Friday, November 13, 2015

The 1950's, from the Internet and in Memory

I was not alive in the 1950's and my parents married just before they closed.  I played dress-up in clothes from the 50's.

My parents built a house in the early 60's and found an unexploded bomb during excavation.  The towers of the Aschaffenburg castle were still blown off, and I could still see and remember that.  When a plane flew overhead my little brother would scare our littler sister saying that it was a war plane.  I also thought that the Main merged into the Rhine at Aschaffenburg, but such were early confusions.

Later, we had some people with long hair sitting in the pedestrian zone and we called them Beatles.  All John Lennon look-alike were "Beatles".  There also were communists distributing leaflets in the pedestrian zone.  One Saturday, I distributed Christian leaflets opposite them.  I don't recall coming into discussion with them.  We practiced English and learned to play guitar singing Beatles songs and Gospel songs.

This is the extent of my brush with rebels and rebellion.  I have not taken drugs.  I have not smoked... nor have my friends.   My village and town life still resembled the pastoral, though murderous, scenes of the Father Brown murder mystery series we have just launched into on Netflix, recent BBC production.   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Brown_(2013_TV_series). I am new to Father Brown, as well--but I recognize the clothes, the village, the church, the pastor.

I am surprised to find all the refugees from the world wars in both the Father Brown series and in the Hercule Poirot series.  I recognize them, too.  Our parents were refugees.

Strange then to come across American life during the time.  The post-war 50's giving birth to strange flowers, to drugs, mysticism, sexual deviance (if one is at all allowed to use the term).  Last night I came across Allen Ginsberg on Buckley's show:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAJYceQ54

He reads a poem on air for William Buckley. I recommend watching the first and the last minute.  We laughed and I am still laughing.  There is a collision of worlds.

But we have reaped a harvest of this--inanity, self-importance, drugs, weird sex.  It has Not improved things.

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