Al Graaf

http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
To some it wasn't that long ago. Enjoy.
AL

Lady72nRob71

Nice... Makes me wish I was living back then and not now!!

jaunty75

I don't know. The 60s were a very tumultuous time. Riots, war, drugs, assassinations, a real division was developing between the young and the old. Yes, we remember the cars, the songs, landing on the moon, and the "simpler" times, but we also had heroin and LSD, Vietnam, shooting deaths of Martin Luther King and two Kennedys, Watts, and more.

The past always looks better through the lens of the present. I prefer the line in the Carly Simon song "Anticipation."

"These are the good-old days."

rustyroger

Ahh nostalgia, remembering all the good things, forgetting the bad.

I'm glad I wasn't black and living in the south, or expressing left wing views, or being drafted to Vietnam back then.
Getting in a car wreck we would walk away from now might have been fatal back then too.

But it was heaps better than than struggling through the '30s depression, the wholesale slaughter of WW2, or having to use seperate entrances to public buildings depending on your color in the '50s.

But the '60s was the beginning of fundamental improvements in the welfare of the whole population, president Johnson pushed through important reforming legislation, racial segregation was unravelling fast, although Barry Goldwater ran for president on a segregation ticket.
Technology was coming on leaps and bounds, the moon landings, the beginings of microchips, oil was going to last forever, great music and color tv shows.
Reliable contraception was a big leap forward too, empowering women to take charge of their lives.

I wonder how the present will be viewed in 50 years time?.

Roger.

Bluevista

Oh brother...
I'm not going political for fear of starting an international incident.

I came of age in the the 70's so I don't remember those years or anything preceding them too clearly.

I do vaguely remember flicking my Bic then holding it up at any rock concert and screaming "Freebird!!".

Jamesbo

If you remember the 60's ...................You weren't there.

MDchanic

I'm afraid, Jaunty, that since "Anticipation" came out in 1971, your mentioning it only helps make Shimmer's point.

And, running through the statements in the video:
•My mother DID get a new car for graduation in 1960, along with insurance, registration, and a credit card for her gas - she always used to tell me how bad she felt that she couldn't do the same for me.
•Nobody within 100 miles of us had a party line phone.
•My grandfather used to tell me in graphic detail what horrors awaited if I ever picked up a hitchhiker (I still pick 'em up whenever I have room... ).
•You still can't graduate HS if you fail gym - happened to my stepdaughter (don't get me started...).
•The expression "drive-by shooting" was invented in the '80s, but that didn't stop my father from being randomly shot at (sometimes by friends) growing up in NYC in the '50s.

I do agree with Jaunty, though, that the '60s were not the greatest time in many ways, once you subtract your own nostalgia.

As he points out, not only were cars MUCH less safe, they were less comfortable. Most of us add at least one or two suspension modifications as we restore them because otherwise, they would handle worse than modern trucks do (I was just riding in a new F-rd 1-ton yesterday, and I can vouch for this). My 14 year old BMW could drive circles around a Porsche 356.
I enjoy driving older cars, but I'm not going to delude myself either.

As fas as drugs, yes there was heroin, but there's more around now, along with massive abuse of similar prescription drugs. I don't see LSD as having been a bad thing, and remember, until 1966 it was perfectly legal.
Don't forget that doctors were far freer with their prescriptions then. If you were anxious, you'd probably walk away with a prescription for a "mother's little helper" like Valium (or Miltown or Serax). If you felt sluggish or needed to lose weight, you'd get amphetamines, such as Dexadrine or Obetrol. If you had trouble sleeping, barbiturates, like Seconal (or maybe Quaalude).

The '60s, as Jaunty points out, were a time of truly tumultuous change. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a real thing, and most Americans were a bit surprised to see it end without a nuclear war. What with assassinations and riots left and right, there was real fear of revolution within the government, an among the average citizens (my grandfather kept a crew-served machine gun in the attic "just in case").

Vietnam was a real thing, too - if your number came up, you might be going on a tropical vacation and coming back in a bag, and kids did just that, across the country, every day. The body counts were announced on the radio news every hour, just before the weather.

The one thing the '60s had going for it that we can't match right now was an earnest belief in change and improvement. The Civil Rights movement closed out the '50s, and by 1964, the Civil Rights Act had been passed. The Great Society legislation, no matter what some may think of it now, was seen as a great move toward helping our neighbors live better lives. Women finally gained rights to live and work on their own that they had been fighting for for years. Technology was advancing so quickly that 2001: A Space Odyssey's vision of a PanAm flight to the moon by 2001 seemed entirely reasonable.
Now we feel none of that optimism, none of that feeling of moving forward, of making our lives and those of the rest of the world better (Remember, those on the Right genuinely believed that we were saving those poor people in Vietnam from the Godless Communists - nobody is under similar illusions today regarding Iraq or Afghanistan).

Finally, let's not forget pollution. In the '60s, it was common for lakes and beaches to be unswimmable, either because of sewage or industrial pollutants - New York Harbor, for instance: back then you wouldn't dream of jumping into it, bu today, there are regularly scheduled swimming competitions. Those of you on the West Coast will also probably remember LA being frequently enshrouded in a brown haze. Where did that go? I remember seeing that same haze over the New York area on hot summer days when the air was thick and stank of chemicals. Haven't seen or smelled that in decades, now that I think of it.

So, yes, if we could recapture the optimism of the time, that would be great, but the rest of it...?
I think we may have it better now.

- Eric

jaunty75

I didn't mention it because it was from 1971. I would have mentioned it if it was from 1871 or from yesterday.

I mentioned it because the line is eternal. It's applicable in any era.

MDchanic

Absolutely true.

I just thought it was funny that you brought up a song that says "These are the 'Good Old Days'" specifically in reference to the late sixties when making a point that our present time (the -- what? -- "twenty-teens" ?) will seem like the "Good Old Days" in the future, just as much as the OP felt the sixties were the "Good Old Days."

I agree that Ms. Simon was making exactly your point about the nostalgic impulse - it's just ironic that it was directed precisely toward the era about which we were reminiscing .

- Eric

Ancient Iron

[QUOTE][/QAs he points out, not only were cars MUCH less safe, they were less comfortable. Most of us add at least one or two suspension modifications as we restore them because otherwise, they would handle worse than modern trucks do (I was just riding in a new F-rd 1-ton yesterday, and I can vouch for this). My 14 year old BMW could drive circles around a Porsche 356.
I enjoy driving older cars, but I'm not going to delude myself either.
UOTE]If the cars we love and restore are so UNSAFE?? don't you think they would all be gone by now???? You can put in all the saftey features you want in a new car that doesn't stop people from driving like idiots. Yes technology has changed some of it is better but not all of it( Do I really need a body computor to run electric windows????) Comparing a car from 1960 to a 2011 is comparing apples to oranges.

citcapp

Ditto

D. Yaros

The compilers did a great job on this. Let me say, I remember it well, both the good and the bad. In 1964 I was fresh out of high school and holding a great paying job. In 1969 I was in USMC boot camp.

Yes this was a life changing decade!

Al Graaf

Enjoyed reading your comments. So where do you think we are headed to next with the economy in the situation that it is? Being a General Contractor, the last years have had a very negative effect. It seems that the Government has pulled all monies out of residential construction and inserting such funds into "public" buildings and works. Didn't Germany do that in the 30's?
AL
AL

oldcutlass

The sixties and current times seem to have a lot in common depending on viewpoint! I personally spent my childhood in the sixties, being born in the 50's. I also managed to survive the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's, and now working on the 10's. Want to know what I realized over my 1/2 + century of life. Life is always subject to change, depending on viewpoint, for better or worse! I appreciated my life in the past and look forward to my life in the future! I had learned in my early years, that you are in control of your own destiny. Would I change anything, absolutely not, for any small change in the past, would have dramatically and probably profoundly effected my future. Do I have any regrets? Sure I do, I look at all of them as learning experiences and worked through them!

Yeah I miss the simplicity of the sixties, however, I also enjoy a lot of the things that make today, well today!!!

coltsneckbob

That was an interesting video.
I turned 14 in 1969, so my recollections of the 60 really start from about 1963. So, why do I think fondly of that era? Well............
-First of all as a kid I was insulated from a lot of the strife and turmoil of the period. Sure I saw it on TV, but as a youngster the impact on me was really minimal. Thus, for kids of my era this was a blissful time.
-I couldn't yet drive, but I could hardly wait to do so. Thus, from about 12 on I was always obsessed with the latest vehicles coming out (as were many of my friends). Cars may not have been safer than those of the 50's, but they were radically different in design and designed now for purposes other than going to the grocery store or work. They were fun machines.
-Music was changing radically and spoke to teenage fun and teenage angst. Along with the type of sound this was something new and different about music. It connected us kids much more than previous eras of music.
-In spite of the threat of nuclear Armageddon there was a lot of optimism in my generation. The USA was on an invention spree. It seemed that every few months we were watching another space launch which pushed ever further the boundaries of technology. At the rate of progress we were making back then it seemed entirely logical to anticipate that by the 70s or worse the 80s we could take a Pan Am shuttle to the moon (as depicted in 2001 a Space Odyssey).
Nowadays we have responsibilities. We are aware of the tragedies of war and poverty, disease and of the consequences of climate change. On the latter issue we regret our over indulgence in the habits that bought it on, but at the same time we don't like having to give up (or change) that easier way of consumption.
At any rate there is one other final, fundamental reason, we love the 60's.....we were young then.

-

MDchanic

No.

You are confusing the relative concepts of less and more safe with some absolute concept of unsafe that you developed in your own mind.
There is no debate about the relative safety of cars from the 2000s versus cars from the 1960s. If you have any doubt, drive a modern car into a bridge abutment at 60mph, then when you get out of the hospital 2 days later, drive a car from the sixties into the same abutment at the same speed.
I guarantee you there will be no hospital stay the second time.

As for whether they would all be gone by now, even if they were very unsafe (as cars form the 1920s, with plate glass windows and no front brakes surely were), that is not the same as saying that they must have all somehow exploded in ***** of flame by now. There are still plenty of cars from the '20s out there. In addition, whether a car is scrapped after an accident has nothing to do with its level of safety. A very safe modern car will be totalled after a bad accident, just like an older car would be. The difference is in whether the occupants had lived or died.

Your logic baffles me.

Conversely, it seems likely to make people drive like idiots.
As cars have become safer, better handling, and easier to stop, people have driven more and more recklessly because they correctly believe that they are less likely to be injured in doing so.
Those of us who have been driving for a few decades will remember how people used to drive, and how the "old timers" drove back then, too.
I feel perfectly comfortable pulling half a G in sweeping turns in my old BMW with no rubber squealing - that would have been considered extremely reckless by my grandfather's generation, who never drove in such a way that you could feel any G-forces at all, in any direction, other than the occasional on-ramp, where the old big block would pin you to your seat. If traffic made him stop short enough that you could feel it, he'd curse a blue streak!

Yes, it is.

- Eric

Diego

Eric, I do appreciate your posts.