'wOw Friend' Sheila Weller: What I Really Did in the '60s

Probably several years older than the author I thought at the time the world had gone utterly nuts. Spent the 1960s in college, medical school and my residency. I grew up in a world in which divorce was practically unknown as was alcoholism and drug abuse, delay of gratification perceived as virtue, and being thifty rather than drowning in debt the proper way to live

Should also point out “the 60s” was mostly a California phenomena arriving in New York at the end of the decade. Made no sense to me than and now youngsters would blow up their educations, do drugs, and heap scorn on all what are generally the best life has to offer such as marriage and family.

Now in my late 60s I realize the 60s were the reflection of the tremendous emotional upheaval of the “Greatest Generation” traumatized by the war and civilian readjustment as expressed through their children’s acting out. Children have amazing psychological antennae when it comes to experiencing their parents’ emotional turmoil. Not much different than an angry and aggressive dog expressing the underlying psychopathology of its master.

Also didn’t help JFK’s Camelot crowd, themselves war veterans, dealt with their problems with acting out, drug abuse and partying.

Today’s America shows the wreckage created in the form of shattered families, the destruction of affordable middle class life, widespread addictive disorders, out of control public and private indebtedness and the collapse of conventional sexual identity.

“Stephanie Zacharek started off by sarcastically reviewing my dedication: “To the women of the 1960s generation. (Were we not the best?)”” Yeah I read that review, that nasty bit of bitchery. And frankly you women and all of us were special, the best and you still are. I applaud you all. I’m a boomer too. The music was fabulous and San Francisco was almost more unbelievable than Bangkok—I danced, smoked too many doobies, listened to the greatest music I’d ever heard (i mean after Patti Page???), had great talks with all kinds of kids my age and that’s all I’m gonna tell you. :-) I fell head over heels for Gracie Slick, yeah, like me and a few million other guys, lol, got a great education and made a life after Vietnam and those years—but I wonder how many of us really ever totally trusted the government again after the lies of Vietnam. I know I didn’t. Not after Chicago and Mayor Daley’s boys. Ahh, Laura Nyro—my oh my. Thank you for her, Ms Weller: now I gotta dig through the cd’s and listen to her again. Bojanges for you? it was Dylan going electric that blew my mind—that was awesome. And then Blonde on Blonde and nirvana for me. i”ve had a good goodlife. I’ve survived and I have my sense of humor, and no, I ain’t gonna tell any more about San Francisco and the Haight. lol So don’t ask Deni hehe

Ok, so I lived through the 60’s in a cloud and I don’t mean from smoking anything. The first half was getting through high school years (grad of 65) followed by getting my first real job, then getting married and having my first child in ‘68. That first half of the 60’s was mostly fun, but I don’t even remember anything about the last half other than living with a cheating husband and learning to be a Mom. Thank goodness life got much better but not until I finally got rid of that cheating husband!

Berkeley in the mid 60s was mild compared to after 1968. Sororities and Frat Houses being thrown off campus? Oh, wow. A piece of ground on which some do-gooders wanted to plant veggies for the poor; the campus wanted another parking lot. Not too bad yet. Some protest of the draft; then a lot. Mario Savio was 30 and leading a free speech protest to eager students who were deathly afraid of what was happening overseas. Then 1968. Assassinations, a presidential election that put a burnt out politician into office and the least likely candidate to communicate to the youth of America but better than McGovern who had to open up the Vice Presidency to anyone who would take it.

Disillusionment to the nth degree by Berkeley students. Still afraid of the draft but now not only hating the military but also those who worn the uniform. Riots. Violence. Other causes taken up: Apartheid, Huey Newton, Berkeley made a nuclear free zone (yeah, right) and much more. Some support to the Women’s movement and less to the Civil Rights Movement. All protest become focused upon Vietnam. More violence and now hatred was added to the protest, hatred toward your fellow Americans, your same sex and “if you are not part of the solution etc.”

Was is all bad? Of course not. The early 60s was Camelot and many of us who were inspired by speeches of JFK and for us girls the elegance of Jackie, we did not change. We did not let the forces of the angry gain a hold of our conscience or patriotism. Yes, I was afraid for my brothers (one in Vietnam) the others dreading the lottery. And I was afraid for my friends from high school who did not have the lottery, only the draft or a deferment. So many joined the Navy. I have toured more air craft carriers than many a sailor. I danced at the Enlisted Men’s Club on Treasure Island and then later at the Officers Club in Honolulu. My friends and family did not get lost in the late 60s and neither did I. Thank God.

Behind nearly every teenager and young adult using drugs is a parent or parents sick with worry and an unrelenting desperation unmatched by few other things. When my brother in law got involved with drugs in the late 60’s in southern california, the stress nearly destroyed his parents and their marriage. Drugs drove him to attempt suicide - and they took him in and nurtured him back to health. He continued to be a pot smoker until his teenage children began smoking pot, and getting arrested selling it. It is a terrible and tragic legacy to hand down to children. My mother’s therapist was one of the adult free-love leaders of the 60’s - he was married 5 times in 15 years. Told her he should leave her marriage to find her own happiness - so she moved out of the area, leaving all of us children to care for our sick father. All of my cousins were involved in drugs and I remember the trauma and depression suffered by my aunt because of it. Drug use destroys the spirit of the entire family.

As for the anti-war movement, due to the public protest, and the collapse of Saigon after congress pulled funding for the S. Vietnamese, my neighbor and his wife and their 5 children were put in concentration camps. He was able to escape with 4 of the children, but she agreed to follow him separately with their handicapped son. When she tried to escape, he made noise, and they were punished and tortured. I was an eye witness to their reunion after 15 years of separation. She had not seen her children since they were 3, 4, 5, and 7, and now they were young adults. The tears flowed freely. Two million people were slaughtered after America pulled it’s support. The bay area hosted wave and wave of tragic boat people escaping the Vietnamese Holocaust. The sixties were a slowly unfolding train wreck.

Always tried to convince my dear Papa that I was on the sane end of the lunatic fringe, because I knew people who were so much further along the line than I was, who never believed that MY luck would get me that FAR - when I heard of young Columbia men being pushed off Harlem rooftops for dabbling in drugs, and people who blew themselves up in NYC townhouses while plotting revolution, which wasn’t going to happen then, anyway. But my time at Berkeley was filled with friends, and yoga and organic food and great music, and great sensuality, and everyone searching, searching…and had been an influence to that day - in the self-help medical movement, in alternative therapies, in knowing oneself. Drugs weren’t all of it - but they could serve as sacramentals. I watched the Rolling Stone types and founded a Shakespeare Co. and acted - I was much too little for THEM - but I cut my ties with druggies when a young man was crippled by a stroke due to coke - and there was a malformed child whose mother had indulged while pregnant - And all of this was ignored, as my relative poverty was not. There was a mean streak in my generation outside of Berkeley - They were the ultimate narcissists. But they survived and those adventures sound much more interesting in retrospect that they probably were in reality….But I still can identify with the ideals of the time - The drive towards self-awareness - the concern for the earth - all sorts of values that were positive and which are re-emerging. But then, on some level, I guess, I never really “sold out.” Just followed my bliss…

I read the book excerpt about Joni, Carly and Carole in Vanity Fair - it was excellent, as is this article.
As for Dr. Mark Klein on the 60’s: “Today’s America shows the wreckage created in the form of shattered families, the destruction of affordable middle class life, widespread addictive disorders, out of control public and private indebtedness and the collapse of conventional sexual identity”.
Well, yeah, blame it all on the 60’s. Maybe the middle class is disappearing, because corporations are paying slave wages. We couldn’t have Woodstock today, because nobody could take time off work.
People made good money in the 60’s and had leisure time. The cultural explosion of that era still influences everything we do - the Beatles, Hendrix, Stones remain to this day.
America is indeed in trouble and it has nothing to do with the 60’s.

my ‘60’s were interrupted by events. i dropped out of college, and my sister told my mother that the latest serial rape murder victim was me. after a bit i attempted suicide and through the offices of police, jail, and ancient psychiatrists it became the state hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. that diagnosis lives to this day. the experiences shaped me. i recommend never being arrested, never being an inmate in a locked ward of a state psychiatric institution, and never having a record.

times have changed, but schizophrenia remains the same. new treatments, refinements in the diagnosis, but society never has learned to use the talents of the discarded.

I lived in middle America during the 60’s. We only heard about what was happening on the coasts, but when I read your posts it’s surprising the memories I have of that time. My family went to see Toronto, and Washington D.C. in the summer of ‘68’. I remember the head shops and their incense laden smell. The sidewalk cafes and the music, not my parents music, but ours, coming from the little shops. The nervousness of D.C. and the heat. Boy do I remember the colors, it was like the Wizard of Oz, with Peter Max leading us down the yellow brick road. I lived ninety minutes north of Detroit when the riots started. My boyfriend’s dad spent the whole night in his shop in downtown Saginaw, I remember being almost grief stricken with worry for his dad.
My father took me with him to the airport when Nixon came to town. I got to shake his hand, even though I didn’t believe in his politics, but my dad did and so I pretended I did too.
When I visit Ann Arbor, Michigan in the summer it brings a lot of it back. It’s still has some of that radical, mother earth feel, but only in the summer, when it’s hot and the kids still are wearing hippy gear and singing on the sidewalks and the head shops still smell of incense.

I think I lucked out being born 10 - 15 years to soon. I was a young mother during the fifty’s and early sixty’s…..I didn’t have time to get into trouble. As my children grew into the Teens it became a concern for me.
I lived just south of San Francisco and read and heard on the news the happenings on a daily basis. I guess you could say I lived the 60’s as a spectator. (thank goodness)