Born in '68.
Posted on 01/09/2007 9:18:52 AM PST by HungarianGypsy
I know I am taking advantage of the Food Ping list by doing this (it's not something I do often, though. so forgive me this time). I was hoping some of you could help me with this topic and maybe even pass it on. Thank you very much.
That's just for starters.
Families did bizarre things, like all eat dinner together at the same time, and they all ate the same thing. Peanut allergies in particular were unknown among children.
Great music... I still have Motown collections in the car.
What do you want to know? I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and was in high school in the early sixties, and spent the summer of 1967 (the Summer of Love) living in San Francisco. I had older friends who were involved with the Diggers and through them met (though how much one meets anyone at parties suffused with alcolhol and drugs, even though one has a lengthy conversation is debatable) various members of the Airplane and the Dead, including the late Ms. Joplin.
I smell another Boomer v. Xer battle brewing.
Born in '68.
The biggest misconception involved drug use - widespread drug abuse did began to be a major problem in the 1960's, but the real devastating drug problem took off in the 70's, and actually peaked in around 1979.
I graduated from high school in 1963 and drugs were never mentioned as a problem by any adult. LSD was around, but only in certain locales and social circles -- it didn't become more common until the very end of the 1960's.
I don't have time to write my life story here, but if you have specific questions, mail them to me and I'll try to help.
I would point out that there was no one "sixties" -- one's experience could vary widely depending on what part of the country one was in. Until about 1964, it was really just an extension of the 1950s, but even that could be wildly different: in San Francisco we had the legacy of the Beat Generation, but that was fringe. Parts of the country didn't enter the "sixties" until they were chronologically passed, and general norms and mores varied enormously from place to place.
Well, I graduated from High School in 72. But you are going to have to ask specific questions. I will say this, althought my friends smoked dope, I thought it was stupid. However, I did a report on the evils of dope in my senior year and discovered there was really no "REAL" evidence for it doing any harm, Reefer Madness notwithstanding.
I still didn't touch the stuff until December of 72. And then only because I was getting drunk while the rest of 'em were getting stoned and a seriously gorgeous chick came into the room I was in and "talked me into trying it".
Come to think of it, that's the70's.
Never mind...
That's all I have to say about that...
My father went to Vietnam for a year and didn't recognize us when he got back.
Although I was born in 1972, I remember seeing hippie buses when I was two years old.
I also knew it was time to go home when the streetlights came on.
I agree. What we think of as the 50's was really the late fifties and early 60's. And frankly, I think that what we think of as the 60's was really the late sixties and early 70's. But even then, that is only when referencing pop culture.
When discussing things like auto racing or baseball or anything else more quantifiable, the decades line up more precicely.
Motown,British Invasion,lots of stuff from before the British Invasion,early and mid 60's folk....
Oh! I really hope not. Since I am an Xer I would be a bit cheesed off if that happened because of me.
Mrs. Slim realized liberal men were trash when the organizer of an SDS rally asked the "girls" to bring cookies.
For the early part of the '60s, see "American Graffiti". For the latter part, see "Full Metal Jacket". That was the '60s.
Some of it is classified information..
You had streetlights?
Just about everyone in school then actually learned to read.
In 1969, when the lottery system for the draft was instituted, a lot of young men in my high school class were pretty nervous.
Classic rock came into its own. I recall hour after hour sitting with my friends listening to Blood, Sweat and Tears, Moody Blues and Chicago.
As teenagers and young women, it was still safe for us to drive down to Steel Pier in Atlantic City, dance, see a concert and walk the Boardwalk safely at night. Forget that now.
Mostly we just went to school, studied sometimes, hung out with friends and stayed out of trouble.
I recall the assassination of JFK and the man on the moon making a big impression on me. Other than that, I wasn't that interested or involved in politics.
concerts if SF until 4 am.
hare krishnas
first joint
touched Grace Slicks butt at a concert after looking up her little black dress on stage for over an hour because I was in the front row.
can't believe I'm not dead after some of the stuff I did.
hell's angel's
drove around with beer all the time. When caught police just dumped it out and told us to go home.
No seat belts, helmets, cell phones, answering machines.
Lotsa freedom
halter tops
much, much more
Depends where you were: I grew up just North of San Francisco. I graduated from high school in June 1966. My senior year, I knew of only a few kids who smoked pot or dropped acid, although the Mexicans were all rumored to use pot. A year later, according to friends a year behind me, by mid-1967 between 60-75% of the then senior class had smoked pot (at least). Meeting up with my high school friends after a year of college, I found virtually all of them had at least tried pot. But, that was California.
My sister finally broke down and bought her own TV from babysitting money. I think it was a 13 inch black and white. She charged us 3 cents per hour to come into her room to watch, 5 cents for Star Trek. I got a discount because I made tickets and assisted her in enforcement.
There was an upside. With no TV, my brother and I spent most summer days playing ball with our friends. We did out morning chores before lunch and then didn't come home to stay until dark, which was 10 p.m. or later in North Dakota. Supper was a very hurried affair to get back to the game. In the wintertime, we build snow forts, tunnels and trenches to defend our turf. The only season we didn't care for was spring when it was too muddy to play baseball and too warm to have anything other than isolated patches of melted snow.
The first time I smoked weed was second-hand, at a Doobie Brother concert in college. Contraty to the Clintonistas, there were a lot of people who grew up in the 1960's who managed to stay off drugs and keep their zippers up. We were only a small part of that number.
I graduated from high school in 1974. I learned how to drive in a Volkswagen Bus. :)
Lots of us grew up in Leave it to Beaver Land.
Not everyone hated President Nixon.
In 1969 during hunting season, at 2:45 when class let out, I would open the trunk of my car and put on some hunting overalls. I would pull my trusty, rusty pump shotgun out, meet with a few other dudes. We would walk into the gym. The gym teacher got his stuff on and grabbed his piece from a locker. Up the stairs we went, down the hall past the principal's office, out the front door and across the street to the open fields on the other side.
That's how it was.
Actually, some people made it thru without any drugs or sex.
I was a boring teen.
My mother bought me Danskin pants and you couldn't tell the back from the front.
I hated those pants.
Other people only got one channel, unless their brother stood on top of the TV with an antenna in each hand :-).
And the TV was big enough for him to do that, and weighed 250 lbs.!
A time of tremendous contradictions. On the one hand you had out of control radicals and hippies and on the other you saw a country that elected Nixon in 68.
I was there but I forgot.
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Philip Larkin
How funny !!! You hit it, spot on. I can really relate from my childhood.
Was he injured or had you changed so much?
A critical thing to remember about the sixties was:
There was Cathy, who'd lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
Patty had only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights --
What a crazy pair!
But they were cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.
Where Cathy adored a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loved to rock and roll,
A hot dog made her lose control --
What a wild duet!
Still, they were cousins,
Identical cousins and you'd find,
They laughed alike, they walked alike,
At times they even talked alike --
You could lose your mind,
When cousins were two of a kind.
I was the first kid in the parking lot to have a Medallion FM reciver unit that had to be plugged into the car's AM radio to work.
There were two, count em, one, two whole FM stations that you could get.
Then, I got really pushy and installed an 8-track tape.
I was high tech.
My brother and I had grown a lot - I was two and he was 4 - and Mom had lost weight and colored her hair. We were standing by the runway when the air groups landed, and Dad walked right past us!
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