Posted on 07/13/2007 7:39:49 AM PDT by Incorrigible
By DICK FEAGLER
Forty years ago, my editors put me on a plane and shipped me off to San Francisco to live with the hippies.
I always had great out-of-town luck. So, on the ride, I met a nice, middle-class couple who were flying out to meet their son. He was a drummer for a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company. He met his parents at the airport.
``You want to know the scene?'' he said. ``Come with me tonight. We got a gig at the Fillmore.''
That's how I entered the Summer of Love _ a summer that changed America.
He took me backstage to meet the band's lead singer. This woman struck me as totally obnoxious. My idea of a lead singer was Doris Day. This woman, who was grungy, sat at a dressing table, patting Southern Comfort whiskey on her face. Her name, she grudgingly told me, was Janis Joplin.
When the show started, I left. It was too loud. I came from the era of Sinatra, and Janis Joplin came from a new age of screech.
The next few weeks were equally startling. The Summer of Love was a summer of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and dirty words. It was so foreign to me, I was sure it couldn't last.
Everybody used dope. The only question was, what kind.
I smoked some. I thought I had to. I took my first toke in a fraternity hovel where the bathroom was wallpapered in tinfoil and the housemother was busy baking organic bread. But I got bored and decided to go home.
A bus came along and I got on it. After about an hour, it dawned on me that it might not be the right bus. I pulled the cord and got off. I had no idea where I was. I flagged a cab and he took me back to Union Square.
I went into a bar and ordered a gin gimlet. The bartender wouldn't serve me. ``You're stoned,'' he said. ``I am not,'' I said. ``I only had a couple of cigarettes.''
Next morning, I called the city desk. ``I turned on to pot last night,'' I told the city editor.
``My God,'' he said. ``Get out of there right now.''
When I got home, I wrote a four-part series about Haight-Ashbury. It got a lot of response. The saddest response was from parents who said: ``Did you run into my daughter, Denise? She ran away from home. Did you see her?''
When I wrote that series, I was 28 years old.
So I thought the Summer of Love was just a fad. I was sure the screeching music wouldn't last. The summer of sex, dope, rock 'n' roll and dirty words would be left behind when these tie-dye kids grew up and joined the mainstream. My mainstream.
I have learned since, to my dismay, that those kids dragged their adolescence with them, tugging it along like a security blanket and dragging the rest of us with it.
Sex used to be private; now it's public, in the commercials on TV. Drugs? Well, there are two kinds _ the illegal ones and the Viagra type that guarantees Superman-like instant erections.
Rock 'n' roll? When's the last time you saw a violin in a commercial _ even a commercial that wants to lull you to sleep.
And dirty language? It's commonplace. The words we never used to say because we thought they were gross come regularly out of the TV, for our children to hear, and find their way into music. Music without melody.
I didn't know it then, but the Summer of Love was a summer that changed the culture. The kids _ the most pampered generation we had produced for a long time _ made American music unmusical and American speech obscene. They erased from the American scene any idea of civility or seemliness.
They dealt us today. And now they're stuck with tomorrow.
(Dick Feagler is a columnist for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at dfeagler(at)plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Hey, babyboomers are still doing their best to destroy this country.... just look at congress.
Look, fact is most those young adults in the late 40s and 50s had it made compared to what is left today.
Hell, we were lucky to buy our first home in the early 80s, and it was 40 years old. We had to beg, borrow and steal and this was with (2) two full time incomes, with jobs that were not secure and didn't last.
Today it's even tougher to survive.
You know what I *constantly* hear from the old, non-boomer generation? "I don't know how these people make it nowadays".
“My dream continues with ferocity, thank you.”
liked that so much it just became my new sig.
I hear that a lot from my mother and father in law who are in their eighties. They are appalled at the prices and the differences in the quality of life for working class and middle class people now as compared to how it was when they were starting out as a young couple.
Last time I was in Carbondale, it was like nothing had changed since I went to school there 30 years ago. NOTHING. Except everything was even shabbier than it was then.
I hear it weekly from elderly people. My Mom in her late 70s just shakes her head. She knows full well the 40s and 50s and early 60s were paradise compared to what is now.
You keep trying to refute the idea of selfish babyboomers with the fact that your non-boomer parents worked for everything. Had he said selfish boomer parents, it would make sense. Just because parents aren’t selfish and hard working doesn’t mean the kids are the same.
Too, it was a whole lot of those greatest generation parents who enacted welfare. Go further back and you have social security. Go even further to get income tax.
If both parents have to work now, it’s not because of this generation, it’s because of the previous ones. Now we have a boomer president who pushed for a drug entitlement which will mean even less financial freedom for our kids.
Not all boomers are problems, just as not every person of any particular age is. It’s just that “boomers” has become synonymous with the dirty stinking leftist hippie. The reason for that is the very vocal hippie who hasn’t grown out of being a hippie, and is doing all they can to remain immature. They constantly pine for the “glory days” of being a dirty stinking leftist hippie, basically upset that they’ve aged. If you’re not a dirty stinking leftist hippie, you shouldn’t be upset. 8-D
No, this was my comment.
I recall my folks bought their first home, it was *brand* new. My Dad use to go to the gas station and say, "gimme a bucks worth of regular". Then they cleaned his windshield, checked his oil and tires. We had everything we needed. And Mom NEVER had to work.
It only took one income back then to buy a brand new home and raise a family to boot.
Just try that today.
Not to mention, they had secure jobs, with great medical benefits, and most had pensions. It was no big deal back then, and was more or less expected.
Today, one is lucky to just have a secure job. They're almost unheard of.
We too have worked for everything, EXCEPT it's taken two (2) full time incomes
it was a whole lot of those greatest generation parents who enacted welfare.
Welfare? Those on welfare have nothing and deserve nothing.
My comment was about the (boomers being selfish) comment. Which is total BS.
Apparently Janis was an obnoxious drunk. Aren’t they all? However, I did like her singing and it wasn’t all screeching. She was a blues singer for the 60s.
This guy didn’t stay long enough. The problem with the hippies was that they saw a problem but used the TOTALLY wrong solution to change it. They turned away from Christ/Monotheism to Eastern Mysticism, postmodernism and pschyodelic trips, they turned the focus inside instead of outside and now we have crack funded gangs, multibillion dollar porn industry, no respect for authority anywhere by anyone, and millions of children passed through the belly of Molech as a sacrifice to convenience.
If Jimmy hendrix were still alive do you think he would have plaid at LiveEarth?
My son was conceived in 1967 in Golden Gate park, SF. I'm happy to announce he has a PhD in Physics. All of us there weren't losers.
There are a lot of selfish boomers. There are a lot of selfish greatest generation, as there are X and younger. There are lots of each generation that aren’t. Selfishness and greed isn’t owned by any particular generation.
My point was that your angst over what your parents were able to do with one income being impossible today is that it’s the result of generations of entitlement mentalities.
I’m not disagreeing with you that it’s much harder today. I’m just giving my reasons for it, that it’s because of the selfishness of past generations that we are now paying for it.
Mr. Natural lives in my heart!
If you’ve heard Bessie Smith, you’ll know what Janis was after...
My mom was a baby boomer and she is a wonderful woman whose most filthy utterance was herd to be “Oh Heck”!!!
It can be done. Just do exactly what our parents did back then to get that house. Get married at thirty or forty after saving as much money as possible. Get only one car, one tv and leave the rest alone just like my parents did.
No second car, DVD players, plasma tv, game consoles, digital cameras, or hobbies.
Use your two week annual vacation to paint the house and give thanks before every meal there is food on the table.
Bingo
You just described my early married years. almost
I married at 19, managed to buy a duplex, lived in one side. The rent on the other half paid the mortgage, leaving me with a small second mortgage payment every month.
Each side must have been about 600sq. ft. tops.
( my side had a large semi-enclosed room/porch, aka ‘Fla room’).
Today a couple demands 3000+ sq. ft., his and her SUVs, plasma TV, etc.
In my area there is mile after mile, development after development of those homes. Practically no modest homes at all.
Builders comply with demand.
I contend it’s the old argument of ‘chicken v. egg’.
Working wives increase buying power, the market responds.
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