Tell me about the '60s (vanity)

[HungarianGypsy]

I am wanting to write a story based on a young adult in the 1960s. Since I was born in 1973 all I really know is what I studied in books. But, I want to get beyond love beads and LSD. I want to be able to write this as it really was. I know it's said if you remember the '60s you weren't really there. But, if anyone does remember I would appreciate reading your stories and facts. Thank you.

[3catsanadog]

I learned to drive without a seat belt.

[x]

If you take any American high school yearbook from 1963 and compare it with the same school in 1968, you will see a change greater than any other 5-year period. In fact, the difference between seniors separated by just five years looks like 25 years have passed. The conception of the change of the 60's occurred the day that Kennedy was killed. Before that all aspects of American society from the church, to education, to style resembled the 1950's. 1964 was the pivotal year in the last half of the 20th-century because of all the changes wraught by everything from the Beatles to birth control to civil rights.

That's a very good observation, but maybe the difference between 1965 or 1966 and 1970 or 1971 better illustrates the difference. I don't know if there were so many long-haired kids in high schools in 1968. A few years later, there were a lot more. It took a while for trends to trickle down from colleges and young adults to high schools. I'd say, in terms of style, 1967 was pivotal. 1968 in politics.

[stumpy]

Actually we were very much like the group of guys portrayed in "Big Wedsnday"... The fights at the parties, some guys wearing the goofie clothes...

I enlisted on my 18th birthday, but while taking my physical, I saw guys I knew show up for draft physicals looking like those clowns, and I had "knots" on my knees like the actors. Semper Fi.

[toomanygrasshoppers]

Transistor radios under your pillow at night, to muffle them when you weren't supposed to be listening. Only AM radio. Stations from cities far away on clear nights. Otis Redding singing "Dock of the Bay" through that pillow in the dark bedroom late at night."

I was just going to post the same thing. lol We could get WLS in Chicago in the Dallas area late at night.

[WhirlwindAttack]

it was brylcream "A little dab will do you" and aqua velva aftershave.

[proudofthesouth]

I don't know if this helps but here goes:

I grew up watching the Vietnam War on the nightly news. My Dad would watch at least TWO broadcasts and they were either about Vietnam, civil rights marches, war protests, or the space program.

Also, fell asleep every night listening to Johnny Carson.

Dresses made out of paper (yes, you read that right - paper) were briefly in fashion around '66 or '67.

And lastly, back in 1969 some scientist predicted that the entire state California would fall into the ocean due to an earthquake on a particular date (it was sometime during that summer). I remember waking up late one night and asking my Dad if it had happened yet.

[3catsanadog]

If you were a girl and a guy wanted to "go all the way", you had no problem saying no because you were brought up that way. And society backed you up. Men pursued the gals.

Now, if a gal said no to a guy, he wouldn't "waste" another minute with her and wouldn't have to. Girls are so much more sexually aggressive now (yes, I know the freeper men here are thinking "all right!!!").

I'm so glad I grew up back then; however, within a few short years from the latter years of the 60's to the end of the 70's, sexual mores had really changed. The women's movement and their so-called "ownership" of their bodies so that they could have sex as willy-nilly as the men made it possible for women to lose the one real bit of power they actually ever had. We girls forgot that good old bit of wisdom - our power lies between our thighs.

[WorkerbeeCitizen]

Thanx for bringing that up. I didn't watch Beany & Cecil but, there was;
Flipper and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Rowan and Martin's Laugh In and Gilligan's Island.
Draft Cards and Lotteries
Draft Dodgers.

[HungarianGypsy]

You see this plot throughout the Sixites, in movie after movie. At the beginning of the decade, in the Kennedy years, it's very timid and benign. As time goes on the sex and drugs, hippiedom and radicalism of the late '60s become more and more a part of the mythos.

What if it's the other way around? LOL! I see I have a lot of reading to do on this thread. I really didn't expect such a big response. My food threads don't get this much of a response.

[Revolting cat!]

One of the best disks of the 60s that nobody ever heard of!

[TheRightGuy]

I entered the 60's as a naive 13 year old kid an exited a 23 year old father of two.

Jr. High ... High School ... College ... Marriage ... College ... Career.

It was, indeed, an amazing decade especially the music.

[3catsanadog]

"Atlantic keeps your car on the go, go, go, go!! keep on the go with Atlantic!"

[jslade]

bump to bookmark

[HungarianGypsy]

Don't' forget Rowan & Martin's 'LAUGH IN'.

Saw these when Nick at Nite would show them. One of my favorites was News of the Future. One of the best of this skit started, "198-(can't remember the exact year mentioned. probably '86 or '87) President Ronald Reagan said today." Talk about prophetic.

[nanetteclaret]

As usual, I'm late to the party, but here goes:

I was 11 years old and in the 6th grade during the fall of 1963-spring of 1964. I have very vivid memories of the day President Kennedy was shot, as it happened here in Dallas. Then, in January or early February of '64, the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan’s show. I listened to our local radio station, KLIF 1190, all summer long that year. I still remember the Charlie & Harrigan show in the morning followed by Johnny Dark until noon. KLIF would play Beatle marathons every Saturday - back-to-back Beatles music all day long! "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," "Love Me Do," "Please Please Me," etc. We would have twist contests – the girls would challenge the boys to see who could last the longest.

We had to entertain ourselves and use our imaginations. We played dolls, explored the creek, made tree forts with old Christmas trees, rode our bikes to school, obeyed our teachers and our parents, tried hard to make good grades, and didn’t have a care. My elementary school day began when our Principal would come over the loud speaker and begin with announcements and a prayer. The oldest students vied for the honor of being able to stand at the mike in the lunchroom and say grace before lunch. This was in public school - before prayer was banned!

Fun things to do in high school included being on the drill team and football every Friday night, church choir tours, driving around on sunny Saturday afternoons in the family station wagon with the Beach Boys at full blast (rainy Saturdays were for Dick Clark's American Bandstand: “Well, Dick, I really liked it. It has a good beat and you can dance to it”).

Our lives were very wholesome, but about 1967 things started being infected with the Culture of Death: the Viet Nam War and corresponding protests and marches, drug usage, free sex, the music became dark, brooding, and depressing, people became hippies and adopted the "grunge" look before it was called that. By the time I got to college in 1970, everyone was "questioning authority," "questioning the meaning of life," celebrating anarchy, and then wondering why they were depressed all the time! A popular phrase at the time was "don't trust anyone over 30." Now, those who said it are pushing 60!

[Thumper1960]

The '60's................................................if you remember them, you weren't there.

[woofie]

I was there, now Im not

[Bigg Red]

I was a teenager in the 1960s. My life was not about love beads, and I never even knew anyone who did drugs until I was in my 3rd year in college. Of course, I grew up in the Baltimore area, so here on the East Coast we were probably behind the California changes (thankfully).

I saw part of the movie "American Graffitti" once on TV, and, if the parts that I saw were representative of the whole movie, it was very much like teen life in my time.

Girls were modest and worried about their reputations, and boys expected to have their advances repulsed. Listening to the latest music on the radio -- AM was the cool part -- was very important in our lives. Cars were very important and boys loved to drag race with each other.

[Revolting cat!]

And the modern automobiles in the 60s! Du-u-u-u-de!

:

[BIGLOOK]

The 60's......In 1960 my father retired from the Navy and we traveled cross country, visiting parks and snake pits, camping all the way from California to our family home in upstate NY. On the day we left, John Kennedy had a big to do in LA during his campaign for the presidency. Got stuck in LA for a couple extra hours; three boys in a station wagon eager to travel and go camping and my parents vowing to vote for Nixon.

'61-'66......No longer a Navy Brat, settled down to High School Daze in one place for the longest period in my life. Worked on farms for cash, hunted woodchucks for bounty till I could work after school in a drugstore or a gas station or a super market for $1.15 an hour, saving for a $100 car. (My father didn't give an allowance.)

Hunting in the fall and trapping muskrats (and if lucky, a mink or two) in the winter for the benefit of the family and to fatten my purse.......I barely broke even.

In '63, Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson took over and Viet Nam was fast becoming the top item on the evening news. By the time graduation came around, getting into a college was considered necessary for survival. So, off to the community college, cherishing my 2S draft status and planning on using it as a stepping stone to some University.
President Johnson had other plans and began drafting out of the colleges; my 2S became a 1A, passed my physical and was told to expect an induction ('Greetings') notice in the next couple of weeks. I come from a Navy family, not just my father and uncles but my ancestors to boot; I enlisted in the Navy, took all the tests and earned a spot in a very good school on the west coast.

Monterey, back in the Navy again, back on the Pacific Ocean....the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Monterey Pop Festival, Big Sur nearby and San Francisco just a couple hours away......all on $90 a month. Tet '68 happened in Viet Nam, Lyndon Johnson bowed out and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in LA. My time at school wasn't shortened but was accelerated. Other service schools followed and leave time was abbreviated to speed the process.

(While in Monterey, the Hippies were friendly and so were the Hell's Angels......go figure.)

What was left remaining of the sixties in CONUS I missed....didn't get back till '71. When I got back, everything was recognizable and notably changed.

Just one story, Gypsy.....there are many others out there, good and ...not so good, so look at the whole thing and report with candor on your findings.