Take me back to the 60's

[Bandit]

a few ripe folks here might enjoy this. I know I did.

http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

Contrary to popular belief these days, We do NOT need a cell phone, blue tooth and an IPOD, to survive!

[PaKettle]

Pretty cool trip down memory lane, even if a little too long...

My wife and I still LOVE "Leave It To Beaver" - one of the greatest sit-coms of all time and we think it is still as funny as ever. (In fact my wife never watched it back then, only now.)

Another great series we watch on dvd is "Rawhide" with Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates. These shows are truly good entertainment and have positive values. (I'm not a "family values" kind of guy, I was a hippie in the 60's. But there is something to be said for programs with good positive values about love and kindness, not always playing to the least common denominator - sex and violence.

If only RFK had become President instead of being cut down by opposing forces...
Who knows what would have happened differently?

The 60's were a great time for me, in spite of all the turmoil.
I feel sorry for the teenagers of today who do not have the great music we had, and could go to a concert without "Miller" or "Budweiser" or "Nike" being posted everywhere. Everything is about money and advertising, now. Back then, there were FM radio stations that played music that the DJ liked - no corporate mandates... You didn't see advertising EVERYwhere you looked...

And people didn't just sit on their asses and say "Oh well, there's nothing we can do about [the war]"... They demonstrated, they got involved, they refused to accept an unjust and immoral war!

Okay. Off my soapbox now.

[rilbrianne]

I wish I had grown up then... that's all I have to say. Your generation is so lucky.

[robivi3]

12 O'clock high with van Johnson, Combat, The NBC Peacock with "ding dong ding". Living in the suburbs, stable, unchanging neighborhoods, going on a trip and LAYING in the back window yard while on that trip seeing only stars. NO STREET LIGHTS!!!!! Oak Hill Day Camp and School in Nashville and then on to Battleground Academy. Never hearing "Child molester", following kids with .22's IN THE SUBURBS who were shooting snakes. NEVER WOULD ANYONE OF THOSE KIDS HAVE POINTED THE GUN AT SOMEONE. All of our fathers had been familiarized with firearms because their fathers were. Crawdads, snapping turtles, fishing with your dad and having an old man hand you a big catfish and your dad would tell everyone you caught it, our secret. South Central Bell and The Shriners Fish Fries, Fairpark in Nashville, a Country Drive out Hermitage. Going to the Bahamas every summer in a time when NO ONE went there, your brothers Hemi Belvedere brand new, his Porsche, my aunt crying when her new hubby got called to Vietnam. Seeing Kennedy in Downtown Nashville, maybe it was summer, I remember being in shorts. THE CHARLES CHIP TRUCK, me thinking that my grandmothers egg packing job in Memphis was more fun than my Dad being an engineer. I used to like to watch the conveyor at Rays Egg Co., but when my Dad worked saturdays I loved to go with him because the Bell Office in Green Hills in Nashville had a bunch of antique switchboards in the employee lounge.

Dress shopping with my mother and as a reward you would get to eat in the Department Store Cafeteria (usually Cain-Sloan). Going to Gatlinburg twice a month and Memphis sometimes on the off weekends.

No I-40 in TN. And on the way to Memphis there was a restaurant and the waitress was always the same and knew that I loved lemon ice box pie as we called it. Old Tennessee when ALL soft drinks were called coke, no one EVER heard the words "pop, soda or such, those were northern terms". It was simply "what kid of coke do you want, cocola or pepsi?" And if you knocked on Patrick Parham and his six brothers door at the wrong time they would be playing "underwear man" running around the house. And Phillips Toy Mart which in those days was run by Mr. & Mrs. Phillips, today the family owns it but it is massive, it was a wonderland for us and it's windows were so beautiful but toys were really expensive back then, believe me they are much cheaper now. I had a huge GIjoe collection and never realized that some of that stuff was 20 and 30 bucks back then.

The greatest memmory of all was that every dayy when my dad got home he would take time with me and we grab my toy rifles and we would go "Rhino hunting" like on Daktari. Great years.

99% of the 60's were for a suburban/country kid a living paradise. Nashville was a great place to be in those days. I had a brother, older and in school but honestly, protests, drugs, tuning out, those things were a billion miles away from our world. That wasn't the whole 60's rilbrianne, for most of America the strife was on the 6 o'clock news. Memphis had its problems, Nashville had afew curfews nad I remember getting caught behind a line of National Guard Trucks coming from Memphis one Sunday but that was it.

I just hope that for some they still have a "60's" of their own to remember. That begins with families that stay intact, people who stick. Not perfect people, not people who don't make mistakes, but folks witha moral compass. There are many people who don't remember threi 60's childhood because they were not surrounded by people who loved them on all sides of the imperfect family. A good life begins with good parents who love you.

[magyar123]

Rolling Stones, Doors, Jimmie Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Beatles, etc.
Face it, younger generation, THAT WAS MUSIC.
What you have today is crap.

[rilbrianne]

99% of the 60's were for a suburban/country kid a living paradise. Nashville was a great place to be in those days. I had a brother, older and in school but honestly, protests, drugs, tuning out, those things were a billion miles away from our world. That wasn't the whole 60's rilbrianne, for most of America the strife was on the 6 o'clock news.

I might have read your post wrong, I really mean I wish I had been there... I was born in 83, and now while my oldest is barely in preschool, kids are killing each other, disrespecting their parents-and parents ALLOW it! There are 82 registered sex offenders in my town, and I have to be careful that my babysitter's sons or husbands aren't there when my girls are. It's SAD. I wish I wasn't a part of this generation, and to think... I brought my kids into this world (while watching my back so some weirdo mommy-wanna-be didn't strip them from my womb). What kind of mother am I? I'm sure it wasn't that bad back then. It was much more innocent than it is now - even if there were still troubles back then.

Goodness, I watch WAY too much news!

[Bandit]

[B]
I'm sure it wasn't that bad back then. It was much more innocent than it is now - even if there were still troubles back then.

Goodness, I watch WAY too much news!

Not at all. At least you see it even if you did not get to experience it. That says a lot of good about your character. It really was innocent.
They were doing drugs but it is nothing like what is happening today. The hippys really were peaceful unlike the gangs & things of today. There were some of the same problems but not nearly as often or as severe as today.

All summer long the front door & windows remained unlocked & there was no fear at all of someone coming in to hurt us. We never even though about being harmed while sleeping at night and could leave the front the door wide open with just a screen door for bugs.
Today, if I wake up & find the door unlocked in the morning by mistake, I immediately wonder if someone had come in at night to cause harm & can get kind of scared about it. I would never leave a door or window open at night now days, unless I was sleeping right by it to hear someone coming in.

I kind see a transition from the 20's to the 50's then from the 50's to the 60's & then the 60's kind of carried through in many ways until the early 90's, then all hell broke loose with the computer age & I don't know if it can ever be repaired.

Your kids will do just fine. The era they are born into, in many ways they will just think it was always like this and not even think twice about it. BTW- the 80's were still a good innocent time also. IMO

Would you believe my hometown between 1950 & 1970 had not seen or heard of a murder in 20 years? Now they can expect on average a murder just about every other week. That aint right.

[Bandit]

Big hairdos and maxi skirt was a big thing in the 60's for some of the women. I remember the girls wearing things like that at church & school & that kind of carried thru into the early 80's.

I don't remember if the presentation mentioned that. I know it mentioned big afros.
I remember having some funny different color striped pants. It was goofy LOL!

It was also the beginning of the end of segregation and that was real progress for those times.

[Bandit]

Everybody picked up hitchhikers

That was listed and that is the truth. No one was afraid to pick up a hitchhiker & no one was afraid to hitchhike. It was accepted and a good deed to do. ..even if you just wanted to go across town you could get a ride in minutes.

I would not pick up a hitchkiker today or go hitchhiking today for my life. No way, Jose!
WEll, maybe if it was an elder lady or someone that I know from somewhere but not a stranger.

[robivi3]

My dad and I used to take "road trips" after my Mom died just to get out of the house. In those days Greyhound would let the rural people off at a stop and they would walk the rest of the way. My dad NEVER once passed up any soldier. He sais that in WW2 when he got his one trip back to the states that he hitchhiked San Diego to Memphis and you picked your car. He remembered getting in a big truck and it wasn't to comfortable so they got out and got in the next car.

We even gave civilian hitchhikers a ride, some were even hippies. When i see a movie set in the 60's or 50's where someone gets murdered and people exhibit 90's attitudes it kind of loses me, mentality was different then.

[robivi3]

The biggest problem for me as a little kid? Cartoons in the 60's were horrible affairs, choppy motion and low budget. Another great memmory, Sgt. Rock comics. I remember myself and Bobby Newport spending an entire day fighting uphill on Percy Drive, from his house way down at the bottom to way up on top of the hill. Going through backyards, alongside houses and no one yelling "get off my property"!

You built snow forts where you were, didn't matter. Kids played. I lived in the Forest Hills section outside Nashville and while there were no black kids in our school there were Jewish, Indian (India), Egyptian and even a couple of Eastern block kids and I don't recall race ever being mentioned in any way and when they would move away there would be a backyard party just like any other kid had. Maybe it was because the group was from a better educated set of parents (alot were associated with Vanderbuilt or Peabody). In the final months that we lived there in 1971 I went to public school (3 months, new svchool year and we were moving). I met my first black person. Busing started and while I had a long ride I NEVER recall the "C" word, the "N" word, getting hassled, robbed or anything. That was at Booker T. Washington Jr. High where in those days you stood up when the Principal walked in the room. I liked the school because it was ancient, had big wood and marble staircases, big oak and mahogany closets in the science room and alot of that old school stately smell that only large stone and wood buildings give off, like an old museum.

I was made fun of when we moved to Maimi Beach for my accent and being a "Hillbilly" by the uneducated, ignorant human turd that went to my Junior High on Maimi Beach. I felt out of place, hated it. I came from a conservative environment to a liberal, feel good, eclectic sh*thole for the wealthy uneducated. It was the most alienated place I had ever seen. Even down to PE we were divided at play, Overtown verses Beach, no cohesion whatsoever among the people. The decency that i had known was gone in what my parents never realized, a massive culture shock. Don't blame immigration, this was a transient, tourist oriented place long before immigration was a big issue. Education has ALWAYS been a backburner issue for Florida, especially in the South. Only now am i seeing improvement in quality. Oh yes, Miami beach was big money, but what good is money in the hands of uneducated, schistery, greedy people? That is where my 60's ended. The things I saw down here in 1971 were unheard of in Nashville at the time. The culmination of all that hate and alienation that was so neatly cultivated came in 1980 when Miami burned. Five white cops beat a black man (Arthur Mcduffy) so bad that his swelling brain cracked his motorcycle helmet. They were found "innocent". he was running from a violation, not a murderer or child molester.

You will make your kids '60's. You cannot look back, you will be good to them and take them places and they will remember that. My parents, my father and real mother (she died in 1969) worked to make my "Nashville memmories" good, family was always around. Those things matter. The time you invest, money or no money, will matter. My kids remember fondly when we all lived in a one bedroom apartment and they slep on a bunk bed and pull out bed in the dining room. They remember home made pizza (that they made), dixie cup popsicles, the pony ride park at 135th and Biscayne, long walks in that park around the nature trail, baby pools, NO TV in the house (until 1992), me working on cars, stacking the new furniture so that water couldn't get to it (H/cane Andrew), living without electricity or drinkable water for weeks afterward (that was our Dade days), it was rough then but we got real close to our neighbors and had UN Assemblies from that day on, a good thing. You will make your kids memmories good, you will shield them, and the need it, don't attempt to raise "R" rated kids. It is not good for them to see everything, and because they are "going to see it anyway" doesn't mean it should be in your home. Example means alot.

[Minnymouth]

I often ponder on all the things that my parents and grandparents SAW in their lifetimes, and its always amazed me....
And yet, my own lifetime things have changed drastically also...

I was born in the 40's, remember the Korean War, the 1st TV's, Brownies and Girl Scouts, the local YMCA, playing softball every summer on a team.

Later on was the 60's with the assisination of JFK (such a sad time in our America), then Dr. King, and Robert Kennedy. The segragation of the school systems.

Vietnam (where both brothers were military). All my friends were and everyone I knew was military. My dad worked at WPAFB in Dayton for 30 years on the flight line. So military was a great part of my life.

AND YES, Woodstock....... where a quarter of a million people gathered for a weekend, with no riots, no injuries, no arrests.... just to play music and express themselves.

Yes, I was part of the "bra-burning" 60's kids. The "flower children" so to speak. Free love??? Not necessarily so!!! Most of us were raised with morals...... But we loved our music, our motorcycles, and our independence!!

I remember Elvis's first show on Ed Sullivan, where they only showed him from the waist up....... HOW FUNNY NOW!! Said he was indecent.....lol.

The 1st trip the Beatles came to the USA. How everyone went wild for their music.

Long hair, motorcycles, and free spirits!!! But peacefull souls!

BUT NOT VIOLENCE, not like today......

Kids were kids, teenagers were teenagers, and then the young adults were wild and free spirited.

When music WAS MUSIC, and the words had meanings. And a love song would bring tears to your eyes and soften your heart.

Marriage was a committment, and most honored it. Thru the thick and thin, and good, bad and ugly of it.

Mom's were stay at home mom's..... dad's made the living. Most kids only had 1 mom and dad............ not a long line of them!!

In the late 60's and early 70's things started changing.... and by the 80's and 90's there was a great deal of violence going on.

Now you can't sleep with a door unlocked, or a window open, for fear of being broken into. Now you don't know your neighbors usually. And family members are separated by states.

At time when "men were men, and women were women"..... and you didn't have any trouble telling them apart....

Change can be good, but also "change" can ruin and destroy all the good that already exists.

Would I want to have children now? NO..... I see no good future for them....

Familys aren't families anymore......a lot of just people living in a house together, going their different ways each day.

Too many kids with no parental guidance, trying to find their own way in life.

Parents too busy to "listen" to their kids...... and then when something happens it's "not my kid"....my kids wouldn't do that!

Yes, inventions and medical discoveries have come a long way. OUr lives are a lot more comfortable then they were years ago.
Instant food, satellite tV, cell phones, etc all the modern conveniences make our days easy to survive.

BUT WHAT'S ALMOST GONE is the "family unit", the "morals", the "parental guidance", the "happy children", the "respect" we used to feel for one another.

Babies are having babies, children are toting guns, gangs are the "in thing". And video games have taught our children that violence is an everyday fun thing.

Yes, I could go on and on about all the changes I've seen over the years, but it wouldn't matter.

Until people and our society SEE'S where our future is headed, makes the necessary changes now, nothing will ever change.
I'm afraid that our world as we know it will become more and more violent, including our own nation.

Yes, the 50's,60's, 70's and so were good years. Lots of improvements, lots of changes in lifestyles.

But with each change, came us giving up something to make it.... and in the process we lost a lot of good things in our lives!

Now I will get off my soap-box......

[robivi3]

The 60's were the turning point for morality. Remember Lincoln's old statements, and a great ones they were:
"The philosphy of the schoolroom in one generation will br the philosphy of governement in the next"
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation"

Now Mr. Lincoln and I would have had some differences, especially on the habeus corpuus issue but in all, those statements were true.
While descent is good, we need opposing views or else we are Nazi Germany, the moral turpitude that came about as a result of actions and viewpoints in the 60's was far from a good thing. I am speaking only to sexual morality, fidelity and like issues, we are cesspool today, nothing more. America will decline and it will not be because we sent one job to China, let in one Mexican or sent one bit of aid overseas. We are a moral, "what's in it for me", cesspool. We shove the kids aside for our own feelings, we have kids to "complete ME" as I have heard said and think only of self. Our own misunderstanding of real freedom will destroy us. The coming generation will not be under law (because I have the right... so "f" you) and as we are seeing down here with so many cop killings will be ruled only by brutality. THAT CANCELS FREEDOM AND IMPOSES FORCED ORDER. Freedom in the USA is near its end, it is not going to come back and we are finished.

We will likely leave the middle east at some point, having lost a substantial amount of our Aircraft Carrier credibility, which is important and NECESSARY. Your enemies are going to kill you no matter how nice you are to them, they will hate you even if Isreal dissappears today, your conversion AND Isreal are their concern. The moral depravity that we sewed in the 60's will be our undoing, they know it. Congrats everyone, we got what we wanted!

Keep in mind I am speaking ONLY to the core issue of order, family and sexual morality. Even the poorest Hatian in the lowest slum in Citie Soliel in Port Au Prince knows what is right to do by his family. Even he thinks of moral issues. Regardless of oppression even he knows that it is important to maintain your family and not to commit immoral acts. He knows that his children will live better if he trains them in thinking and tries to educate them. Even he regrets when he wrongs his wife and his family. Even he knows it is wrong to leave his family just to please himself. Here in the land of plenty we serve our own bodies and go from this to that to please ourselves. The truth is the ride is nearly over. We don't even obey simple moral laws, how can we be ruled?

I don't know of many in my extended family (and yes there are ghosts and bad decisions like all families) who fooled around, NONE who molested kids to please themselves, none ever arrested... None of this back to at least my great-grandmothers and fathers. No divorce, none in the book. Nearly all of these things have beset this generation (except the worst mentioned above) and add drugs. I don't mean the morphine habit someone may have got in the ignorant days of the Civil War, or laudenum or what may have been. I mean modern drag you down drugs.

Do you expose your kids to garbage like "The Man Show". Why teach your son or daughter that it's OK to be a piece of crap? Why argue it? "It's funny, I teach my kids right, so they know not to act that way". OK, good! But the message you send is, it's OK to watch it, laugh at it, so it's OK, that will be their humor. Why bother exposing your kids to crap. You make your kids "'60's" by what you feed them.

Sorry to get preachy, it's my nature when I sit down to write.

[Bandit]

The 60's were the turning point for morality. Remember Lincoln's old statements, and a great one it was.
"The philosphy of the schoolroom in one generation will br the philosphy of governement in the next"
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation"

Wow. That explains why Clinton was a pot smoker (but did not inhale) and why Bush has a drinking problem (but the public cannot see his driving record) & why he does not deny or claim to have done cocaine.

If that is true which it seems to be, The president from this generation will be high on meth with a crack pipe in his desk and shooting anyone who looks at him the wrong way. Instead of golf or fishing every weekend it will be GRAND THEFT AUTO with a joystick every other saturday.

I suppose I kind of put that together before but now fully understanding Lincolns quote.

[Bandit]

The biggest problem for me as a little kid? Cartoons in the 60's were horrible affairs, choppy motion and low budget. Another great memmory, Sgt. Rock comics. I remember myself and Bobby Newport spending an entire day fighting uphill on Percy Drive, from his house way down at the bottom to way up on top of the hill. Going through backyards, alongside houses and no one yelling "get off my property"!

You built snow forts where you were, didn't matter. Kids played.

I can't remember what the cartoons were then. I know Mickey Mouse at that time was real bad. Popeye, Archies, Banana Splits, maybe the Monkeys??..
You will like this going down memory lane:

http://sidesplitters.catastrophe.net/arch/2002/TV/tv-lyrics.1/cartoons.html

BUt yes the kids played. We built snow forts every year & it did not matter where. Cowboys & Indians but we were not taking real guns to school. I had a load of plastic army men and tanks and would set up a battle.
An electric train was an icon. It seems to me there were a lot of board games then for the younger ones as the parents could play cards on saturday night. I played a game of parcheesi {very old-ancient- board game} a couple of weeks ago & it seemd so analog to us. It was fun trying to remember the rules.

We had our bikes too but I do remember bikes being stolen quite often in those days. Probably because it was so easy to take. When I rode my bike to school I would lock it up on the bike rack. Do kids even ride bikes to school any more? It is probably against the law today or they are just too lazy.