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I remember the Hari Krishnas too, standing around in the parking lots asking for money. Oh, the Moonies, they were totally crazy. So many cults back then. But all of that came later on. I was in at the beginning and out when it got too weird and went too far. I was out by the time people were taking hard drugs, only in when people were experimenting with pot.
On a somber note, my first ex and I had a good friend who went to Viet Nam and came back depressed and lost. We tried to help but I found out with my next husband, a Viet Nam vet, that the ones who were most emotionally damaged could not be helped. My second husband never spoke about it except to tell me he had been there.
But he did seem to be bottling something up inside and it took decades to come out. His total breakdown and subsequent hospitalization and hopeless prognosis by the VA ended our marriage, 30 years after the war was over. I'm proud of him because of a few things he finally confided in me when we were trying to get him on VA disability and get him well again. We still keep in touch by email even though he wanted a divorce and lives alone in some hole in the wall place according to his wishes.
His condition reinforces in me that my anti war protests were appropriate. We did not dislike the soldiers, we were against sending them to a useless, confusing, impossible to win, war.
I don't think I've ever known a Viet Nam vet who would talk about his experiences there in any detail.
Glad you kept in touch with your ex-husband, sounds like he needed you. I had a boyfriend who was drafted, and came home so hooked on drugs he couldn't function anymore. He had wanted us to get married and me pregnant before he went to Viet Nam as an insurance policy that he wouldn't be drafted, but I was still in school and was too determined I wouldn't end up like my mother- in an abusive marriage with no way to get out and be self-sufficient, and blaming her kids for her predicament, so I just couldn't do it.
What critics of the so-called hippie era fail to understand is that it was a relatively brief experimental period for many youth who were coming out of rather repressive households in an overly conservative culture, often with repressive father/parents who had a particular rigid mindset about what their children "must" do and become.
Perhaps. Having come out of the Depression and the Great War that affected a lot more of the population personally than Vietnam did, those "repressive" parents of yours probably did have a rigid mindset about things like working hard at jobs so their kids would have a roof over their heads and a meal in front of them each night at the dinner table. Most of them were willing to give up any ideas they might have about ditching their wife for a younger model because the mother of their children didn't understand them, or ditching the family to go to Europe for a few months to find themselves, because that isn't what you do if you're an adult and want to keep your kids feeling safe and secure. After fighting in Saipan and Normandy, they produced a generation that had soaring divorce rates and which aborted a good portion of my generation. Thanks, Baby Boomers. Most of my cohort would have loved to have had parents like yours.
I lived right in the middle of it. Worked indirectly for a big name record company, met with Berry Gordy and crew, was on Pete Seger's boat, met Stravinsky, Ferlin Husky, Johnny Cash, Abbie Hoffman. Free tickets to the Fillmore East, also went to the Fillmore West. Hendricks, Heart, Cocker, Doors, Sly, Motown. Lived on both coasts. Saw 'Hair' in LA. Open mega parties there with hundreds of people from the famous to the Hells Angels. Traveled all around the US and had friends who were roadies and studio musicians for the big name bands. Was at the first Earth Day.
Never got into the political stuff. You couldn't get me to touch drugs or drink with a ten foot pole and haven't for 45 years, saw too many minds messed up and lives ruined. Was at Woodstock that morning and high tailed it back to the city before anyone got there. We use to take kids from out of town off the street who came to the Village before they could get into trouble. Some of them came back every year. Missed the moon landing because we didn't have a tv, too much to do to sit in front of a box. I wouldn't say I idealize that period at all, sometimes it was crazy, but lots of interesting opportunities, a few once in a lifetime I should have taken advantage of and didn't.
In 1964, I think, we had an English lit teacher in high school who spent class time playing Dylan and Joan Baez records with a side of Buffy St. Marie. One day we came into class and she was gone. So was one of the Biology teachers. They ran off to San Francisco together -- the advance party for the summer of love. We got a crabby substitute teacher who wasn't into Dylan but the seeds had been planted. You couldn't put the cat back in the bag. Blowing in the Wind was the senior class song when we graduated in '66. We had already lost one guy everyone knew who dropped out of school to enlist and lasted about a month in Vietnam.
Perhaps. Having come out of the Depression and the Great War that affected a lot more of the population personally than Vietnam did, those "repressive" parents of yours probably did have a rigid mindset about things like working hard at jobs so their kids would have a roof over their heads and a meal in front of them each night at the dinner table. Most of them were willing to give up any ideas they might have about ditching their wife for a younger model because the mother of their children didn't understand them, or ditching the family to go to Europe for a few months to find themselves, because that isn't what you do if you're an adult and want to keep your kids feeling safe and secure. After fighting in Saipan and Normandy, they produced a generation that had soaring divorce rates and which aborted a good portion of my generation. Thanks, Baby Boomers. Most of my cohort would have loved to have had parents like yours.
Couldn't miss an opportunity, could you, to one more time paint an entire group of people with that very broad brush based on your own discontent with the way things are, eh?
As regards "baby boomers", some of us 1) made our own way from dysfunctional childhoods with no support- not even moral or mental, let alone financial, from our "Depression and Great War" parents, working and paying our own ways and struggling through the years to do so, and 2) formed marriages/partnerships which have lasted eons and supported our own children as they grew up and became responsible adults on their own, in some cases providing continuing support when needed, often at some cost to ourselves and delaying of our dreams.
Sorry if your parents did those things you're condemning in your post. Shame on you if your parents provided you with everything your heart desired as you grew up, financed an expensive education that you took for granted, and who continue to support you in every way until you find a job you believe matches that fancy education and which will support you in the manner you've come to believe you're entitled as you bite the hand that fed(feeds) you.
If you would prefer to have had my parents, please, have at them....
In 1964, I think, we had an English lit teacher in high school who spent class time playing Dylan and Joan Baez records with a side of Buffy St. Marie. One day we came into class and she was gone. So was one of the Biology teachers. They ran off to San Francisco together -- the advance party for the summer of love. We got a crabby substitute teacher who wasn't into Dylan but the seeds had been planted. You couldn't put the cat back in the bag. Blowing in the Wind was the senior class song when we graduated in '66. We had already lost one guy everyone knew who dropped out of school to enlist and lasted about a month in Vietnam.
I was a sophmore in 66, and I had found my stride, being one of those who didn't fit it. But there were about six of us who hung around with each other, and we quite proudly established that we were not them. When they had football rah rah assemblies we sat together and brought a book to read. Nobody bugged us, but maybe different was more tolerated then.
There was already discussion in class about outside events. I don't know where I got them from, but when I was going through boxes I found a bunch of literature from the SDS. I must have gotten it at school. I remember in the next few years how much the music and politics had slipped into ordinary life. Dad said little. It wasn't ever discussed with family.
I started being a fan of folk music years before, in the folk revival times of Hootenanni and the other shows. The first anti war songs started back when those like Pete Seeger started performing them, and this opened the door for Dylan and the other new performers. I just love music, but I shared a lot with mom and some she didn't care for. Music was and still is a background noise in life.
I was still in high school when my cousins got their draft numbers. One was one number away from being drafted when they filled the list. It was the year more were killed than any other. I remember you could tell he was scared.
The attitudes we learned then may have modified, but haven't gone away. I really wish that instead of people sitting and grumbling to like minds over the phone about Iraq, they would have taken to the streets and assembled. It would have made a difference to see how many ordinary people didn't like things, but if you stay in your living room nobody knows. Today the feeling seems to be doesn't matter, nobody was going to listen. What have we lost?
Admittedly the 1950's were too rigid, from styles of hair and dress to accepted political opinions to other matters. But there is such a thing as throwing out the baby with the bath water.
And throwing out the baby with the bath water is exactly what occurred during the counter-culture/hippie movement, when almost everything "mainstream" was rejected and the narcissistic pursuit of short-term pleasure was celebrated.
There is the long-term pleasure and gratification of building skills which contribute to society as well as allow one to earn a living, whether those skills be those of the carpenter, plumber, electrician, scientist, lawyer, accountant, nurse, doctor, concert musician, or many others. But building such skills requires self-discipline, which became a dirty word.
And how about our minds, our most precious possession? So many did not survive the drugs with their minds intact. The OP is fortunate that she did, or am I assuming too much? I have to wonder when a parent celebrates the abandonment of his or her own children in pursuit of hedonistic pleasures. I am old fashioned enough to believe that when one brings children into the world a serious responsibility is created. Oops! There's another rejected concept, "responsibility".
Speaking of minds, it blows mine that this idiotic and self-indulgent movement could be considered a positive thing when all was said and done and we look back on it. Only those who still embrace that lifestyle, the faded hippies who have remained true to the cause, can claim any consistency.
Doubtless many will want to paint me as a hopeless stick in the mud, but I, too, hitchhiked around Europe, the difference being that I had learned two European languages thoroughly, French and German. I, too, decided to live frugally and forego keeping up with the Joneses once I started my career job. I love adventure and learned to fly private airplanes, the biggest adventure of them all. That took self-discipline and responsibility, those dreaded evil concepts.
Blind, knee-jerk rejection of mainstream values is truly blindness and idiocy. It is destructive on the whole.
I have been highly disgusted by many posts in this thread but cannot keep myself from reading it, much like I look at auto accidents when passing by despite their sometimes gruesome and painful nature.
I repped Escort Rider with the comment "post of the year".
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General thoughts on this thread so far
