Are you old enough to remember the 60s?

Question

If so, what are your thoughts, memories of it? I was a little kid then, and I remember my brother being in the Vietnam War.

Answer 1

Even with Vietnam (yeah, and I was there too) the 60's were a far more peaceful time than we have today. Much safer in most all aspects of life. Sure, I didn't make anywhere near what I make today, but I could buy a decent house for a what you pay for a decent car today. I bought my 1963 T-Bird for $3500, my 1964 Fairlane 500 was $2800 off the showroom floor and my 1968 Dodge Charger was $4800 from the new car lot. Gas could be had for .29 a gallon and we didn't worry about running out. Pull up to the pump and tell "the man with the Texaco star" to fill-er-up; check the oil and tires and I'd be back on the road for less than 10 bucks. Our cars, we are told now weren't as safe. But I don't know about that. My '63 bird was hit broadside by a GMC 3/4 ton pickup at 60 MPH and I walked away from it. A bag of Fritos was .49 and a pack of smokes were about 29 cents and nobody had yet told us that smoking caused cancer. We still worried about polio, and weren't branded if we carried a pocket knife to school. Hot rods were in vogue, anything modified. Big Daddy Roth and Rat Fink were the rage in LA and Daryl Starbird was the mid-west king of radical customized cars. Elvis was King! Rock and roll was in it's early years. The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Janis Joplin were topping the charts while The Rolling Stones and the Beatles were just around the next corner. Woodstock was about to happen, wet soggy, zonked out, just happy to be alive and be there. Would I go back? In an instant! A much simpler, gentler time. If you brought a gun to school it was because you were going hunting after. You would never have thought to turn it on a student or teacher. We had too much respect for one another and our elders to do that. Racisim and the KKK were major affronts across the nation. Those things I believe are for the better today. I could drive through any section of town and not worry about locking the doors of my car, night or day. In the 60's you weren't diagnosed as having ADD, heck that was just the class clown again; you see the drug companies hadn't yet come up with a "cure" so there was no disease. Drug companies and lawyers couldn't advertise on radio and TV either. That was nice. In the early part of the decade you could still see Jimmy Dean or Marilyn Monroe in a movie and it wasn't a re-run. The television season began anew each September and ran through early May. Postage stamps were 5 cents in 1965, and you could get Post, Life, or Colliers delivered to your door. My postman never rang twice but the milkman always left 1½ gallons of milk 3 times a week.
A chick was a girl, bitchin was neat, and bread was money. If you fell out you went to sleep; 4 on the floor and 3 on the tree described the shifting mechanisms in your automobile. Hodads didn't like surfers, much less one that could hang five or ten. If you had a tight head then you had too much to drink and scurvey was ugly, weird, or not having a neat appearance. Best of all, I think, there was no rap.

Answer 2

Best memories -- we fired the poseur standing in front of a band crooning sentimentally at us and demanded singer-songwriters with their own material and their own musical skill. College education was cheap. We didn't get into space until May of 1961 and by July of 1969 we were on the moon!

Color TV used to be a wonderful luxury. Most adults smoked. White collar adults would have a drink at lunch! The crime rate was low. Cancer was a death sentence.

Vietnam was an arrogant, preposterously poorly planned mistake but we could get away with it because we were the world's largest creditor nation running a trade surplus. Our "client," the South Vietnamese army, tortured and abused prisoners, but we NEVER did --the one odd case, Mai Lai and Lt Calley, resulted in court martial and prison.

As the world's biggest debtor nation, Iraq, a smaller operation, is a fiasco, with whole barrios of the capital city unpoliced, no border guards anywhere, insurgents pouring in to make trouble for us, and the USA has a worldwide reputation for brutality because of Git'mo and Abu Ghriab.

The biggest mistake of the sixties turns out to be Medicare, passed in 1965 on overwhelming sentimentality, which now, in 2006, has a net unfunded debt of $60 trillion dollars in a $14 trillion economy -- oops!-- baby-busters and y generation will pay all their lives and get NOTHING, your government has taken up the business of pitting one generation against another for political purposes.

I think in the sixties young people saw a bright future and were right about that to an extent. I think that's missing now.

Answer 3

I was a teen during the 60's. Both of my brothers had to go to Vietnam, which was really kind of rough. Thankfully, they both returned home, although it did take them a little while to get back to their "real" selves.
But there were a lot of good times in the 60's and a lot of good songs came out of that era.

Answer 4

I was born in '63. I remember my first day of kindergarten ('68) & how disciplined but at the same time, innocent & fun it was to be in school then; I remember I could walk to school by myself, even at the age of 5, 6 or 7 & the only fear I had was of meeting up with a rabid dog; I remember chocolate bars cost 5 cents & you could get an amazing bag full of candy for $1.00; We watched Walt Disney every Sunday evening; Of course I don't remember this myself as I was 5 months old, but my Mom told me that when John F. Kennedy was killed (we're Canadian), she just held me & cried for a long time. So ironically, I know where I was when he was killed. I remember our doctor still did house calls.

Answer 5

Oh yeah, most of the 50s too. Mid 50s through the 60s was fab. time! It was great back then. Vietnam was not cool but everything else was.

Answer 6

I remember hearing about hippies and love children..but I was very young..I'm not an American but I do have vague memories of the vietnam war.....

Answer 7

I remember the 60s.

At least your brother came home from Vietnam.

Answer 8

I wasn't born until 1971, however...
I think I tried to ,"appreciate" ," comprehend", the 60's in the 80's..
I thought I was a hippy and enjoyed a lot of MOTHER NATURE back then...
Well it was the 80's...but it was a lot of fun...
at least what I remember of it.

Answer 9

Of course, they say if you truly lived the 60s you don't remember it.

I remember protesting the war and having it mean something.

Actually putting flowers in my hair.

A sense of hope, and belief in the innate goodness of people.

Sex wasn't lethal.

The birth control pill became available--whoo hoo!

Answer 10

No I wasn't born till the 80's. My mom was born in 1961 and she remembers the toys like the doll Crissy with the hair that could be long or short.