Launched 41 years ago yesterday - 7/16/69. Landed 7/20/69 - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
If you have a powerful enough telescope, you should be able to see our U.S. flag and a couple of NASA's little hot rods from the later missions..
I could write a book about the summer of 69. It was by far my favorite summer. I was between my sophomore and junior years in college. No one was seeing just one person I remember dating several cuties that summer. (You have to remember that The Pill was around back then, but no one had even heard of AIDS.) Mini-skirts were in, as were flared jeans made by splitting the seam at the bottom and inserting a pie-shaped piece of a bandana. Bandana head-bands were also big and everyone was wearing shades. If it was above freezing, sandals were the preferred footwear. Tie-dyed T-shirts were everywhere. Creedence Clearwater Revival was my favorite group. They released Lodi, Proud Mary, Born on the Bayou, Green River, Bad Moon Rising and a bunch of other songs that year. The Archies, a group that never really existed, recorded Sugar, Sugar. It was pure bubblegum, but it sold over 3 million copies and stayed at the top of the Top 40 for four weeks. Simon and Garfunkel recorded The Boxer, Diana Ross and the Supremes did Someday, Well Be Together, the Stones released Honky Tonk Women and good ole Neil Diamond had Sweet Caroline. Good music everywhere you turned the dial on the radio! I was VERY lucky that my dad was into cars our family wheels were a 63 Impala coupe and a 66 Nova SS 327/4-speed. Not much doubt about which one I preferred Street racing was BIG and not frowned upon like it is now. You could find some serious get-togethers almost any Friday or Saturday night if you were hooked up with the right people to know which back-road was being used. Organization was good and the cops rarely hassled us. We also had a decent drag strip close by, but it was only open from late April thru early October. Viet Nam and the Cold War in general were on everyones minds. My familys politics were more liberal than most, so lots of dinner-table conversation centered around the war and how it affected Americans. Besides the war, social unrest resulting from racial tensions also divided the country along other lines. 1969 was definitely a magic year. I cant imagine such a collision of music, politics, cars, sex, drug experimentation and over-the-top clothing/hair/partying happening again in the foreseeable future! As more than one person has said: You just had to be there
ah yes...I was part of Apollo 12 in Navy Fleet Air Support Squadron 30 (VR-30) on the USS Hornet. That was fun. The next year I got sent to DaNang...FASU (Fleet Air Support Unit DaNang), for 12 months. If you look real close you can see me standing next to our Grumman C-1A "Trader" on the flight deck.....maybe this picture is a little fuzzy.
Turned 16 in Feb '69. Got my license in April. That was a fun summer! My older sis took off for Boston for the summer and I had the use of her 1957 Ford. I worked days at my partime job but the evenings were wide open. My buddies all had 55-57 Chevys but we didnt care who had what. We'd cruise every night to a local park (Ault Park in Cincinnati) where everyone either parked their cars and sat on the hoods to watch the parade of cars.....or you were one of the moving stream of mostly 50's and early 60's cars slowly cruising past everyone to look right back. When we'd get bored with that, we'd hop back in our cars and drive over to Frisch's Big Boy where they still had "curbside service". Placed your order for some fries and a cherry coke thru the speaker/mike and waited for one of the girls to bring it out to your car on a tray. The cruising/watching phenomenon would continue at the Big Boy. Naturally, we'd keep our eyes peeled for a car with members of the opposite sex for potential conversation and who-knows-what. Your money was spent on car parts, gasoline, more car parts, cigarettes, oil, more car parts, fast food, and the occasional date. I never seemed to have more than $25 extra cash at any time that year. I learned to save a few bucks by buying stuff at the junkyards. All the songs on the radio still stand out. My world expanded a bit with the mobility of the car. A bit of down to earth responsibility sunk in when I wrecked my sister's car the last week of summer (right before she returned to Cincinati). The money I had finally saved up to buy my own first car was instead handed over to my father who purchased another car for my sister to use. Still, all in all, I had a blast that year!
'69 - Wow, what a flashback just seeing the year! My last summer at home and being a senior that fall we seemed to have the world by the short hairs. Spent most of the summer having a blast & hangin' with one GF (she was great). It was my last summer of being a kid with no responsibilities to anyone but me. The clothes, music, cars and 'entertainment' of the summer of '69 were never repeated. Next year I headed out to look for America, traveled from job to job thru several states and finally joined the Air Force.
Far out! Out of sight! Racing a Jim Davis X-Top Fuel car with a 354 on pop and hilborns. The Doors man!
Got married 8-9-69 while we were having a celebration with family friends the Manson Family was on a killing spree. Sharon Tate was murdered the night.
Summer of 69, High School graduation. Navy boot camp in SanDiego. Navy supply school,30 of us , 28 went to DaNang Naval support activity. I was sent to Kodiak Island,Alaska. I think the other guy went stateside. Kind of felt like I missed out on Vietnam service, but made up for it when I got called up as a Reserve for Desert Storm!
Just like every other year. The news media told us everybody was into sex drugs and rock and roll.They sensationalize everything. Everybody I knew except for a very few were just having fun mostly inide the law. 69 had its good and bad just like now does.
"1969, my buddy's were coming back from Nam telling us it was the party of a lifetime. I couldn't wait to go..... " New Dears Day Evening 1967!! My Buddy's had been out at Kim's Dad's cabin in the country drinking, waiting for the football game to come in on the TV antenna. I came by later after I went back into town to get my new '67SS/RS Camaro that I let a girl take home the night before that later became my wife. Ben was scratched all up and Crocker (2nd L., Special Forces, Green B.) home on I want to say either his 2nd or 3rd R&R was crying so I asked what the hell happened? Seem's Ben was on the roof twisting on the antenna and Crocker drunk when he heard something overhead! Crocker rolled and grabbed Ben's new Browning .22 Automatic and rolled under the coffee table flipping out barking orders to his squad! Shooting holes in the roof so Ben jumps off into a rose bush!! As three or four of the guys pounced on Crocker! The night before, Crocker and I were throwing kitchen knives and my ice-pick seeing who could stick which the most times. Andway, later that evening, Crocker sucking on a 5th of Jack got to crying that they wouldn't let him bring his dried ear collection state side so he could show it to all of us..... And the drunker Crocker got, the more he cried and the more it came out of him about how hard it was for him to cut the throats of the little kids they sent to them/him loaded down with explosives!!! I missed all this because I lost my trigger finger to a table saw at 15 years old or so out on the farm, so I had a 1-Y classification that when I turned 28, turned into a 4-F. I want to say my draft number was 284, but it's been years??? Fucking 'Nam PARTY, right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Steve K. came back in a body bag!!. pdq67
News media back then...How could you not hang on every word that Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley or David Brinkley said? Media heroes in my book! You guys are great! Thanks for the memories (say, is that a Bob Hope quote?) Ken
Sneekin in the Old Fort Drive-In theater drinking Little Kings working a Burger Chef and hanging out at Sharon Woods on saturday afternoon oh yea a bottle of Ripple wine
Everybody else went to Woodstock. I worked. Needed cash to buy a car! 54 Dodge Royal V8-241-HEMI. Have more memories with my STILL wife and that car than anything that happened at Woodstock!
25 years old.............wife and 2 kids.................being responsible just like dad raised me....................managed to have a '67 drag car, 427 B/MP Camaro................2nd shift at the Chevrolet plant.............life was good but sure sounds boring typing it out. Don't ask about 1988 Frank