Where were you for the Summer of Love?

[randy_byers]

The wave of reminiscence about the 1969 moon landing has got me thinking about the significant lacunae in my shared experience with even Americans of my own generation. We were on Yap island in Micronesia from the summer of 1966 until the summer of 1970. I was five when we moved out there and nine when we moved back. One thing that means is that I didn't watch TV for those four years, so for example I missed Star Trek on its first run and only caught up with it in reruns. It also means that I missed following the first moon landing on TV.

Yap wasn't completely cut off from the world, but it was pretty close. One memory I have is of sitting in our neighbors' parents' airconditioned bedroom listening to Sgt Pepper's on a reel-to-reel tape deck. The cover fascinated me. Both my brother and sister went to school on Hawai'i, and I remember my brother bringing albums back with him. For some reason the one that sticks in memory is the Lovin' Spoonful. "Hot town, summer in the city/Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty." I think the Animals was another one. On the other hand, the radio station out there played almost nothing but country western, and I got a good dose of Hank Williams and Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline. I didn't catch up with the pop music of the era until we got back to the States. My sister's copies of the red and blue Beatles anthologies and Abbey Road, which she left behind when she went to college in Indiana, were instant favorites.

For the most part I got caught up with everything I missed, but it's like getting caught up with a historical era you weren't around for. holyoutlaw remembers tanks in the streets in Chicago during the riots of the late '60s. To me, those riots are something I've only read about in books and seen in documentaries. I'm not sure the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations even registered on me at the time, although I started taking piano lessons when we got back in 1970 and one of the songs I taught myself to play and sing was "Abraham, Martin and John".

One of the odd things about all this is that I've read enough about and from the era and listened to enough of the music, seen enough of the movies and TV shows and documentaries, heard enough first hand stories from friends that it seems like I was there. American culture is permeated with the Sixties. It almost comes as a shock, as when thinking about the first moon landing today, to remember that I actually wasn't around. Then I remember how much I felt like a stranger in a strange land when we returned from Yap. I was an outsider, just slightly out of key with my peers. Even in college one of my favorite professors (she taught Shakespeare) told me that learning that I'd lived on a distant island as a child finally helped her understand something she'd sensed about me. (I was vainly pleased that there was something mysterious about me in her eyes.) It took me a long time to get over that feeling of not quite belonging, and it is only these little jolts of estrangement that make me realize that for the most part those feelings are a thing of the past. It's just that it was a past I didn't share with you.

Comments

[alces2.livejournal.com]

I was in high school in Kansas from 1967 to 1970. I was almost as isolated in Kansas from the summer of love. I was in advanced classes and quite marvelously social inept. Oh wait, I still am. Okay, a little better than then. I did go to one meeting of a group called, hm, I think Youth Action Coalition (YAC??) primarily because a girl I liked brought me along. She was, I do believe, infatuated with that older college guy running the meetings, certainly not with me (AFAIK). However I did get to see all the TV shows current to the time. However my father wasn't too enthusiastic about that long-haired hippie music.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

So when did you move to the Bay Area?

[alces2.livejournal.com]

Hm, let's see. I moved to Iowa from Kansas in 1974, to Detroit in 1975 and then to San Francisco in 1978 and I have been in the Bay Area since then.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

One of our family stories, by the way, is about a time when my brother and sister found a copy of Meet the Beatles on the beach, and my parents (still church-going Mennonites at the time) wouldn't let them keep it. I mean, talk about out of the cultural loop! My parents weren't allowed to go to movies when they were growing up, because they were considered sinful. By the time I came around, my grandparents had TVs just like everybody.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

I was in the Navy, on nights or mids, so saw almost no television. But it was shore duty, so I read newspapers and got to see the moon landing at a friends house in Gustine, since it was on Sunday. We put the television on the porch, so we could see the moon and the TV at the same time.

I saw my first Star Trek episodes at the 1968 Worldcon, and have never seen all of even the first season, IIRC.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You were from South Carolina orginally, right? Were you still living there when you joined the Navy, or did you move to the West Coast first?

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

I joined the Navy in SC, went to California for boot camp (they asked), then Pensacola, FL; Millington, TN; and back to California, which is where I saw the landing, the week before my 4 years was up.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I love that image of you guys taking the TV out on the porch so you could see the moon and the TV coverage at the same time!

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if it's a Bug, or a Feature. Not that I lived abroad during childhood, but in several ways I might just as well have. Never much interested in the Pop Culture that perfused the lives of most of my age-mates -- music, movies, or (though it came along a bit later) Television -- I picked up only little bits of it, here and there... just enough to get a vague idea of the significance of most people's References. So, yeah, there are considerable amounts of life/cultural background that I don't share with others -- even others of my generation, which is about two generations ahead of yours (& at least that of most of the people I know), I guess. Still... everybody seems to manage, somehow.

And every once in a while something Pops Up. The discussion thread of a non-fan Blog I was skimming recently got diverted to talking about the movie "You Can't Take It With You" -- released when I was about ten years old, I didn't see it for another five or so years, but was Extremely Influenced by it (probably more than I realized until almost twenty years later, when I discovered people somewhat like that in Fandom). A surprising ot of those bloggers -- three or four generations younger than I -- turned out to be familiar with the movie, and to appreciate it.

But not sharing big parts of "the common culture" might help enable one to have a somewhat different perspective, which might benefit all concerned.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It does seem that one thing that a lot of fans have in common is feeling estranged from the common culture in one way or another. Loud and pronely, that's us.

You Can't Take It with You is the Capra film? I don't think I've seen that one. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen any Capra other than It's a Wonderful Life. I keep meaning to check out It Happened One Night sometime. Seems like I've been watching a lot of Claudette Colbert movies lately.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

Oh, and since I was spending a lot of weekends in San Francisco in that period, I heard a LOT of live music that was influential, and pop music on the radio. So I was very much in touch with some parts of pop culture.

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

Have you written about the live shows you saw back then? I'd be interested to read your reminiscences, should you feel moved to share them.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

If you can remember the 60's, you weren't there. All I remember is small bits, but every now and then a piece of music will bring up a scene.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I've just realised that being born in March '68, I really am a child of the Summer of Love, IF its effects had travelled to surburban SE London, which I rather doubt.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Ha! No doubt the love vibes permeated the ether.

[spikeiowa.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm pretty sure the Summer of Love didn't reach Iowa until after 1970.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The vibes traveled slower in some parts of the ether than in others.