Even though conventional wisdom states, “If you remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there,” I’m guessing a good number of you Baby Boomers reading this column do remember most of that coming-of-age decade anyway. I entered 1960 as fat, nerdy, eighth-grade kid and left 1969 as lean, mean, olive drab, nerdy, fighting-machine, ready to protect the United States of America from godless communists. The 1960s began with General Ike in the White House and ended with his former vice president, Tricky Dick Nixon, in his place.
For me, the big event of 1960 was purchasing my first car, a 1929 Nash, with money from my newspaper route. My intention was to fix it up so it was ready for me to drive when I turned 16. The 1960 year marked the end of the Howdy Doody Show. The repercussions of hearing Clarabell the Clown finally utter a word still affect me today. Who can ever forget movin’ and groovin’ to songs such as Alley-Oop, a tune my eighth-grade nun thought was a recording made by a formerly undiscovered tribe of aboriginal cannibals?
In 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president. This event was necessary because he was elected in 1960. Americans had seen the Nixon-Kennedy debates on live TV and realized Nixon may not be an actual sentient life form. The Berlin Wall was erected, but I didn’t care because my big concern was sending letters to Hayley Mills.
In 1962, I got my driver’s license; we had the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly resulted in World War III and the annihilation of all life on the planet, making my newly-obtained driver’s license totally useless.
The 1963 year was marked by non-violent, equal-rights, demonstrators who were violently attacked in Birmingham, Ala., with dogs and fire hoses. Because the world hadn’t ended in 1962, my driver’s license was functional and I spent most of the year racking up miles in my scalloped and pinstriped custom, dual-quad, 1958 Chevy (my old Nash was in the garage) that on a good day made eight miles to the gallon and would go up to 92 mph in second gear.
That year I was part of a garage band. We learned three songs with nearly as many chords and, by constantly repeating them loudly, managed to alienate neighbors as far away as Nairobi. President Kennedy never lived out the year, his life cut short by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Following 1963, coincidentally, was 1964. The Beatles came to the U.S.! I was out of high school and free! Sick of school, I took a job on a Motorola assembly line building color televisions. I quit three weeks later, figuring being sick in any kind of school was better than in a zombie-like assembly-line existence. I was now a member of a real rock group and I had a steady girlfriend. Life was good, almost. The almost word was because I had to register for the draft.
The year 1965 saw me in art school, figuring to be the next Norman Rockwell. Uncle Sam had other plans and withdrew my draft deferment for drawing pictures. As a 19-year-old my only other option to not be drafted was getting married before the end of the year. I figured I’d rather face the godless Vietnamese commies than a potentially god-fearing American wife. My hair was getting longer and old people over 30 had started viewing anyone with hair longer than Pat Boone’s hair suspiciously as a possible godless commie.
In year 1966 brought us miniskirts, LSD, Batman on TV, and peace and love except if you happened to be over the age of 30.
The years 1967 through 1969 are mostly lost somewhere in a purple haze, although I vaguely remember attending a Jimi Hendrix concert at the Coliseum (the Chicago version) in 1968. There was some kind of riot in Grant Park during the Democratic Party Convention, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, and the Big Mac was introduced to Americans by (dare I say it?) godless commies.
By the end of the decade we’d landed on the moon. I was drafted, married, and on the way to the U.S. Army’s personnel management school to learn how to select volunteers to fight godless commies wherever they may be, even in Mayberry.