My (19)60s

The thinkers of the day are starting to look upon the year 1968 as the one that encapsulates all of what is commonly known as "the sixties." My dear e-friend the Eclectic Pundit sent me to a series of mini-memoirs in the City Journal by writers who were There At The Revolution during that year. After slogging through all those memories and considered conclusions, I came away thinking what I thought in 1968: we occupied the same time and space but our reactions couldn't be more different.

Here are the things that define the American sixties for me: the black civil rights movement, the student war protests, a true pop music revolution (a burst of intense creativity we haven't seen since that roughly followed this timeline: urban folk, Dylan's intelligent lyrics, the British invasion, concept albums, singer-songwriters) and a loosening of cultural strictures surrounding drugs and sex. These separate strands came together to form a throbbingly exciting backdrop against which to play out one's late-adolescent gropings toward maturity, and overall, I loved the times. But while some manned the ramparts and trashed their universities, in the backwater of Lexington, Kentucky, I watched, and felt differently about each separate phenomenon.

I was never so proud to be a son of this soil as when African-Americans started their protests for equal treatment. Having had Jim Crow racial attitudes forced upon me by the prevalent southern culture of Washington, D.C., and from the time I could think being aware that those attitudes were wrong, watching America struggling to live up to the promise in its founding document filled me with profound feelings of relief and hope. I didn't march, though, because doing so was inopportune. In Kentucky nobody was doing it, and when I was at home, participating in a protest march would have brought the roof of my parents' house, which still sheltered me at their expense, down upon my head. For me, discretion has always been the better part of valor, so my protests are discreet. I was overjoyed to be able to reach out quietly to black people whom I'd always wanted as friends. It hadn't been possible before because there was no social mixing of the races. Now, to the extent there was, I happily indulged. That was my "protest."

As for the anti-war protests, I thought their foundations were bogus, not much more than intellectual cover for guys like me who were afraid for their own skins. I didn't march then because I didn't believe in the movement. In my eyes, the validity of the protests grew in proportion with the realization by the nation at large that we were losing American lives in Viet Nam for not much more reason than macho posturing on the part of our leaders, who couldn't admit they'd made a mistake. In the end, my anger matched that of the rest of the country, but by then I was participating in my own protest in the Peace Corps. To this day, my Peace Corps service is my proudest achievement, a time when I truly did some good for the country.

I've already said so much about the music of the times that I hesitate to repeat myself. It's enough to let you imagine, if you didn't experience it, what it was like to live in anticipation of the next incredible release by (in no particular order) : Joan Baez, The Beatles, Judy Collins, Buffy Saint Marie, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan....need I go on? The music which young artists now consider their pop heritage, a part of our cultural warp and woof, was new then. Take the word "exciting" and multiply its meaning by a factor of ten, at least. That's how delicious the anticipation was.

Drugs: never did 'em then--unless you count alcohol, which I did plenty of. I was in Kentucky after all! That was the drug of choice, at least in my cohort. In the Peace Corps, drug use was (and remains) grounds for immediate termination, so for me the idea was a non-starter, though it certainly wasn't for many others I was with. I didn't experience marijuana until the 70s, and that's as far as I got with non-alcoholic drugs.

Sex: I experienced the unspeakable relief of coming out as gay. Thank you for that, sixties. 'Nuf said about that.

And there you have the Ralph Cherry tour of the sixties.