My basic belief is that what is generally thought of as the '60s did not reach most of the country until some time between the Democratic convention in '68 and Woodstock a year later.
After Brandeis (Class of '64), I came back to Philly for Penn Law School. By the time I graduated, Ira Einhorn was mouthing off to a few acolytes in Powelton Village, and there was a head shop in Center City and half a dozen hippies were hanging in Rittenhouse Square , but social activism was confined to a small fringe.
At Penn Law, I had my class's only beard and was one of two law students I knew to smoke pot. We graduated one African-American and zero Hispanics or Asians, and no one was (openly) gay.
Did you ever read Evan Osnos's quote about Joe Biden: "Anyone born a white, straight male in America in 1942 won a cosmic lottery"? I think Osnos was right on.
I have a couple of years on you, but I do not remember the early '50s as you do. My contemporaries did have a war— Korea— which was ugly and protracted, and never adequately explained (then as now). The war seemed a lot closer then to my childish imagination than half a world away, and probably was, with the Russians just having beaten us to the H-bomb. Of course, those were the duck-and-cover days, designed precisely to scare the hell out of us. They succeeded, too. I remember being convinced back in 1955 that World War III would break out in three years, and that I personally would not survive it. I was well aware of a guy named McCarthy, and had already marked down Richard Nixon as a man to watch out about. A boy about my own age, Emmett Till, made me suddenly aware of something else— racism, and the War Between the States that had apparently never ended, despite what the textbooks said.
Yes, there was plenty of Cold War propaganda, but plenty of critical literature, art, music (the best of jazz), theater, and film too. Of course, things in the '60s became critical in a way they hadn’t been in the '50s, and I found a war I had to actively resist. Maybe the '70s was more of a break, when the Great Disillusion set in that the whole country seems to have been experiencing since, and which has brought us, nauseatingly, to the age of Trump.
If Dan’s daughters were so impressed that he was alive during the '50s, and if they were so glued to the TV set every week for “Happy Days,” as Dan describes, just imagine what they will think of me (and I’m the father-in-law of one of those girls, dear Julie), when they learn that I came of age in Milwaukee in the 1950s, graduating from Shorewood High in 1955, and that I used to hang our at The Milky Way Drive-In, which was the basis for Arnold’s Drive-In in "Happy Days," and that on Friday and Saturday nights there were so many kids and hotrods jammed around The Milky Way that the waitresses on roller-skates and in tight, tight shorts could barely glide their way through the crowds? Just imagine it, and you can see the mercury in my status thermometer rising way past 98.6. And bless Ms. Dent, a beautiful late bloomer.
I think my cohort (b. '46, graduated h.s. '64, college '68) was just a bit further along the "taking a peaceful, prosperous world for granted" arc. Hence, as you note, many of my contemporaries were thinking more in terms of "revolution." You will note how the evolution of rock proceeded along a parallel path (by the late '60s, the Beatles, Stones, and compatriots were producing psychedelic excursions) designed to be even more disruptive than the original developers' "Hey, let's piss off our parents" tenor. My classmates were marinating in a mushrooming Vietnam experience, a more violent civil rights movement, as well as the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust (speaking of mushrooms— and we ingested a few too).
On the other hand, because I personally spent ages 18-32 in academic settings, I tended to forget that half of my generation was in a much more conservative environment (factories, small towns, etc). Hence, my puzzlement at the rise of Nixon and the rejection of McGovern. So America had widespread polarization going back to the late '60s and through the '70s as well.
From reader Bob Levin:
My basic belief is that what is generally thought of as the '60s did not reach most of the country until some time between the Democratic convention in '68 and Woodstock a year later.
After Brandeis (Class of '64), I came back to Philly for Penn Law School. By the time I graduated, Ira Einhorn was mouthing off to a few acolytes in Powelton Village, and there was a head shop in Center City and half a dozen hippies were hanging in Rittenhouse Square , but social activism was confined to a small fringe.
At Penn Law, I had my class's only beard and was one of two law students I knew to smoke pot. We graduated one African-American and zero Hispanics or Asians, and no one was (openly) gay.
Did you ever read Evan Osnos's quote about Joe Biden: "Anyone born a white, straight male in America in 1942 won a cosmic lottery"? I think Osnos was right on.
From reader Robert Zaller:
I have a couple of years on you, but I do not remember the early '50s as you do. My contemporaries did have a war— Korea— which was ugly and protracted, and never adequately explained (then as now). The war seemed a lot closer then to my childish imagination than half a world away, and probably was, with the Russians just having beaten us to the H-bomb. Of course, those were the duck-and-cover days, designed precisely to scare the hell out of us. They succeeded, too. I remember being convinced back in 1955 that World War III would break out in three years, and that I personally would not survive it. I was well aware of a guy named McCarthy, and had already marked down Richard Nixon as a man to watch out about. A boy about my own age, Emmett Till, made me suddenly aware of something else— racism, and the War Between the States that had apparently never ended, despite what the textbooks said.
Yes, there was plenty of Cold War propaganda, but plenty of critical literature, art, music (the best of jazz), theater, and film too. Of course, things in the '60s became critical in a way they hadn’t been in the '50s, and I found a war I had to actively resist. Maybe the '70s was more of a break, when the Great Disillusion set in that the whole country seems to have been experiencing since, and which has brought us, nauseatingly, to the age of Trump.
From reader David Rubin:
If Dan’s daughters were so impressed that he was alive during the '50s, and if they were so glued to the TV set every week for “Happy Days,” as Dan describes, just imagine what they will think of me (and I’m the father-in-law of one of those girls, dear Julie), when they learn that I came of age in Milwaukee in the 1950s, graduating from Shorewood High in 1955, and that I used to hang our at The Milky Way Drive-In, which was the basis for Arnold’s Drive-In in "Happy Days," and that on Friday and Saturday nights there were so many kids and hotrods jammed around The Milky Way that the waitresses on roller-skates and in tight, tight shorts could barely glide their way through the crowds? Just imagine it, and you can see the mercury in my status thermometer rising way past 98.6. And bless Ms. Dent, a beautiful late bloomer.
From reader Terry McDaniel:
I think my cohort (b. '46, graduated h.s. '64, college '68) was just a bit further along the "taking a peaceful, prosperous world for granted" arc. Hence, as you note, many of my contemporaries were thinking more in terms of "revolution." You will note how the evolution of rock proceeded along a parallel path (by the late '60s, the Beatles, Stones, and compatriots were producing psychedelic excursions) designed to be even more disruptive than the original developers' "Hey, let's piss off our parents" tenor. My classmates were marinating in a mushrooming Vietnam experience, a more violent civil rights movement, as well as the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust (speaking of mushrooms— and we ingested a few too).
On the other hand, because I personally spent ages 18-32 in academic settings, I tended to forget that half of my generation was in a much more conservative environment (factories, small towns, etc). Hence, my puzzlement at the rise of Nixon and the rejection of McGovern. So America had widespread polarization going back to the late '60s and through the '70s as well.
Born in 1937, my war nightmare came from the cover of a comic book: airplanes flying around the globe into the yawning mouth of the detested Hirohito.