***The Generation Of '68?-For Mary, Class Of 1964 Somewhere

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia entry for the "Summer Of Love", 1967.

Al Johnson, Class Of 1964, comment:

The first draft of this comment was written before I got my grubby little hands on a copy of our Class of 1964 "Manet". After intense examination of that document I find nothing there that would indicate that the future foot soldiers of Woodstock Nation were seething to be free to try alternative ways of living. Nor do I get a sense from those pictures that people were getting ready to challenge the way political institutions were being run in this country. I will thus let my original remarks stand.

Do you consider yourself a member of the Generation of '68?

"In that time, 'twas bliss to be alive, to be young was very heaven"- a line from a poem by William Wordsworth in praise of the early stages of the French Revolution.

I mentioned in the Tell My Story section that while we were all members of the Class of 1964 some of us were also members of the Generation of '68. I guess to those of us who considered themselves part of that experience no further explanation is necessary. However, if you are in doubt then let me give my take on what such membership would entail.

This question is actually prompted by an observation made by my old friend, and our classmate, the great track and cross-country runner Bill Cadger (See On The Matter of Bill Cadger-Runner for a comment on his exploits). Part of my motivation for joining this site was to find him. I have done so and we have started to keep in touch again. At one of the "bull sessions" that we have conducted I asked him whether he had gone to any class reunions. I had not done so and therefore I was interested in his take on the subject.

Bill said that the only one that he had gone to was the 5th reunion in 1969. Of course that is the high water mark for the Generation of '68. A key observation that he related, as least for my purpose here, is that when he went to that reunion and people came up to him to introduce themselves he had trouble identifying people, especially the guys, because of all the beards and long hair that were telltale tribal symbols at the time. So that is one, perhaps superficial, criterion for membership.

Frankly, dear classmates, among the reasons that I turned my back on the old hometown right after high school was that it seemed like a "square" (remember that tribal term from our youth meaning not "hip", another term from that era) working class town that did not fit in with my evolving political and cultural, or more correctly counter-cultural, interests. Thus, Bill's comments rather startled me. My assumption would have been that the "squares" would have gotten a job after high school (or gone to college and then gotten a job), gotten married, had kids, bought a house and followed that trail, wherever it led. This new knowledge may tell me something different.

Is it possible that there were many other kindred spirits from our class who broke from that pattern, at least for a while? Who not only grew their hair long (male or female) or grew beards (male) but also maybe dressed in the symbolic Army/ Navy store fashions of the day (male or female) or burned their bras, symbolically or otherwise (female)? Or did some dope (Yes, I know, on the advise of counsel, we are all taking the Bill Clinton defense on this one. Now!) and made all the rock concerts? Or hitchhiked across the country? Or opposed the damn Vietnam War and got tear gassed for their efforts, supported the black liberation struggle and got tear gassed for their efforts, supported an end to the draft, ROTC on campus, etc. and got......well, you know the rest of the line? Or lived in a commune or any number of other things of like kind that were the signposts of the generation of '68? In short, tried to "storm heaven". We lost that fight but the same kind of storm clouds are gathering again, at least a little, in 2008. Your stories, please (and that includes those "squares" who now do not now seem quite that way anymore).