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Was there shock that things could change so quickly in 20 years? Did people think the end of the world was here? Did people think humanity was doomed because of the long hair, the civil rights, the drugs, and rebelling youths? Or was it considered just a fad that would blow over and go away? Did all these things seem to happen in another galaxy and your world was never impacted? Or did you come eyeball to eyeball with all the change that was going on?
What were your experiences and those of your parents and especially the experiences of other older people like during this time? What did you think of those times?
I was 16 in 1968. Some of my friends smoked weed and did some stronger stuff but I didn't. Not sure why, but I wasn't attracted to it. I did have long hair and enjoyed the music.
Parents were parents and we now don't understand the youth of today. I think that will always happen.
I was born in 1960, in a different country (where, however, people idolized and knew very well American popular culture), and I remember the 60s from the perspective of a child. Some older folks were annoyed with rock music, long hair on boys and mini skirts on girls, but the annoyance was not very serious, and I don't recall anyone thinking it signalized any doom. I remember it as a very optimistic happy time, and a much more relaxed time, when people lived far more in the moment and enjoyed living in it. Long, very long before cellphones and continuous total connectedness with everything.
I was born in San Francisco and grew up there during my school years. I was just starting high school in 1968 and could write a book about my experiences and adventures in that era. The summer of love was in 1967, with concerts at Golden Gate Park and also the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival at the Memorial Amphitheatre on Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley. Admission tickets were $2 with a free bus up the mountain from the bus depot in Mill Valley. This was a pre-Woodstock rock music festival in a beautiful place that turned out to be unforgettable (I still remember it!).
Entering early teen years, digesting over the fold headlines from my afternoon newspaper route offered further understanding of world events. Summer camps from church and YMCA outings, season pass at the community swimming pool, swatting bugs from family holiday picnic gatherings were as difficult as avoiding relatives one attempted to sway away from.
Youth baseball and staying up later than usual, lead to DXing (keeping a log of distant AM radio stations received). Comparing this information with others served as an unintended geography lesson. CKLW Windsor/Detroit was exceptional.
I can't say that I look back at the 60s with fondness. First part going through the duck and cover drills in school; all the talk about nuclear war killing everyone. I remember in 1962 standing on the corner of US#1 in Florida watching the trains full of military vehicles going by south along with truck convoys of troops.
Then later it was my turn to calculate if I wanted to take a chance on possibly dying in some jungle in a war that I had no interest in like a friend from school did. I chose not to take the chance so I enlisted in the US Coast Guard. Then I still wound up on a cutter that did a tour in operation Market Time in Vietnam. Oh well, at least it wasn't in the jungle.
Surviving the 60s was more of a concern to me than long hair, drugs or rebelling youth were. Add in things like the rampant segregation in the south and students being shot on a college campus at Kent State (which was actually in 1970) and that era is not listed in my book of wonderful memories.
The 60's were the beginning of drugs and all the harm they do from then on. Yes drugs existed before but way underground and never heard of by normal people.
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