Fifties and Sixties

I was a child and teenager during the Fifties and Sixties. The time in which we grow up leaves us with memories that can only be understood by those who grew up at the same time. This page is dedicated to anyone who remembers "The Way We Were". Also see Class Reunions.

1960 - 1964: The first parent-financed revolt
The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great. (Abbie Hoffman)
The 60s undoubtedly were the most turbulent years of the century. (Walter Cronkite)
All we are saying is - Give peace a chance! (John Lennon & Yoko Ono)
All we are saying is give peace a chance. (John Lennon)
Baby Boomers
But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned. (Bob Dylan)
C'mon people, now smile on your brother,
ev'ry-body get together, try to love one another. (Chet Powers)
Do you believe in rock 'n roll? Can music save your mortal soul? (Don McLean)
Do your own thing.
Don't trust anybody over thirty! (Jack Weinberg)
Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope. (Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers)
Drop Acid, Not Bombs!
Drugs are a bet with your mind. (Jim Morrison)
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. (Jim Morrison)
Far Out!
Feelin' groovy
Go with the flow!
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free (Joni Mitchell)
A Groovy Kind of Love
Hell no, we won't go! (Anti-war chant)
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? (Anti-war slogan)
How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone? (Bob Dylan)
How many years can a people exist before they're allowed to be free? (Bob Dylan)
I Can Dig It
I get by with a little help from my friends, get high with a little help from my friends. (The Beatles)
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
If it feels good do it!
If the button is pushed, there's no running away.
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave. (from Eve of Destruction, written by Phil Sloan, performed by Barry McGuire)
If you can remember the 60's then you weren't there
If you want to be free, be free, because there's a million things to be. (Cat Stevens)
If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair (Scott Mckenzie)
I'm the one who's gonna die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want. (Jimi Hendrix)
Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world. (John Lennon)
In the 60's people took acid to make the world seem weird.
Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it seem normal.
I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one.
And I believe it could be someday it's going to come. (Cat Stevens)
Keep the Faith
Like a true Nature's child, we were born, born to be wild (Steppenwolf)
Live and Let Live
Love is all you need. (Beatles)
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
Make Love, Not War
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role...You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. (Jim Morrison)
Nobody living can ever stop me. As I go walking my freedom highway. Nobody living can make me turn back. This land was made for you and me. (Woody Guthrie)
Old hippies don't die, they just lie low until the laughter stops and their time comes round again. (Joseph Gallivan)
One thing I can tell you is you've got to be Free! John Lennon)
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around- the music and the ideas. (Bob Dylan - 1992)
Power to the People
Question Authority
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. (Abbie Hoffman)
Sock it to Me!
Somebody exploded an H-bomb today, but it wasn't anybody I knew. (The Moody Blues)
Tell it like it is
There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning! (Abbie Hoffman)
There's a feeling I get, when I look to the west, and my spirit is longing for leaving. (Led Zeppelin)
There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speaking their minds. Getting so much resistance from behind. (Buffalo Springfield)
They won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had (Joni Mitchell)
A time for love, a time for hate, a time for peace, I swear it's not too late. (The Byrds)
We all got up to dance, Oh, but we never got the chance! (Don McLean)
We all want to change the world. (Beatles)
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. (Edward R. Murrow)
We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives. (June Jordan)
We have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. (Bob Dylan)
When you've seen beyond yourself, then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there. (George Harrison)
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind. (Jim Morrison)
Why do we never get an answer, when we're knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions, about hate and death and war.
'Cause when we stop and look around us, there is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution, that is burning in its greed. (The Moody Blues)
Woodstock
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. (Bob Dylan)
You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'.
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'? (Barry McGuire)

How Times Have Changed!

1965: Long Hair
2000: Longing for hair

1965: The perfect high.
2000: The perfect high yield mutual fund.

1965: Keg.
2000: EKG.

1965: Acid Rock.
2000: Acid Reflux.

1965: Moving to California because it's cool.
2000: Moving to California because it's warm.

1965: Growing pot.
2000: Growing potbelly.

1965: Watching John Glenn's historic flight with your parents.
2000: Watching John Glenn's historic flight with your children.

1965: Seeds and stems.
2000: Roughage.

1965: Popping pills, smoking joints.
2000: Taking pills for popping joints.

1965: Our president's struggle with Fidel.
2000: Our president's struggle with fidelity.

1965: Killer weed.
2000: Weed killer.

1965: Hoping for a BMW.
2000: Hoping for a BM.

1965: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor.
2000: Trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor.

1965: The Grateful Dead.
2000: Dr. Kevorkian.

1965: Getting out to a new, hip joint.
2000: Getting a new hip joint.

1965: Rolling Stones.
2000: Kidney stones.

1965: Being called into the principal's office.
2000: Calling the principal's office.

1965: Fourth Street bridge
2000: Dental bridge

1965: Screw the system!
2000: Upgrade the system.

1965: "Whatever"
2000: Depends

1965: Parents begging you to get your hair cut.
2000: Children begging you to get their heads shaved.

1965: Take acid.
2000: Take antacid.

1965: Passing the driver's test.
2000: Passing the vision test.

1965: Peace sign.
2000: Mercedes logo.

Quotes from the 50's

I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are it's going to be impossible to buy a weeks groceries for $20.
Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long when $5,000 will only buy a used one.
Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging dime just to mail a letter?
If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.
When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 50 cents a gallon. Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage.
Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make impossible to stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long as the girls.
I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying 'damn' in Gone With The Wind, it seems every movie has a 'hell' or 'damn' in it.
Also, it won't be long until couples are sleeping in the same bed in the movies. What is this world coming to?
Marilyn Monroe is now showing her bra and panties, so apparently there are no standards anymore.
Pretty soon you won't be able to buy a good 10 cent cigar.
I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas.
Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the president.
Do you suppose television will ever reach our part of the country?
I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now.

Remember...?

When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathrooms, flunk a test or chew gum.
And the banquets were in the cafeteria and we danced to a juke box later, and all the girls wore fluffy pastel gowns and the boys wore suits for the first time and we were allowed to stay out till 12 p.m.

car When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car. . . to cruise, peel out, lay rubber and watch drag races.

And people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger. . . or on a chain around her neck to hide it from her parents!

And no one ever asked where the car keys were 'cause they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked.
And you got in big trouble if you accidentally locked the doors at home, since no one ever had a key.

Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like "That cloud looks like a..."

And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game.
Back then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience-it was a game.

Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals 'cause no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.

And everyone knew about Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and The Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk.

When everyone was familiar with the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing in cowboy land, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.
Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive by shootings,drugs, gangs,etc.
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we all survived because their love was greater than the threat.

And...with all our progress...don't you wish...just once...you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace...and share it with the children of today...

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that!

And was it really that long ago?

How Times Have Changed!

Quotes from the 50's

Remember...?

Links

60's Links ...

50's Links ...