Write about what?

One of the particular memories I had as a child was when my parents asked me to select a doll, one that I didn’t mind missing for a while. They were going to pack it in box for the basement. At the time we lived in an older two-story house. Our basement did not have paneled walls or a linoleum floor. In fact I am not even sure it had a concrete floor as it was not the kind of place where I and my siblings ever went to play. I remember going down there once with my mom and seeing the lone bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I watched as they packed cans of food and bottles in card board boxes, placing blankets on top along with a few items of clothing and the toy each own of us were willing to spare. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized these were “survival” items, packed in preparation for possible nuclear missile strike. Photos from a U-2 spy plane that flew over Cuba had shown evidence of mid-range offensive missiles being transported, and the Cuban missile crisis had begun.

Now, it is laughable to even contemplate engaging in nuclear war and expecting to win. However, at that time the elementary school sported black and yellow signs with three triangles within a circle, indicating a fallout shelter. I was not afraid of atomic bombs. My parents had grown to adulthood during World War 2 when it was considered almost unpatriotic to create fear concerning the United States and war. As a child I don’t recall hearing much discussion of the cold war and nuclear proliferation.

Shortly after that time we entered the spy craze on phase on TV. Shows were a kind of fantasy that portrayed suave, quick witted agents successful battling a diabolically evil organization that never could be completely defeated. I decided a few hours a week of watching fictional spies on TV was not enough excitement, and started checking out books on spies from the local library. Then, I got one that told true stories, the grim, deceitful trading of information for money, unsavory and unreliable sources, and a hefty dose of blackmail. There seemed to be no clear cut heroes.

The “Cold War” seem to fulfill our desire for a common enemies to vilify. But the first world and second world countries did not suffer as much as the third world, underdeveloped ones did. We poured advisers, weapons and often young soldiers into these hot spots were war was anything but cold and civil. In this way the increasing government money poured into military technology kept our economy growing, while contributing the the civil wars that crippled many of the thirst world nations. Of course some of these places became the hot spots that still threaten us today. “Cold War” was a misnomer, even though we were never foolish enough to use the highly destructive nuclear weapons at that time.

In 1966 my parents decided it was time to take a grand tour of the country. For three weeks we traveled west of the Mississippi, camping most of the way, hopping from national park to national park (Thank you Teddy Roosevelt, the parks were and still are an excellent idea.).  Halfway through the trip we ended up in San Francisco. Dad wanted to see Golden Gate Bridge, Mom wanted to see Fisherman’s Wharf, and I wanted to ride the cable cars up and down the thrillingly steep streets. My older brother, who had just started to high school, wanted to visit Haight-Ashbury.

So one evening our family, parents with four children nicely dressed for our visit to the big city, walked through this quiet bohemian neighborhood with rows of old apartments crammed against the sidewalk. We stopped in a small store filled with a strange assortment of items; the walls were papered in posters with brilliantly colored surreal patterns. It was the type of establishment that would later be called a head shop. There my older brother got his prized underground newspaper. I found the posters an interesting style, and learned what “psychedelic” meant, but I am sure we weren’t the typical clientele in this birthplace of the hippie movement.

We had taken the grand tour of the country early in the “summer of love.” We arrived at San Francisco when over 100,000 teenagers and college students were about to descend on this same neighborhood to celebrate a counterculture of yet to be illegal drugs and free love. If it hadn’t been a chilly night, when most of the early arrivals were indoors, I am sure my parents would have vetoed my brother’s request. But instead, I had the privilege of sight-seeing in Haight-Ashbury at the cusp of it becoming overwhelmingly famous as a hippie haven, not realizing that my brother knew things ahead of his peers. (Although my brother was aware of the hippie movement, he was never drawn into it.)

Now that I reflect on my past, it is amazing that a crowd as large as the baby boomers conformed as much to each other as they did. Perhaps it was the sheer numbers of people born from 1946 to 1964 that caused business to cater to them. Fashions aimed at girls my age – short, brightly flowered A-lined shifts, embroidered caftans, bell bottom jeans – were obviously divergent from what our mothers wore, but the same as all the other girls. The guys my age hummed the same tunes. Almost all knew the words to the latest song by Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. I wasn’t completely comfortable with that kind of conformity. Hearing the Billboard top forty played over and over again on the radio was a bit boring. When I moved into a new high school, I came dressed in one of my fashionable turn-of-the decade seventies outfits. I was an outsider, only having  a few friends that hung out on the fringe. One friend pointed  out to me that it was the same outfit that a popular girl had worn. I never wore it again.

As I look back on growing up as a baby boomer, I now see that my generation’s break with the values of the prior generation, distrust of government, and rejection of consumerism were often orchestrated events. Many of my peers thought that rebelling against parents was a universal trait. We wanted to be different from the older generation, but weren’t willing to travel that path alone, or even in small groups. The sit-ins, marches and the rock music festivals were a way to be with others with similar tastes, to be surrounded by a large company of peers. We wanted to be different in the same way.