The Summer of 1967 - it was dubbed the Summer of Love. We had just graduated elementary school - 6th grade. We were 11 and 12 years old. That summer was the Monterey Pop Festival - memorable for a lot but in particular Jimi Hendrix "making love" to his guitar before setting it on fire on stage - 6th grade was over and a whole new world awaited us!
Between the years 1967 and 1970 when we attended Ben Franklin Junior High School those years were filled with both the fun of growing up and with a seemingly unending stream of events.
Hendrix at his best - blowing everyone away including me at the age of 11 at the Monterey Pop Festival!
The month of August always jogs a lot of memories about Woodstock and music and those crazy times of the late 60's and early 70's. My bedroom began to fill with black light posters, posters of bands, a giant poster of Goldie Hawn and baseball - always baseball!
The 60's was obviously an era turned upside down by its events but at the same time it was a great era in which to grow up because of the bubble we lived in as kids and because our parents allowed us to be kids as much as possible. I mean no wonder the guys who served in Vietnam had and still have such a difficult time - life at home went on like nothing was happening.
As for music, the decade would start with the likes of Fabian and Frankie Avalon - explode with The Beatles and the British Invasion and end with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Hendrix doing his brilliant version of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock.
Above, with Elvis in the Army the 60's music scene would begin with the likes of Frankie Avalon and Fabian (no offense fellas!) and would be changed in a few short years by the arrival of The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors and Hendrix!
Above Crosby, Stills and Nash. Along with Hendrix, Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, they and others would end the most progressive decade of music ever.
The turbulence that went on during our time in junior high school truly seemed like a tv thing. Television kind of made it all seem "not so bad" - it was weirdly distant. I mean even our parents continued to have their house theme parties - it made the stuff that was really going on seem like it was not - ya know - going on!
After JFK died the war in Vietnam escalted quickly.
When JFK died I remember that event being obviously very somber, even at the young age of 8 I remember how signifigant it was - how there was change in the air. Like Beth Daly, I remember my mom crying and seeming worried. I also remember my dad confessing to my mom that despite being a Republican he voted for JFK. It made me remember going to the Bergen Mall to see JFK in September, 1960 with my mom and being on the radio with my third grade class at Seton Hall the very day AND time JFK was assassinated! But it wasn't until Martin Luther King and RFK died that I realized there was an alarming thing going on. I remember watching the tv with the news coverage of the Chicago riots with my grandfather. He was so angry at the kids in the streets and was saying things like "kill the bastards" - I thought that reaction was shocking and a major part of the problem. Admittedly whatever side you ended up on, the passion burned. I was perplexed by the protest riots and the race riots of 1967 - I didn't understand the anger of it all - how could I when I lived in such a bubble(?) but I was truly troubled by it - yet I still continued to buy my baseball cards and so on - weird - life was moving on without a thought - a signifigant thought to all the bad stuff.
In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy ran for president and there was hope that a new Kennedy in the White House might eliminate all the turmoil going on.
Riots with police were happening in all the major cities but during the Democratic convention in the summer of 1968 the world got to see it at its worst every night in prime time.
Above, despite the Vietnam War, the race riots, the assassinations, Kent State and war protests on our tv's night after night in between commercials for Clairol hair products - we still had our cookouts and watched Bewitched on tv!
Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" - click arrow to listen.
In 1968, when RFK died I was in the 7th grade - 12 years old basically (that November). RFK's death changed me a lot as far as my opinions on things and got me thinking more about how not to always accept things they tell you to accept. I played a baseball game that weekend at Vets Field and I remember that people seemed very sad. I played a lot more music in the ensuing years - searching for answers - the White Album, The Stones, The Doors, The Zombies, Hendrix, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel - I gave away my Monkees records to a girl in my neighborhood - lost a bit of innocence. I was still a happy kid though - not lost in deep thoughts yet thinking about it all. Its funny - when you look back at a specific block of time in your life you can see your progression as a kid, how things had an effect on you - you certainly don't see it when its happening. The music, the feeling that Vietnam was not right. The utter dread - the potential reality that Vietnam would be an inevitable part of your own and your firends lives for real!
The next year, 1969 (the year following RFK's death) - that was quite a summer - it brought us Woodstock, the moon landings and an amazing New York Mets team that was suddenly on fire - it was such an odd gathering of events but all historic. The year itself - 1969 - conjures up instant memories of these events and more. Gimmie an "F, gimmie a U......................!"
Above we were transfixed by the Apollo 11 moon landing July 20, 1969.
In October, 1969 I exagerated being sick so I could stay home from school to watch the Met's play the Orioles in the 1969 World Series - the Met's swept them in 4 games!
The moon landing was awe-inspiring - we all gathered around the tv like we did with The Beatles, like the JFK assassination, the RFK assassination - just like everyone else. Woodstock seemed inspiring too - this music festival in upstate New York - the kids making a big splash, taking over a small town in NY to the delight of Max Yasgur the owner of the farm where the concert was held. They never could have planned Woodstock the way it came off - it was a statement. At 13 I wanted to go to Woodstock so bad - I had heard about it from a cousin who said he was going - my mom of course said "not a chance" and I protested a little but realized it was not happening! But I couldn't wait to buy the live Woodstock album when it was released. Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner kind of put the exclamation mark on the decade - the first time I heard it I was like "Yeah - how does he do that?!" the song expressed what so many were feeling - what he made that guitar do to express his feelings about the war - I was just amazed by it. Since 1967 music was becoming thought-provoking and was evolving by the day. This - mind you - was 3 years after the Meneghin's and I wanted to start a band based on the Monkees - we actually collected dues to buy guitars - The Monkees' "I'm A Believer" seemed so far away after all the stuff going on (I recorded me singing that song in the spring of 1967!) - the band idea died quickly after discovering so many other things!
There was a time in 1967 that I wanted to start a band like The Monkees and The Beatles - we collected dues for a little while for guitars but the idea died quickly.
The weekend of August 15-17, 1969 would change the world of music and how we looked at things like the war in Vietnam and it was proven that 500,000 people could gather peacefully in the pouring rain for a memorable weekend!
Hundreds of thousands of people would converge onto Max Yasgur's dairy farm in the Summer of 1969.
The classic photo that epitomized the Woodstock Rock Festival - the couple in the photo married and are still together!
Jimi Hendrix playing his incredible version of the Star-Spangled Banner on Monday morning as those who still remained were waking up - if you were lucky enough to have stayed til Monday morning you got quite a show! Just click the arrow to play.
Then 1970 - the turbulence continued. War protests were everywhere - cities, colleges. One of those colleges was Kent State. In May, 1970 the war protest entered new levels. On May 4 the National Guard were given the orders to shoot and shoot they did - killing 4 students where they stood - it was incredible even to us junior high school students living in the Ridgewood bubble. It was devestating - I remember staring out Milton Kalina's classroom (it looked out to the cemetery) - "This is America now?" I thought...
Above the surreal image of the National Guard vs college students at Kent State University in Ohio May, 1970.
Above the 4 Kent State students who were shot died on May 4 at their school - they were you and me.
It was then that I realized that it was possible I could get drafted to fight in Vietnam and frankly I dreaded that prospect - I truly believed that this was not World War II ya know?! In January, 1973 at the age of 17 - a senior in Ridgewood High School - the Vietnam War was officially ended. As my 18th birthday drew near later in November, 1973 my dad brought me to Hackensack, NJ to register for the draft. I remember walking down the sidewalk in Hackensack toward the the draft center and asking my dad if I would be arrested if I didn't register. In the end I registered. But when I learned there was no chance I would have to go to Vietnam it was such a relief - put that chapter in the books and we drank it up at Esposito's!
To visit the Vietnam Memorial is truly one of the most moving experiences - name after name after name......
To this day when I watch retrospectives and such about Woodstock, RFK or Vietnam I relive the moments I struggled with as a preteen and young teen trying to figure it all out. Those times were both good and difficult. I always thought "Thank God for music, girls and Dona Maria (Spanish teacher)!"
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