I certainly didn't know where the drugs were in 1967. I was born in Australia, raised in the US, attended a fine school, hung out which inquisitive minds, but I didn't have a clue when I graduated from Prep School in 1967. I thought Dylan songs were better covered by Peter, Paul and Mary and the Byrds, that the Beatles had peaked on Rubber Soul, that Johnson was OK and the War In Vietnam was an inconvenient necessity.
My immediate concern was college. I had been admitted to Duke and Penn for undergraduate work, but I had decided I'd go to Tufts, outside Boston. They were all good schools, but my American family came from Boston, and I felt some tug there. I could say that I looked at the summer of 1967 as a blow out summer, my "American Graffiti" moment, but the thing I lacked most in 1967 was perspective, the ability to see myself in context, and because of that, I was dull to the meaning of everything.
The summer of 1967 was beer and beer, drunken drives in fast cars, aimless searches for loose women, punctuated by a couple of road trips. I made it through that summer with the help of a couple of close buddies, and when August ended, my dad and I headed for New Hampshire, for some bonding before I started school. I could say I was excited, but I realized later that I'd been in a state of shock most of my life prior to 1968, and what I was mostly as we drove through Connecticut and Southern New Hampshire was numb.
Not knowing what was going on, but hoping something would happen. Anything.
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Thanks Nick- this was a great intro/invite to the concept. Kind of open up the definition to what it even means to "look back." The question everyone wants to know of course (not just about you but about all of us) are the 60's or early seventies why we are at least occasionally batshit crazy?
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