400k wds, some neologisms. Story of a young bohemian bawn and bred in the briar patch that lay between the borders of St. Elvis Era and the Eleusinian Feels of alternity.
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Nowadays the old folks say, "It was the war. It was the racism. It was the drugs." Well, yeah. But not at the first. For me the first thing was evolution. At nine years of age, 1959, I simply could not believe that grown people were living in a fantasy consisting of primitive folklore that was no more credible than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny -- Enforcing by law, here in the grand old state of Tennessee, the institutionalization of said fantasy as the absolute and only truth regarding our origins. Ah, but worse was yet to come.
When I was twelve, 1962, I had my life all planned out. I would attend an Ivy League university and become a defense lawyer like Clarence Darrow. Of course, there was the draft to consider. Because I had come to believe that it was wrong to kill people, I decided I would join the Judge Advocates Corps. That way I could get through college free of charge and then serve my years in the military without violating a single one of the Ten Commandments. I would only defend people who had been arrested for unjust causes, of course. Afterward, I would land a fellowship at a Ivy League university and spend the rest of my days in an ivy-covered tower, indulging in the ultimate intellectual vice, vegetative trance a la philosophy.
Before that, I had wanted to be a secret agent like James Bond. Before that I had wanted to be a Mad Scientist and invent a time machine. Before that I had wanted to be a soldier and die in a heroic last stand like Crockett or Custer, mowing down the enemy like Johnson grass. Before that I had wanted to be Lord Greystoke, swinging naked through the trees, riding wild elephants naked, dancing through the naked jungle with naked Nubians. Before that I had wanted to be a cowboy. Before that I just wanted to be allowed to drink more than three soda pops a day.
So if not 01-01-60, then what shall we take as our starting point? The inauguration of John F. Kennedy? Alas, I was never much of a Kennedy fan, not back then, anyways. Don't get me wrong, I liked JFK. I agreed with most of his political stances and admired his willingness to stand up to not only Khrushchev, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and the GOP, but also the Mafia, the KKK, J. Edgar Hoover, corrupt Labor leaders, right-wing Cubans, and in general anyone who was a really good shot with a rifle. But hell, I was a Southern Gentleman. There were loyalties to consider. Robert E. Lee lost a war over that.
But you couldn't help but agree with JFK about the civil rights of all human beings.
At any rate the Sixties certainly did not begin in 1960 nor at the JFK inauguration, for me personally nor for most of Mid-America. I was ten years old and lived in Memphis, Tennessee. All I knew of Kennedy was that he was Catholic, had a beautiful wife and relatively long hair his own self, and was hated without reservation by almost all the grownups around me. Only the Yankee family across the street liked him, and they, being Yankees, had two strikes against them in the first place. Like all Yankees they was snotty, and I won't even mention what the other strike was.
