[CatoRenasci]

Depends where you were: I grew up just North of San Francisco. I graduated from high school in June 1966. My senior year, I knew of only a few kids who smoked pot or dropped acid, although the Mexicans were all rumored to use pot. A year later, according to friends a year behind me, by mid-1967 between 60-75% of the then senior class had smoked pot (at least). Meeting up with my high school friends after a year of college, I found virtually all of them had at least tried pot. But, that was California.

[brazzaville]

Good morning.
"I graduated from high school in June 1966."

I spent the end of the '50s and the beginning of the '60s running the streets in San Francisco. It was a great place to be a kid in then. I moved to Santa Maria to start high school and graduated in June of '66 also.

I enlisted in the Army on July 1st of 1966 and the rest of the '60s were spent either getting ready for Vietnam, or in Vietnam, with 30 days back in the world every nine months on extension leave. When I left people were sneaking into the school bathrooms to smoke cigarettes and dope was mostly a rumor. When I visited a year later they were sneaking in to smoke pot.

I always came home prepared to desert but after the first leave, I felt more at home in Nam than in California. I had little in common with most of my contemporaries and I didn't come back to stay until the Army told me bye in 1970.

For me, the '60s is Vietnam and music. I can't hear Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin without drifting back to the war. The '70s and '80s were fun but they were just weak shadows of the '60s.

Michael Frazier