Fun To Watch 1960s Teenage Baby Boomers Who DIDN'T Rebel



I like the videos by Hoffman. He gives me a glimpse of what life was like...

The thing that really struck me about this video was how articulate and mature these teenagers seemed when compared to today's public school educated functional illiterates.

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Thread Killer.

My older brother turned 16 in 1966, and this portrayed him pretty accurately!

The values installed in him by our parents and the school system, are what he lived by, worked hard for, and achieved.

Our joke is a line from one of V.P. Dan Quail's High School friend's talk about the later 1960's: "When it came to the sexual revolution, all the girls we encountered were conscientious objectors!"

Ivan (I turned 10 in 1966)

I graduated from a small town mid-American high school in 65. There were 92 in my class. 51 are still in Illinois, with 30 still in the same county and 18 still in the same town.

There were 46 boys in the class and 32 served in the military with 13 in Vietnam all of whom came back. 18 classmates are now deceased.

How do you keep up with this stuff? Reunions? My class had at least 500, I think. I don't know where ANY are now, short of a Vietnam casualty.

I agree that teens then seemed more mature.

The reaction to the video is telling. The residents felt it was slanted journalism that made them look bad and stoked class warfare. User comments suggest the teens were no different than teens anywhere else.

I was born in 58 but lived in Gainesville Florida the home of the Univ. of Florida. There were plenty of rebellious teens in town. It was quite entertaining at times other times not so much. My older sisters were not into the long hair drugs and war protest though. I will say my teenage years were interesting living there as well.

I graduated HS in ‘65 and was in Nam a year later. When I got out of the service I returned home, became a cop in my city until retirement and still live there so I guess I fit this profile too.

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Old Cop
LEO (Ret.)

Articulate and mature.....maybe but they were only copying their parents and doing what the parents expected. Were they doing their own thinking?, no, even to admitting cheating on tests. To please their parents. Respect and honor your parents but were they?

I would have been an outcast in that school for non-conforming.

In 1966 I was 20 years old, married, good job, owned a Corvette and my own small house and no debt..

But I do agree about many of todays functional illiterate products of the public schools.

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Super Snooper

Kids are different now, because schools and values are different. I graduated in '63, and was taught discipline at a early age - both at school, at home and at church. My PE , Biology and Shop teacher was a retired Army Master Sargent that made certain that everybody got a regular taste of the paddle, and doing anything wrong was not wise. I wish kids could experience that today.

I missed the 5 year reunion as I was in RVN, but have been to the rest and was in charge of the 35 year and 50th. I live 80 miles away, but try hard to keep in touch. I remember my classmates on their birthdays and try to email the class at least once a week.

Being a small town we grew up close. My dad was the Scout Master and my mom was the Selective Service clerk.

teens aren't meant to be clones of their parents, their meant to find their own way along with the rest of their generation.
Raised hell in high school, had long hair, and damn right I inhaled - and than served my country and raised a great family.
It's not a black and white world, it's in technicolor.

I graduated in 69, class of 55 in a small western Ks town. Left for college that fall, came home to summer jobs next two summers and have not lived closer than 300 miles since. I make it to most class reunions, that are held every five years. A few more than half attend these, some disappeared immediately after graduation. Seven or eight are deceased. Interesting is that most of the popular prom queens/kings etc never made it very far in life. Lots of the “plain” kids were quite successful.

I graduated in 1966, tried work in the factories around Detroit. I wanted more then a union job. I enlisted before I could be drafted. I went to Vietnam in 12/67. I stayed in the Air Force because it provide me a chance to different things go to different countries. I was not a normal high school student I was a shop rat, I took shop classes because I was told I need those skills, My family was blue collar. I retired from the service got a degree In social work, worked in mental health and substance abuse treatment. It was my way of giving back. I am now a Priest. I did not rebel, I found my own way. I have attended 1 class reunion. and lost track of my high school friends. I figure you can't go back and you can't change the past.

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Carpriver.

Reading the survival rates of your HS classes makes me envious. There were 155 in my Senior class (1974) heart attacks and cancer have taken half in the past 45 years. My brother (class of 1969) has had 4 bypasses and lost a kidney to cancer and I had a stroke 9 years ago. I know which of my class did heavy drugs and which were squeaky clean, the death rate seems to be close to equal! I think there were food additives that that didn't mix well with others and that caused the death rate.

Only 2 from my class got to Vietnam, 14 of the 127 in my brother's class went to Vietnam. Our school never lost a man there!(of any class)

Homecoming and Prom Queens/Kings, football and basketball, and teacher's pets didn't succeed very well. The career farmers and Building trades were the most financially and martially successful! goes for both classes.

Ivan

I was 16 in 1966, so that was my life,
I took the dance lessons, EVERY week,
589 kids in my graduating class,, ZERO protests,,

At our 25th reunion, a group of 5 talked about how they were the first to smoke pot in our high school.
It occurred during the last week of school, in the GIRLS restroom,,
YEP, a group of girls was the first to have weed at our school, in Pittsburgh, in 1968.

Don't get me wrong, other schools had been smoking weed for years,, but, that just did not happen in our neighborhood,

I never even saw weed until 1970,, I had already joined the US Navy, and it was too risky to mess with the stuff,,,

....but I was a really straight kid.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

As Mark Twain said, some things are "greatly exaggerated". Schools started to go down hill when they got male teachers who were simply draft dodgers and infected the kids with their cynical attitudes, I was first exposed to dope in the Army. And parents are not always the paragons of virtue and the fonts of wisdom they are made out to be.

Graduated mid 60s. Many of the boys back then had jobs going through high school, many had cars also. Most of the boys smoked. It might have been a coincidence but having a job and a car the girls were more friendly.

Lost a few friends in Nam and a few in auto accidents, then as time went on many have disappeared. My school held one reunion not many went, it was a small school and they have not held another.

Just as well you cannot go back.

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

HS graduate in the 60's, college and the U.S. Navy in 69. Was not
a rebel but did do my own thinking, sometimes not popular, still isn't.
Never and I mean Never had any kind of illegal drug. I did have
my fair share, or more, of C2H5OH in various concoctions.
I now live about 60 miles, as the crow flies, from where I grew up.
I always liked Strother Martin's line as Shanghai McCoy about been
around the horn, sailed the 7 seas, seen everything, done everything,
that's how I know people are so miserable.

I was one of the rebels. My group liked foreign sports cars. Okay, one eventually got a Shelby Cobra, but that was a British/American hybrid., and two got a Corvette. Detroit Iron was not for us. I let my hair grow except at the beginning of football season when our football coach snarled, "GET A HAIRCUT!" The college head coach and an assistant coach were former Marine drill instructors. We compromised between a Marine recruit haircut and long "hippie" hair to a haircut that would comfortably fit under a helmet. I would feel sorry if some of the current NFL players were to play on my college team.

We studied hard so that we could go to college, get a student deferment, and be draft dodgers. At my high school, 92% of the graduating class went to college. Also, a college education would give us the opportunity to earn the money to buy a Ferrari. Among my group of friends; two Civil Engineers, three Electrical Engineers, one high school Vice principal, one high school teacher, one very successful businessman, one NFL player for Dallas, and me in law enforcement. I got my Bachelor's Degree from San Jose State University. We all graduated from college and we sure were rebels.

Cars we owned; seven Ferraris, one Aston Martin DB6 Vantage, four Jaguars, two Mercedes-Benz sports cars, three Porsches, two Austin-Healys, one Triumph TR4, one MGTD, one Alfa Romeo Sprint Speciale, one Morgan +4, one Cobra 427SC (a real one, not a replica), one Ford GT40 (a real one, not a replica). I still have my Ferrari, my Jaguar XK120 roadster, and my Jaguar C-Type racing car. I was pulled over many times by the San Jose Police Department for "a safety check". Sports car owners at that time were one small step above the Hells Angels. We rebels did get numerous speeding tickets. My friend with the Aston Martin one day was motoring down Hwy 5 on his way to Los Angeles at a reasonable speed, 140 mph.

We are getting a little old now, but we are still rebels. We just don't speed as much.

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People forget that 65-70% of the Army in the 1960s were volunteers, the other services almost all volunteers. I read that out of 1500 or so college campuses there were only about 100 where there were protests and radical activity.

my cuz was, and remains, a sports car maniac ...in the late 60's he was pushing a 63' split window Vette, balanced and blueprinted 327, 4" black side pipes, roll cage, dual quads on an Offenhauser mid rise manifold barely squeezed into the engine compartment, rear end for high speeds, tricked suspension, flared wheelwells for wider knock offs, pale yellow, no emblems of any sort, tinted glass...all about road racing...was in a group that headed from San Francisco to Lake Berryessa during summer for weekends of skiing, girls and booze...Vette's, Sunbeam Tigers, Porches, American Muscle...roll across the Golden Gate bridge Sat morning at 7 am, first car to Rancho Montecito at the lake took the pot of $100 per car...group was getting known, law enforcement wasn't happy, and local jurisdiction wasn't having much success picking off the drivers...

Made the occasional run, my last was just that....cuz flat out floored on a straightaway, trying to hold off a buddy in a built 427 Vette, speedometer needle maxed, RPM's into red line, with all that felt like it was on rails...once we hit the last ten miles of corners just ate the other Vettes lunch, big block too front heavy to hang while cuz went through them like a slot car...on a run a few weeks later that my cuz missed, Highway Patrol rolled out brand new Interceptors, chased them all down and arrested every single driver. And that was that.

I graduated in '67. Tried to join the Marines, but rejected (One kidney). Played basketball and JROTC officer, so I was a (Sort of) straight arrow.
I stay in touch with the few true friends I had then, the ones that aren't buried. I can count them on one hand.

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I'm with her

I was 16 in 1966, 200 in my high school class, I was a "Shoppie"? Is that what they called it? I was a farm kid, I knew most of those skills they were teaching, wood working, metal working, drafting, and electricity. I also took Ag. I was also a "Gear Head" always fooling around with cars.

I had those same goals, a house, cars, family, decent job, etc, etc. I never invisioned College. I just wasn't into accedemics. My guidance counselor, didn't think I would ever amount to anything. So much for encouraging the youth.....

Got drafted, went to Nam, came home, went to work. I think I turned out all right. I thank God for giving me the skills required to be "Successful"!

WR

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God, Country, Family

What I'm saying is that in the video, all the kids seem to be well spoken and sounding like adults That's not copying their parents, that's a good education. Based on how they were speaking, if I didn't know they were 16 and in high school, I would've guessed they were a few years older.

On another note, I was in a Catholic high school 25 years later and there were echos of what those kids were saying, it just wasn't as prevalent. My folks pressured me, but it wasn't to the point where I was cheating on tests.

There were cliques, but nobody was an outcast, everyone was included - then again it may have been that the vast majority of us, literally, grew up together from 1st to 12th grade or it may have been the religious values... I should've been an outcast at a religious school - I was/am a metal head, defiant and didn't buy what the indoc was selling - but I wasn't. I had friends from every group.

However, if I'm honest, there was one group that wasn't tolerated at all...

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Thread Killer.

One day some radicals decided to tear down the American flag and burn it. Some guys from the football team stood around the flag pole. "Think you're gonna tear down the flag? Think again."

Extremely wealthy rebels if they still have those cars! The Cobra is a $3-5 million dollar car and the GT40 is closer to $10 million. I can’t speak to the others you list but I bet the values are astounding as well.

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No school like the old school.

In the 60s I had to attend a High School that was mostly mega-rich rich kids. I wasn't one of them, and never fit in - I drove a 1954 Ford, the rich kids drove Impalas and T-Birds. I had a paper route, and they made fun of me for having to work.

I shoulda graduated in '65, but I was so bored that I started skipping school and the school had a 40 day absence limit-miss over 40 days and go back to the same grade next fall.

I was a senior and in February '65, I skipped and got in a wreck that was in the paper with pictures and names and I got a well-deserved suspension for skipping that put me over 40 days.

I joined the Army (sat around all morning waiting for the Marine recruiter to show, but he skipped too, so the Army was welcoming me with open arms and I joined).

Kept up with one guy from school, he was in VN at the same time as me (not same unit), joined the PD when he got home like me and followed me to law school.

Yeah, I'm the only lawyer you know without a high school diploma. And I never missed it. Not a bit.

Bob

My friend bought the GT40 and the 427SC years ago when they were relatively cheap and in need of restoration. They are restored, and he still owns them. There was a time when these cars were unloved. There was the time when a GT40 was no longer able to race and totally impractical to drive on the street. What are you going to do with it? I remember when one of the 1967 LeMans Mk. 4 could be had for a few thousand dollars. What were you going to do with it? You couldn't drive it on the street and you couldn't race it.


The 427SC was a monster to drive. Even Ken Miles was intimidated by it. I remember when you could pick up one for a few thousand dollars. If it needed restoration, it was one step from taking the engine for a street car and scrapping the rest. A 289 was more desirable.


Fortunately, my friend had the financial resources to restore both cars.

I enlisted in the navy in 1964 I was 17 so my dad had to sign the enlistment papers. No onne wants to hire and train someone who's liable to get his draft notice any day. Spent a little over three years on active duty at sea. best thing I had done. Discharged from the navy right before my 21st birthday. Ended up in the inactive reserve. 3 years later got my honorable discharge. Got a job at a public utility and spent 30 years working for them. Frank