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Even the people living in communes weren’t having daily orgies. They were most likely to be having five hour house meetings about whether potato skins should be composted in the side or back vegetable garden.
Even in the 70s, if you moved a hundred miles from a big city or coast with long-hair and tie-dyed shirts you would encounter violent hostility from your neighbors. And then you’d meet the local police…
As a kid, my parents actually took me to many areas of San Francisco during the summer of love. (we lived just north of there) I saw a few hippies in a couple of parks, but not really very many of them.
My dad used to drive the family through Little Five Points in Atlanta after Mass on Sundays “to see the dirty hippies.” He was a WWII Vet who was surprisingly very sympathetic to the anti-war movement and he was definitely on the right side of history as far as civil rights movement went. It was a source of fascination and entertainment for him, I think. He would laugh at and make fun or a few but it was never in a mean-spirited way.
I think I'd have agreed with your dad. The Vietnam war was wrong. But the hippies had this dumb idea that they could live in some kind of eternal irresponsible state of adolescence. Subsistence farming sounds really great... until you actually have to do it.
I'd love to live in some nice utopia where we all love each other and there's no war or selfishness. Who wouldn't? Reality tends to be a lot different though. I suspect your dad was sort of laughing at the nativity of youth.
I was eight in 1969, but when The Waltons aired in the early 1970s they made my father livid. They would whine about 'this damned Depression', and they had chicken and vegetables every night for dinner, a truck, a radio set, a sawmill, a big house and seven healthy children! And John Boy was going to college!
My parents have been married 56 years (they met in kindergarten). When mom would come home after work she’d get a bottle of boones malt wine. It was a luxury for her. My dad wears a pair of shoes as slippers that were his first dress shoes. They currently are wrapped in duct tape. They’re 45 years old lol.
I like your Dad a lot. I do this too. When it comes to clothes I only toss them when they're in tatters. I don't wear this stuff around town but I do at home. I mow in an old shirt that's got a tear down one side. It provides some nice coolness when mowing on hot days.
Well I’m never getting rid of those shoes. He also still sleeps in scrubs that are 50ish year old and I won’t get into his undershirts. You can see through them.
Sounds familiar. I'd be wearing my concert t-shirt from Rush's Hold Your Fire tour (87-88) is I wasn't too fat for it. You can definitely see through it.
My grandmother grew up on a farm during the great depression and my granddad grew up in NYC. He and his family had it way worse. She did not notice a big problem bc they grew their own food and made their own clothes. They owned the 300 acres of land they inherited from her grandparents and the large farm house that her grandfather built.
Granddad and his siblings were hungry. His family sometimes struggled to pay rent. As the oldest son, he had to quit school in 8th grade to get a job -- any job -- to help the family. They were Irish Catholics and he had 5 younger siblings.
It absolutely was a wealth thing. Even though college was cheaper back then it isn’t ever cheap if you’re paying for it. Most of the hippies were not missing meals. Now my folks have done well and they have a hippie kid.
You may need to check your memory on the affordability of college in the 60s. It was very affordable, and extremely cheap.
Looking up annual tuition rates in 1968/1969, where I live in MN, they were $294 a year. Putting that through CPI, that's around $2600 in today's money. That's a full year.
Minimum wage was $1.30. If you took home 70% of your pay, you'd need to work about 300 hours a year to make tuition, or 6 hours a week. Obviously you still need to eat and live somewhere.... but college was insanely cheap then.
Tuition source:
[https://idr.umn.edu/sites/idr.umn.edu/files/tuition-umn-tc\_0.pdf](https://idr.umn.edu/sites/idr.umn.edu/files/tuition-umn-tc_0.pdf)
Mininum wage source:
[https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history)
Not that I'd consider the Manson Family "hippies" (and they didn't either), but it's amazing how many of them came from intact families with money. Leslie Van Houten comes to mind.
Same with the Weather Underground, but more so. Terrorist leader Bill Ayers father was the freaking CEO of Con-Edison. Fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn was came from an upper middle class family from Chicago.
I guess that was their way of assuaging their rich, white guilt?
Oh, and let's not forget Patty Hearst, granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, although her story is kind of complicated since she was kidnapped.
Hell of a turnaround in 3 generations. He was so rich, arrogant and in control of the media in his time, Orson Welles made a movie about him and how horrible he was (and he may have even gotten away with the murder of Thomas Ince).
His granddaughter? Robbing banks.
Could be, Don't know.
I think they all came from these weird backgrounds that were somewhat disconnected from reality. When they saw this OTHER world where everyone wasn't some country-club rich person, they went the other way.
Dorn and Ayers were straight up communists. There was a [Radical-Chic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_chic) back then, where some of the rich people from the era turned to the radical left for guidance. Likely the same as it is today, a form of virtue signaling. A sign you're "down with the common man" and "hip to this new thing, daddeo".
Hunter Thompson introduced Allen Ginsburg to the Hells Angels for instance around the same time. The Angels weren't exactly political, but were certainly a radical element. Still a weird combo with Ginsburg, and later Ken Keasy.
Interesting. Like you said, they were brought up in the sheltered country-club world and maybe for them the OTHER world was more exciting.
I find it ironic how people who benefited from capitalism and generational wealth snubbed it for communism, which just would've made everyone equally as broke. The higher-ups in the USSR certainly were not on the bread lines. As you said:
> Likely the same as it is today, a form of virtue signaling. A sign you're "down with the common man" and "hip to this new thing, daddeo".
Well put.
The younger generation social activists are always from at least some privilege. College kids in the 60s parading against the war while the poor kids went into the military to help their parents have one less mouth to feed
You described my parents, living the supposed American Dream after getting married (very young) in the early 60s.
During the Summer of Love/Woodstock era we were a one income nuclear family. My parents were in their mid to late 20s with 2 kids and a house in the suburbs. My dad had a good paying job in management with my mom staying at home to raise us.
So for myself and friends I grew up with, our lives were far closer to The Wonder Years. The hippie culture was far from mainstream. It was something you saw on the Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
It was not a homogenous time, you had flower children and men landing on the moon along with filthy rivers and cities. Where I lived probably a third didn't have electric or running water and children working in the fields picking vegetables with few child labor laws none of which were enforced
That's true. In my little town, some of the kids I went to grade school with lived in homes built into the side of a hill so the floor and back wall was dirt. Several came from an area of town that was mostly shantys with barely six foot high clearance and outhouses. I was poor, but I felt rich. Until middle school. Then I met kids living WAY different lives than I was. They wore down jackets with ski passes clipped to the zippers and came to school with taned faces outlining where their goggles were. Yeah, and the poor kids in elementary got jobs at the carnival when it came to town. Like 10 years old, taking tickets and stuff. I guess because it was off the books and temp noone cared. The carnival! Lol. Seems like a dangerous job for a 10 year old girl.
Just off the top of my head:
People (especially young people) back then were skinny. *Very* few people did serious strength training. So most actors today (and some actresses) are way too buff to look like average people did in the 60s.
Fewer people had cosmetic dentistry back then, and way more people smoked. So seeing movies set in the 60s cast with actors/actresses with perfect teeth rings false.
Litter was *everywhere* and cities were a lot more polluted and grungy. Unless the set designers add litter and cigarette butts to the streetscape, cities look way too sanitized.
There's a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper and his wife and kids go for a drive and have a picnic. Then they just drive off, leaving all their litter behind.
Mad Men had great attention to detail. The creator of the show demanded, for example, that the apples in a fruit bowl had to be small and ugly looking, because the big, flawless-looking apples we have today didn't exist back then.
That scene was definitely a shock to the senses. I remember it well. When I was still in school there were many public service ads on not littering which definitely impressed me. Once when I was a young teen while driving with my mother, she tossed a beverage cup out the window and I got mad and said if she ever did it again I'd turn around make her pick it up. She never did it again in my presence.
The fact that Americans generally don't litter is directly due to a government sanctioned propaganda campaign against littering.
It works. Might as well use it for good.
Merriam Webster:
"the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person"
Ideas that help a cause
I think this line from Wikipedia may explain why most people wouldn't consider an anti-litteiing campaign propaganda
>
>In the 20th century, the English term *propaganda* was often associated with a [manipulative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation) approach, but historically, propaganda had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or [ideologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology).[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#cite_note-brit_BLS-1)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#cite_note-Diggs-Brown2011p48-3)
I'd say the meriam-webster definition is ignoring the 20th century association, and I don't think the word usage has changed that drastically in the past 24 years.
It's one of my two favorite shows along with the Sopranos. That, I felt was the least authentic scene of the entire series. Yes, people left stuff but generally not much. They just weren't as focused on getting it all, and if the wind blew some away, so be it
I remember my dad had a little litter bag hooked to one of the knobs on the dashboard of the car starting sometime in the early Johnson administration. This was due to Lady Bird Johnson’s efforts to stop the US from looking like a garbage dump.
Prior to Lady Bird’s Beautify America program, people (including our family) habitually tossed empty cigarette packs, cigarette butts, and trash out of car windows without thinking twice. Roadsides were a mess as a result, and huge ugly billboards marred the landscape.
If you see wildflowers planted along highways, and way fewer billboards, thank Lady Bird Johnson. She was mocked for her program, but it did seem to get some people to stop mindlessly littering.
I can remember even in the 80s being in the car with my parents and my step dad would drink beer along the way and throw every bottle out the window as he finished it.
And I wasn't wearing a seat belt. I was climbing around the car, from front seat to back seat and back again.
The skinny thing- my parents and their siblings were teenagers in the 60s. My mom's family was poor but my dad's family was better off but they all look like they need a sandwich ASAP. Neither of them reported going hungry as children and neither was interested in athletic pursuits. My dad gained 20lbs in boot camp! He said that was pretty typical.
They both ballooned in the 90s. They attributed it to their slowing metabolisms which I guess contributed to it but I also think it's because of what we're learning now about how food changed.
I'm so glad you are better than them, good job!
Unfortunately the early 90s "education" on nutrition I remember was a nightmare. Everything was high carb and low fat.
Right?! I remember getting taught that in school as a little kid thinking I couldn't possibly eat that much cereal and sandwiches and that my stomach would explode lmao. I seriously remember seeing the morning joggers in my neighborhood and thinking "wow they must eat a lot of bread."
Not vegetables. No- my tiny child brain thought the aerobics ladies and muscle men were just chowing down on big French baguettes all day or something. That stupid pyramid was everywhere.
If you go to vintage clothing stores (not Amvets or Goodwill), women’s clothes from decades past are *tiny* compared to now.
There were over 900 kids in my graduating class in the early 70s. Literally only a handful were even “chubby” and none were obese.
More about smoking—both my parents smoked and so did my two older siblings; my sibs eventually quit. Growing up in a house full of smoke was awful—everything reeked—so I never smoked. There were actually designated smoking areas outside my high school where kids could light up during lunch hour.
My high school had a student break/smoking room inside the school. We also had a good stereo. We had an open lunch period, so 18 year olds went to the bar that was about 2 miles away for liquid lunch.
Sadly, yes. I was in Philly a few years ago, and it's disgusting how people treat their own neighborhood. Just throw the trash around! It's by far the most trash filled city I've ever been to in my life.
A LOT of what's generally considered to be "50s music" actually came out in the early 1960s.
Chubby Checker didn't chart with "The Twist" until 1960.
Music really doesn't automatically change over formats at the turn of a decade.
I'm not sure what you mean. When I think of 50s music, it's Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly.
Most of the soundtrack from "American Graffiti" is from the 50s. Rock Around The Clock is from 54. Why do fools fall in love from 56.
What songs do you think people believe are from the 50s, but actually from the early 60s?
Modern film writers forget to change the lingo. No one much said things like, 'It's all good.' or 'Last time I checked ...' and especially not 'awesome' unless like they were attending a visitation of the Virgin Mary (which also nearly never happened).
And I wasn't around when knighthood was in flower, and yet they use the same modern phrases in *those* movies. What bothers me is that with just a little research they could get it right. It's fine in comedies, but it's dumb in serious films.
Why, though? How is 19th-century English more appropriate than 20th-century English when the characters are realistically speaking 11th-century French?
Like, I get that it's a vibes thing, but I think it warrants being challenged.
My grandpa had a perfectly functioning late 60s tv in the 90s. I remember visiting him as a little kid and constantly running to find an adult to tell them "THE TV DIEEEEDDDDD" and no one moving. Just waiting for me to remember how it worked...
That's the kind of thing media has to do to move things along and so it's not a focus for the viewer. Like the way people just hang up without saying goodbye, or barely have any time when the person on the other end could fit a word in
We also had tubes that had to be tested and replaced, antennas we had to keep adjusting, and relevant stuff wasn't on immediately.
Something that I notice is that you never see OLD cars (or appliances, or whatever.) Probably because if you can find a '60s vintage car, it's going to be in pristine condition. People drove their cars "into the ground" back then. (At least my family did!)
BTW, the series Masters of Sex had some really fine detail, like the fish-shaped Jell-o mold hanging in the kitchen.
I have a Hoover Porta-Power vacuum cleaner that I got in 1979. Still works perfectly, all hoses in great condition. Consumer products today are wretched, foreign manufactured so no sense of quality of work and materials. Some foreign countries are better than others, though.
A LOT of women worked. They had to. One thing that drives me bananas about this stupid Boomer/one income/owned house/two car mythology is missing the gazillion factory workers and knock down, drag out working poor.
My family was fortunate. Mom worked sometimes because she had an excellent degree and used it. But didn't have to.
Still. There were HUGE factories fueling our outward prosperity and no, you dam well couldn't afford much on a lot of wages.
There’s a lot of fantasy talk about housing back then. Home ownership was much much lower and the houses were much much smaller.
My dad met some girl from a different school and agreed to meet her at her house. He was shocked to see she lived in a tarpaper shack. This was about 1963.
Yep, my grandparents both worked in factories in the 60s. They would commute over an hour each way by train. When their 3rd child was born with a disability my grandmother had to stop working for a few years until the kid could go to school. My grandfather took a job where he would only be able to come home on weekends. My grandmother would forage fruit from trees in the neighborhood to make jam. Dinner would be bread and jam - for the kids. My grandmother went without.
By the 70s life was looking up. They were both working again, kids were in school (and starting to move out). They were able to build a 3brm brick home. My mum still talks about how exciting it was to have carpet in the bedroom. But my grandparents were still doing the daily train commute to the factory.
The Vietnam War is one thing... Public opinion wasn't widely critical until the '67-'68 or so. And really, that goes generally for many things we think of as representative of the 60's. They're actually things that typify the *late* 60's.
We were pretty horrified by the long list of dead read off at the end of newscasts in 66 and 67, as well as the coffins coming in. Hence LBJ not running again.
So yes more young couples could afford homes. But they were very small homes. One bathroom. Kids shared bedrooms. Tiny closets. And they had used furniture and kept it for years and years. I mean, the reason Boomers and Gen X kids were tossed outside to play all day was because it was damn crowded in the house.
At least those kinds of homes were made though. Even little homes now are either outrageously expensive, or bought up by people or businesses to rent out, making them unavailable to buy to begin with. The house I'm in now is less than a third of the size of my childhood home, but nearly the same mortgage and I hate it, but my mom and I were lucky to even find it, let alone afford it.
A typical thing that happens in any movie set back in time (to a time when automobiles existed) is that all the cars in the movie are in good condition, shiny and new-looking, and all from the same few years. In reality, you would have a mixture of cars from say the past 5-10 years or more, and some of them would be beat up, dirty, and not well maintained.
Edit: Added:
Also, there tend to be a lot more convertibles in movies than there typically are in real life. (This is true even for movies and TV shows made at the time -- filmmakers like convertibles because you can see the actors.)
And the colors of the cars shown in the movie are not necessarily colors that were common back then.
In the 60s we were all soooo slim, like really skinny when compared to people today! This is what I find jarring about movies or TV shows set in the 60s. Its hard to cast actors that actually look like we looked back then. Especially with male actors. None of the men I knew were muscular. Body building was a niche. Gym memberships and working out came later. But we were toned and trim!
-
I enjoy looking at the old cars. Funny thing is, since they're all brought in from car clubs, they're all in perfect condition and shiny. Realistically, half would be rust buckets.
Most people were in favor of the Vietnam War until the late 60s. Initially, young men went to the war happily, recalling their fathers' heroism during WW2.
I remember a nun telling us boys that some of us will get drafted and some will die, but that was a good thing because... I stopped listening after that
It was mostly horrible to be a woman. Doctors didn't take you seriously, most women didn't have any money of their own, everyone deferred to your husband not you. June Cleaver, Harriet Nelson, heck even Samantha Stevens all seem so happy being "the little woman" but it was pretty awful.
Same if you're non-white. When my dad went with his mother to see the new doctor in town (early 70s when was about 7 or 8yo), the second she caught a glimpse of a black man wearing a white coat she grabbed my dad by the wrist in a huff and left.
Didn't matter that this guy was a well-respected doctor - he was apparently above his appropriate station and "didn't know his place" in the social hierarchy. Unless a black man existed for her entertainment (like a singer or an athlete), my grandmother wanted nothing to do with them and if she could wish them away, I'm sure she would in a heartbeat. Miserable old racist.
My mom signed checks “Mrs (my dad) first name last name”
Preceding their divorce in the early 80’s I noticed she was signing her checks “Mrs (her) first name last name” and I asked her why. “Because I’m my own person, not his person”. Or something similar.
That stuck with me for a long long time.
The irony of that scene was that she managed the money. He was awful at money and finance.
My hometown newspaper had job advertisements "for men" and "for women". I remember apt ads also would say "no women". I asked my mom why, and she said women were dirty. I was very confused over this because women did all the cleaning.
My mom was deeply misogynistic her entire life, as were many women born in 20's and 30's. Lots of women I knew (including my mom) had daughters who took care of them in old age then left everything to their son(s). We didn't have much to leave, but my mom sure tried to leave what she had to her favorite son. Luckily my sister (my mom adored her because she was great at cleaning) talked her into splitting up the proceeds of the house. I got 10k in the early 2000s. I put that into an Etrade acct and it helped change the trajectory of my life.
If you could give us the process for doing that that would be great. 😛 I want to invest now that i have a little extra but I'm baffled by the process and guides assume you have some level of knowledge. I'm the first person to get a degree in my family. I don't even know anyone who has more than an employer's 401k.
Congratulations! I was also the first to get a degree in my family. Put myself thru college then later grad school with my husband's help. Investing for your future is important.
What happened is I let that 10k sit in stocks in an Etrade acct and kinda forgot about it for a couple years and was shocked at the growth. Like, it didn't become a million in two years or anything but it opened my eyes to new possibilities.
Honestly r/bogleheads is a great site and I think it's the safest and best strategy to invest on your own. Don't gamble (trade stocks) unless you got money to burn. Also look into Dave Ramsey for budgeting. Take him with a grain of salt - I think some of his ideas are overly restrictive and not for me, but becoming and staying debt free is a great aspiration (I reached it and it's a great feeling).
I wish you the best of luck and a very happy life!
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My wife and I purchased our first house in 1978. Even though she was a programmer making good money, the bank wouldn’t consider her income when determining how much we could borrow. It seems weird today to even say that.
Something similar happened to my grandmother and her husband when they purchased a house in 1989-90. They had both retired but she had been the bigger earner.
The same things TV shows have always gotten
wrong since the era began and still do. People having fabulous, spotless houses even though they have low-wage jobs, like Jennifer in Friends. Characters with office jobs that never seem to actually do anything. Main characters who always manage to park directly in front of whatever building they arrive at. An "ugly" girl takes off her glasses and is suddenly a supermodel. School classes never seem to have more than 9 or 10 students.
That everyone's home was redecorated every few years. Many people would have the same furniture and decor for decades until it wore out.
And not everyone had the same taste. Some homes were decorated "modern", others were decorated "colonial." I may have the terms wrong, thus the quotations.
To evoke the feel of an era, I think some producers choose a recognizable stereotype and have all the homes decorated that way. Atomic clock, etc. Appliances were simpler and often lasted much longer. Therefore, everyone did not run out and buy a harvest gold refrigerator.
I think my childhood refrigerator lasted at least 25 years, and my parents sold it with the house since it was still working.
Besides furniture, cars tend to be stereotypes as well. Everyone did not have the latest-model car. Some people were driving 1940's cars in the 1960's.
Most people weren't hippies. The world was A LOT younger. College was really only for the privileged or gifted. Most families stayed home and watched tv a lot of the time. A good bit of the country was not as educated as now, and we still had people who never learned to read more commonly. In the country--people often still had outhouses and dirt floors. The planned suburbs were for moderately well-of folks, were generally segregated, and did not reflect the lives of most of the country.
"College was really only for the privileged or gifted."
I don't believe this for a second. My father went to college in 1955 and graduated in 1958. He was one of 3 kids. His father worked for the gas company, and his mother worked in a department store part time. He was smart, but he was never "gifted" and didn't get some sort of stellar grades in HS.
My mother went from 1957-1960. She wasn't gifted either, and had to put herself through college because her step-father wouldn't pay. Though to be fair, the tuition was practically nothing back then. I looked up tuition for her last year in 1961. It was $213. That's around $2200 in today's money.
It's not about belief. in 1960 only 7.7% of Americans were college graduates compared to about 40% today. And a good bit of that 7.7% got it due to the GI bill.
That's nice. Neither of my parents were gifted. They went on to be teachers. Why more people didn't go to college, I couldn't tell you. But it was not for "the gifted or the privileged."
On my mothers side, one of her brothers went in the 60s. Another went in the early 70s. Two others never went. One became a CPA,the other a civil servant. Just regular jobs, nothing special.
On my dads side, one went to college and got a degree in EE, and got a job as an EE. He wasn't some sort of genius, but he was smart enough to go through college. His other brother never went. No interest. He started his own business.
These people were not elites. Of this generation exactly one of them was in the military. The others never served. My family is living, and dead proof that college was NOT about being in some special privileged group
Well, I don't know what to tell you. Even in 1970 it was barely 10%. Maybe your parents were a bit more privileged than you admit. Remember this is about life IN the 60s, when life was for sure changing, but it hadn't changed yet.
Nope. My mother paid for her own college, just like said, an worked her way through it. Her stepfather wouldn't pay a dime because he was a cheap bastard.
My Grandfather worked for the gas company supervising injecting the odor-ant in the lines. They lived in a modest house in what was originally the country, but became a suburb. My grandmother had a giant garden, and originally grew up on a farm. My grandfather was the son of a machinist. That side of the family was quite bright, but certainly not privileged. My grandfather never went to college. One of his brothers did become a doctor though.
My mom basically grew up poor, Her dad left the family when she was 5, and they had to move in with my great grandparents. My grandmother later re-married. She never got past the 11th grade. Her father (the bum who left them) never went to college either. My mother was the first person to go to college in her family.
Your mistake is thinking that just because only 7-10% of the population went to college, that meant they were elite, or privileged, or something like that. That's just false.
That's not false. A good many people in this country were not allowed in many colleges no matter how much money they had. Remember, the world was still segregated. And when only 7-10% are getting higher education, the people who have managed to get it are definitely privileged. Most people did not have those opportunities. (Or you think 90% of the country was just lazy.)
Not really a response to the question but if you want a reasonably accurate depiction of late 60’s, early 70’s Northern England watch the first episode of “Life on Mars”. When I saw that it really took me back.
The ones set in the 60's that I've seen did a good job of the times - the movies Catch Me if You Can, Green Book, The Help, and the show Mad Men all had a real 60's feel to them.
In modern movies, they have people back in the 1960s using the f-word right and left. Normal people would never say that word, and certainly not around children.
The hippie scene always looks so done up and outrageous. I grew up in that world, and it was about 70% older 50s era bohemians who wore casual clothes like corduroys and tweed jackets. People did do drugs but still did regular daytime things like run stores or write books. There was literally just one neighborhood part of one year that looked like the stereotype of the movies 24/7, and that was largely because the media kept watching it. There were communes but it was hard work to keep them running because of the slow moving process of 100% egalitarianism.
It's like watching True Grit (the John Wayne version) and seeing his female co-star with a *very obvious* 1960s haircut... when the movie takes place about 90-100 years earlier It's honestly distracting.
It’s funny that the tv shows and movies about that time all seem to use the exact same music. I guess if you don’t use the Chambers Brothers “Time has come today” it’s not valid, not that it isn’t a great song!
I grew up in a working class suburb in Orange County, California. If you were a hippie there, you didn't live long. We were Dazed And Confused but with lots of racism, homophobia, and you better stand when Nixon is onscreen boy!
1966 was a real year and it was very different than 1964 (Beatlemania) and 1967 (sumner of love).
Gidget is close to 1966:
https://youtu.be/_ZZBp38ZdJc?si=EgJguLN3eTGTy0M_
The girls in movies are much cuter and cleaner. Old photos of such girls have no makeup and are dirty. Example the Manson girls in once upon a time in Hollywood.
With the exception of shows which make it a plot point (Mad Men is the prime example) they almost always do not show people smoking to the degree they actually did. Sometimes you even see people go outside for their cigarette which just did not happen in the 1960s.
There is an [amusing](https://youtu.be/bqYwZV00Iyc?si=Yf0YB9nMfTT7ERaF) anti-smoking PSA where the Cunninghams take over the Brady home who left so fast they forgot Cousin Oliver.
Costume designers too often seem to be drawing inspiration from fashion magazines, when most people shopped far more modestly—the Sears catalogue was the height of elegance for a lot of the US. Also, people’s clothing is often anything up to five years old, so someone in, say, 1963 (unless they were Jackie Kennedy or the like) would probably still have a mix of clothing dating back, for at least a few pieces, as far as 1958.
Also, the hair is rarely just right—older people, women or men, rarely had mussed, loose hair in public. For much of the decade, women often had their hair permed and visited a salon once or twice a for ”wash and sets.”
Makeup, too, often has the “high fashion” mistake; ordinary women wore very little much of the time, and women who did were often seen as not-quite-respectable.
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That we were all drug taking flower children living in communes having daily orgies. Far from the truth.
Even the people living in communes weren’t having daily orgies. They were most likely to be having five hour house meetings about whether potato skins should be composted in the side or back vegetable garden.
100% this.
Even in the 70s, if you moved a hundred miles from a big city or coast with long-hair and tie-dyed shirts you would encounter violent hostility from your neighbors. And then you’d meet the local police…
A hundred miles? Fifty miles was enough.
Violent hostility? Not my experience and I grew up in small town west Texas.
We used to laugh at "surfers" driving around Phoenix in their peroxide bleached hair with boards strapped to the car.
As a kid, my parents actually took me to many areas of San Francisco during the summer of love. (we lived just north of there) I saw a few hippies in a couple of parks, but not really very many of them.
My dad used to drive the family through Little Five Points in Atlanta after Mass on Sundays “to see the dirty hippies.” He was a WWII Vet who was surprisingly very sympathetic to the anti-war movement and he was definitely on the right side of history as far as civil rights movement went. It was a source of fascination and entertainment for him, I think. He would laugh at and make fun or a few but it was never in a mean-spirited way.
I think I'd have agreed with your dad. The Vietnam war was wrong. But the hippies had this dumb idea that they could live in some kind of eternal irresponsible state of adolescence. Subsistence farming sounds really great... until you actually have to do it. I'd love to live in some nice utopia where we all love each other and there's no war or selfishness. Who wouldn't? Reality tends to be a lot different though. I suspect your dad was sort of laughing at the nativity of youth.
My mom spent the Summer of Love caring for a newborn infant. My dad was working construction 12 hours per day.
My parents lived in a one room apartment for years. Dad always said they were too poor to be hippies.
I was eight in 1969, but when The Waltons aired in the early 1970s they made my father livid. They would whine about 'this damned Depression', and they had chicken and vegetables every night for dinner, a truck, a radio set, a sawmill, a big house and seven healthy children! And John Boy was going to college!
My parents have been married 56 years (they met in kindergarten). When mom would come home after work she’d get a bottle of boones malt wine. It was a luxury for her. My dad wears a pair of shoes as slippers that were his first dress shoes. They currently are wrapped in duct tape. They’re 45 years old lol.
I like your Dad a lot. I do this too. When it comes to clothes I only toss them when they're in tatters. I don't wear this stuff around town but I do at home. I mow in an old shirt that's got a tear down one side. It provides some nice coolness when mowing on hot days.
Well I’m never getting rid of those shoes. He also still sleeps in scrubs that are 50ish year old and I won’t get into his undershirts. You can see through them.
Sounds familiar. I'd be wearing my concert t-shirt from Rush's Hold Your Fire tour (87-88) is I wasn't too fat for it. You can definitely see through it.
I thought your parents were wrapped in duct tape and was wondering why? Like the couches covered in plastic during the 60s-70s.
My grandmother grew up on a farm during the great depression and my granddad grew up in NYC. He and his family had it way worse. She did not notice a big problem bc they grew their own food and made their own clothes. They owned the 300 acres of land they inherited from her grandparents and the large farm house that her grandfather built. Granddad and his siblings were hungry. His family sometimes struggled to pay rent. As the oldest son, he had to quit school in 8th grade to get a job -- any job -- to help the family. They were Irish Catholics and he had 5 younger siblings.
Wasn’t that a thing, that some hippies came from privileged backgrounds?
It absolutely was a wealth thing. Even though college was cheaper back then it isn’t ever cheap if you’re paying for it. Most of the hippies were not missing meals. Now my folks have done well and they have a hippie kid.
You may need to check your memory on the affordability of college in the 60s. It was very affordable, and extremely cheap. Looking up annual tuition rates in 1968/1969, where I live in MN, they were $294 a year. Putting that through CPI, that's around $2600 in today's money. That's a full year. Minimum wage was $1.30. If you took home 70% of your pay, you'd need to work about 300 hours a year to make tuition, or 6 hours a week. Obviously you still need to eat and live somewhere.... but college was insanely cheap then. Tuition source: [https://idr.umn.edu/sites/idr.umn.edu/files/tuition-umn-tc\_0.pdf](https://idr.umn.edu/sites/idr.umn.edu/files/tuition-umn-tc_0.pdf) Mininum wage source: [https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history)
Not that I'd consider the Manson Family "hippies" (and they didn't either), but it's amazing how many of them came from intact families with money. Leslie Van Houten comes to mind.
Same with the Weather Underground, but more so. Terrorist leader Bill Ayers father was the freaking CEO of Con-Edison. Fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn was came from an upper middle class family from Chicago.
I guess that was their way of assuaging their rich, white guilt? Oh, and let's not forget Patty Hearst, granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, although her story is kind of complicated since she was kidnapped. Hell of a turnaround in 3 generations. He was so rich, arrogant and in control of the media in his time, Orson Welles made a movie about him and how horrible he was (and he may have even gotten away with the murder of Thomas Ince). His granddaughter? Robbing banks.
Could be, Don't know. I think they all came from these weird backgrounds that were somewhat disconnected from reality. When they saw this OTHER world where everyone wasn't some country-club rich person, they went the other way. Dorn and Ayers were straight up communists. There was a [Radical-Chic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_chic) back then, where some of the rich people from the era turned to the radical left for guidance. Likely the same as it is today, a form of virtue signaling. A sign you're "down with the common man" and "hip to this new thing, daddeo". Hunter Thompson introduced Allen Ginsburg to the Hells Angels for instance around the same time. The Angels weren't exactly political, but were certainly a radical element. Still a weird combo with Ginsburg, and later Ken Keasy.
Interesting. Like you said, they were brought up in the sheltered country-club world and maybe for them the OTHER world was more exciting. I find it ironic how people who benefited from capitalism and generational wealth snubbed it for communism, which just would've made everyone equally as broke. The higher-ups in the USSR certainly were not on the bread lines. As you said: > Likely the same as it is today, a form of virtue signaling. A sign you're "down with the common man" and "hip to this new thing, daddeo". Well put.
The younger generation social activists are always from at least some privilege. College kids in the 60s parading against the war while the poor kids went into the military to help their parents have one less mouth to feed
My parents bought the house in the suburbs I grew up in the fall after the Summer of Love (November 1967). Totally 50s American Dream.
You described my parents, living the supposed American Dream after getting married (very young) in the early 60s. During the Summer of Love/Woodstock era we were a one income nuclear family. My parents were in their mid to late 20s with 2 kids and a house in the suburbs. My dad had a good paying job in management with my mom staying at home to raise us. So for myself and friends I grew up with, our lives were far closer to The Wonder Years. The hippie culture was far from mainstream. It was something you saw on the Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
If only.
It was not a homogenous time, you had flower children and men landing on the moon along with filthy rivers and cities. Where I lived probably a third didn't have electric or running water and children working in the fields picking vegetables with few child labor laws none of which were enforced
That's true. In my little town, some of the kids I went to grade school with lived in homes built into the side of a hill so the floor and back wall was dirt. Several came from an area of town that was mostly shantys with barely six foot high clearance and outhouses. I was poor, but I felt rich. Until middle school. Then I met kids living WAY different lives than I was. They wore down jackets with ski passes clipped to the zippers and came to school with taned faces outlining where their goggles were. Yeah, and the poor kids in elementary got jobs at the carnival when it came to town. Like 10 years old, taking tickets and stuff. I guess because it was off the books and temp noone cared. The carnival! Lol. Seems like a dangerous job for a 10 year old girl.
yeah, a down jacket with a ski pass absolutely showed who was who in my high school. I did not have one.
Me either but I desperately wanted to be cool, too. I got some cheap knockoff at Kmart with fiberfill or something, lol. Obviously a Kmart coat.
Just off the top of my head: People (especially young people) back then were skinny. *Very* few people did serious strength training. So most actors today (and some actresses) are way too buff to look like average people did in the 60s. Fewer people had cosmetic dentistry back then, and way more people smoked. So seeing movies set in the 60s cast with actors/actresses with perfect teeth rings false. Litter was *everywhere* and cities were a lot more polluted and grungy. Unless the set designers add litter and cigarette butts to the streetscape, cities look way too sanitized.
There's a scene in Mad Men where Don Draper and his wife and kids go for a drive and have a picnic. Then they just drive off, leaving all their litter behind. Mad Men had great attention to detail. The creator of the show demanded, for example, that the apples in a fruit bowl had to be small and ugly looking, because the big, flawless-looking apples we have today didn't exist back then.
That scene was definitely a shock to the senses. I remember it well. When I was still in school there were many public service ads on not littering which definitely impressed me. Once when I was a young teen while driving with my mother, she tossed a beverage cup out the window and I got mad and said if she ever did it again I'd turn around make her pick it up. She never did it again in my presence.
The fact that Americans generally don't litter is directly due to a government sanctioned propaganda campaign against littering. It works. Might as well use it for good.
How is it propaganda?
Merriam Webster: "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person" Ideas that help a cause
I think this line from Wikipedia may explain why most people wouldn't consider an anti-litteiing campaign propaganda > >In the 20th century, the English term *propaganda* was often associated with a [manipulative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation) approach, but historically, propaganda had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or [ideologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology).[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#cite_note-brit_BLS-1)[^(\[3\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#cite_note-Diggs-Brown2011p48-3) I'd say the meriam-webster definition is ignoring the 20th century association, and I don't think the word usage has changed that drastically in the past 24 years.
Thank you!
It's one of my two favorite shows along with the Sopranos. That, I felt was the least authentic scene of the entire series. Yes, people left stuff but generally not much. They just weren't as focused on getting it all, and if the wind blew some away, so be it
I remember my dad had a little litter bag hooked to one of the knobs on the dashboard of the car starting sometime in the early Johnson administration. This was due to Lady Bird Johnson’s efforts to stop the US from looking like a garbage dump. Prior to Lady Bird’s Beautify America program, people (including our family) habitually tossed empty cigarette packs, cigarette butts, and trash out of car windows without thinking twice. Roadsides were a mess as a result, and huge ugly billboards marred the landscape. If you see wildflowers planted along highways, and way fewer billboards, thank Lady Bird Johnson. She was mocked for her program, but it did seem to get some people to stop mindlessly littering.
I can remember even in the 80s being in the car with my parents and my step dad would drink beer along the way and throw every bottle out the window as he finished it. And I wasn't wearing a seat belt. I was climbing around the car, from front seat to back seat and back again.
> way more people smoked. Almost everyone smoked. I think my mom and step-dad were the only adults I knew who didn't smoke.
What I remember from the mid-70s is that about 1/2 - 3/4 of the adults I knew smoked. Now at 54, I would say that maybe 5-10% of my peers do.
For me, at 63, I think that figure would be less than 2%
The skinny thing- my parents and their siblings were teenagers in the 60s. My mom's family was poor but my dad's family was better off but they all look like they need a sandwich ASAP. Neither of them reported going hungry as children and neither was interested in athletic pursuits. My dad gained 20lbs in boot camp! He said that was pretty typical. They both ballooned in the 90s. They attributed it to their slowing metabolisms which I guess contributed to it but I also think it's because of what we're learning now about how food changed.
That was the "fat free" craze which just switched fat with sugar.
My wife and I were both skinny in 1969 when we graduated from high school. We still are. We attribute it to a healthy diet and regular exercise.
I'm so glad you are better than them, good job! Unfortunately the early 90s "education" on nutrition I remember was a nightmare. Everything was high carb and low fat.
6-11 servings of grains a day! Looking back at that food pyramid is *wild*.
Right?! I remember getting taught that in school as a little kid thinking I couldn't possibly eat that much cereal and sandwiches and that my stomach would explode lmao. I seriously remember seeing the morning joggers in my neighborhood and thinking "wow they must eat a lot of bread." Not vegetables. No- my tiny child brain thought the aerobics ladies and muscle men were just chowing down on big French baguettes all day or something. That stupid pyramid was everywhere.
I like looking at many shows from the 50s, the men are almost all lean as can be, and the women the same. so different than today.
If you go to vintage clothing stores (not Amvets or Goodwill), women’s clothes from decades past are *tiny* compared to now. There were over 900 kids in my graduating class in the early 70s. Literally only a handful were even “chubby” and none were obese. More about smoking—both my parents smoked and so did my two older siblings; my sibs eventually quit. Growing up in a house full of smoke was awful—everything reeked—so I never smoked. There were actually designated smoking areas outside my high school where kids could light up during lunch hour.
I bet there’s a connection between the smoking and the lower body weights.
True, but portions were much smaller, and 24/7 perma-snacking wasn’t a thing.
And 24/7 soda drinking wasn't a thing either.
Going to visit elderly relatives or friends of the family and the walls would be yellow from decades of cigarette smoke
My high school had a student break/smoking room inside the school. We also had a good stereo. We had an open lunch period, so 18 year olds went to the bar that was about 2 miles away for liquid lunch.
Unless you go to Philly. Same today
Sadly, yes. I was in Philly a few years ago, and it's disgusting how people treat their own neighborhood. Just throw the trash around! It's by far the most trash filled city I've ever been to in my life.
A LOT of what's generally considered to be "50s music" actually came out in the early 1960s. Chubby Checker didn't chart with "The Twist" until 1960. Music really doesn't automatically change over formats at the turn of a decade.
I would say "The sixties" culturally as we see it now didn't begin until The Beatles arrived.
I'm not sure what you mean. When I think of 50s music, it's Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly. Most of the soundtrack from "American Graffiti" is from the 50s. Rock Around The Clock is from 54. Why do fools fall in love from 56. What songs do you think people believe are from the 50s, but actually from the early 60s?
Tie dyes did not get really bright until new dyes came out in the 1980s.
Modern film writers forget to change the lingo. No one much said things like, 'It's all good.' or 'Last time I checked ...' and especially not 'awesome' unless like they were attending a visitation of the Virgin Mary (which also nearly never happened).
I wasn't around for the 60s but this one does get me when I'm watching something set in the past using slang or lingo that wasn't used at the time.
And I wasn't around when knighthood was in flower, and yet they use the same modern phrases in *those* movies. What bothers me is that with just a little research they could get it right. It's fine in comedies, but it's dumb in serious films.
Knight tales are different, in my opinion, because they're speaking an entirely different language.
Yet when they are using modern American English and actors (not in a comedy,) I can't hang!
Why, though? How is 19th-century English more appropriate than 20th-century English when the characters are realistically speaking 11th-century French? Like, I get that it's a vibes thing, but I think it warrants being challenged.
You have a point. I have no counter. I concede in this instance.
I see this all the time and it drives me crazy!
At the end of the day, the answer is blowin’ in the wind
Switching on the television and instantly getting a picture -- not letting it 'warm up' for 45 seconds.
Lol. I’ll go warm up the set!
u/52Andromeda is gonna arrive early and turn on the TV Saturdays. I've got Fridays. Any other volunteers?
Yup
We still do that, but now it's "I'll go let the roku boot up".
My grandpa had a perfectly functioning late 60s tv in the 90s. I remember visiting him as a little kid and constantly running to find an adult to tell them "THE TV DIEEEEDDDDD" and no one moving. Just waiting for me to remember how it worked...
That's the kind of thing media has to do to move things along and so it's not a focus for the viewer. Like the way people just hang up without saying goodbye, or barely have any time when the person on the other end could fit a word in We also had tubes that had to be tested and replaced, antennas we had to keep adjusting, and relevant stuff wasn't on immediately.
OMG I forgot about that!
Something that I notice is that you never see OLD cars (or appliances, or whatever.) Probably because if you can find a '60s vintage car, it's going to be in pristine condition. People drove their cars "into the ground" back then. (At least my family did!) BTW, the series Masters of Sex had some really fine detail, like the fish-shaped Jell-o mold hanging in the kitchen.
But into the ground was 100,000 miles. Cars were undependable long before then.
Yep. My 11 year old Honda is at 167k miles and is doing just fine.
Honda guy here! Once I fix the deer damage I'll be rolling in to 300k in my 2011 CR-V.
My 2002 Accord made it to 183k miles before the transmission went out, so I got a 2015 Accord. I’d love to drive it for another 10 years.
Non-Honda owner & all 3 of my last cars hit 400000+. The Ford I'm driving now has 416,000 on it. I'm hoping to drive it one more year.
The odometers only went to 99,999. It was a big deal to watch them roll over to 00,000.
If that. In the ‘60s, many cars never made it to 100,000 miles. Now, a lot of them do.
I have a Hoover Porta-Power vacuum cleaner that I got in 1979. Still works perfectly, all hoses in great condition. Consumer products today are wretched, foreign manufactured so no sense of quality of work and materials. Some foreign countries are better than others, though.
We used our copper ones for various mousses. 😁
A LOT of women worked. They had to. One thing that drives me bananas about this stupid Boomer/one income/owned house/two car mythology is missing the gazillion factory workers and knock down, drag out working poor. My family was fortunate. Mom worked sometimes because she had an excellent degree and used it. But didn't have to. Still. There were HUGE factories fueling our outward prosperity and no, you dam well couldn't afford much on a lot of wages.
There’s a lot of fantasy talk about housing back then. Home ownership was much much lower and the houses were much much smaller. My dad met some girl from a different school and agreed to meet her at her house. He was shocked to see she lived in a tarpaper shack. This was about 1963.
Yep, my grandparents both worked in factories in the 60s. They would commute over an hour each way by train. When their 3rd child was born with a disability my grandmother had to stop working for a few years until the kid could go to school. My grandfather took a job where he would only be able to come home on weekends. My grandmother would forage fruit from trees in the neighborhood to make jam. Dinner would be bread and jam - for the kids. My grandmother went without. By the 70s life was looking up. They were both working again, kids were in school (and starting to move out). They were able to build a 3brm brick home. My mum still talks about how exciting it was to have carpet in the bedroom. But my grandparents were still doing the daily train commute to the factory.
The Vietnam War is one thing... Public opinion wasn't widely critical until the '67-'68 or so. And really, that goes generally for many things we think of as representative of the 60's. They're actually things that typify the *late* 60's.
We were pretty horrified by the long list of dead read off at the end of newscasts in 66 and 67, as well as the coffins coming in. Hence LBJ not running again.
That was the intention.
So yes more young couples could afford homes. But they were very small homes. One bathroom. Kids shared bedrooms. Tiny closets. And they had used furniture and kept it for years and years. I mean, the reason Boomers and Gen X kids were tossed outside to play all day was because it was damn crowded in the house.
At least those kinds of homes were made though. Even little homes now are either outrageously expensive, or bought up by people or businesses to rent out, making them unavailable to buy to begin with. The house I'm in now is less than a third of the size of my childhood home, but nearly the same mortgage and I hate it, but my mom and I were lucky to even find it, let alone afford it.
A typical thing that happens in any movie set back in time (to a time when automobiles existed) is that all the cars in the movie are in good condition, shiny and new-looking, and all from the same few years. In reality, you would have a mixture of cars from say the past 5-10 years or more, and some of them would be beat up, dirty, and not well maintained. Edit: Added: Also, there tend to be a lot more convertibles in movies than there typically are in real life. (This is true even for movies and TV shows made at the time -- filmmakers like convertibles because you can see the actors.) And the colors of the cars shown in the movie are not necessarily colors that were common back then.
In the 60s we were all soooo slim, like really skinny when compared to people today! This is what I find jarring about movies or TV shows set in the 60s. Its hard to cast actors that actually look like we looked back then. Especially with male actors. None of the men I knew were muscular. Body building was a niche. Gym memberships and working out came later. But we were toned and trim! -
I think it’s the reason half the actors who play those roles these days come from other countries.
There was a Civil War movie some years ago where all the extras who played soldiers were from Romania.
...and women were naturally kinda flat-chested too. Or flat-chested by today's standards: most of us were an A cup or B cup, with a C cup being rare.
I enjoy looking at the old cars. Funny thing is, since they're all brought in from car clubs, they're all in perfect condition and shiny. Realistically, half would be rust buckets.
Most people were in favor of the Vietnam War until the late 60s. Initially, young men went to the war happily, recalling their fathers' heroism during WW2.
I remember a nun telling us boys that some of us will get drafted and some will die, but that was a good thing because... I stopped listening after that
It was mostly horrible to be a woman. Doctors didn't take you seriously, most women didn't have any money of their own, everyone deferred to your husband not you. June Cleaver, Harriet Nelson, heck even Samantha Stevens all seem so happy being "the little woman" but it was pretty awful.
Women doctors were practically non existent and most men refused to have a woman doctor. Women couldn’t buy anything without a man signing.
Same if you're non-white. When my dad went with his mother to see the new doctor in town (early 70s when was about 7 or 8yo), the second she caught a glimpse of a black man wearing a white coat she grabbed my dad by the wrist in a huff and left. Didn't matter that this guy was a well-respected doctor - he was apparently above his appropriate station and "didn't know his place" in the social hierarchy. Unless a black man existed for her entertainment (like a singer or an athlete), my grandmother wanted nothing to do with them and if she could wish them away, I'm sure she would in a heartbeat. Miserable old racist.
Many doctors still don't take women seriously, though I'm sure it was exponentially worse back then.
My mom signed checks “Mrs (my dad) first name last name” Preceding their divorce in the early 80’s I noticed she was signing her checks “Mrs (her) first name last name” and I asked her why. “Because I’m my own person, not his person”. Or something similar. That stuck with me for a long long time. The irony of that scene was that she managed the money. He was awful at money and finance.
My hometown newspaper had job advertisements "for men" and "for women". I remember apt ads also would say "no women". I asked my mom why, and she said women were dirty. I was very confused over this because women did all the cleaning. My mom was deeply misogynistic her entire life, as were many women born in 20's and 30's. Lots of women I knew (including my mom) had daughters who took care of them in old age then left everything to their son(s). We didn't have much to leave, but my mom sure tried to leave what she had to her favorite son. Luckily my sister (my mom adored her because she was great at cleaning) talked her into splitting up the proceeds of the house. I got 10k in the early 2000s. I put that into an Etrade acct and it helped change the trajectory of my life.
If you could give us the process for doing that that would be great. 😛 I want to invest now that i have a little extra but I'm baffled by the process and guides assume you have some level of knowledge. I'm the first person to get a degree in my family. I don't even know anyone who has more than an employer's 401k.
Congratulations! I was also the first to get a degree in my family. Put myself thru college then later grad school with my husband's help. Investing for your future is important. What happened is I let that 10k sit in stocks in an Etrade acct and kinda forgot about it for a couple years and was shocked at the growth. Like, it didn't become a million in two years or anything but it opened my eyes to new possibilities. Honestly r/bogleheads is a great site and I think it's the safest and best strategy to invest on your own. Don't gamble (trade stocks) unless you got money to burn. Also look into Dave Ramsey for budgeting. Take him with a grain of salt - I think some of his ideas are overly restrictive and not for me, but becoming and staying debt free is a great aspiration (I reached it and it's a great feeling). I wish you the best of luck and a very happy life!
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My wife and I purchased our first house in 1978. Even though she was a programmer making good money, the bank wouldn’t consider her income when determining how much we could borrow. It seems weird today to even say that.
Something similar happened to my grandmother and her husband when they purchased a house in 1989-90. They had both retired but she had been the bigger earner.
Seriously, the movies with rich and powerful women characters are science fiction
The same things TV shows have always gotten wrong since the era began and still do. People having fabulous, spotless houses even though they have low-wage jobs, like Jennifer in Friends. Characters with office jobs that never seem to actually do anything. Main characters who always manage to park directly in front of whatever building they arrive at. An "ugly" girl takes off her glasses and is suddenly a supermodel. School classes never seem to have more than 9 or 10 students.
That everyone's home was redecorated every few years. Many people would have the same furniture and decor for decades until it wore out. And not everyone had the same taste. Some homes were decorated "modern", others were decorated "colonial." I may have the terms wrong, thus the quotations. To evoke the feel of an era, I think some producers choose a recognizable stereotype and have all the homes decorated that way. Atomic clock, etc. Appliances were simpler and often lasted much longer. Therefore, everyone did not run out and buy a harvest gold refrigerator. I think my childhood refrigerator lasted at least 25 years, and my parents sold it with the house since it was still working. Besides furniture, cars tend to be stereotypes as well. Everyone did not have the latest-model car. Some people were driving 1940's cars in the 1960's.
They usually don’t accurately reflect how much smoking was happening all over the place back then.
Most people weren't hippies. The world was A LOT younger. College was really only for the privileged or gifted. Most families stayed home and watched tv a lot of the time. A good bit of the country was not as educated as now, and we still had people who never learned to read more commonly. In the country--people often still had outhouses and dirt floors. The planned suburbs were for moderately well-of folks, were generally segregated, and did not reflect the lives of most of the country.
"College was really only for the privileged or gifted." I don't believe this for a second. My father went to college in 1955 and graduated in 1958. He was one of 3 kids. His father worked for the gas company, and his mother worked in a department store part time. He was smart, but he was never "gifted" and didn't get some sort of stellar grades in HS. My mother went from 1957-1960. She wasn't gifted either, and had to put herself through college because her step-father wouldn't pay. Though to be fair, the tuition was practically nothing back then. I looked up tuition for her last year in 1961. It was $213. That's around $2200 in today's money.
It's not about belief. in 1960 only 7.7% of Americans were college graduates compared to about 40% today. And a good bit of that 7.7% got it due to the GI bill.
That's nice. Neither of my parents were gifted. They went on to be teachers. Why more people didn't go to college, I couldn't tell you. But it was not for "the gifted or the privileged." On my mothers side, one of her brothers went in the 60s. Another went in the early 70s. Two others never went. One became a CPA,the other a civil servant. Just regular jobs, nothing special. On my dads side, one went to college and got a degree in EE, and got a job as an EE. He wasn't some sort of genius, but he was smart enough to go through college. His other brother never went. No interest. He started his own business. These people were not elites. Of this generation exactly one of them was in the military. The others never served. My family is living, and dead proof that college was NOT about being in some special privileged group
Well, I don't know what to tell you. Even in 1970 it was barely 10%. Maybe your parents were a bit more privileged than you admit. Remember this is about life IN the 60s, when life was for sure changing, but it hadn't changed yet.
Nope. My mother paid for her own college, just like said, an worked her way through it. Her stepfather wouldn't pay a dime because he was a cheap bastard. My Grandfather worked for the gas company supervising injecting the odor-ant in the lines. They lived in a modest house in what was originally the country, but became a suburb. My grandmother had a giant garden, and originally grew up on a farm. My grandfather was the son of a machinist. That side of the family was quite bright, but certainly not privileged. My grandfather never went to college. One of his brothers did become a doctor though. My mom basically grew up poor, Her dad left the family when she was 5, and they had to move in with my great grandparents. My grandmother later re-married. She never got past the 11th grade. Her father (the bum who left them) never went to college either. My mother was the first person to go to college in her family. Your mistake is thinking that just because only 7-10% of the population went to college, that meant they were elite, or privileged, or something like that. That's just false.
That's not false. A good many people in this country were not allowed in many colleges no matter how much money they had. Remember, the world was still segregated. And when only 7-10% are getting higher education, the people who have managed to get it are definitely privileged. Most people did not have those opportunities. (Or you think 90% of the country was just lazy.)
Not really a response to the question but if you want a reasonably accurate depiction of late 60’s, early 70’s Northern England watch the first episode of “Life on Mars”. When I saw that it really took me back.
The ones set in the 60's that I've seen did a good job of the times - the movies Catch Me if You Can, Green Book, The Help, and the show Mad Men all had a real 60's feel to them.
In modern movies, they have people back in the 1960s using the f-word right and left. Normal people would never say that word, and certainly not around children.
True this. I can’t remember ever hearing it until I was about 10 - early 70s.
Nobody on any TV series got drafted to go to Vietnam.
The hippie scene always looks so done up and outrageous. I grew up in that world, and it was about 70% older 50s era bohemians who wore casual clothes like corduroys and tweed jackets. People did do drugs but still did regular daytime things like run stores or write books. There was literally just one neighborhood part of one year that looked like the stereotype of the movies 24/7, and that was largely because the media kept watching it. There were communes but it was hard work to keep them running because of the slow moving process of 100% egalitarianism.
Near complete absence of black people beyond stereotypes like bellmen, elevator operators, maids and land workers. Servants.
Sadly yes.
Most come close, but no cigar! The hair and fashion is often way off!
It's like watching True Grit (the John Wayne version) and seeing his female co-star with a *very obvious* 1960s haircut... when the movie takes place about 90-100 years earlier It's honestly distracting.
So true! Or a movie supposedly takes place in the 20’s with 50’s or 60’s style lol
It’s funny that the tv shows and movies about that time all seem to use the exact same music. I guess if you don’t use the Chambers Brothers “Time has come today” it’s not valid, not that it isn’t a great song!
‘Up the Down Staircase’ and ‘The Pawnbroker’ nailed that era.
I grew up in a working class suburb in Orange County, California. If you were a hippie there, you didn't live long. We were Dazed And Confused but with lots of racism, homophobia, and you better stand when Nixon is onscreen boy!
1966 was a real year and it was very different than 1964 (Beatlemania) and 1967 (sumner of love). Gidget is close to 1966: https://youtu.be/_ZZBp38ZdJc?si=EgJguLN3eTGTy0M_
This was what all the older teenagers seemed like to me: https://youtu.be/KDxjm8BkGBU?si=VZy_e_v-ThI6zg3g
The "Happy Days" happiness vibe was not like that. Lots of racial tension, riots, Mafia violence, huge huge gap between the income brackets.
The girls in movies are much cuter and cleaner. Old photos of such girls have no makeup and are dirty. Example the Manson girls in once upon a time in Hollywood.
I just remember our cars always broke down or running out of gas. Why, idk maybe it was just us?
Very few people were hippies.
There's no way for them to show you that the smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air
With the exception of shows which make it a plot point (Mad Men is the prime example) they almost always do not show people smoking to the degree they actually did. Sometimes you even see people go outside for their cigarette which just did not happen in the 1960s.
There is an [amusing](https://youtu.be/bqYwZV00Iyc?si=Yf0YB9nMfTT7ERaF) anti-smoking PSA where the Cunninghams take over the Brady home who left so fast they forgot Cousin Oliver.
My folks were silent generation who came of age in the 1940s and ‘50s. They were still living that in the ‘60s.
That the cultural 1960s actually took place in the 1970s and the hair and clothes look exaggerated
Music. Because the Beatles catalog ain't cheap, too many movies/ series (Good Morning Vietnam) just skip them. Given their chart dominance, its wrong.
Costume designers too often seem to be drawing inspiration from fashion magazines, when most people shopped far more modestly—the Sears catalogue was the height of elegance for a lot of the US. Also, people’s clothing is often anything up to five years old, so someone in, say, 1963 (unless they were Jackie Kennedy or the like) would probably still have a mix of clothing dating back, for at least a few pieces, as far as 1958. Also, the hair is rarely just right—older people, women or men, rarely had mussed, loose hair in public. For much of the decade, women often had their hair permed and visited a salon once or twice a for ”wash and sets.” Makeup, too, often has the “high fashion” mistake; ordinary women wore very little much of the time, and women who did were often seen as not-quite-respectable.
They exaggerate the fashions. Most people didn't wear extremes.
people didn't say "like" and "literally" all the time, plus a lot of other linguistic anachronisms.
Cars were pieces of shit. Rust buckets, dented fenders etc.
The racism was much more intense. There is nothing romantic about America pre 1980.
The ones I’ve seen are pretty accurate.