Lifestyles

The rollicking, frolicking Sixties: Part 1

By DAVID KITTREDGE
The decade of the 1960s provided a number of cultural shattering events that drastically changed our mores and norms, probably more than any other decade up until that time and as we wrapped ourselves in the comfort of our much loved president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, to protect us from the bullying and autocratic Nikita Khrushchev, only to have our vanguard torn from us that bleak autumn day in Dallas.

The ’60s opened with the image of Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev slamming his fist and finally his shoe on his desk at the United Nations with incensed rage in protest of the Philippines delegate’s truthful remarks that “the peoples of eastern Europe and elsewhere which have been deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union.” Apparently the truth even hurts maniacal despots. This event took place on Oct. 12, 1960, and directed the position and the resolve of United States during the Cold War period until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

This image of the Russian leader’s temper tantrum was foremost in my and my elementary school chums’ minds in the early ’60s and had a pronounced effect on us. This image of Khrushchev, along with our teachers ordering us to hide under our school desks during the nuclear attack drills, did not do much to alleviate our angst at the time either. 

I recall wondering to myself what the heck good could come from hiding under my desk during a nuclear missile attack? One minute our teachers were warning us not to eat snow because of possible nuclear fallout contamination and the next minute we were ordered to skulk under our desks for “protection” during impending missile attacks. It simply did not make any sense to me. 

I would much rather have been outside standing on the playground staring at the sky for any incoming nuclear warheads; there is nothing better than good old fresh air during times of potential hyperventilation and conflagration.

On May 9, 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the world’s first oral contraceptive known commonly as “the pill”. This event set off one of the biggest changes to societal norms in all of history, resulting in the sexual revolution. Because of the pill, women had more control over their futures, and as a result many more women were able to attend and finish college and were then able to enter the job market at a higher level.

In January 1961 we were swept up into the comfort of Camelot with the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the dashing war hero and marvelous orator who provided us with reassurance amid these days of heightened crisis during the Cold War. President Kennedy successfully stared down the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. 

Before we leave the inauguration of JFK, I would like to mention that this was the last time I remembered seeing stove pipe or top hats donned in public. President Lincoln wore a top hat a hundred years earlier and that style of hat was invented in the late 1700s, talk about staying power! Since then you generally will not see one worn in public other than by magicians, who wear them to be able to hide and then pull rabbits, among other various accouterments, out of their hats. I know of a few politicians who would probably benefit from wearing a “magical” top hat even today. But perhaps they feel that would be too obvious for their machinations. 

Poet Robert Frost was invited to Kennedy’s inauguration and even penned a poem especially for the event called “Dedication,” which he was to read, but due to the glaring sunlight Frost could not see his newly written poem even with the aid of Vice President Johnson’s top hat for shade. Instead 86-year-old Robert Frost narrated from memory, another earlier poem he had written, “The Gift Outright.” 

And soon after the earth-shattering blows started to pummel our consciences with the untimely of deaths, by assassination of John Kennedy, his brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King that left us questioning again our sense of direction and safety. Many of us had set these men upon pedestals as heroes and they had been ripped from our hearts.

Then the revolution started to smolder after the death of JFK until it blew wide open with the invasion of the Beatles in February 1964. I remember going to school the day after their debut on the Ed Sullivan Show and the boys in school had already started changing their hair styles to emulate the British band. Bangs were in. Brylcreem and the product’s direction for use, jingle “a little dab will do ya” were out! Songs like “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout” were laid as the cornerstones to a new foundation of a music genre known as “the British invasion,” which included a hoard of groups from across the pond and of course influenced the American music scene, which was primarily made up of doo-wop and folk bands before the arrival of the Beatles. 

 

To be continued …

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