Something dawned on me the other day.  It wasn't a stroke of genius, or some deep insight that I could now share with the world.  It was just an internal drawing of a line in the sand.  Something inside of me said enough is enough!

 

Stop defining me, and all "my brothers and sisters" from the 60s Generation, as characters playing outlandish roles in a retro television special designed to draw hordes of viewers in an effort to sell more laundry detergent or fast food!  We are no different than folks from generations before, and after.

 

Really!  Glad I got that off my chest.

 

Here's what I'm talking about. 

 

Last Tuesday was a day like most others.  You know what I mean.  Go to work.  Stop at the convenience store for a few things.  And, in my case, make a quick left turn into the music shop to check out all the new toys.  That's where my awakening happened.

 

Those who know me, know that I'm a retread musician with a love for old blues, rockabilly, and '50's roots rock 'n roll. My BluesRoot project is a labor of love.  The fact that I perform songs from that pre-classic rock period…added to the fact that I'm a bit long in the tooth for doing it in the first place… have made me, in some circles, interesting.  Anyway, while I was standing in the swanky guitar section (that's the area where you need a home equity loan to buy that once in a lifetime beauty staring down at you from the pegs in the wall), two Generation X, Y or Z'ers wandered over and asked me how things were going.  One called me "the reborn hippy", while the other said "it must be great to have everything you all did back in the '60s to pull from when you're performing."  He then went on to tell me about the special he had recently watched on television ..the one that "told it like it was" meaning everyone was into flowers in the hair, protests (for a variety of reasons not just the War), and a totally free lifestyle.

 

I listened.  I smiled. I acted grandfatherly. And, I realized that in the past week or so I had heard the same view of "my decade" expressed at the grocery store, the pharmacy (where I stood reviewing the liner notes on a Greatest Hits of the 1960s CD), and good grief, even at my doctor's office, where my new 30 something year old doctor told me to slow down a little, and added that it must be hard to do so since I was a child of the 1960s!

 

All right.  I get the drift.  We were all weird. 

 

Not really.  The folks I knew then, and know now, were, and are,  normal people…good people with strong opinions for sure…but normal people who happened to come of age in a decade that was positioned by all the forces of the universe…for change.

 

We were the kids who grew up on Howdy Doody, Davy Crockett, John Wayne, and the Hit Parade.  We were also the kids who just happened to hit adulthood at time when change was rapidly reshaping the nice, neat world in which we lived.  The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi and Janice, and all that went with them reflected that change…and the issues behind it all.

 

We weren't special.  We weren't that different from our parents.  We were normal people growing up in an abnormal time.

 

I guess you had to be there.  Today, we have become a living piece of history.

 

What happened in our generation did however alter the stream of our nation's lifestyle.

 

Our children, and their children, live in a vastly different world. Fast food has taken the place of a home cooked meal.  Computers have replaced television and radio.   Speed and multitasking have taken over for prudence and patience.  Social protest has gotten lost in a communications hurricane of 24/7 "issue of the day" news and sound bites. 

 

When I think back to the coming of age 1960s and the childhood '50s,  I look at some of the best, and some of the worst, days of my life…probably the same way everybody does.  Even with all the social forces converging, it was still oddly slower, more defined, more real.

 

I love the music from our day.  I like the old television shows.  I still enjoy the literature.  They defined normal to me…and to those I have spent a lifetime sharing experiences. 

 

The members of the 60s Generation were not outlandish in a broad defining way.  We were normal young people living in an abnormal time.

 

Like I told those two young people in the music store, things aren't that much different today,  But,  I have to admit it…I do hate rap. Don't understand it. It's just…not normal.