August, 1969 was a pivotal time.
For me, it was the culmination of a 4 year struggle, a long running gauntlet which led to medical school acceptance at a time when every 21 year old male who could, applied to medical school to avoid Vietnam. Tickets of admission to med school were harder to cop than tickets to "Hamilton" today. But despite being told I'd never make it, I got in and I was on my way to New York City to matriculate.
I hadn't heard about what was going on a hundred miles up the New York Thruway near Woodstock. I wouldn't have cared, if I had. I would have been like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel and the Doors and a variety of others, dismissive of the whole hippie thing.
It was a summer of culmination in many ways: The Tet Offensive had happened the year before and it was pretty clear America would not defeat Vietnam. My brother was on the launching pad to Vietnam. The lottery had not yet been devised, so almost every male born between 1940 and 1951 was in line for the draft, unless they had a deferral. Med School was one of the only sure deferrals.
Watching the film, "Woodstock," brought back memories, despite the fact I never attended.
The whole counter culture revolution, the blather about Peace and Love and words like "groovy" and "far out" and "tripping" and "where it's at" brought back conversations, snippets of those times.
I had heard all this at peace demonstrations. I had been to enough of those. The hippies and tie dyed folks, the love beads and long hair and reefers and the smell of pot were well established by 1969.
In some ways, it makes me feel a little like Rhett Butler in that scene where he hops down off the carriage carrying Scarlet O'Hara and Melanie Wilkes and hands Scarlet the reins and says, "You can get home on your own."
"Where are you going, Rhett Butler?" Scarlet demands indignantly.
And Butler explains he's joining the old men and boys marching out to meet Sherman's invading army.
"It's stupid, I know," he says. "I'll never understand it myself. Or forgive myself."
But off he goes to join a hopeless, silly, stupid cause. He cannot resist being part of the resistance.
And that's sort of the way I felt about the hippies and all those middle and upper class, privileged kids who were playing at hippie, pretending to rebel, all the while knowing it was just a summer fling, knowing they'd go back to their upper class lives when it was all over. And yet, absurd as they were, they were at least resisting.
And there was something liberating about it, too.
Johnson had lied. Nixon had definitely lied. "Never trust anyone over 30," was a sound piece of advice. America seemed to be built on lies. Vietnam was a bright and shining lie. Johnson and Nixon both talked about "honor" and "commitments" and fighting for "freedom" and fighting for "our country." And every night on Walter Cronkite you could see the lie. And guys my age were mucking about in rice paddies, getting their legs blown off because of that lie.
In the era of a pathological liar who tweets daily, who leads every news story, who has made himself the central figure in the nation, some of that hippie rejection of lies and power and Senators and Congressmen-please-heed-the call seems in order.
Maybe what we need is a three day weekend of Peace and Love and songs about justice and truth.
Maybe Dylan will come this time.
For me, it was the culmination of a 4 year struggle, a long running gauntlet which led to medical school acceptance at a time when every 21 year old male who could, applied to medical school to avoid Vietnam. Tickets of admission to med school were harder to cop than tickets to "Hamilton" today. But despite being told I'd never make it, I got in and I was on my way to New York City to matriculate.
I hadn't heard about what was going on a hundred miles up the New York Thruway near Woodstock. I wouldn't have cared, if I had. I would have been like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel and the Doors and a variety of others, dismissive of the whole hippie thing.
It was a summer of culmination in many ways: The Tet Offensive had happened the year before and it was pretty clear America would not defeat Vietnam. My brother was on the launching pad to Vietnam. The lottery had not yet been devised, so almost every male born between 1940 and 1951 was in line for the draft, unless they had a deferral. Med School was one of the only sure deferrals.
Watching the film, "Woodstock," brought back memories, despite the fact I never attended.
The whole counter culture revolution, the blather about Peace and Love and words like "groovy" and "far out" and "tripping" and "where it's at" brought back conversations, snippets of those times.
I had heard all this at peace demonstrations. I had been to enough of those. The hippies and tie dyed folks, the love beads and long hair and reefers and the smell of pot were well established by 1969.
In some ways, it makes me feel a little like Rhett Butler in that scene where he hops down off the carriage carrying Scarlet O'Hara and Melanie Wilkes and hands Scarlet the reins and says, "You can get home on your own."
"Where are you going, Rhett Butler?" Scarlet demands indignantly.
And Butler explains he's joining the old men and boys marching out to meet Sherman's invading army.
"It's stupid, I know," he says. "I'll never understand it myself. Or forgive myself."
But off he goes to join a hopeless, silly, stupid cause. He cannot resist being part of the resistance.
And that's sort of the way I felt about the hippies and all those middle and upper class, privileged kids who were playing at hippie, pretending to rebel, all the while knowing it was just a summer fling, knowing they'd go back to their upper class lives when it was all over. And yet, absurd as they were, they were at least resisting.
And there was something liberating about it, too.
Johnson had lied. Nixon had definitely lied. "Never trust anyone over 30," was a sound piece of advice. America seemed to be built on lies. Vietnam was a bright and shining lie. Johnson and Nixon both talked about "honor" and "commitments" and fighting for "freedom" and fighting for "our country." And every night on Walter Cronkite you could see the lie. And guys my age were mucking about in rice paddies, getting their legs blown off because of that lie.
In the era of a pathological liar who tweets daily, who leads every news story, who has made himself the central figure in the nation, some of that hippie rejection of lies and power and Senators and Congressmen-please-heed-the call seems in order.
Maybe what we need is a three day weekend of Peace and Love and songs about justice and truth.
Maybe Dylan will come this time.
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteNever saw the movie, but listened to the album all the time in high school. I was a fan of the hippie music, especially CSN&Y. My cousin covered it as a reporter and then went on David Susskind to discuss it, which we all thought was incredibly cool at the time.
Cant imagine such a concert taking place today-kids too pampered to sleep outside for a weekend and seems next to impossible for such an event to occur without some sort of political unrest, police altercation or mass shooting. Such are the times...
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteAs I watched the movie, I kept thinking "Mass Shooter."
Such a gather in America today would be like putting the dogs into heat, and all the gun toting lunatics would be drawn to the event with bump stocks loaded.
Phantom