Sometimes I feel like my soul is from another time. I listen to music, read books and watch movies from my favorite decade and feel a strange sense of nostalgia, even though it was years before I was even thought of. (Actually, I was never really “thought of” until it was too late. I hear I was an “uh-oh” baby. But anyway…)
So, what decade would I love to visit? The sixties, of course. (That shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who know my musical inclinations and love for old films.)
There are so many great things about this era in time:
- Music – Okay, you should have known this would be at the top of my list. But how can you not LOVE sixties music? The Doors, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the beginnings of Led Zeppelin (their first album wasn’t released until 1969), The Who, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Otis Redding, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard….the names go on and on. And then there was Woodstock. I would give anything to see some of these bands live. Unfortunately, it is much, much too late for that. Well, technically I could still see the Stones, but who would want to? One of them might fall and break a hip.
- Audrey Hepburn – The sixties gave us Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady, two of my all-time favorite movies. Although my favorite Hepburn movie was Sabrina (1954), this was still a great decade for Audrey.
- Literature – Some of my FAVORITE books from childhood were written in the sixties. Although the Boxcar Children series began in the forties, ten of the books were written between 1960 and 1969. It just so happens they were my favorite ones. ALSO, Madeleine L’Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time and The Moon by Night, the first two books of hers I ever read. They led me to her 1980 book, A Ring of Endless Light, which I can honestly say I read at least five times as a teenager. (If you saw my copy of the book, you’d know. It is definitely well-worn.)
- Television – Oh my gosh, the sixties had some of the BEST shows. The Flinstones, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Jetsons, Mr. Magoo, the Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, the Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie, Mr. Ed, the Dick Van Dyke Show, Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, Get Smart, Flipper…There should be a channel dedicated to JUST shows from this decade. TV Land is decent, but lately they’ve been slackin’.
- Revolutionary thoughts – The sixties was a decade of radical thoughts and protests. People stood up for what they believed in and spoke out against injustice. The Free Speech Movement took place in 1964 at Berkeley, where students demanded administration to acknowledge their right to free speech and academic freedom. Martin Luther King, Jr., made his famous “I have a dream” speech and anti-war sentiments were made known by the flower child generation. People didn’t stand around idly waiting for things to happen or change to occur. They stood up for what they thought was right, even if it meant persecution.
I know it was a painful, tumultuous time in the lives of many Americans, but we have learned so much from people of this era who were unafraid to speak their minds and push the accepted boundaries.
