The Sixties Start in Earnest: JFK Blown Away Peter Paul & Mary
The Sixties Start in Earnest: JFK Blown Away Peter Paul and Mary
Hey Everyone,
It is 9:30 PM, and I just got back from my Social Media for Professionals class at CCSF or as we call it in our utopia of the furthest left city of the USA, Free City. That said, it works for me to be able to enroll as a resident of SF and pay zero tuition.
Let us get to brass tacks, shall we?
Last off on the blog regarding the LA Teachers Strike (1970), I eluded to having some cultural or historic insight into that last year or two--late 1963 through the early Summer of 1965--living as a child here at 280 30th Avenue in San Francisco. In retrospect, my memories are faint and fleeting, however significant in shaping of my life, politics, patriotism, and understanding of the emerging world around me.
First, let us address the day I had the first memory of my life:
Oftentimes, at least in my parent's day, people referred-to "Where were you when you learned of President Kennedy being assassinated?" much as people who were old enough to process the events of 9-11 now reference that fateful [and I might add that story also never added-up from the beginning] day.
Here is the rub...I had just turned three-years-old in October of 1963 and do not remember the events of November 22nd of that year; however, I remember being in our family room--okay, it was Sea Cliff and my Father of thirty-eight-years-old was already well established in his television career with over seven years in the early-to-mid nineteen-fifties, working for KTLA 5 and NBC in the Los Angeles.
Later, returning to SF where he had worked at KGO TV 7, in it's infancy, 1951, Willard S. Davis Jr. went on to became the Associate Producer of the Don Sherwood Show...little cloudy on that one, he may have been the director, but the answers to this lay in his archive at the California State Library in Sacramento.
In 1960, shortly before my birth [Now-a-days, everyone wants to say, "Oh....Sea Cliff" but it was really a quite modest three bedroom and if memory serves--two bath or two & a-half bath home] my parents returning after five years in Hollywood.
...just a couple houses north of California, it was devoid of any kind-of view, but we walked down to the beach and GG Bridge regularly]
Anyhow, it is so weird and this first memory seemed to be just that--the first recollection of one's life--yet by my late twenties and certainly my early thirties when I began to become a political activist--this hazy memory became a focus in significance; how odd it is that my first memory out of all of the day-to-day goings-on of a three year old would be the tragic events surrounding a political leader.
This first memory of my childhood was of the nationally televised funeral of our 35th president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy; later, the Beatles broadcast live and singing the hit, "All you Need is Love" over the Summer of '67--or of Love as we think of it here in SF--was the first international satellite broadcast live event. Transmitted some almost four more years away, and broadcast...as NBC used to say, "In Living Color."
Notably, I remember the flicker-rate on that old black-and- white Zenith brand television as clear as it was unclear, if that makes sense. Perhaps, as young children who have imaginary friends and vivid nightmares of crying and sitting-up with mother convinced there had been a horrible man with a dagger in my closet or under my bed--these memories or our connection to other dimensions are weened from us by the age of five, six, or seven; in this context, I think the flicker rate is more apparent to the young (?). Yet, I can remember looking around that room; the totally cool wish I-had-it-now mid-century light fixture--like the old Zenith, it too--would grace my teenage bedroom years later in Carmichael, CA and the importance Dad placed on explaining how we had had the leader of our country taken from us.
The horse drawn carriages on the Capitol Mall, the 21-gun salute to a WW II Veteran of PT Boat heroics, the grieving Jackie, Caroline, and of course, John-John saluting the coffin as it proceeded by the First Family, no more, stars & stripes blowing in the wind.
I often ponder my interests in conspiracy theory or what we now are fortunate enough to have finally dragged into the cleansing sunshine of the new mainstream, the Deep State; reading books in my teens [Jim Mars' Executive Action and Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement] that questioned the official narrative of November 22nd, my enlistment in the US Army Infantry as an ardent anti-communist, and political activism that led to my nomination and run for an Oregon US House seat in 2006 seem as if they are tied to that day, in some regard. As Elton John once sang, "...since the day that I was born I waved the flag..."
Why was this day of such national importance my first memory along with heading down California Street earlier that morning to have my right-arm-cast removed at our doctor's office? Looking at the trolleys--the streets largely devoid of cars--my mother remarking how vacant and lacking traffic and citizens, the City looked as we bore-down California towards town?
...a bit of background: My Mother and I had been hit by another car in our 1962 Chevy Nova earlier in the month (?) by an "Oriental" [sic] as they put it...complete with some bullshit from Willard about "the Japs" [sic] having had not been industrialized long-enough [yes, I actually remember this conversation too, with my Father continuing,] "...to be able to drive well-enough." Willard went on to then equivocate: "This, Son, is why we won World War II" or something along those lines.
Really Willard? What about Japanese Mitsubishi built Zeros that out-flew their Angelo-Saxon built British Spitfires and P-41 Mustangs? Nice try!
I only bring this up not to incite or make anyone upset, but it is really amazing to me to see how differently many spoke in those days; actually, my parents were always slow to evolve regarding my two oldest sisters coming of age in the late 1960s, towards decades-end regarding what was then coined as the generation gap as well as racial relations. They really were not that bad. We are West Coast People, yet, it was just how they put things.
The irony is lost on me regarding my insistence to not be politically correct. Difference being, I know this to be the case, they did not!
Thankfully, we were taught to respect people of all races and backgrounds, and so-on. Any kind of derogatory talk or use of the N' word in or around our home--referencing this or what had been the racist statement in the early sixties talk in regards to the car accident as a child in SF-- would later-on in the 1970s be met with a strong rebuke and sit-down chat on how "We do NOT use that kind of language," and strive for equality in opportunity for all, etc.
They did evolve along with the Bunkers' of All in the Family--we all did.
Yet, get 'em around Uncle Devin and Aunt Bunny and their guard came down when the booze flowed at the cabin, for instance--even Creme-de-mint for the kids via snow cones if we were good--and political discourse was usually peppered not so much with racial slurs, but ethnic chides, and a good measure of better by virtue of their skin-color nonsense from Bunny and Devin, mostly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry,_El_Dorado_County,_California
It seemed as if a man who had taken my Grandfather's plumbing contracting company to a point or size where he employed twenty-five-to thirty people--many of whom were minorities--there still was a pass on what some said in private in those days.
Retreating to the main room with the fireplace, us kids would play poker, fool around with a pedal-driven grand organ, and the record player setting the right vibe as the snow slowly piled up covering the windows at times. We just largely ignored their shortcomings; after all and what I always liked to say when I was a maintenance man [usually, if I was stumped on a plumbing repair in a tenants' bathroom, for instance] "Don't worry, I come from a long-line of alcoholic plumbers!"
So, they did change as the years unfolded:
Albeit slowly, and their partaking at the cabin facilitated with ease--what was to become my older sisters' and cousins,' increasingly main mission in their teen years:
Gauging how much alcohol could be siphoned-off for the end of the trip, raiding the liquor cabinet late after everyone had gone to bed or early in the morning. Oftentimes, wrapping-up at Echo Summit or Sierra Ski Ranch with a teenage drinking binge before taking those last few runs and heading back to the valley. This started to become a thing as we entered the mid-nineteen-seventies, at least for the older kids, anyway; I watched them scheme, meticulously, using what were then glass Skippy brand peanut butter jars people kept around to store or freeze left-overs. Having had 1/4 -1 and 2 cup embossed or etchings on the jar, it was easy for them to add each day--undetected.
However, watering-down booze bottles was not an option within the Davis' household; indisputably, we are legion for not only being known for our iron-clad livers, but can sense a weak drink, instinctively!
Performing these duties late at night or early in the morning up-until the last day skiing at which time there would be several of these episodes adding to what their partners-in-crime also poured-off from their parents; Alan Larson's family who had a place at Heavenly Valley comes to mind among other regulars from our Big Valley--following what was often four, or five days at the cabin:
Usually, a big blow-out would ensue.
After side-stepping high above the puma-lift, rope-tows, and later Echo's single chairlift for the privacy they sought--myself tagging along as long as I was considered cool. Onward, we side-steeped, some in cross-country skis' just for the occasion as opposed to alpine, towards the rocks crags of the peak [I think that was the actual Echo Summit, but something tells me it was across the pass/highway on the Pyramid Peak side, Desolation Wilderness?]
I will never forget Larson peeing allover everyone's skis in the basement of Echo's lodge once we came back down, drunken fifteen year-old he was; shocked...shocked, I tell you!
By then, Alan had great potential having trained under Spider Sabich, the 1968 Winter Olympic Skier.
Spider Sabich Learned to ski at the Even Smaller Edelweiss Between the Cabin and Echo Summit
Mater of fact, my oldest cousin, Mo, was even in contention for making the Nationals for the US Ski Team at some point and also skied with Sabich. Even in those days, you needed to lock-up things at Squaw Valley, Kirkwood, or Heavenly--not Echo!
...unfortunately, your gear was, however, vulnerable to be pissed-on by over indulgent teens!
Moreover, you needed to not live in what the regulars or those residing in the Sierra or Tahoe basin referred-to as the Flatlands: Sacramento or the Bay Area.
If one had any hope of making the US Nationals, let alone the Olympics, then one required daily training in the theater of USA Skiing: Colorado, Idaho, or The Sierra. Thankfully, my Uncle Devin, Mo, and Scott,[and later Tracy which pissed me off as she was two years younger and a girl! My how times have changed] had patience with their uncoordinated SoCal cousin turned Sacrament-an.
By the early 1970s, I had advanced to intermediate runs, briefly skiing expert runs, however ungracefully by my mid-to late-teens; Tracy went on to become employed at Echo for a number of seasons as a Ski School Instructor and member of Echo Summits Ski Patrol in the early-to-mid eighties.
I can still see Mo now on those brown Rossignol Skis with Look Nevada bindings, and just too cool for all the ski-bunnies. By the early 1970s, he was to be in a committed relationship with his once fourteen year-old love of his life, Viki Pilar--soon to be his wife of close to sixty years,
The Powers that be Might want to make a law against that, but you also might want to check with their three quite successful grown children--all approaching forty, first.
...then again, you might have your gear pee-ed on by the lightening fast, jump-taking, incorrigible Alan Larson who by that time was living at Heavenly--for training purposes--to take a stab at making the US Olympic Team. I once lived in a world were I too was a child free of worry, despite bomber alerts at nearby Mather AFB, happily building forts along the America River.
...really Echo was more fun and anything goes which is why Bunny and Devin gravitated towards the family oriented or good-old-boy atmosphere culture of bring your own sandwiches and cooler of Bush Beer--of course--aspects of the once family run ski area.
Back to the story ADHD Man:
I do still recall descending the grade from the Avenues' towards downtown on California this same day of the JFK funeral and my Mother saying how the streets were empty as most people had not gone to work, staying home to mourn and watch the live telecast of the funeral in DC.
It was after the removal of the cast for my broken right arm, that this poignant conversation with my Father--explaining the importance of our leader being struck-down in his prime--then transpired as we watched the procession and placing of the casket in the rotunda of the DC Capitol.
Which brings me back to Peter Paul and Mary and the also rather faint recollection of a conversation in our Sea Cliff living room regarding the song, "Puff the Magic Dragon." The popularity of both this and the song "Blowing in the Wind," "If I had a Hammer" and other folk songs as acoustic and the bohemian or beatnik culture and music would soon give way to electric guitar as the British Invasion was about ready to unfold; the culture--San Francisco and NYC's Greenwich Village yielding to what was about to change dramatically.
"...You dig, Man?"
This is why I often refer to the fact that decades cannot be easily packaged or demarcated by their end of the "9" or even "0" year, historically.
...life just does not work that way.
Point being, in the late Fall of 1963, Peter Paul and Mary would have two songs in the top 10 of the Billboard Magazine Hot 100--American Top 40--that had just eclipsed my parent's era's chart, and weekend best-of radio show, Your Hit Parade as the new standard of measurement of music sales and air-play in the United States. Easy Listening and/or Middle of the Road [MOR] as a format on radio continued but as the Stones' said, "The change has Come..."
Beatlemania had begun to unfurl in the fall of 1963 and would become firmly ensconced in 1964.
That said, I touched on my show, Simpler Time and Place, this week about what had been my first talk about drugs in the culture and this "Puff the Magic Dragon" that was anything but a children's song!
As I remember, the talk--I do not really remember the word drugs being used and I was largely an observer as my sisters listened; yet, my parents explaining that puff had to do with inhaling marijuana, the Dragon being synonymous with drag-in--and that this was a threat to civil society, Continuing, these were "...issues of right and wrong, and the country, 'going-to-pot'" as my Mother put it. In fact, they always referred to "how liberal San Francisco had become" once we put-down-roots in West Los Angeles, practically in Governor Reagan's Pacific Palisades Heights, backyard.
In retrospect, the lyrics of "...little Jackie Paper" was a reference to the Zig-Zag Man of French rolling paper fame, and so-on.
The Country's culture was heading towards a revolutionary change--later to reach a pinnacle in the streets of Chicago in 1968--predicated upon the Flower Power of '66, simultaneous shift on television to Living Color, followed by the events of 1967: The Summer of Love.
Actually, the jumping-off point was considered by many historians to have been in the Fall of 1964. Across the Bay at Cal, the free speech protests of a burgeoning youth culture, sit-ins, trapped squad cars and all, unfolded in UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza
Earlier in the Summer of 1964 at the Republican National Convention at the Cow palace in Daly City, Barry Goldwater accepted the nomination and would go on to lose in a dramatic landslide to LBJ:
Goldwater Accepts 1964 Republican Nomination
Hence, and evidence of the societal shift leftward, George Christopher would soon hold the distinction of being known as the last Republican Mayor of San Francisco about the same time.
These pictures are on display at the Greek Orthodox Church G. Christoper Sport Facility just a stone's-throw away on Brotherhood Way:
[Pending]
Leading the way--I do say this knowing LA soon thereafter this period would become the heartbeat nationally & culturally of the US, following the Summer of Love to a great extent--were the City's bohemian-cultural-heartbeat of North Beach and emerging Haight neighborhoods. However, the choices presented in 1964 really were the demarcation of old vs. new, a seminal moment for SF. Goldwater in his acceptance speech at the Cow Palace stated, "Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice" going on to state a confrontational approach to countering the spread of communism was the choice before the nation, thereby the world. Goldwater continuing on stating, "...and let me remind you, also, that 'moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.'"
A nation just off the very real jitters of the Cuban Missile Crisis rejected his rhetoric--the only aired once "Daisy TV Ad" depicting-pedals-picked off a flower as only through a child's-eyes' a serialized or fear-mongering thermos-nuclear explosion helped usher in the Great Society-era of LBJ.
As a one term president who would not seek reelection in 1968 as Vietnam escalated on his watch, significant gains for blacks and social justice through passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964), Food Stamp Act (1964) and LBJ's appointments to SCOTUS--resulted in an almost two-decades long lock- or tradition of liberalism. The Warren Court's affect on matters before the courts' jurisprudence, legacy, and precedent cemented in decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) [right to use birth control (later the ruling a key argument for the Right to Privacy paving the way for Roe v Wade (1973)] Miranda v. Arizona (1966) [Self Incrimination/Right to Remain Silent], and Loving v. Virginia (1966) [interracial marriage], and of course, as mentioned, Roe v. Wade (1973).
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1965/759
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=97
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18
In closing, Simpler Time and Place is a good-time-party-machine kind of program with the music, storytelling, and companion blog epitomizing a bygone era; a show positioned in countering the stress of the tragic news-cycle, the daily Trumpian' gaffes, our divisions among the newcomers and the old-timers, if you will; a break from the constant stress or madness of senseless shootings, mayhem, and forward thinking in these times of chaos.
Somehow as we usher out the old, I am sure this can and will end well--eventually--as we move forward, together towards a New Age. Yet, much like the events of today and this presidency, we do not live in a vacuum and the times we live in and choices we make moving forward are as historical--even more so I would suggest--as those of the mid-to late 1960's.
Foremost, as a Libertarian who believes in absolute personal liberty and the right to do as we wish with our own bodies and personal choices as long as we are not infringing or impeding on others personal liberties, this precipice of time offers boldly stepping into a decisive decision-making-time:
Hence, as a Jeffersonian--I am old and my opinion carries less weight with each passing day--it is up to the people of this nation and to a larger extent this emerging order, how they want to live and be governed; it is my greatest hope that we can do so in a civil, respectful, and loving way.
This is the gift we give to the world as San Franciscans', Bay Area Folk, Californians' and Citizens of--dare I say--the World as mankind moves forward, the Nation-State yielding to what this next generation has in mind:
The right to self-determination should and shall always belong to We the People.
Posted by Drake McDonald Davis on October 23, 2018 No comments:
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Drake Davis is a 6th Generation [Paternal/5th Maternal] Californian who graduated from San Francisco State University in December of 2018. Currently, Davis is about to launch a career in voice-over having over 5.5 years on-air over two decades in Sacramento & Portland, OR; better yet, Davis was there with four additional years in live performance at the birth of Disco and height of the Roller Disco Era in Sac. Poised to go far and in possession of the coveted SFSU Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts [BECA] Degree, Davis can be be harnessed to make money for your media outfit.
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