Life Was Better in the 1960's
Life was better in the 1960’s, here’s why; The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Sean Connery as James Bond—soul music, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, James Brown, Motown, Muscle Shoals, and Stax records. B.B. King was still young and bad as he could be. Albert King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy and Junior Well, Elvis, and Johnny Cash were at or near their peaks. Even Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, the man who essentially invented jazz—and its first real superstar—was still having hits in the 1960’s. So were Sinatra and The Rat Pack. In fact, Sinatra’s greatest output may have come in the 1960s. Even if by the end of the decade, he sang songs that tended to be unworthy of his enormous talent.
Most Americans, even the young ones, knew they were lucky to be American, as imperfect as it was in the 1960’s. My generation eventually rebelled, inventing new forms of social unrest and protest, while just barely skirting the precipice of socialism’s grip.
More than 50,000 young men, whose average age was 19 died in war, in the 1960’s; Middle class kids, high school kids who couldn’t afford college, the poor, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, consciences objectors, blue collar teens from everywhere and from every American background died, if not equally, they were still dead.
Then came Nixon and Watergate. Even before that, there was the Kennedy assassination, the assignations of Malcom X, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. That’s four major political assassinations within five years, all of which were caught on film or image, to one degree or another.
Vietnam, the undeclared war, lasted 10 years and was seen nightly on TV’s around the world. It was the first time in history that a war could be watched in the comfort of your living room.
In 1962 America sent a man into space, and then in 1969, to the moon. Old barriers were torn down with such speed that the culture as a whole suffered from future shock. And, as one decade merged into another Richard Nixon, the former vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower and 1960 presidential candidate, lost and then won the Whitehouse—and then resigned in disgrace for having set in motion a petty burglary at The Watergate Hotel—all in an effort to thwart a man who had no chance of beating him in the 1972 presidential election.
In 1976 and 1977 Congressional investigations into the American intelligence community, primarily the CIA, concluded that President John F. Kennedy had likely been killed as the result of a conspiracy involving the Mafia. The same Mafia that had conspired with the CIA to overthrow Castro, in an effort to regain control of Cuba as a gambling mecca and reestablish Havana as a mob stronghold. The CIA’s real concern was Fidel Castro and Russia—and rightly so—even if it left them blind to the mob’s influence.
In retaliation, over a few quiet days in October 1962, Russia and Cuba retaliated by putting nuclear missiles 90 miles off Miami’s shore, bringing the U.S. and Russia within a breath of nuclear war. The two super powers stood face to face and readied their arsenals until one or the other blinked. Russia flinched first and the world narrowly avoided the worst bloodbath in human history. One as potentially cataclysmic as the extinction of the dinosaurs some sixty six million years earlier, when humans were nothing more than a gleam in God’s eye.
These things are just memories, now, replaced by an ever-changing cast of human actors as we work our way through a world we never made and only vaguely understand. But I would’ve hated to miss it. I hate the thought of missing it when my time ends—even some of the bad—and certainly, all of the good.
To be born again, then. That is the secret. And this time, do it right.
Mark Magula
Most Americans, even the young ones, knew they were lucky to be American, as imperfect as it was in the 1960’s. My generation eventually rebelled, inventing new forms of social unrest and protest, while just barely skirting the precipice of socialism’s grip.
More than 50,000 young men, whose average age was 19 died in war, in the 1960’s; Middle class kids, high school kids who couldn’t afford college, the poor, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, consciences objectors, blue collar teens from everywhere and from every American background died, if not equally, they were still dead.
Then came Nixon and Watergate. Even before that, there was the Kennedy assassination, the assignations of Malcom X, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. That’s four major political assassinations within five years, all of which were caught on film or image, to one degree or another.
Vietnam, the undeclared war, lasted 10 years and was seen nightly on TV’s around the world. It was the first time in history that a war could be watched in the comfort of your living room.
In 1962 America sent a man into space, and then in 1969, to the moon. Old barriers were torn down with such speed that the culture as a whole suffered from future shock. And, as one decade merged into another Richard Nixon, the former vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower and 1960 presidential candidate, lost and then won the Whitehouse—and then resigned in disgrace for having set in motion a petty burglary at The Watergate Hotel—all in an effort to thwart a man who had no chance of beating him in the 1972 presidential election.
In 1976 and 1977 Congressional investigations into the American intelligence community, primarily the CIA, concluded that President John F. Kennedy had likely been killed as the result of a conspiracy involving the Mafia. The same Mafia that had conspired with the CIA to overthrow Castro, in an effort to regain control of Cuba as a gambling mecca and reestablish Havana as a mob stronghold. The CIA’s real concern was Fidel Castro and Russia—and rightly so—even if it left them blind to the mob’s influence.
In retaliation, over a few quiet days in October 1962, Russia and Cuba retaliated by putting nuclear missiles 90 miles off Miami’s shore, bringing the U.S. and Russia within a breath of nuclear war. The two super powers stood face to face and readied their arsenals until one or the other blinked. Russia flinched first and the world narrowly avoided the worst bloodbath in human history. One as potentially cataclysmic as the extinction of the dinosaurs some sixty six million years earlier, when humans were nothing more than a gleam in God’s eye.
These things are just memories, now, replaced by an ever-changing cast of human actors as we work our way through a world we never made and only vaguely understand. But I would’ve hated to miss it. I hate the thought of missing it when my time ends—even some of the bad—and certainly, all of the good.
To be born again, then. That is the secret. And this time, do it right.
Mark Magula