Grateful Dead

For me the summer of love was a mixed bag. Lost two friends in Vietnam. Hippies and rednecks beating on each other. A friend tossed in the clink over pot seeds. Except for the ones who died, we were young and immortal. Sure was a lot of good music, tho.Sorry about a bring down post on a dormant thread, but this called to me

I was in going into the third grade that fall. I remember going on vacation with the family to Cape Cod and I remember my parents crossing the street to avoid the hippies. We were respectable people who didn't have anything to do with "hippies", those long-haired dope suckers who continuously jacked off into their semen encrusted underwear! I also remember the Boston Red Sox having a great year, driving for the American league pennant with the likes of Joe Foy, Rico Petrocelli, Tony Conigliaro, Jim Lonborg and, of course, the great Yaz, Carl Yaztremski. There was also this English rocker group who had just released an album called "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." My Catholic grade school trooped us all into an assembly in September of 1967 to watch a cautionary movie. It started with a close up of a hand with a piece of chalk writing on a blackboard. Slowly the hand wrote three large letters: L -- S -- D. The evil Ellis Dee. I was determined to try it at any cost after that. Anything the nuns were against I was for!

December 1st, 1969. That's why sometimes I'm called, "Numero uno". Number ONE baby!!! That's cool that my birthday is Welfare day. All the poor folks are always high on Eric day.

I graduated high school in 1966. 1967 was my first year of college. I was hip to the scene but I didn't get on the bus, so to speak, until 1968, which is when my summer of love really began. The summer of love started a movement that gratefully continues in some respect or other until this very day. I am always happy to see younger people carrying the torch of hipdom and being a Deadhead is a big part of that tradition. I attended the 40th Anniversary in Golden Gate Park and it was a mellow scene full of good vibes The late sixties were an exciting, idealistic, adventurous and eventful time and a lot of love and groovy shit went down, but a lot of mistakes were made as well. Many good people went down along the way, but many good people survived. I think we must look back and remember the good ole days, take the positive, leave the rest and move on. Continue to teach the children and cultivate the spirit in us...Further...Further...Further...Onward through the fog.

I was not quite 2 during all that so my memories of the the summer of 1967 are circumspect. but it did produce my wife, whose parents met in the Haight during that time and she was born in 1968. so it has had a directly profound effect on my life.

The Summer of Love lives forever! Larree.ws

Born in July 1959 made me 8 years old then. Like Jack1921, I had 3 older girl cousins who did all the babysitting for my brother and I (he's 2-1/2 yrs older) and while he was watching cartoons, I was listening to Anne(+9 years), Patty(+8 years) and Susie(+ 6 years)!!! That summer I remember standing on the corner while Patty was talking to her friend John back in Brooklyn, NY and him telling her that he was going to San Francisco "cause that's where the scene is". They were always taking care of us as Mom worked so I absorbed a LOT...the music, their conversations, etc. I wasn't an obnoxious kid...I'd just sit close by and listen quietly because it was much more fascinating than TV. The music really "grabbed" me...I had an AM transistor radio and remember listening to WABC (wasn't even aware of FM then) and hearing the Beatles, Turtles, Lovin' Spoonful, Doors, etc. Then when we went over to their house, thats where I got turned on to the good stuff....The Dead, Airplane, Allmans, Santana. I remember my first vivid memory of knowing I was listening to the Dead, it was 1970-71, sitting in the kitchen doing my homework after school and by then I knew about FM...good ole WPLJ and WNEW (i think)...the DJ was Scott Muni and he put on Uncle John's Band. Now back in those days they were supposed to play the "proper" album but not "our" guys...he put on the version that had "Goddamn, well I declare.." and thinking to myself...that's pretty cool of them to take chances LOL. Probably could've cost them their license if someone complained but....... Got into the bootleg recordings in 1976-1977 and finally made it to my first show in May 1980. From then on I was "On The Bus", never looked back and never regretted any of the touring I did in CA and the West Coast from 1983 - 1989, tho it cost me dearly. The Dead have been the ONE constant in my life and for that, i will be forever......Grateful! "Thank you, for a REAL good time!" ..even a blind man knows when the sun is shinin'...you can feel it!..

I turned 16 on 6/21/67 billed as the "official 1st day of the Summer of Love",,,,,,,taking the north bound train to the park (excuse was to go see grandma, which I did after the park) Had figured out by this time why everyone was always smiling @ me......"Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" that had been it for me from the start in the Panhandle. a few years earlier......seeing Pigpen walking around the Haight alot & although I wore my purple wool Sgt. Pepper coat alot, I still was riding them horses in Half Moon Bay.......course once I had my car we were all up there way more going to the Fillmore West & stuff, horses went by the wayside for a spell.......think I may give my grandson a harmonica soon......what a hometown band!......Gypsy Cowgirl Jack1921-why do we have to grow old? better than the alternative........

I do remember that year only because I stayed with my aunt for a spell.I was a lil tyke 10 yrs. old. But my 2 girl cousins were 16 & 17. They turned me on to the music of that time; The Doors "light my fire" I remember that one. The Beatles, The Jefferson Airplane, Janis & Jimmy, Cream comes to mind too. They told me about some band from out west with some guy named "Pig Pen". Pig Pen? I remember thinking, you mean like Charlie Brown? Life sure was simple then. Why do we have to grow old?

Boy, where do I start? 1967 was a magical year for me. I was all of 16 years old, and a budding, incipient hippie! It was a magical time for Canada too - Expo 67, and budding hippie scenes in all the big cities! We even had our own version of Haight-Ashbury, right in downtown Montreal. On August 6, 1967, The Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead gave a free concert in downtown Montreal, in the square at Place Ville Marie, a large sky-scraper, in the center of downtown Montreal. Man, what a scene!!!! Hippies as far as the eye could see, and as far as I was concerned it was heaven. In October, Montreal's own underground newspaper, Logos was launched. By then, I was wholly immersed in the hippie scene. What glorious, precious memories!