-THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

Every now and then, one of the younger generations will ask me what life was like in the Sixties. And I tell them that, although the exact date is unclear, it was very early in that decade where the lunatics were given the keys and allowed to run the asylum. It was a massive jailbreak from the straight-laced Fifties - a colossal exodus from naiveté that began with the slaying of a president and ended with 400,000 rain-soaked hippie lemmings throwing themselves into Yasgur's pond at Woodstock in defiant homage to the only thing left they felt they could believe in: love, drugs and Rock & Roll. Sandwiched somewhere in between, hidden among the wars and the race riots and the assassinations and the Beatles and the LSD and the pushers and the addicts and the street violence and the KKK and Charles Manson, was the soul of America. But no-one, if they were even looking, could find it.

The average annual salary was $4743 and the minimum wage was $1.00/hr. It was the decade of the Cuban missile crisis where the Doomsday clock was two minutes away from midnight: the time when the world would experience its first, and probably last, nuclear war. It was the age where the term ‘Negro’ evolved into ‘black’ and the African-American population began to vocally and physically demand what, according to the constitution, had been theirs all along.

It was the time of the Space Race with the Soviet Union getting out of the gate first but having to settle for second place when America landed on the moon and verified that it wasn’t made out of cheese.

It was a decade that was, at the same time, exhilarating and terrifying. I’m glad I experienced it and even more elated that I survived it.

Copyright February 2010 - phil cerasoli