The way it was, or at least how I remember it.

Growing up in the 60's

I'm lucky I remember it!

Recently a friend of mine began posting song lyrics from the music my generation grew up and came of age listening to on his social networking page.  This brought to mind my youth at least the parts I can remember of it.  Groups like The Doors, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, and Santana (yes I mean the same Santana that is around today) were making statements about the way things were being done. 

The 60's to say the least was a turbulent decade, violence between blacks and whites, protesters against an unpopular war, political protesters making statements against the government, and musicians speaking to us through their music.  And it wasn't just what was then termed as either underground rock or acid rock, which by the way was the more common moniker; people like Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and others were taking up the cause for country music as well.

There were many different kinds of protests; Martin Luther King Jr. marching for civil rights, college students protesting the draft by burning their draft cards, draft dodgers going to Canada to avoid military service, and some protesters who were even calling for the downfall of the government.  Not that I particularly disagreed or agreed with the statements that were made back then by those in opposition to the norm.  People such as Timothy Leary called to the younger generation to "tune in, turn on, and drop out", as yet another protest method.

Our government had been hijacked by what President Johnson had called the military industrial complex and in so doing we were plunged head long into a war that was at best unpopular, and at worst illegal.  The hard line old guard die hard conservatives were dedicated to keeping control of a government that was basically holding on by a thread.  Nixon mishandled the office of President so badly that his then vice president Spiro T. Agnew resigned and by the early years of the 70's he too resigned in disgrace.  The political portion of the government tried to stretch their reach into military operations and in doing so they botched up the military structure and it's ability to conduct the war in Vietnam.

The true military leaders involved with the boots on the ground in Vietnam were in effect handcuffed by the persistent interference of political power brokers half a world away.  The death toll mounted as soldiers were forced to take the same ground repeatedly instead of taking and holding it as the policy used to be and should have been then.  It started out with a few "advisers" teaching the South Vietnamese soldiers how to conduct conventional warfare in an unconventional war.

If we are to believe what we were told about a complete draw down of these advisers before President Kennedy was assassinated then we would have been out with clean hands and a clear national consciousness by perhaps as early as 1964.  Unfortunately we will never know if this would have happened due to his death at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald.  Lyndon Johnson became president and promised that he wouldn't send American boys halfway around the world to do the job that should have fallen squarely on the shoulders of the indigenous people of Vietnam.  We all know how that worked out, more and more soldiers were deployed, and more and more soldiers died because of an ineffective military machine run by politicians.  Take a trip to Washington DC (District of Corruption) and walk along the black marble wall erected as a reminder of the cost of "freedom".

I am the child of a father who served his country proudly through 3 different wars, WWII, Korea, and finally Vietnam.  I didn't particularly have any hard feelings either way about the war, all I knew was that my father was sent into harms way, ostensibly to secure the freedom of a solemn nation that had been invaded by it's neighbor to the north.  I saw the looks on the faces of civilians as my father walked through the airport upon his return from that war.  He was openly mocked because of where he had been, watching him as he passed among unfriendly individuals, I caught the impression of what Jesus must have felt on His way to be crucified.  The people who served their country and went where they were told and did what they were ordered to do deserved a better welcome home than any of them deserved.  None of them wanted to be there, but, still they went.  They definitely didn't want to do what they were doing, yet they still did.

The music of that generation fueled the fires of rebellion and hostility, and was perhaps the most influential era in music history.  Look back to Woodstock, and the Monterrey Music Festival to see how much influence music had on the psyche of the disaffected youth of that decade.   So in my opinion anyone who grew up then has gotta love The Doors  It was music for a different generation, those of us who were disaffected by the way things were being mishandled in Washington, and Vietnam.  Now do you understand where those of us who are 40+ years old distrusted the government or so long?  Those who are still holding out and on for what we believed back then are called hippies, and anyone else who protested and then joined the system were told that they had "sold out" their ideals and became what they despised most of all politicians. What some have now come to understand is that they had to join the system to make the changes they protested for. Damn shame it didn't work out the way they wanted, Washington is now more under the control of the lobbyists than at any point in our history. 

Today, the music and speeches of my generation are becoming relevant again.  We were lied to by a president and his cast of cronies.  We now have soldiers on the ground on every continent, many of whom are in harms way, and for what.  In the case of Iraq were our soldiers sent there to exact revenge upon that country's leader for "shaming" the father of then President "W"?  This is perhaps another question that we may never get answered.  Afghanistan is becoming this generations Korea, both are forgotten wars only heard about in the case of the former when the death toll rises, and in the case of the latter when the reruns of MASH are seen on television.

One only need listen to the music of my generation to understand it's importance then and it's coming relevance now.  Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison and many others involved in the music of the 60's lit the fires of imagination about how things could be as opposed to how they were.  It was wrong to have protested the war and used the soldiers as the symbol for it, they were not to blame then anymore than the soldiers fighting today's wars are responsible for them.  If we must protest then lets do it right, protest the war, not the soldiers, mistrust the government, not the generals. Don't make your point at the graveside of the fallen, make it when it counts, election day.  Welcome our soldiers home with open arms and hearts.

The motto of the USO is "Till they all come home", lets do that, bring them all home, from everywhere!