1969
The country was embroiled in an apparent can't win war in Vietnam...President Nixon just was taking over the reins...set his mind on getting us out...had our super negotiator (so we were told), Henry Kissinger, meeting with the North Vietnamese to neutralize it all...to no avail...and the worst of worst happened in the end of the year...Nixon had to get more troops to send over there...and reinstated the 'draft'...oh lord...yup, Dec 1...
One of the most prolific album pictures ever was released....well, and so was the music...by the Beatles...Abbey Road...them walking across that street, single file...not sure why it touched us so, but it did...the best cuts?...'Come Together', 'Something', and 'Oh! Darling'...
If you are an inhabitant of Santa Barbara, like the kids are, the talk of that time, was the incredible OIL SPILL...that to this day, is almost always mentioned somewhere and sometime, in a talk about the oil rigs...still out in the ocean waters...there...man, they still have leakage...hmmm, does that happen in Louisiana, too?...
In March, the two killers...of RFK and MLK, admitted in court that they in fact, did it...not much in the way of conspiracy theories in those assassinations...the MLK killer, recanted his admission, later on...you think we have gun problems now?...
Of all things, that occurred...in the coldest of cold wars...a Russian sub and an American sub...COLLIDED in the Barents Sea...this was a fact that many of us, had no idea that it happened...like just north of Russia...just why were we there?...
Elvis Presley...recorded an album in Memphis...like Tennessee...and had in it, his last real great songs...'In the Ghetto', 'Suspicious Minds' and 'Kentucky Rain'...geez, in Tennessee...should have been Tennessee Rain...I digress...oh yea, the LP was named 'From Elvis in Memphis'...
This was the time of anti-war protesting...in most of the colleges around the country...yup, even in the tiny teacher's one I went to...the topper?...was the National Guard in Cali...called out helicopters to quell the 'uprising'...sprayed skin-tingling powder on them from the choppers...what on earth were they doing?...listen, kids, it was a frustrating time...
Yea, this was the year, that Teddy Kennedy...drove off the bridge in Chappaquiddick Island, in Massachusetts...where the girl inhabitant died...Mary Jo Kopechne...a campaign aide...you must remember this...and HIS story thereafter...
The British were embroiled in a battle with...the Northern Ireland people...they had names for their skirmishes....man, I thought the world was coming apart...watching that...and it all simmered down...
Gadaffi, staged a coup de tat, and took over Libya...and that tyrant held power until the past, what, 5 years or so?...geez, there was chaos everywhere, huh...
Neal Armstrong...set foot on the moon...'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!'...this was the epitome of JFK's vision of space exploration...
Woodstock...August 15-18...were you there?...seems like a lot of people took credit for being in the land of revolution in NY...you must see the video of it, if you haven't yet...perfect piece of time standing still...
The flicks?...'Midnight Cowboy', 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', 'Funny Girl', and 'True Grit', where John Wayne finally won an Oscar...
The PLO is formed over, well right next door to Israel...and the ongoing battle was...begun...
Get this...the first battery powered smoke detector was founded...what we take for granted now...right?...
The clothing?...big ties...mock turtlenecks shirts...wild colors...you know, I lurved the style...
Yup, that was the way it was...1969...
Comments