biased memories
Is it possible to get nostalgic and all about a time that you never lived in? perhaps what I am feeling is not nostalgia but a wish to have been born and living through this time. I have always felt a certain love of the 60's and 70's. A time that was simplier, more relaxed, and definitly more interesting than the times of today. Going through this website link really made me get a deep feeling of regret of having been born through the 70's and been too young to remember it, but instead remember the 80' and, unfortuneatly, the 90's and 2000's.
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
Though, I have been reminded that when you hear of the sixties, you are usually only bombarded with the good powerful feelings and not the horrible emotional fears that the time brought. My father, who was in the navy, tells me stories of fear of him basically being on 'floating coffins' through dangerous waters with arms that hit ice bergs a mile off once in every 20 shots. Perhaps that just means that the navy had really bad gunners, perhaps it was the actually guns themselves. After all, is it not said that it is a poor musician that blames his instruments? But, the fear itself, floating along thinking that just below you could be a U-2 submarine taking their time sighting your ship with torpedoes to put you into a watery grave must have been great and horrifying. Thinking that you could have been sunk at any moment. At your post, in your bunk, or at the dinner table.
But then that is if you are one of those people that took up the call to join the navy/army and to protect your country. Personally, I have never been one for the whole army/navy taking orders thing. Gain my respect and I will follow you to hell and back in a heart beat, bark out orders at treat me like crap just cause you have one more bar on your shoulder than I do and you can carry your own ass into hell and I will watch you from the sidelines. However, even the people that weren't in the military stil had their sense of fears and doubts. The Cuban Missile Crisis in '62 would have struck fear into the hearts of even the lowliest of the common citizen. Not because there could be U-2 boats floating below you, but simply because at any second, at your job, in your bed, at the table, a blinding flash could come tearing through your house and vaporize your entire family, or even worse, burn the flesh from your bones and just leave you a scarred, radioactive mess of a human that, with any mercy, would die quickly instead of living through the pain of being flayed alive.
These are just two examples that I am given by family members that lived through that time telling me to keep in perspective the age. Though now I often wonder, what will the 80's (my generation of growing up) web site look like? what things will they glamorize? From my perspective, the 80's was the age of the video game. I remember getting my first Atari 2600 and thinking that the graphics were excellent. Playing River Raid and trying to get the high score, taking pictures of my score on the screen and sending it in to the company to get my official badge to sew on my jacket/shirt to show that I am got a high score. Like a badge of honour to see how many badges I could get. Though, I got one and then, because of my nature, started to sell them off to other kids that couldn't get the high score. I think I sold them at $5 a piece and all I had to do was play the game and get the score, mail off a fifty cent letter (that wasnt even my money to begin with but nicked the stamp from my parents) and then wait. Think the company got smart cause they stopped sending badges to my address. Movies were all about self awareness and growing up to discover who you really were through hardships and trials of teen life. Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, Sixteen Candles, Goonies, Weird Science (to name only a few) were the top movies in my life, and to this day I still watch those movies and get a feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Now, what do we have in the 90's and the new millienium? instead of the protests of the 60's demanding a fall of the restrictive traditions in society like the hierarchy of man over woman and caucasian over all other races, we have fights against the fall of decent traditions like respecting elders and your fellow man, respect for the law and order, respect for society, peace, harmony and a turning trend of protecting the offenders and not the victims. Instead of peaceful movies where we are told to look into ourselves, find our inner strength and build on that, we get movies of pain (Jackass), glorification of slackers (Van Wilder) and movies that basically say that crime is a great and exciting life to live and is more interesting than having a nine to fiver and dying peacefully in your bed.
'I remember when times were a lot more fun around here..when good was good, and evil was evil, before things got so..fuzzy' Garden of Allah - Don Henley
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
Though, I have been reminded that when you hear of the sixties, you are usually only bombarded with the good powerful feelings and not the horrible emotional fears that the time brought. My father, who was in the navy, tells me stories of fear of him basically being on 'floating coffins' through dangerous waters with arms that hit ice bergs a mile off once in every 20 shots. Perhaps that just means that the navy had really bad gunners, perhaps it was the actually guns themselves. After all, is it not said that it is a poor musician that blames his instruments? But, the fear itself, floating along thinking that just below you could be a U-2 submarine taking their time sighting your ship with torpedoes to put you into a watery grave must have been great and horrifying. Thinking that you could have been sunk at any moment. At your post, in your bunk, or at the dinner table.
But then that is if you are one of those people that took up the call to join the navy/army and to protect your country. Personally, I have never been one for the whole army/navy taking orders thing. Gain my respect and I will follow you to hell and back in a heart beat, bark out orders at treat me like crap just cause you have one more bar on your shoulder than I do and you can carry your own ass into hell and I will watch you from the sidelines. However, even the people that weren't in the military stil had their sense of fears and doubts. The Cuban Missile Crisis in '62 would have struck fear into the hearts of even the lowliest of the common citizen. Not because there could be U-2 boats floating below you, but simply because at any second, at your job, in your bed, at the table, a blinding flash could come tearing through your house and vaporize your entire family, or even worse, burn the flesh from your bones and just leave you a scarred, radioactive mess of a human that, with any mercy, would die quickly instead of living through the pain of being flayed alive.
These are just two examples that I am given by family members that lived through that time telling me to keep in perspective the age. Though now I often wonder, what will the 80's (my generation of growing up) web site look like? what things will they glamorize? From my perspective, the 80's was the age of the video game. I remember getting my first Atari 2600 and thinking that the graphics were excellent. Playing River Raid and trying to get the high score, taking pictures of my score on the screen and sending it in to the company to get my official badge to sew on my jacket/shirt to show that I am got a high score. Like a badge of honour to see how many badges I could get. Though, I got one and then, because of my nature, started to sell them off to other kids that couldn't get the high score. I think I sold them at $5 a piece and all I had to do was play the game and get the score, mail off a fifty cent letter (that wasnt even my money to begin with but nicked the stamp from my parents) and then wait. Think the company got smart cause they stopped sending badges to my address. Movies were all about self awareness and growing up to discover who you really were through hardships and trials of teen life. Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, Sixteen Candles, Goonies, Weird Science (to name only a few) were the top movies in my life, and to this day I still watch those movies and get a feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Now, what do we have in the 90's and the new millienium? instead of the protests of the 60's demanding a fall of the restrictive traditions in society like the hierarchy of man over woman and caucasian over all other races, we have fights against the fall of decent traditions like respecting elders and your fellow man, respect for the law and order, respect for society, peace, harmony and a turning trend of protecting the offenders and not the victims. Instead of peaceful movies where we are told to look into ourselves, find our inner strength and build on that, we get movies of pain (Jackass), glorification of slackers (Van Wilder) and movies that basically say that crime is a great and exciting life to live and is more interesting than having a nine to fiver and dying peacefully in your bed.
'I remember when times were a lot more fun around here..when good was good, and evil was evil, before things got so..fuzzy' Garden of Allah - Don Henley
posted by Capt_Canuck at 8:08 AM
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