“This is a news alert coming in from our broadcast network. This morning across the nation, the sun has risen on a beautiful day. The birds are singing, the trees are swaying in a gentle breeze and people are greeting one another with a smile.
It is reported that the taxi cabs in NewYork City have actually slowed their pace and their horns are silent as they carry people to their destination. It seems that America is at peace with their fellowman.
Just in……The Prime Ministers of Russia, China, and Japan have been in contact with the President this morning and they are offering their hand in friendship and peace.
Wait, another alert….gun fire in the Middle East has ceased and people are beginning to move out of hiding into the streets greeting one another in a show of solidarity.
The above is not reality at this point, but the thought of a world with peace and goodwill to everyone is paramount in most everyones mind.
In the 1950s, we as children were frightened by the thought of a nuclear war. We succumbed to the drills, where we got under our desk to shield ourselves from possible falling debris.
I remember my mother putting up food and water in case we could not get out of our home.
I watched as a young boy, the Prime Minister of Russia beating the table with his shoe on the small TV screen in our den. These were scary moments in the lives of the people not only in the two countries feuding, but the world.
I am a product of the 1960s, the music, the freedom and the good times. This era saw a lot of change as we moved into a time of what the hippies called, peace and love.
Our music changed, we dressed differently, our thought pattern went in a totally different direction. The young people of the day wanted peace.
Now I have never been one to march and protest for a cause, but looking back I can know see clearer the reasoning of the hippie generation.
The closest I every got to being a hippie was growing my hair and playing loud rock music, which I still love and listen to today.
I remember my Dad telling me as I went off to college, “Son, I can’t tell you how to wear your hair when you are away, but when you come home that hair has to go.”
He never understood our music either. He liked the country sound, old country music. He listened to Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, and he loved Marty Robbins. At times I would be in the car with him and a song would come on and I would say, “Dad, how could they have recorded that song back then, one of my favorite rock groups has it on their album.” He would smile and say, “Your guys know good music when they hear it.
Then the United States got into the Vietnam War full force and fear struck in the minds of every teenager in the country. Kids were leaving in droves due to the draft and kids were coming back home in droves from the fighting in the jungle.
Young people began protesting the war and the hippies began sit-ins in peaceful protest of the war.
Once again our nation was in turmoil and peace couldn’t be found.
In August of 1969, the 15th-18th to be exact, in White Lake, NY, 400,000 young people gathered to participate in the largest rock concert to date.
Musical groups assembled from all over the country and even Canada to entertain these kids and most sang songs of protest to the war.
It was a weekend to remember, there was music, drugs, drinking, sex, and babies being born all out in a field that became somewhat of a mud bogging area before it was through.
Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young, Ritchie Haven, Country Joe and the Fish, Joan Baez, just to name a few of the musical acts performed into the night as the crowd listened and did their thing as was a common phrase in this era.
I remember I was at the ripe age of 16 when this was going on and would loved to have been there to make history that weekend.
But peace did not prevail. The world was still at war.
What’s it with people who hold a position of power, but want more power? What’s with it with people who have everything but want everything everyone else has?
We live in a volatile world today and I for one think we have wasted a lot of time trying to further our advancement too fast and we have gotten out of control.
The songs of peace during the 1960s are songs written from a perspective of love and reasoning. The meaning if listened too and studied wants nothing more than everyone to get along with each other in a great society.
I have never been one to thrive on this to the point of being invasive on some else’s life, but as I grow in age I look back and realize that maybe they were on to something back then.
What exactly, would peace look like? How would it feel to walk down the street and everyone be kind enough to help someone in need want ing nothing in return.
Before I leave this world, that has given me the hope of better things to come, a place where I have felt the joy of children and grandchildren being born and felt the happiness of success in a career of my choice. I want to experience the peace and love of a world that cares about their fellow man.
I have never intended my writing to be political, there are too many talking heads in the world today, but call it age, maturity or the feeling of just wanting to get along with your fellowman, that brought this subject to mind.
The musical group Crosby, Stills, and Nash did a song called Wasted on the Way, below is the chorus and it hits pretty close to home.
“And there’s so much time to make up everywhere you turn, time we have wasted on the way. So much water moving underneath the bridge, let the water come and take us all away.”
Life Happens
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