The 1960s discussion thread

They say it's the most culturally significant decade of the past one hundred years. Do you agree?












If you were around, do you recall much from that era?
What was your life like at the time?
Any favorite 60s music, TV shows, fashions?

I wasn't around, but my parents met in 1969.

Chris wrote:They say it's the most culturally significant decade of the past one hundred years. Do you agree?

I was around, but the "decade" at one end was quite different than at the other. The 10 years from 1960 to '70 did not encompass the social changes. If we are looking at a common decade, it would more likely be 1965 to 1975. 1960 to 1965 was still a breakaway from the uptight conservative 1950s.

I was in the Air Force from '63 to '67. In 1968 I was working as a security guard at a hospital and hadn't dropped out, still kept short hair and shaved but enjoyed the sexual revolution which was embraced by young ppl, even those apparently str8-laced non-hippies. I did a couple nurses and an older switchboard operator from the hospital.

Chris wrote:If you were around, do you recall much from that era? What was your life like at the time?

They say "if you can remember the '60s you weren't there."

I was there and remember quite clearly many pleasureable moments. Free-luv was the thing. There was an openness and sense of family. We were all brothers & sisters, crossing racial lines of the previous generation and sexual experimentation included ... well anything.

As I mentioned, my '60s started in 1970. I was a cop in '69 but in the process of dropping out and hanging with long-haired hippie types in the French Quarter. By Jan 70 I quit the police and was hanging with communes and crash pads in New Orleans and by July we went to the Atlanta Pop Festival - a sequel to Woodstock. So I had all those classic experiences - and again, it was great fun.

Oscar Wilde said that "Youth is wasted on the young." I am so glad that I was young at that time. We opened so many doors - and they seem to not have been all shut back, but young ppl aren't going thru them so much any more. Too busy txtng.

Chris wrote:Any favorite 60s music, TV shows, fashions?

Oh yes, speaking of Doors, Love Jim Morrison. He sang to me so much in 1969. Also, Led Zeppelin is one of my favorites - but they sing to the adolescent fervor. Santana for the rhythm and Moody Blues for the philosophy. Joany Mitchell was one of us.

As for fashion, I didn't wear fancy clothes. Bell-bottom Levi's and denim shirts, with sandals. Sometimes just had a mustache but finally went with full beard.

This is me, 1972

It's like Larry the Cable Guy's baby picture, there's a vast, obvious difference, but the then and now look exactly the same!

Anyway, that's long before my time, my own mother was only a child at the time, but she said I would've enjoyed it with everything that was going on. I'm a very stubborn person so she's probably also factoring in the political and social sides of it as well when she told me that.

They used to say that the 90s was the 60s standing on its head. I don't know how true that statement was though.

As far as the 60s go....not that I was there, but it seems like 1968 was the seminal year of it with all the protests and assassinations of political figures. Speaking of "seminal", I bet there was a lot of sex....I wonder what was better.... the "free love 60s" or the "sexual revolution 70s".

Shale wrote:

I was around, but the "decade" at one end was quite different than at the other. The 10 years from 1960 to '70 did not encompass the social changes. If we are looking at a common decade, it would more likely be 1965 to 1975. 1960 to 1965 was still a breakaway from the uptight conservative 1950s.

I was in the Air Force from '63 to '67. In 1968 I was working as a security guard at a hospital and hadn't dropped out, still kept short hair and shaved but enjoyed the sexual revolution which was embraced by young ppl, even those apparently str8-laced non-hippies. I did a couple nurses and an older switchboard operator from the hospital.

Makes sense. I always say that the first three or four years of a new decade is basically a hangover of the last. From what I gathered, the 60s became full circle during '67 Summer of Love. Again, from what I gather. I can also believe that '65-'75 were probably more in sync with each other, because from what I've observed of that decade, the first half and latter half sort of seem different. 1971 and 1978 seem to have little in common.

Oh yes, speaking of Doors, Love Jim Morrison. He sang to me so much in 1969. Also, Led Zeppelin is one of my favorites - but they sing to the adolescent fervor. Santana for the rhythm and Moody Blues for the philosophy. Joany Mitchell was one of us.

As for fashion, I didn't wear fancy clothes. Bell-bottom Levi's and denim shirts, with sandals. Sometimes just had a mustache but finally went with full beard.

This is me, 1972

So when did you finally decide to part with all that long hair Shale, and was it a sad, sad day?

I was 4 in 1960 and 13 in 1969. In the first half of the decade, I was just an oblivious kid, going to school and playing with my friends. Main difference between now and then was "playing" meant running around or riding your bike instead of sitting in front of a screen having a machine get all the exercise. Ooh and collecting baseball cards and chewing the worst tasting gum. McDonalds was still keeping count and had only sold "millions". By the second half, I was more aware of what was going on around me and Viet Nam pretty much dominated that. All in all, 1968 sucked.

1960

* The first debate for a presidential election was televised. It was between Senator John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Nixon seemed nervous, but Kennedy stood tall. The debate on TV changed many people's minds about Kennedy.

* This year NASA sent up ECHO, the first communications satellite to be seen with the naked eye.

* American "U2" spy plane shot down over the USSR.

* The Olympic Games were held in Rome and Wilma Rudolf won three gold medals.

1961

* John F Kennedy moves into the White House. He gives his famous speech - "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

* The soviets have sent the first man into space and the Americans need a man in space, too. The event came on May 5, 1961. Alan Shepard was sent to space in the "Freedom 7". On May 25, Kennedy wanted to have a man on the moon and back before the decade was over.

1962

* John Glenn became the first man to orbit the earth - 3 times. It was a five hour flight.

* Rachel Carson, a scientist and writer, warned that our earth would die of pollution and chemicals. Especially chemicals that were developed to kill bad insects. DDT was a real bad chemical. It killed bad insects, along with good insects, along with plants, along with animals. She wrote the book Silent Spring with a warning. At least five states banned DDT.

1963

* Martin Luther King Jr. made the speech, "I have a Dream" on August 28, 1963. More than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators came to Washington DC to demand equal rights for Black and Whites. Part of the speech was - "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…"

* President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was never sent to trial. While being moved by police to a different jail, a man named Jack Ruby shot Oswald. Who killed President Kennedy nobody knows for sure.

1964

* The Beatles, a British rock and roll band became VERY popular. The "Fab Four", John, Paul, George, and Ringo, were played on radio stations all over the world. They were seen on the "Ed Sullivan Show". They performed concerts that were quickly sold out. All the frenzy over the group became known as "Beatlemania", which was only the beginning.

* This was the first year the cigarette boxes had a warning printed on it "Smoking can be hazardous to your health". It had not occurred to the US government to give the warning that smoking lead to cancer and lung problems.

* The first Civil Rights bill was passed to stop racial discrimination.

1965

* President Johnson ordered bombing raids on North Vietnam and Americans begin protesting the war.

* The world's first roofed stadium was built, the Houston Astrodome.

1966

* Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse and a Pioneer of animated films, died of cancer on December 15, 1966, but his legend lives on.

1967

* The first heart transplant was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa.

1968

* Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Two months later, Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's brother was assassinated, too. Both were civil rights leaders.

* On November 5, 1968, Shirley Chisholm was elected America's first black woman to Congress.

1969

* Nearly half a million people headed over to a 600 acre farm in New York for the Woodstock Festival. Many top rock musicians were there. It lasted three days, a weekend of music, love and peace.

* July 20, 1969, 4:18 p.m., one of the biggest events of history happened. Apollo 11 landed on the moon, astronauts aboard. Neil Armstrong's famous speech for the historical steps "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Cool Clothes


Hot pants (extremely short shorts)
Mini skirts
No hats or gloves for day wear
Space age fashions in vinyl and other synthetics
Bold, solid color contrasts from the Op Art and Pop Art movements, commonly
called Mod fashions
Preppy fashions for upper class youth: Madras plaids, oversize hairy sweaters,
painstakingly matched accessories

The 1960's decade began, and so did the Vietnam War. Debate between politicians began as well, almost as bad as the war itself. White House records and transcripts show that the U.S. military leaders usually voted for the use of nuclear bombs, while Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy wanted not to get into those weapons. The Vietnam War did start in the 60's, but there had been trouble in Vietnam before that.

The trouble started when the people of North Vietnam wanted to take over South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese people didn't want that, so they tried to fight back. Soon, the Americans pushed their way in the war. They thought that if South Vietnam didn't want to be part of North Vietnam, they shouldn't be bossed around. America began to fight for South Vietnam.

In 1961, President Kennedy sent a group of people to Vietnam to report the conditions. A reporter known as the "December 1961 White Paper" argued for more in military and economic aid. It also had an introduction of a large scale American "advisers" to help stabilize the Diem regime and pound the NFL (National Liberation Front.)

Things had gotten worse in 1968 for the Johnson administration. In late January the DRV (or North Vietnam) and the NFL began to attack some major cities in South Vietnam. The attacks were known as the Tet Offensive, which was a way to fosre the Johnson administration to the bargaining table. The Americans were getting war weary, as The Communists Party correctly decided, and that they were not likely to succeed much longer in war. Many people thought that the Tet offensive was a military defeat, it had produced the desired results. Lyndon Johnson was disgraced, and announced he would not seek the Democratic Party's re-nomination for president, then hinted he was going to the bargaining table to end the war.

^^Shale, without double checking, I think Tet was in '68.

Very interesting era it was, with so many different pots on the stove all boiling over at once.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love

Imagine all the sex that happened at the Summer of Love.

I missed The Summer of Love, just getting out of the Air Force and trying to find employment and a place to live. I was a bit of a loner until arriving in New Orleans and scarfing up on all that "free love" even as a str8 security guard and later a cop.

"This unprecedented gathering of young people is often considered to have been a social experiment, because of alternative lifestyles that became common, both during the summer itself and during subsequent years. These lifestyles included communal living; the free and communal sharing of resources, often among total strangers; and free love..."

I got into this in 1969 and quit the police dept. & dropped out by Jan 1970. I need not imagine all the sex in those subsequent years. It was a great time to be young.

Shale, I once spoke to an older guy who served in Vietnam; drafted at eighteen. Like you, he was very fond of his coming of age era, and spoke highly of the volume of easy sex he had from 1967 to about 1980 (you know what happened after that.)

I love the short bobs and off the shoulders tops & dresses young women used to wear back then.

So question WHEN did the hippie movement die out? I can guess it prolly did gradually but when would you say "hippie" chic was dead? We gotta be 70's here.

Bumping for MLK

43 years ago today Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis TN

Let us remember his sacrifice for all of us.