Comments on: You Kids Get Off My Lawn

By: Adrien Deume

Adrien Deume — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:49:22 +0000

My first political memory I think was the March 1966 meeting of Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey with Pope Paul VI in Rome – mainly I remember asking my mother ´what does ecumenical mean´(I was 6 or so). I think she went to the service they held at St Paul’s Outside the Walls. Also there was the Beatles Rome tour – we got caught in a traffic jam their entourage caused – which I guess must have been 1965.

By: agm

agm — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 04:55:20 +0000

Sigh. Challenger. Mainly hurts remembering that it was once feasible to dream of walking the sky.

By: clew

clew — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:12:51 +0000

My first memory is of Walt Kelly’s obituary strip; I count Kelly as political. (I also remember the grownups crying over what must have been the Vietnam War, but I can’t date it.) I graduated from college in 1990.

It greatly soothes me, when I feel middle-aged, to look at the undergraduates and realize how glad I am that I don’t have to be young again. I expect being actually old will be worse, but I didn’t like young at all.

By: Steve T.

Steve T. — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:17:07 +0000

Ben Alpers: Hey! I grew up in Berkeley too, probably about five years ahead of you. Yep, People’s Park and all that fun stuff. I remember one Sat. afternoon I was at a teen church group thingie at St. Mark’s Episcopal on Bancroft. Afterwards we walked up towards Sather Gate to enjoy the riots and see what pepper gas smelled like.

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:38:11 +0000

Thank god. There were some people besides me who cited Sputnik. (Also, Eisenhower’s heart attack.) And at least one who went back further. (I stopped reading at about #35 because is was just so dammed depressing.)

Just you young whippersnappers wait. I wanna hear what you have to say when you get will into your 50s like I am. Of course, given the prevalence of Alzheimers in my family I’ll probably be senile or gone by then.

MKK

By: John Casey

John Casey — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:22:59 +0000

For me, it was the Democratic convention of 1956: JFK was competing for the Vice Presidential nomination, but lost it to Estes Kefauver. Later that year, I was in a very small Democratic minority in the 2nd grade, and can still feel the burn of “Whistle while you work, Stevenson’s a jerk, Eisenhower has more power, whistle while you work.”

I was 6.

I still hate Republicans.

By: SFO

SFO — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:15:27 +0000

I remember Cronkite counting the days on the hostage crisis. And then my mother crying when Reagan got elected.

By: Leinad

Leinad — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:40:48 +0000

21 y.o. – I’ve got a shameful block on the Berlin Wall, but I remember the Gulf War, as it coincided with my first year at school. I spent much of my playground time being a scud missile or an F-15.

My first political memory would either be the Sydney Third Runway protests or the 1996 Labor loss to what would become the dreary conservative government of my teenage years (it’s actually a good thing to have in a lot of ways).

By: Crooked Timber » » Yoy Kids Get Off of My Berlin Wall

Crooked Timber » » Yoy Kids Get Off of My Berlin Wall — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:53:38 +0000

[...] Two radio spots that aired when I was a freshman in high school (that would be Wills Point High School, aka “Home of the 1965 State AA Football Champs,” which can now also proudly boast that it is “ranked as ‘academically acceptable’ under the Texas Education Agency”) have stuck in my head for the past—oh good lord, this can’t be true—thirty years almost. And to think Kieran feels old. [...]

By: Hidari

Hidari — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:59:14 +0000

I remember (incredibly vaguely) the 3 day week and the resulting power cuts. Of course, as a kid I thought it was fantastic. We got to play games by candlelight.

By: garymar

garymar — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:07:01 +0000

Oh yeah, burritoboy?

I was let out of the edubba early when news arrived that the armies of Sargon had attacked Uruk. We put down our clay cuneiform tablets and rushed to the top of the ziggurat to have a good look. The sound of bronze on bronze will ring forever in my memory.

Shirley MacLaine was there too.

By: rachel

rachel — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:48:09 +0000

Another vote for the Iran hostage crisis. And the Iranian revolution in general. I remember being quite riveted by the television images of demonstrations and riots. And being confused about who this Shah guy was, and why there was a big fuss about him coming to the U.S. for medical treatment. And then the presidential election that seemed to be around the same time, which was the first time I became aware of Democrats and Republicans. I too started college in 1990 and am now finishing up my last term as a graduate student!

By: Monte Davis

Monte Davis — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:25:47 +0000

Mostly Sputnik, just a glimpse of Hungary 1956. But I can cheat back to the Korean War with inarticulate memories from age 3:

Pre-dawn family drives that I later learned were taking my father (USMC WWII) to nearby reserve duty

And pretending to read the Sunday comics with my older brother. Big Picture newsreels on the TV, and green convoys outside: our street was on a reserve/Guard route.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:15:04 +0000

There wasn’t much news in England before the 60s and it was all declaimed in the same tone of voice. I recall the Daily Mirror agitating for Attlee to resign as Labour leader, and the Matthews cup final, but nothing before them, aged 7. Scariest news – Suez. Much scarier than Cuba because we thought (age 10) there was a chance the US would bomb us. And, as our troops know too well, that’s a Bad Thing.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:36:23 +0000

My mother voting for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Before that my father at a podium, on televison, and being asked questions and it was very important to us how he answered them.