The Haze of the '60s

Easy Rider: Me in my first decade

Last fall, I took a class on the music of the 1960s. We trekked through a decade diverse enough to encompass polar opposites like Diana Ross and Jefferson Airplane, Edie Sedgwick and Walter Cronkite. I have shared the planet with hippies, Hendrix, and The Mamas and the Papas’ Michelle Phillips, who, strangely, ate a banana while "California Dreaming” on the Ed Sullivan Show.

My recollections are a gossamer haze. As I steered the boat on family vacations, a larger world was always there, encroaching. I played with Duncan yo-yos in my Shaker Heights driveway and spent my summers at the country club swimming pool. Of course, I didn't know it, but the psychedelic tie-dyed shirts I made with rubber bands and buckets of colorful Rit Dye would have been perfect attire for 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. 

Peter Fonda in Easy Rider

I hung out in our groovy, yellow-and-orange basement, with posters of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, and a blacklight-activated peace sign. (They still sell a variation today.)

In the spring of 1968, my dad came down one evening to wish us farewell – he was taking a work trip to New York and seeing the new musical Hair on Broadway. There were whisperings of nudity in this production – a proposition that eclipsed its social content and phenomenal musical score.

Good morning starshine
The earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below

The harsh realities of the day occasionally punctured my bubble. I can still feel the heavy mood in our family room on June 6, 1968: as I sat on the floor playing with a train set, the adults around me whispered about the assassination of RFK. Even Star Trek reflected social themes that, in some way, contributed to my eventual liberal sensibilities.

The summer of ’69 brought four fast events in as many weeks that were as remote from the safe conformity of the decade’s beginning as the Grateful Dead were from surf music. My parents were unable to shield me from the media coverage of Helter-Skelter, the shocking Manson family murder spree.

The safety and sameness of my birth year, 1961, had given way to Jimi Hendrix’s acid-induced “Wild Thing” at the Monterey Pop Festival, in which he played his guitar with his teeth and then set it on fire.

It may have taken me until the ‘80s to become a wild thing myself, but revisiting my first decade from a later perspective was both exhilarating and eye-opening.

--

Leave a Comment, Win a Mug!

!

Bold thoughts and irreverent insights from Cleveland, Ohio for your coffee mug.

Just leave a signed (non-anonymous*) comment in the space below to enter the drawing.

Winners are chosen at random and notified every Monday via the Comments section below.

* To leave an attributed comment, sign in to Google using the Chrome browser -- or just add your name to your comment. I'm not picky.