The Sixties Story is in the Music

It was so many years ago now, that the ’60s seem to be worlds away from today. Having been a teen-ager during those years, for a long time now, I’ve experienced a desire to share my insights about that volatile time in history. It was a time of upheaval, of previously unimagined paths forged . . . some that would benefit mankind, others that would take a heavy, heavy toll. All in all, it seemed an exciting time in history to have been “coming into my young adulthood.”

Many of my best friends back from 1961 through 1966 were guys. I’d always found guys easier to trust than most women and far less competitive. I’ve never forgotten the day that Jim, Dave and Don told me they’d just enlisted in the Armed Forces. Yes, I was happy and excited for them, but I was also scared for them. What if there were to be a war? Would they survive? What if they didn’t survive and I lost two of my dearest friends? We wrote letters while they were away and thankfully, yes, they did all return unharmed. But! This was just before the Viet Nam war began.

Suddenly, there was this unfamiliar and monstrous thing called, “The draft.” Kids I’d just graduated with from highschool were being drafted. My brother came to me one day and in a panic-stricken voice stated, “Jeanie, I’ve just gotten my draft papers and I’m 4th on the list! What am I going to do?” My immediate response was, “Jeff, you’ve got to enlist right away – BEFORE they can draft you!!” (After all, the guys I’d known who’d enlisted had fared quite well in the service all in all. I’d just learned that the French had fought Viet Nam for eighty years and finally gave up and pulled-out of that godforsaken place that I’d never heard of before.) Jeff went down that same day and enlisted in the Navy. I’m so grateful to this day that he did so. He spent his four year naval career in Texas working on jet aircraft engines! (Thank you, God!)

Others weren’t as fortunate as my little brother and didn’t make the right decisions at the time; some were conscientious-objectors and fled to Canada. Most young men at the time, were drafted and sent to Viet Nam to fight a war of which they knew very little. Many fought and died over there.

It was the (at the time) seemingly universal reaction to the Viet Nam war that took another tremendous toll on American lives. That reaction, in my experience, was the rage experienced by youth throughout the previously peaceful country of the United States.

Combined with the rage being experienced by the youth in America was the fact that the drug scene had just begun to move into the midwest. (I lived in a small town in the state of Minnesota.) Marijuana, or “Pot” and “Grass” as we called it, caught-on like some kind of wildfire. Thus was born, the Peace Movement. Marijuana was known for “mellowing people out.” A common slogan of the time became, “Make Love, Not War.”

As I recall it, the actual Peace Movement itself, began out on the West Coast in sunny California. As I was graduating from highschool, many of my classmates could hardly wait to leave Minnesota to live out by the ocean. Many traveled there in old, painted and beaten-up vans. (Mostly in Volkswagon vans, as I recall!) Young women had begun wearing flowers in their hair, long dresses and walked in bare feet. Many of them looked clearly, “stoned.” (Eyes appeared glazed and sometimes their speech was slowed-down and sounded flat.)

Added to this picture was good old Timothy Leary who was busily conjuring-up, in his college lab, what came to be known as “The Mind Expanding Drug, LSD.” More commonly referred to as “Acid.” Many of the people with whom I’d graduated from highschool, graduated to the latest rage of the time, “Acid.” For those who preferred spending their days and nights watching the elephants on their wallpaper romping around or taking drug induced, imaginery journeys down the yellow brick road, this drug caught on quickly. There, of course, were those individuals who imagined they were Superman and who fell to their deaths “flying” off of tall buildings. The other drugs like speed and heroin had also moved into the midwestern states. These drugs took their toll in the form of overdose deaths, drug-related suicides, auto accidents and so on.

Not long after, as I recall, were the Kent State University shootings by police during a demonstration. (Demonstrations were new to the country at the time, thus seemed very threatening in nature.) Around the same time was the establishment of the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped Patty Hearst and who DID use violence as a means of communicating their dislike of the United States Government.  How well the emotion of these tragic events is conveyed in 'Ohio' by Neil Young.

In the beginning of all of this turbulence, I’d so wanted to be a flower child in California with some of my highschool friends who’d pursued this dream. Not too many years later, I would learn that some of them would never return.

Having gotten married and given birth to my baby son, these were not options for me. My son’s life was far too important to risk exposing him to this unchartered and risky territory and I’d really wanted to make my marriage work. Thus, I was never to fulfill my dream of being a flower child. Of course, the Manson murders occurred toward the end of the 60’s and I realized that my dream hadn’t been such a good idea after all. (Clearly, flower children were not all that they’d been cracked-up to be!) I chose my own poison right here in good old Minnesota and it was the legal drug of alcohol, primarily. In retrospect, I thank God that my precious son kept me from going to sunny California to wear flowers in my hair. It seems crystal clear to me that I would’ve been one of the drug fatalities without a doubt as alcohol and other drugs were to become my vice.

Some of the Viet Nam vets returned to Minnesota. Many of them missing limbs, most of them very bitter and angry individuals. Many with drug and alcohol problems. Nothing at all like the same boys who’d left us a couple of years earlier.

It’s funny, I’ve always told my children how glad I am that I grew-up in the 1960s . . . because it was a truly exciting time in history. In my experience, the most turbulent time in history to be experienced in our beautiful country of America and I am able to say that, “I was there.” But I truly wonder if those of us who were there don’t all experience a deep pang of sadness looking back at the times when we lost so many.

I came away from the experience of the 1960s with a firm conviction that violence never solves anything and I’m proud to say that I raised my children with that philosophy. I am patriotic and love my country. I never waver where my values are concerned. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to say that I survived the 60s, was able to learn so much and have been blest to have lost so little to those few, never to be forgotten, years in time.

Copyright by JC Eberhart 2007