My favorite thing about the 60s might have to be the founding of the band Chicago.

Lived in a Dorm, dances every week, awesome field trips, great friends, My First Love. I could have stayed in that year forever.

It was a hell of a decade.

Ah, the Earrhrise photo!

Space fan here. The times the TV was rolled in on a ?7ft stand in grade school to watch Mercury & Gemini take offs!
One of the only times I cut HS class was to sit in the stairwell to hear one of the Apollo take offs on my dad's little transistor radio.

… see my Post #33.

Had lots of space toys too.

Remember these?

Apollo 8 was a remarkable and audacious mission. It was improvised by NASA because the Lunar Module(s) weren’t ready for test flights. To stay on President Kennedy’s time table to land on the Moon before 1970, NASA needed to test a lot of systems and technologies so they sent Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon without the LM. The Earthrise photo happened without planning!

1968 was a terrible year for our country. The assassinations of RFK and MLK, the Vietnam Nam War, student unrest and political violence dominated the news. The successful flight of Apollo 8 at the end of the year was a much-needed lift for our exhausted country. NASA and the astronauts received a congratulatory telegram from a woman in the Midwest who wrote, “Thank you for saving 1968.”

Andrew Chaikin’s book “A Man On The Moon” and the Tom Hanks produced HBO miniseries, “From The Earth To The Moon” are excellent chronicles of the space program of the 1960s and early ‘70s. There are many details and back-stories that detail the challenges and the people who made Kennedy’s dream come true.

Married in 1971. We were married for 51 years. She passed away in 2022 from cancer.
Two wonderful sons and four grandchildren.

and the blue plaid book bag I got right before I started First Grade in 1969. I don’t have the same memories of the decade that a lot of Boomers have, lol.

a Gen Xer than a Boomer.

Followed by marijuana, and The lack of crowds that we have down nowadays.

and someone would drive by and throw you the peace sign and you’d throw it back and YEAH BABY, you now have a place to crash, a bit of maybe puny yet lovingly-prepared food, a few tokes of whatever’s on hand and some tunes wafting out the funky but perfectly serviceable sound system, and yep — that’s the way it was, 60s fans…finest kind!!❤️

such a visceral reaction to it I figured one of my nannies must have played it all the time when I was a little kid though I can't recall who (my parents never played rock and roll or showtoons. The radio was always on CBC). I literally have so many emotions when I play some of those songs. I played them for a bit. The feeling did not wear off for a long time. Then I looked up the actors in the movie and some of them have died of old age or were older people today. That shocked me. That felt weird. Now I can't listen to the music - too confused my emotions are: life, death, the 1960s... it is all mixed up.

From short A-line dresses, soft sweaters, bell bottom jeans, and long gowns for dates.

Milby park in Houston late 60’s. Free Sunday bands playing.

Two all-time favorites.

Tikki

The comfortable closeness of sitting around in a circle with the families of the neighborhood on quilts on the ground, singing, clapping in unison, dancing and sharing food.

Songs like; This Land is Your Land, Green Green, Silver Threads, Puff the Magic Dragon, If I had a Hammer, Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, Down By The Riverside, All My Trials/Bahamian Lullaby and so many more.

It was peaceful community building at its very best. Some of the best memories of my life.

I can almost smell the grass and hear the acoustic guitars and banjos.

We could really use some of those traditional
American gatherings today. I imagine that they still happen somewhere. At least I hope so.

I was less than ten years old. We went as a family for 3 or 4 years. There are several other things that I remember and love. But hootenannys are by far my favorite. ❤️

You painted a picture and created an atmosphere. Sounds idyllic. And, you're right, a sense of community has become all too rare for many people these days (other than online).

Thank you.

By the way, the man wearing the white shirt, red shorts, and with crossed arms looks like Michael Douglas's character in the movie Falling Down.


The rise of Jim Morrison and The Doors. I'm not fond of Oliver Stone's movie The Doors because that movie doesn't portray Jim accurately. Obviously he had a substance abuse problem. There's real life accounts of Jim purchasing an entire box of spoon rings and giving them away. He purposely gained weight and took poetry classes after fame. He predicted some future musical equipment.





The lovely, sweet and extremely beautiful Sharon Tate.

would have to say about the state of US politics today?

I'm not sure if you know this but his father was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin. Jim always claimed that his family was dead when they were actually alive and well. It's possible that Jim was aware of his dad's involvement and never maintained contact.


https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/jim-morrisons-dad-played-a-role-in-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident.html

I was born in 1962.

I'll just leave that said and return to 2024.

My age ...

than being glued to their phones.

Didn't make it to Woodstock, too young, still living at home, but I did go to West Palm Beach Pop Festival and it was lifechanging. Never have i been so high with so many good people, the vibes were out of this world. The pot and hash and mescaline and acid flowing around were mind bending and the music was heavenly! We changed the world, in some ways. Sad to see it backsliding so badly these days.

Edit - corrected typo

in response to the comment "If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there."

My stolen response: I can remember the '60s, just not in order.

school. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be a student today.

I have a theory that "decades" really run from the middle of the calendar decade to the middle of the next. 1961 and 1970 are a million miles apart, but taken together they constitute the "60s." Same could be said of 1971 and 1980.

I was born in '56, so I was too young to enjoy most of the frolics of the late '60s. I'll go with a generic "music" answer, because that's nice and safe. When it came to Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll, well... 1 out of 3 is pretty good if you're hitting a baseball.

-- Mal

60-64 were nothing at all like 65-69, which were much more like 70-74. Maybe it's me, because I was a kid in the early 60s, but an adult in the late 60s.

I liked the music and relatively normal politics of the 60’s. But I was born in 1983 so I don’t have any first-hand experience.

never got the chance to do that... but from 1989 to 1999 I worked at NASA and met a few... and that was the best decade of my life ( so far )

I always say I wish I could have been born a bit earlier, so I would have been alive when The Beatles first arrived to America.

Only the best for my butt and fecal matter! No cheap disposable diapers for me!

Still miss you, Mom.

Even as a kid I knew I wanted to be a scientist. So the space program was my thing.
But, the earliest missions happened when I was really young.
Apollo happened when I was a tween & a teen, so the memories are much more vivid.
I

but there's more discussion of Apollo starting with post#5. It obviously had a major impact on people of that era.

Included someone who worked on the project! Pretty cool.

There was excitement on the air

The only nice thing I remember is being able to disappear from home on my bicycle and escape the whole thing for a little while.

Me and some college friends clowning around, about 1969. I'm at top right. I don't remember what we were doing but it must have been really fun and stupid.

And the young Beatles when they were so cute with moppy hair.

Dances every Friday night, teenage night clubs, mini skirts and maxi coats. It was a great time to be in high school and college.

colorful new gadgets, tootle loop phones. fishnet stockings, Roman sandals, Afro hair styles, long straight hair, the Black is Beautiful movement, Nehru jackets, all kinds of new sleeves styles on blouses , the London fashions from Mary Quant, hanging ashtrays, midcentury modern Scandinavian furniture, acrylic popping up everywhere, the new connections with Japanese products and clothing from India and African nations, and the general sense of a new international culture, coffee houses where people talked to each other and discussed politics and had live music, people graduating college and going into the Peace Corps, but mostly a sense of optimism, exploration, and joy.

The world went from black, white, and gray,and bland, exploded in wonderful new color and sounds, and then in a flash it was all gone.

I graduated high school in 69, and we were rebels about everything. Rules were meant to be challenged.

The thing i liked most about the decade was the great Saturday morning cartoons. When I was very young, I would watch thode while eating Post Crispy Critters cereal. IMO, today's cartoons just don't measure up. Your mileage may vary. I also enjoyed reading the Sunday funnies. Many of the strips that were around then, sadly, no longer are.

That first photo looks like a pic of the Young Republicans at the local High School. Either that or a coed sleepover at Mitt Romney’s house.

I did it for my little boy. I could not stand the idea of him being drafted into an unjust war and perhaps being killed. We marched in Washington, joined forces with MLK who saw the war as unjust. Another Mother for Peace came along about the same time. I still have a shoebox full of buttons we were wearing. Maybe I could give them to a museum somewhere...

I was only 5 years when he did, and don't remember much about that decade, but I definitely remember what it was like to have him back after being stationed overseas for two years- one year in Thailand and one in Vietnam.