Tuesday, December 18, 2007

1969

The year 1969 has often been spoken of as one of the best (and worst) years on record. Many wonderful and dubious things happened in that year of four decades ago. That was the year the Gap opened for business. It was the year Wal-Mart incorporated. Woodstock was held in New York.

Many of us that are not from that decade often don't realize what all happened in 1969. On July 20 of that year our proud nation was the first to reach the moon. John Lennon married Yoko Ono...they were evidently famous for some reason during that decade...I wouldn't know...I wasn't born in that decade.

On closer inspection I believe more "strange" things happened in 1969 than perhaps any other year, ever. The Brady Bunch made its television debut. The very first ATM was put into use. The Football War was fought between El Salvador and Honduras when fights after a soccer game led to a war, seriously. The Manson Family. Chappaquiddick. Canada adds French as an official language in addition to English. Hee-Haw debuts. The Nixon administration begins.
This is just a tip of the ice-berg of all the strange events of the second to last year of the sixties.

There was also a plethora of "interesting" people born in MCMLXIX. Marilyn Manson, Bobby Brown, Mariah Carey, Nate Dogg(the rapper, not me, I was not born in that decade), Sean "P-Diddy-Puff-Daddy-Puffy" Combs, Matthew "Anti-Anti-Perspirant" McConaughey, and Jay-Kay (lead singer of Jamiroquai).

The point is this...there were so many strange things and interesting people born in that year that I wonder what was going on. Was there solar flares? Unusual gravitational phenomena?There was a lot of drug use. May be that was it.

It is time for us, as Americans, to look back on history. Even history that seems so far away. Back to a time when television was only sporatically in color. We owe it to those that were born in that decade so long ago.

Here are some other folks that were born in the decade: aging bachelor George Clooney, Seventies T.V. star Eddie Murphy, and presidential candidate Barak Obama. All from the sixties.

The children of the sixties need our help.

Happy Birthday Baybuh. 12/18/You Guess the Year.

Ps. I was not born during that decade.