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Author | Topic: For our younger members | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Silent H Member (Idle past 5849 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
I wonder what's keeping Dan from 'shooting his load'. What do you mean? Perhaps that is what is keeping him from posting. holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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Verzem Inactive Member |
Life In the Late Sixties and Early Seventies
I graduated HS in 1970 and I must say, life was good back then. My father was an auto mechanic and he raised five of us kids with a stay at home mother. He managed to buy us a house and a couple of hundred acres of land up north to hunt on. We built a nice cabin on it and went hunting there every year as well as taking many summer trips to go fishing in his nice big boat. We went on annual vacations to all parts of America and Canada, and took annual fall hunting trips out of state too as well as hunting on our own land. I look back on that and I think it was pretty impressive to be able to do all that on an auto mechanic’s wages. So, economically, I think that from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies were probably our country’s Golden Years. People had a lot of purchasing power back then. Most households were still one wage earner households. Some of you mentioned music. Sure, I admit that I am biased. But I have to say that the best music to listen to and have fun with was that from the mid-sixties through the early seventies. Now, technically, I would have to say the best music was from the eighties. But, man, it just doesn’t get any better than The Doors, my all-time favorite band. And I can listen to Led Zeppelin all day long. To me, today’s music is nothing but a bunch of garage bands. I just don’t see any talent any more. It is just a bunch of commercial stuff that will sell. Where have all the lead guitarists gone? I lament. Bring on another Duane Allman! Here, here!! Ah, the lovely TRS-80! Weren’t they wonderful? When I got to college in the fall of 70 we used punch cards to program computers that filled a room. That is kind of funny when you think about it. As for the sex, that part of the late sixties and the seventies was great. With the advent of the pill there just weren’t the worries of pregnancy to have to deal with like others before us had had to do. So yes, there definitely was an explosion of promiscuity back then. I think it was mostly the women who were liberated from the fear of pregnancy that caused the explosion. The men always wanted it, they just started getting it more when the pill came along. And remember, this was pre-AIDS so there was no pressure like that to stifle the sexual revolution. I had a very high draft number (338) so I didn’t have to worry about going to Viet Nam, but a lot of my friends and classmates did. Some didn’t come back, some did in coffins, and some came back all messed up physically or mentally. And some moved to Canada. This was one part of living back then that wasn’t good. In today’s world with bush’s war in Iraq, I see many similarities. I predict that we will start seeing some protests in the streets before long, especially if the body bags keep coming home. The day after I graduated I picked up a hippie hitch-hiker and drove him to his commune because he got me high and promised to give me more to pay for his ride. When we got there I met some really nice people and I ended up staying with them a good part of the summer until it was time for college. Let’s just say a good time was had by all. I ended up going back there every summer during my college years and then ended up moving across the country or I might still be going back, if it is still there. Hippies were very good people. I can’t say that I ever met a lazy one. In the commune I was involved with, everyone pitched in to do the work out of a sense of community. Ah yes! Then, we had the Muscle Cars. No one will ever be able to convince me that today’s cars are better in any way, shape, or form than the cars of the late sixties and early seventies. Put me in a ’67 GTO any day! Or a ’69 Camero! Or a ’70 Charger. Or a Hemi-Cuda!!! I have had more fun drag racing than probably anything else I have ever done. I can remember a few of us with fast cars would get together and make a run to another town and call out the guys with the fastest cars in their town for some street racing. Actually, it was more like country racing because we’d all go out of the towns a ways and find a straight stretch of road where we could see if anyone was coming for a long ways. In my area, most of the towns seemed to have some quarter-miles measured out somewhere a few miles out of town where the locals would always go to race. It kept it safe. And we almost always ended up partying with them after we were done racing. Lots of good friends were made that way. Yup, cars just have never been the same since the muscle cars died out. For those of you younger ones here that think you like it so well today, do a google and find out how many working days for an average working stiff it takes to pay off a car nowdays compared to say, 1970. Five year loans back then were unheard of! Yep, the dollar definitely went a LOT farther back then. And of course, there was the space program. I had a paper route back when it was getting going and I would sit and read every single word in every article that had anything to do with our (and Russia’s) space program. I watched everything I could on every news program. Without thinking about them for years, I can still rattle off the names of every astronaut from the Mercury, Gemini, and Saturn missions. And yes, I remember vividly the day Neil and Buzz set foot on the moon. Oh yes, that was a great time to live. Yes indeed! Very exciting! Let’s also not forget that you couldn’t lose the remote. It was connected to the television by a wire! And those phone calls in the booth cost a dime, as did a bottle of pop, or two Snickers bars. In the town I grew up in the local theater owner offered free movies to children every Saturday afternoon ( I think the local merchants subsidized him) Parents would drop off their kids and do their shopping then, I guess. We’d go there and get a bag of popcorn and a soda for twenty cents. Yahoo! Oh, and I also lament the demise of the drive-in movie theater. Where in the world do kids go to make out nowdays? It is sad, truly sad. I quit smoking when they raised the price of a pack of cigarettes up to 55 cents from a half dollar. I thought that was outrageous! So, yes, I think I grew up at the perfect time. The only thing I am jealous about are all of the wonderful discoveries that are going to happen in the future. One observation though is that with all of these labor-saving devices that seem to come down the pike nowdays, it seems like we are all busier and don’t have nearly as much leisure time as people used to. What is up with that? Verzem
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
Er, the 60s - I dunno, didn't the US get involved in some stupid war? The beatles were big, and there was some sex and some drugs and some awful fashion (photos of your mum in a bright yellow PVC miniskirt, nice!). Technology was beginning to resemble something worth having, but you still wrote with quill pens and didn't have indoor toilets.
Was Mary Whitehouse in the sixties?
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Silent H Member (Idle past 5849 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
didn't have indoor toilets. Sure you did, they just didn't flush. The main problem is that this was before toilet paper was available to the masses and man those punch cards could really do some damage. holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
True Story: When my parents bought the house I grew up in 1978 (when I was 18 months old) it had no sewage system - instead, a man came round to collect the bucket. Really.
Norfolk; gotta love it.
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purpledawn Member (Idle past 3487 days) Posts: 4453 From: Indiana Joined: |
I graduated HS in 1978. I grew up on a farm.
No wall to wall subdivisions complaining about animal smells or farm machinery running at 6am. No weed police! They take the time to get out of their truck to stick a little flag next to a thistle plant (the only one in sight) and then mail a letter to tell you there is a thistle plant on your property and you need to deal with it. Such a job! No telemarketers! Didn't have to worry where we left the telephone. Like the TV it was connected. When you called a company, real people answered the phone! I do remember the party line though, which was annoying at times. We could actually get all the channels (4) without an outside antenna or the need for cable. My parents live in the same house and today they can't get those local channels without a satelite dish. Schools could discipline and we actually had books we could take home and study. We weren't inundated with mass marketing of TV characters, or movies stars. I had to make my daughters clothes if I didn't want some characters plastered on the front. No HFCS in my food before 1970 anyway and Coca Cola had a kick to it! It was fun playing the LP's on the 45 speed and running home movies backwards. I listen to country music and the singers were actually louder than the background music back then so we could hear the song. I still have an old record player (turn table) I use. My daughter gets a kick out of those really big "CD's" that I have. A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
Parasomnium writes: I wonder what's keeping Dan from 'shooting his load'. holmes writes: What do you mean? Perhaps that is what is keeping him from posting. Most probably, Holmes, most probably... I will be forced to assume that he's having the mother of all orgasms if he doesn't show up soon. It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back. - Bill Vaughn
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Parasomnium Member Posts: 2224 Joined: |
{creationist-quote-miner/misspeller-impersonation-mode on}
Mr Jack writes:
You ecxpect us to beleive taht? I grew up in 1978 {creationist-quote-miner/misspeller-impersonation-mode off} It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back. - Bill Vaughn
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Syamsu  Suspended Member (Idle past 5620 days) Posts: 1914 From: amsterdam Joined: |
On TV the people from the 50's and 60's look and speak fresh in my opinion. The 70's people look rotten, decadent. After that the people look non-descript a lot, with a few powerpeople mixed in, and the talk is meaninglessly politically correct a lot. I think people started to have more sex, and then in the seventies there was a lot of incest and peadophilia. Now it's more responsible. Now people have as much sex as can, but pay mind to keep familylife at it's bare minimum, and no less.
regards,Mohammad Nor Syamsu
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
What I said was that it was an amazing time. That is akin to the Chinese Blessing "May you live in interesting times". It could be good or very bad, anywhere in between, but certainly different from what went before or after.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
Seeing that sex has been mentioned nine times now (ten, if you count this sentence), I wonder what's keeping Dan from 'shooting his load'. I like to make sure everyone else is satisfied before I finish up. Nobody likes a selfish poster.
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
In response to the original post, I think of the sixties as Jack Kirby and Patrick McGoohan. As I understand it, some other stuff went on as well, but those seem like the two coolest things.
Apart from that, it seems to have been a general nationwide sex-obsessed apocalypse cult, wrapped up in a focus on the energy of youth and pop music. Y'know, sorta like America just turned into Japan for a while.
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Silent H Member (Idle past 5849 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
a general nationwide sex-obsessed apocalypse cult, wrapped up in a focus on the energy of youth and pop music. Other than the possible addition of "and the internet", what separates the above statement from today? I actually disagree about the 60-70's being sex-obsessed, but rather sexually open which required some fighting of cultural norms on expression. In other words they were getting more honest and explicit in their discussions. Today we (as a world) are much more sex-obsessed. Who is having sex with whom and how are they having it? How are we going to protect the children from any exposure to it? I mean for heck's sake we had an attorney general buy drapes to cover naked statues, are arresting kids for playing doctor, and have the entire media industry in knots because a small partially covered nipple got on tv for a second. That is pretty obsessed. Kind of funny, I was watching a British TV show the other day from the late 70's. The characters were decrying the horrible economic times (at that time) stating: the dollar was falling, there was trouble in the MidEast, and Carter wasn't performing as well as had been expected. All you have to do is change Carter to Bush, and we're in the same boat now as then... oh yeah except they'd have had to cut out all the sex gags because it wouldn't be PC. (edited in: There was more than just McGoohan, but McGoohan might have been enough to redeem any decade. Has he ever gotten a star in Hollywood?) This message has been edited by holmes, 12-17-2004 10:17 AM holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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Dan Carroll Inactive Member |
Other than the possible addition of "and the internet", what separates the above statement from today? Good call... "sexually enthusiastic" might be a better phrasing for the sixties.
All you have to do is change Carter to Bush, and we're in the same boat now as then... I have a distinct memory from a little under four years ago, when I was home visiting my parents. My Mom was reading the paper, and she just put it down, sighed, and said, "You know, thirty years ago our messing around with oil and the Middle East was creating an energy crisis. You'd think thirty years would be enough time to get off our asses and fix things."
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
What I said was that it was an amazing time. That is akin to the Chinese Blessing "May you live in interesting times". Connotation, my friend. If I told you that last night, I had some amazing sex, would you bestow congratulations, or condolences? "Amazing" is a pretty positive word, so no wonder I mistook you to say that the 60's was a pretty positive time to grow up in. Still, though, I don't think I would have liked it. And I'm still not sure how much of this fond rememberance is fact and how much is the nostalgia of a bunch of old farts.
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