The Threshold of a Dream: the sixties

When the 1960s began, I was a six-year old kid discovering the friends and fields of my Connecticut neighborhood.  Daddy drove his Mercedes coupe to his radio station; Mommy filled the Country Squire with chatty girls.  My three sisters and I explored Greenfield Hill at will, and I was happily oblivious to the world.  But the sixties held changes unimagined.

MLK and "I have a dream,” the Beatles, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, rock ‘n’ roll music, Civil Rights, the yogis, Drop City (look for it in my next post) and the ERA contradicted the Bay of Pigs, assassinations of our visionaries, In Cold Blood and the Vietnam War.  Wrapping up with Woodstock, psychedelic drugs and free love, riots and be-ins, the country was gripped by a true revolution.  It was an amazing decade, energy toward enlightenment and violence divided the country.

In my little town, my parents worked and partied, succeeded and fretted, while we kids built a frenetic world of our imaginations.  In the sixties, I grew through Ginny Dolls to Barbie to horses to making out, drinking and smoking.  And music, always music.  By 1968, I had experienced the World’s Fair, Broadway, Europe, Jazz Festivals, and Playland.  Then, the ultimate betrayal and gift, Daddy sold everything and packed us off on a trip-around-the-world. 

Life would never be the same.

That decade spun me round and spit me out a bold teenager with wide eyes and few skills.  In 1970, I quit high school and moved away, dropped LSD and road-tripped in a VW van, and I began MY life as a W-O-M-A-N, in the new era.  Anything was possible, and I believed it.

Where were you in 1970?