I remember the kindly staff members at a Chicago museum who allowed us to huddle inside their doors after closing time and wait for a ride back to the hotel. The cab driver had dropped us well short of our destination, fearing for his life and possibly ours.
It was April 4, 1968. Riots erupted nearby, continuing through the weekend. They left 162 buildings destroyed in the city, over 2,000 people behind bars and 11 dead. And I have a vague recollection of anxiety in the voices of adults around me.
We were back home for the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., watching the somber procession on a grainy black and white Zenith.
All of this came to mind over the weekend, when the teenager responded to my lame ”if you had a time machine” question with a firm desire to experience the 1960s.
It seems a curious choice. Why would a modern day teen versed in Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and “Orange is the New Black” — I”m a horrible role model — wish for the twists and torments of that pivotal decade? If I gained access to a time machine …
OK, revisiting the Constitutional Convention and quietly inserting articles into this nation”s founding document prohibiting easy listening music and Oprah sounded a big juvenile, even to the 15-year-old in question.
Yet we can easily tick off the lowlights of the ”60s: The assassinations of Dr. King. John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X; the ever growling toll of our conflict in Vietnam; the violent reaction to Selma and other civil rights activities; places like Watts and Chicago, people like Manson or Wallace, things like DDT, LSD, thalidomide — it was surely a difficult time for those over the age of ten.
I was more frightened by George Wallace and his 1968 campaign for the White House than the rest of it. As a 6-year-old baseball fanatic with only a limited grasp of civics and current events, I was convinced the noted segregationists would, if elected, kick Lou Brock and Bob Gibson off the Cardinals” roster.
And I couldn”t be certain of Wallace”s stand on the rights of second baseman Julian Javier.
That”s right, “tune in, turn on and drop out,” “ask not what your country can do for you,” “I have been to the mountaintop” — none of it resonated. The ”60s turned on more important phrases. Remember Sgt. Schultz” impassioned “I see nothing” or the time Robin exclaimed “Holy human pressure cooker, Batman!” or Dan Rowan”s “say good night, Dick” sign off or Joe Namath and his endorsement of booze and women? And there was the constant thrill of “lift off” each time NASA launched more astronauts into space.
My ”60s was free of figurative cuts and scrapes, at least at the time. Only now do we focus more on the war and death and throes of cultural change.
For a modern day teen looking back on the era, there are no scars to risk reopening. It”s a decade of seminal music, powerful words and hulking Detroit muscle. Stripped of the pain, King”s words simply inspire greatness. Stripped of context (I see young eyes glaze over when I tell of the sanitation workers strike in Memphis) King”s mountaintop is a crescendo, a dramatic climax before we enter the now. Throw in a backbeat of Motown, moptops and Hemi Cudas and it is easy to understand why a teen would look at the ”60s and think “I”d like to see that.”
Come to think of it, I”d like to see it myself.
Over years of formal study I examined the period in great detail, reading the speeches, observing the footage, visiting the sites. I can drive the teen out of the room with long winded diatribes on the ineffectiveness of Westmoreland or the errant judgement in Nader”s “Unsafe at Any Speed.” I can gush over Bobby”s speech in Indianapolis that fateful April evening or tear up entering Dealey Plaza. Of course, I might also be swept up by emotion during a particularly poignant rerun of “The Monkees.” But my own memories lack dimension. They are as soft and grainy as that old Zenith.
So I would welcome a bit of time travel back to the not so distant past. Maybe then I could feel with the same sharpness as the cab driver and museum staff way back when all the uncertainty, the anxiety, the thrill and despair of a man, a movement and an era.
