Some people state that the Sixties died at Altamont: Hell's Angel's, bad vibes, death.

At the bar there was a regular who fought in Vietnam. Long black hair, even at his age, worn in a ponytail; his girlfriend would occasionally braid it, before she went batshit crazy and disappeared. Rumors: there were rumors. He worked as a chef at a nearby mission, and was fighting a long battle with leukemia, which he lost two years ago, after having moved to Florida to be near family.

He blamed Agent Orange for his disease. I have no idea if that was true or not, but it was his story, and he was entitled to tell it his way. He had a dry sense of humor, and would often shake his head at the foibles of the other regulars. Of course he had his own seat at the bar, at the corner.

There are several older regulars at the bar who have strong opinions on Vietnam, and Richard Nixon. They didn't fight in the war -- they were children at the time. But the legacy of that period was ingrained in them: they knew they would have protested Nixon and the War if only they were old enough: they just didn't have the good fortune to be able to be born early enough to burn a draft card. Their young adult years were after the Sixties Damage: they are really the children of the Forgotten Seventies. Which was, to a large extent, Sixties nostalgia that was already beginning before the Sixties were even over.

So they hate the War, and Richard Nixon; some even hate LBJ. JFK gets a pass, of course: the Kennedys were Special, and the Special get passes, even Teddy. Insert bridge joke here. Something about heroism and swimming, probably.

Some people state that the Sixties died at Altamont: Hell's Angel's, bad vibes, death. But you could make the argument that the Sixties died -- and the Sixties Damage began -- on July 18, 1969, when a sainted Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to die in the Chappaquiddick water.

I first wrote that sentence as 'the shallow Chappaquiddick water', because that is always how I pictured it: small bridge, small water. But fifteen minutes on Google and I cannot find reference to the depth that the car submerged. Distance from bridge, probable speed of car, yes: but not depth. Which I find interesting in its lack of obvious access: maybe the water was shallow, which makes Teddy look worse, maybe it was fairly deep, which really still doesn't make Teddy look much better.

Teddy was forgiven, if it was not truly forgotten. I consider this one of the beginnings of Sixties Damage, where the Dream is allowed to live, even if the Truth must drown. In shallow water, maybe: I don't know. You can't really measure a metaphor.



- james james

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