in the antiwar movement before it was crushed by COINTELPRO, and my experience was the exact opposite: there was a strong element of real support for the troops in the antiwar movement, not as some abstraction but as real people who had been through horrendous experiences and were trying to make sense of it all. I was involved in a GI coffeehouse in Cambridge, and also found myself playing the same role for a friend who had dropped out of college and got drafted. And oddly enough, even though he did his service stateside he was treated as something of a scary outsider by society at large when he came back.

There was no agenda of recruiting these guys or trying to use them as grist for some political game, just a genuine urge to help the victims of the war who happened to be our contemporaries. To the people I knew and worked with this "spitting" nonsense amounts to a blood libel.

[Odessey]

26. Replied to wrong post

See "Sorry, I disagree". In my haste, I'm afraid I replied to myself!! :-)

[LuLu550]

29. thanks for the link!

I got "into it" with a couple people on a message board. It is particularly good to have since right wing vets are dusting all this crap off again to paint Kerry as "Hanio John."

[Odessey]

25. I'm sorry, I disagree.

Most of what I wrote is based on childhood memories, but, last year, at our local courthouse, they had a board with the pictures of many of the local men and women who were serving in the Middle East. A Vietnam Vet stood next to me and cried. He said he'd wished they had done those types of things for all the Vietnam vets. He said, when he got off the plane in California, "he and his buddies were spit at and bottles thrown at them". I cried with him, with my arm around his shoulder. He said there was a scuffle at the airport as other customers in the airport came to their aid and got between them and the people who attacked them.

That war (conflict) was horrible. We should have never been there. But I've learned long ago not to trust the "experts" just because they've written the books. If the author is at any way biased, his writing reflects it. Part of my job involves research and I've worked with students working towards their doctorates as they do research. You wouldn't believe how they stretch to support their theses. I keep saying 'just the facts'. Whether you like them or not - the facts are the facts. I look at the spate of both conservative and liberal writers and take the "facts" in their books with a grain of salt. And, now that I'm old enough to not be awed by the 'all knowing' college professors like I used to be, I take their opinions and research with even less of a grain of salt.

Sorry, I don't want to be rude or contrary. The Vietnam vet thing is a soft spot for me. The injustice of it all - the war itself, the treatment of those men, the power-hungry 'establishment' that the protesters referred to at the time - all leave a bad taste in my mouth. My high-school graduating class missed going by one year. We were to first class to really be carefree. War was not part of our vocabulary. The shadow had been lifted.

[teach1st]

14. The only recent time period to which I can relate

Before you hurl "stuck in the sixties" insults at me, hear me out.

When I hear "sixties" I think of the late sixties and early seventies. I was high school age and the following is what I went felt, with my particular circle of friends and acquantinces:

The late sixties were at best a time when being peaceful and accepting were cool. Consumerism and greed were not cool. Being unacceptable was acceptable. Our music transcended genre and, sometimes, profit.

Sure, there were excesses in the sixties, and it was so "in" to be "out" that there was to some a uniform style of the time, dutifully noted by the media. But I think we accepted anybody who wanted to try being on the bus, no matter who they were or what they looked like.

At any rate, the media didn't really get it and if one hung around outside the reaches of media, there were so many wonderous events and emotions to experience that I'm still assimilating them all.

Above all, we know that we had it. We knew that Johnson and Humphrey, Nixon and Daley, Hoover and all of the rest of the uptight straight world did not have it...we could see right through their games, their wars, and their disabled culture.

Too soon, though, for many, the stuff of the sixties became co-opted, diltuted and tainted by the very forces we were trying to transcend.

[K8-EEE]

15. I Am 44 -- But I Was Just Listening To That Song!

I remember hearing that on the radio when I was in first grade! Perfect song for all the weddings...

What it meant to me -- an explosion of freedom and ideas. I was lucky to be a child in the 60s.

[peterh]

16. the 60s were playful and without….

For this 52 year old, leaving Oregon in `70 is when both life and meaning took hold…

[gator_in_Ontario]

17. 60's? what 60's?

[plaguepuppy]

24. Is that a picture of Tecumseh?

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Tecumseh.html

[Dees]

27. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I went to high school, war and college in the sixties. I guess you might say I am 60's to the bone. Assassinations, civil rights, war, counter culture all had their huge impact on my young brain.
Later on there was family, business and responsibilities. I don't mind telling anyone that my values are rooted deeply from that decade. I'm more than happy to comment on music, politics, events and trends from the sixties. Nowadays there is almost an obsession with all things sixties. I was there and I think I'm a better human for it. I know I'm a better Democrat as a result of having surviving the sixties.

Peace.

John

[LuLu550]

28. well, it started out like that song

then it went to me getting tear gassed in DC.

[Gildor Inglorion]

30. I First Heard that Song in Vietnam

where I spent almost all of the year 1967. I yearned with all my heart to go to San Francisco and find out what a "love-in" was! When I got back to the states, I was assigned to Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, between Washington, DC, and Baltimore. I was there when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and Washington was set alight. By the time I returned to civilian life, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, the Chicago Democratic Convention/riots had occurred, and *yuck* Richard Nixon had been elected president. I never did find out what a love-in was. :-( Nevertheless, I loved the 60's because of the music, the end of censorship (I read "Ulysses,""Lady Chatterley's Lover," "Fanny Hill," and all the newly available European stuff as fast as I could get my hands on them), and the atmosphere of "Power to the People!" and "All You Need Is Love." I've never quite outgrown that era. I hope I never do.

[kodi]

31. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

dickens

it was, same as it ever was.

we just happened to grow up then and focus on it as unique because we feel that we are unique.

same as it ever was

....same as it ever will be

[Carolina]

32. everything seemed possible, then it all changed

I grew up in Washington, DC where the President at that time was like a neighbor. Drove by the WH every day going to & from school and recall seeing JFK on some Fridays leaving via Marine One from the south lawn heading to Andrews and thence Hyannisport. Our family loved JFK and with him in the WH everthing seemed possible. That's how my political activism/inclination started.

Then JFK was murdered and it felt as though a family member had died. Nothing was the same nor would we ever be so innocent or exuberant about politics again.

Our world, my early years, was segregated, but segregated in DC was not so bad as the deep south and change occurred sooner as well. When we moved into a white neighborhood long before the civil and voting rights acts passed, people said some ugly things and smeared nasty graffiti on our cars and walkway, but there was no violence or fear of it. Course they all moved out, fleeing to the suburbs.

Civil rights defined the first half of decade for me. Then came all the upheaval with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, the deaths of my political heroes Martin and Bobby and a sense of resignation as Nixon was sworn in. I remember going to all the protests despite my parents fears and concerns about my welfare and going to Nixon's inauguration wearing my Kennedy buttons in defiance. My parents had gone to the March on Washington in August 1963 (the site of MLK's most famous spech) but wouldn't take us kids for fear of violence.
Being in DC at that time gave us a front seat to history and we loved being involved.

1968 was the best and the worst with so many images: working with my sister on Bobby Kennedy's campaign, the worry that my cousin would have to go to Vietnam, the riots after MLK's death and my fear and inability to get home the day they started, the RFK funeral train arriving at Union Station, the utter sadness and tremendous sense of loss and waste, and yes, the thought -- even then -- that the forces of negativity and evil were taking over in the form of the GOP.

It was good and bad, wonderful and sad. And I'm glad I came of age when I did.

[DancingBear]

33. It was, as they say, the time of our lives

It was a time when those of us who lived through it thought we truly could change the world. It was a time when the music mattered, when Hendrix and Morrison and Joplin and the Airplane took hold of your soul and did not let go. The ride was mesmerizing, as it led from a newly minted phenomena called underground FM radio all the way to a muddy field in New York.

it was a time when those who were young knew that the ways of those who were not were in serious need of a kick in the ass, and we were more than happy to provide it. We wore our hearts and emotions on our sleeves, then, up front and straightforward. We moved in solidarity with our own kind, fighting the battles for acceptance and equality each and every day. We grew our hair long and wore American flag patches upside down on frayed bell bottoms, and we knew of the underground "freak houses" that kept you safe when you ventured into the deep south. We learned of the Chicago Seven, the Black Panthers, and the Weather Underground. We watched police attack us for no other reason than we were different from them, yet we still gathered time after time to argue that civil rights and gay rights and women's rights were ready to sit down at the time along with the rest of America. We learned of Mother Earth News, and built home made solar collectors in the garage. We watched many leaders die, and many more go to prison. Through it all , though, our spirits and beliefs never wavered, and we carry them today. "Look what's happening in the streets - gotta revolution, gotta revolution..."

For those not old enough to have lived through such a time, bear with us as we reminisce, for these times will not come again. We are proud of what we did back then, because we truly believe we made it easier for you. All we ask is for the occasional moment to sit back and remember why.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

[gula]

35. My first protest march at 15/16: against the invasion of

Chekoslovakia. What can I say, just another old European.