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Thanx ... I didn't go to the next page, but yours was the only reply that was objective ....

For the record,

I heard about hippies and chicks and miniskirts and dope and etc. ... while I was in Korea ... in the Army ... I was 18.

When I got out, in late '67 ... being from Boston ... I naturally landed in one of the "places to be."

At almost 20 ... just like all those crazy college days I missed (but you anti hippie folks know whom you are) .. I was turned loose in a candy store.

Sex, drugs, booze, party and best of all ... rejecting authority.

Now I'm 59 ... I can speak about Calypso Louie with some credibility because I was around for the Black Panthers.

I can speak with some knowledge about the futility of the peace movement because I watched the Beatles come ashore and go through their transformation(s) ... and yes ... shed a tear when John was murdered.

I can sleep at night because I was able to develope a thought process that is based on the reality of my ill spent youth and not on books, movies and (if this post is any indication) .. the negative comments of people that have no clue.

I heard Sinatra croon in the 4th grade, the Beatles and the Stones battle in the 60's and 70's, some $h!t called disco got wiped with boot scootin' Skynard and the like ... I turned off in '81 and discovered jazz in '90 or '91.

Did I ever smell? ... yep ... puked a few times and pissed my pants once .... I've opened doors in my brain that perhaps were never meant to be opened ... and I can caution folks today of many, many perils in this thing called life.

But I rankle when people slam what they know nothing of.

I don't reminisce, but I use what I've been, where I've been, What I've done and whom I've known to become the man that I am.

Any and every man and woman 60 and older have a set of memories and experiences that apparently younger people cannot begin to understand.

How sad ... their ability to imagine has been excised.

I wonder what the i-podders will be like when THEY'RE 60?

So true.

I think you are about 7 yrs older than me, but 'I hear you MAN!'

You have a good point. The IPod generation will have to live with the consequences of stem-cell technology, human cloning and embryonic inter-mingling with animals, etc. It seems that great promise always comes with great consequences, some of which are very evil.

Take Care Bro

Wolf

It seems as though the "generation gap" is alive and well, eh? ;)

I was born in '53 so my early years were filled with playing outside, reading books I loved, and no tv. It was a perfectly wonderful time.

The summer of '68 SEEMED different, somehow..even in a small New England town on the Atlantic...there was something...off. If I could articulate just what it was...I'd write books. Whether it was hormones changing us, or something else- suddenly EVERYTHING seemed less wholesome. Rebellion was in the air, disgust with all we'd grown up loving and respecting was easily seen, in our clothes, our language and our attitudes.

Temptations were everywhere. Why I was so blessed to escape the worst of it I'll never know. But I watched as lifelong friends threw themselves into drugs, anti-war, anti-men, anti-"establishment" shells. I smoked a little pot, dropped a little speed, went to see Jim Hendrix at Boston Garden...but never was a real hippie. I liked showers and clean clothes and my family:)

The ones who critisize our generation, will be critisized in turn by their offspring. We'll see how they deal with those days...