By DAVID KITTREDGE
Renaissance Redneck
I cut this year out of the decade of the sixties topic because of the number and magnitude of happenings in this last year of the decade which were noted in the 2009 book by Rob Kirkpatrick titled “The Year Everything Changed.” Although this book title has been viewed as hyperbole by some I found the title as being a realistic assessment. I have not read the book as of yet, but I have added it to my reading list.
On Jan. 20, 1969 one of our most hated presidents, Richard Milhous Nixon, mentions in his inaugural speech of the divisions facing our nation at that time by saying,”We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the Moon, but falling into raucous discord on Earth.” His summation of the years preceding his inaugural event rings true despite the outright hatred felt for this man who had lost an election to a much loved president eight years earlier.
During Nixon’s first year as president we would reach the Moon as directed in John Kennedy’s speech in 1962 at Rice University when he said that “We will go to the Moon and do other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard …”which seems to be be a very unique vantage point in that politicians and leaders do not usually suggest an offensive assault on any objective if it is deemed hard to do. Rather, a politician might suggest a defensive posture against a more powerful force, if need be, to protect oneself or one’s country. But regardless, reach the Moon we did on July 20, 1969, thanks to the inspiration of President Kennedy and to some very hard work from the folks at NASA.
The day of the lunar landing, I along with my family watched on television while Neil Armstrong made his descent down the ladder of the lunar module, making his famous statement “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” We watched as the American flag was planted into the lunar surface and heard the astronauts being chided by mission control to be careful as they hopped and danced on the surface of the Moon like children at play, taking advantage of the weak gravitational force provided by Earth’s satellite orb.
Less than one month later 500,000 American youth descended onto Yasgur’s farm in New York State for three days of peace and music at a festival know as “Woodstock.” There were 186,000 advance tickets sold for $18 each. The concert promoters were expecting a total of 200,000 concert goers. Obviously the organizers grossly underestimated the crowd and also didn’t have the time to complete fencing and ticket booths, which the concert goers took advantage of by merely walking into the venue without paying, which left the promoters nearly bankrupt. Fortunately, the organizers recouped their monies and more with the 1970 release of the documentary film, “Woodstock.” Despite the rains the mud and overcrowding, which caused a lack of food, sanitation, and medical care, most concert goers reported since then that they still enjoyed the weekend festivities.
In late September, the Beatles released the record album “Abbey Road” and it’s famous cover portraying the Fab Four using a crosswalk on said road. Upon release of the album, the conspiracy theorists flew into a raging frenzy by dissecting the album cover’s various photos and artwork into clues and “proof” that band member Paul McCartney was dead and had been replaced with a substitute. Some of this thinking was somehow derived from the fact that McCartney was bare footed in the photo. He later explained the reason: it was a warm day and he was hot, so he took his sandals off. This “Paul is dead” idea was a hot topic at school that fall and it was even mentioned that if you played a particular song backwards it proclaimed that Paul was indeed dead. Play it backwards? How was that to be done? You must have had to manually push the record backwards on the turntable by hand to achieve this. But, if you pushed too fast the recording would sound like evil chipmunks spouting gibberish, and if you pushed too slowly it would sound like Boris Karloff singing a very bad version of the “Monster Mash.” I imagine that quite a few “Abbey Road” albums were ruined by teenagers trying to raise the specter proclaiming that “Paul was dead.” Thankfully in November, Life magazine chased down Mr. McCartney and his family in Scotland and pasted his puss on the front cover as proof of his existence.
The movies “Easy Rider” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” were released in 1969. Both movies portrayed outlaws as the protagonists in the plots, and these anti-heroes were all eventually executed in the end. This idea of the anti-hero came to the forefront in the decade of the ’60s counter culture via peace protests and racial uprisings.
The Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River fire disasters helped to pave the way for the Environmental Protection Agency and “The Clean Water Act.” The Cuyahoga River had caught on fire 13 times from 1868 through 1969 due to severe pollution problems. The Ohio River was described by “Time” magazine in June of 1969 as the river that oozes rather than flows and that if a person fell in they would decay rather then drown. The Santa Barbara oil spill was the largest at that time and now ranks third all time being eclipsed by only the 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disasters.
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