1968 and the living was weird

I was visiting friends in Austria, on a skiing trip...but I didn't grasp the ramifications...I was a callow 17.

I don't remember...

Write down what you do remember Dianne. Its important.

Funny dadpad, what I don't remember probably isn't really worth remembering.

Do as your told woman and stop procrastinating.

OK dadpad, you have me shaking in my boots, so here goes...

I had left San Francisco to get away from a very abusive relationship. After moving to Missouri to be near family, I started dating the man I would marry in 1969 and to whom I would be married for the next 34 years. Sigh. Glad that's over! Shows what a slow learner I am.

This is one of the most enjoyable threads I've ever read through.

I turned 12 in '68. If you ever see the show "The Wonder Years" on TV, look for the episode where a few students try to organize a school walkout, in protest of the war in Viet Nam. That episode captured 1968 beautifully.

In 1968 I had been married to Mr. P. for a year, had settled in suburbia, and was doing a credible imitation of June Cleaver. :wink:

1st half of 1968, I was a 13/14 year old boarder in a St. Louis, Mo. High School.

A hard place, only boys, several with emotional problems; some of them very violent. Teachers who used a cricket bat to slap students (something unthinkable home in Mx). The perfect place to "become a grown-up".

But one day, a propaganda from the Columbia Records club arrived. 10 LPs for a dollar, and then a record a month for "only $5.99". I made my list. The records that arrived weren't exactly the ones I asked for. Some of them were: Nancy Sinatra (This Boots Are Made For Walkin'), Turtles, Association, Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass. Others, I hadn't asked for: The Doors, Vanilla Fudge, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream. I played them and inmediately understood that these guys were somewhere else, in a place of reality that I wanted to be in. Rock music became a part of my life.

Hanging out with the other Mexicans -one of them became governor 24 years later-, showing off our swiss knives; playing pinball machines (we didn't have them in Mexico): Flying Chariots, Casanova, Ice Revue, at the Do-nut shop. Machines that did not tilt so easy. You stood in front of them with your legs wide open, threw the ball and started screwing the machine.: you moved your pelvis, your hip, you danced with it, banged it, caress it. To get an extra game was like having the machine orgasm.

The Vietnam war. An athmosphere of social tension. Young against old, and white against black were the more visible ones. The times, they were a-changing. Old people were for scalation; young ones, for descalation. Whites were openly racist; blacks were obviously angry as hell. Every one had a racial tag, always derogatory: nigga, spick, whap, pollack, kraut, hymie.

I had a weekend at Harry's house in New Madrid. His parents were nice, but were obsessed with race. We go to a dump near the Mississippi River to shoot into the air. A black man, about 300 yards from us, moves to pick up some garbage. Harry's dad shoots near him: the man runs away scared as hell as Harry's dad thinks it's so funny. Harry was ashamed. His parents were devoted followers of George Wallace, and I'm sure they questioned his son to make certain that the spick was actually white.

A dance with Barbra. kisses with Patricia (well, even third base!) and some great books read: "Macbeth", "Gulliver's Travels, "Spoon River Anthology", "Sister Carrie", "The Jungle" and, most of all, "El Llano en Llamas", bu Juan Rulfo.

Hammer running with a meat blender (another kind of hammer) trying to beat Father Murphy, who had expelled him from school. An argument with Father Leo, when I told him I didn't believe in the Catholic Church any more. Another fellow, Kennedy, destroying with an ax his room door when he was expelled. Some guy named Porta, being so happy they had "killed the nigga" when Martin Luther King was assasinated. The Seniors being all hung up about the draft day draw (and Calcaterra burning his draft card).

Man, what a fascinating nightmare!

1968, second half:

Back in Mexico I set into listening to rock music, with some Budweiser bermudas on, a green polyester t-shirt (not the yellow one, it attracted the bees) and a beer on my hand.
With some friends (Rafael, Victor, Jorge Bush -yes, that's his name!) we'd play a record, put our heads beneath the console and look endlessly at the cover.
Víctor sometimes took his dad's 1958 Mercury and we travelled nowhere listening to "Hush", "Summertime Blues" and "(I Can Get No) Satisfaction". We felt there was no satisfaction in the provincial and ultranationalist Mexico we had the unfortune to live in.
Victor really wanted a motorcycle, and with perfect teenage logic, we thought on how to get it. We'd gather olympic stamps, which came in soaps and suds. 20 different ones and we'd win a washing machine. We'd sell the washing machine and buy a motorcycle.
Of course we didn't buy soap. We shop-lifted it, filling our mackinoff. Soon we had so many soaps we decided to use them as rocks and break windows.
What was behind those moments of senseless violence? Primary teenage rebellion, sure. But also the wish to create chaos where there was an excessive order. An order whose rigid hierarchy had us in the lowest of ranks.
We could never find the 20th stamp. But we kept on going to the supermarkets, kept on breaking windows. There was no tranquility in El Dorado.

No tranquility, that's for sure. The University -including Victor's High School- was on strike. Papers wrote about "student agitation". Pictures of burnt buses. Suddenly the word "students" was pronounce with hatred on the TV. I remember a note in the paper, telling mothers how to explain their small children that their older siblings were students, but that didn't mean they were bad persons. I also remember a magazine cover: "Are Mexican women equal to men?". It was a provocative title because the common answer would have been: "Of course not!"
We had a remote idea of what the Student movement was about. We knew that students were for the removal of the chief of police, the abolition of the riot police and against one article of the Constitution. We knew that cops had beaten the students. We perceived that older people were unanimously against the movement. We knew that the students had humorously attacked the President. And Victor wanted to burn a bus.

One afternoon, the 27th of August, we were at Rafael's when the noise coming from an avenue nearby called upon us. Buses full of students going to the Museum of Anthropology. Another demostration, but this time it seemed huge.
We discussed a little about going. Victor and I did. Incredible march, making fun of the government, of the government promotionals, of the "sold press". To our surprise we met people we knew: the quarterback of our former football team, the boyfriends of Rafael's sisters. Someone gives me a banner, with the image of a guy I do not know (Demetrio Vallejo, railroad union leader, political prisoner); I demand to change it for an Emiliano Zapata one.
In front of the American Embassy we chant: "Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh, Johnson, Johnson, chin-chin-chin" (I thought ho-chi-min we only syllables that rimed with chin-chin-chin). I saw a big banner with Ché Guevara, which worried me for about 5 seconds. I enjoyed watching the faces of the people, many thousands who gathered to watch the march.
Several blocks later someone starts chanting: "¡Zo-ca-lo! ¡Zó-ca-lo!", meaning they want to go to the country main square -the root of the nation- while the demonstration was scheduled to the Juarez monument. We are told: "in fact, the march has already arrived to the Constitution Plaza" (Zócalo). "We are about 700 thousand", says a young man.
Víctor and I exchange glances. Zócalo sounds dangerous. We decide to leave and walk back home.
To our surprise, by Plaza Necaxa -less than half way- we find a huge amount of soldiers, sitting on their tanks and armed vehicles. We walk in front of them fearful that they read in our faces that we have just left the demonstration.
At home, we find my father somewhat worried. We told him we had gone "to see" the march. He told us that it was him who had gone to see it and had seen us marching. I thought: "he's gonna beat the hell out of me", but instead he said that we were doing the right thing, that Mexico needed a democracy, but warned us to be careful.
That night the army "dislodged" the students at Zócalo. 4 days later, President Díaz Ordaz pronounced his (in)famous speech: "We have been tolerant to criticable extremes".
That menacing speech and our growing involvement with the movement moved my parents and Victor's to make us an offer we -a fourteen and a fifteen year old- could not refuse: "Why don't you two young men go for 3 or 4 to Acapulco?". We sunbathed and imagined we picked the beautiful girls at the beach.
Back in the city, we thought more about the bowling championship than about the movement. The last day of the bowling championship was October 1st. The night of October 2nd was marked by sound: helicopters overflying, then ambulances, one after another, the whole night. Somber, terrifying rumors came with those sounds. The students had been massacred in Tlatelolco.
The papers and the TV said there had been "an exchange of fire". In the conscience of the people it was clear that they lied. I was angry. The Tlatelolco neighborhood was in a state of siege.
On October 5th, a sunday, we were playing flag football on the street, when on the street corner, we saw that light tanks and other light armored vehicles were passing by, on their way to the military base. The game was suspended. We all went to see the unlikely parade, feeling impotent. Victor was the first one to tell the soldiers to go & screw their mother. Several of us followed him: "Murderers! Sons of bitches".
Something very deep had changed in the country. Enough that some privileged teenagers, little snots who were among the big beneficiaries of the "Mexican miracle" told the members of the Armed Forces to go you know where. Enough so that a whole generation would never be the same again.
That generation would be fundamental in the struggle for democracy in Mexico. But we were very young then. On Sunday night we yelled "Murderers!" to the soldiers. Early Monday morning we were in the cue to buy some tickets for the Olympic Games.

i'd have to say : 1968 and the living was pretty good !

in 1967 we spent several days at EXPO '67 in montreal and got a taste of the world - saw wayne newton RIDE (!) on stage with the RCMP MUSICAL RIDE :wink: .

so we decided that 1968 we would see a part of canada LIVE .
we bought a tent and set off for a two-week camping trip through ontario , quebec , new brunswick and prince edward island - in a 1959 VW beetle !

stopover at the BAY OF FUNDY -which has a maximum tide of about 17 meters - about 50 feet .
ehbeth and mrs h are standing near one of the rocks in the bay - it's low tide and the water will rise to the "tidal mark" (that is 50 feet !) on the rock in a few hours .
after snapping the picture we made a fast getaway to dry land !!!
hbg

I remember crying about Dubcek et al.

Fbaezer, your post is one of the most interesting I've read so far on a2k.Experiencing US, the racial tension, sometimes up close, student protests about the war in Vietnam, the music (life changing for a teenager).

When you returned to Mexico, I think you saw many of the same things that were happening in the US, including the vilifying of 'students' who were trying to change things for the better. The changes often weren't effective, only idealistic and the youngest often lived a Lord of the Flies type of existence, replete with hepatitis, malnutrition, lots of drugs, irreparble mental damage and illnesses that often ended in tragedy.

There was a tone of awe and excitement in your story. Many of us who were perhaps 8 to 10 years older were becoming cynical about the hypocrisy of the government and its obvious lies. The fact that you lived all over the world for many of your young university years must have given you a broader understanding of what was happening to society. You have always seemed much wiser than many of us who were so tied up in the local movement that we lost sight of the larger picture and the complexity of the social ills we were protesting.

I think the movie The Big Chill was fairly accurate in its depiction of the aftermath in the lives of former American hippies who were all grown up and dealing with criminals who really were nasty human beings, with little incentive to be a responsible part of society, admiting to falling for the lure of money instead of changing society to care more about each other, acknowledging a bitter cynicism.

Still, some good things came out of that time, including civil rights awareness and the recognition that J. Edgar Hoover's hold over the FBI was perverse and antisocialand obscenely powerful. Many of us learned to look closely at what we were being told by the government and huge corporations. (It still didn't stop many of the Enrons, did it?).

It was an unreal, incredible, storm of change, creative, idealistic but not all of it good. I'm glad I lived through it.

Funny, I do remember a lot from those days. I wasn't high all the time, just smoked dope and listened to mind-blowing jazz now and then. Never wanted to try the stronger stuff. That and the fact that San Francisco was so exquisitely beautiful, nothing seemed impossible.

And the music...just amazing in some of the little clubs along Haight Street. Memories...

Please write more about your experiences during that time from the perspective of different societies.

8 years old:

Rural Australia was largely isolated from the ructions occurring in the wider world.
My time was taken up with primary school and my parents trying to survive on a teachers wage. Despite the low wage we had an annual holiday to the beach, towing the caravan for hours to Rosebud each christmas.

School was walking distance from my home. I remember reading a book as i walked unfortunatly not seeing the sheets of reo laid out for installation at the new church hall. I tripped and fell driving one of the exposed reo ends into my knee. There was of course no one to help. I recovered myself enough to make my own way home. Fortunately no real damage just tears and lots of blood. I remember being in trouble for tearing my pants.

We collected beer bottles from other homes and... just... around and stacked them under the side of the house. When the length of the house was completely filled with beer bottles the bottlo came and gave us some money.there must have been several hundred bottles. It is the first time I can remember having paper money. I think my older brother and I split $5. I bought a foam surfboard... from the newsagent, there being no other shops that sold toys or sporting goods. It broke in half on our next holiday to the beach.
I recall sitting in a deckchair at the caravan park to watch the open air movie shown once a week.

Wow. Thanks for the clue, Diane, I'd missed Fb's posts.

I am always pleased to read his rare long posts. Terrific, man.

Glad your knee survived that, Dadpad.