If you were 15 or above at any point during the 1960s, I have a few questions:
When is the first time/around what year you recall seeing long hair (meaning say chin length or longer) on a male who wasn’t a celebrity or a rockstar? What were the reactions of both your peers and those of your parents and grandparents? What about when you yourself grew your hair long?
What were the views on Richard Nixon by people you know ranging from 18-65 prior to the bombing of Cambodia? Do you recall if any of your parents were 1968 Nixon voters? Were any here voters for Nixon in 1968 or 1972? Was anyone here “clean for Gene” in 1968 or anyone here a Humphrey supporter or whose parents supported Humphrey?
By the late 1960s, did “Greasers” still exist (as a separate subculture from bikers) or were they viewed as anachronisms of an earlier time at that point? Was there any animosity between say those in their late 20s/early 30s in the mid-late 1960s and those who were in their teens to early twenties?
Did your parents begin embracing any aspect of the '60s counterculture? If so, what and around when (and adding in their birth years would help out of curiosity)
I don’t recall about long hair, but the first bearded person I met was in 1962 when I had my first job at Columbia. At the end of 1964 I grew a beard and have no shaved since. When I walked down the main street of my wife’s small town in southern NJ, people would lean out of their cars and gape. I don’t think my parents were overly happy, but they accepted it.
I have mentioned this here before, but my mother (born 1913) felt that Nixon should not have been allowed to walk down the street without ringing a bell and crying, “Unclean, unclean.” I would not have been caught dead voting for Nixon. I certainly supported Gene McCarthy, but was reasonably happy with Hubert Ho Hum (as my Minnesota-born friend called him). I can’t say I was very aware of the bombing of Cambodia, but was generally against the war. In 1968 I moved to Canada (no, not a draft dodger–I was 31 and they weren’t drafting 31 year-olds).
I really don’t know what “Greasers” were. There was no more than the usual animosity among the various age groups.
My parents (b. 1906 and 1913) were anti-war and never voted but Democratic, but were relatively conservative for all that. And I already described my mother’s attitude toward Nixon.
Around 1966 or 1967. Certainly when I went away to college in 1967 it was happening around me.
I didn’t discuss it with any adults that I remember. Since I was away at college there was not much opportunity to discuss it with my parents. Everyone I knew was for Robert Kennedy. After he was assassinated and Humphrey was nominated, interest lagged pretty much. There were some groans when Nixon won, but mostly in passing.
I don’t think greasers were a thing any more. The last gasp was the token biker in the Beach Blanket movies. Those trappings (slicked back hair, leather jackets, biker boots, smoking cigarettes) just weren’t cool any more.
No, not really. A slight flare in the trousers maybe, wider lapels and ties for a while, but that’s it.
I don’t think I saw particularly long hair on any non-celebrity males until I went away to college in Boston in 1967. Note I’d not describe a “Beatles haircut” which I did see on others as chin length. My grandparents hated long hair – I recall wearing a long wig once when I went to dinner after coming home form college. and my grandfather wouldn’t even look at me long enough to notice it was obviously a wig. He still wouldn’t look after my cousin walked right over and pulled it off because it was so obviously not my hair. My parents didn’t like it but I don’t think they’d have made me cut mine if I’d worn it once I was at college. At high school it would have been against the rules
I was too young to vote for or against Nixon as voting age then was 21. I’m sure my grandparents voted for him and my parents against him. I supported Gene, not that it earned him even one vote. I didn’t vote for Nixon in 1972 though.
I don’t know.
My father definitely liked the Beatles. My parents did turn against the war.
The first time I saw a guy with long hair (a pony tail) was in a “coffee house” in 1962. But long hair really didn’t become a thing until 1965 or so. Other kids and oldsters would yell “Get a hair cut!” I started to grow a beard in my freshman year of college, 1963. I don’t think my parents cared one way or another.
My parents were Democrats. They would have voted for anyone, as long as he was a Democrat. They absolutely hated Nixon.
The only greasers I remember were in the 50s.
My parents were both born in 1913. No, they didn’t embrace any part of the counterculture.
It was me. My mother had a shit-fit when I came home for Christmas during my first semester at college. Had to get it cut.
My parents were Republicans. They had to defend the US every evening at dinnertime from the withering criticism from their five kids. Supper was not a good time.
We called what would become greasers “hoods”. They were objects of ridicule among the hippie crowd, but if they smoked pot, we could overlook the hair style. They were usually a little older, having come of age in the late 50s as opposed to the early-mid 60s. They were a little old to be “baby boomers.”
My parents were born 1915 and 1921. Mother came around in her old and exhausted age to voting Democratic, and gave up on the hair length thing. They both became a bit looser as we kids grew older, but they certainly didn’t do any drugs–except for nicotine and alcohol, natch!
Nobody in our school was allowed to have long hair, though since I lived in the Bay Area, there were long hairs all over the place. One kid my senior year got into trouble for wearing a Mohawk, and he got suspended, and then he got into trouble for shaving his head.
My father was a Republican and voted for Nixon, though he wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. I turnd 21 in 1971, so the first time I was eligible to vote was in 1972, which I always thought was unfair because my sister, born in 1954, got to vote then, too, because the voting age had been lowered. In the primary elections, I voted for McGovern, my mother voted from Humphrey, my father voted for Nixon, and my sister voted for Wallace.
I don’t recall any greasers.
My father was born in 1925, my mother in 1928. I don’t recall them ever embracing any aspects of the counterculture.
Hair to collar in back, with bangs to approx. eyebrow height in front: 1969, on the heads of other fourth graders in my classroom. In Valdosta freaking GA no less.
My peers were very hostile and non-accepting of any male who did not grow their hair long and styled in that fashion. And that would be me, I was dong a retro 1950’s thing at the time. I believed in “do your own thing”, individual self-expression and all that. The long-haired male kids were by no stretch of the imagination countercultural, they were conformists to fashion.
My parents and grandparents were very non-accepting of long hair on males. They repeated the mantra that long hair belonged on girls. When I grew mine out long, I was 18 and out of the house. It did not go over well with my Dad in particular.
My parents were disappointed 50s idealists, the kind of idealists who believed that rationality and an accepting tolerant attitude would overcome racism and superstition and usher in a new world. The violence, lack of cohesive shared undertandings and truth, and violation of social conventions they held dear soured them on all things progressive by the end of the 60s and yes they voted for Nixon in 68 (they had voted for Kennedy in 60 and Johnson in 64). I was (as I said before) in Valdosta GA and we were largely surrounded by Wallace supporters in 68.
I looked the part, myself (as a 4th grader and kept the look for several years): Vitalis, short hair, pipestem pants. It wasn’t really a “thing” except as a sort of pushback against the Beatles-haircut, flare-legged-pants, wide belts, peace-sign shirts, etc that were the trendy appearance being shoved down our throats.
Never, at any point. My Mom remained idealistic about race and equal opportunity but it came out of that beforementioned 1950s Southern progressive attitude. (e.g., both parents sat me down before 2nd grade and said I would hear a bad word “nigger” from some white kids who thought black people were inferior, that those kids were wrong, we were all equal and it was unfair to think that way, and I was never ever to use that word). My mom worked for head start and later taught in economically depressed schools (majority-black) and cared about social inequity. She also later invaded men’s domains as a female scientist in the 70s. But she never embraced the 60s counterculture or identified with its rhetoric. My Dad meanwhile became conservative and actively disapproving and actively politically incorrect in reaction to the 50s zeitgeist.
When I was in college in 1956. in Louisiana, there were a couple of guys, celebrated beatnik types, who had beards. One of them went on to get a degree in petroleum engineering and became a big Texas cattle rancher.
By the Nixon era, people were already being led around by their noses, and believed what the media told them. I was already a confirmed leftist and pacifist and voted for Johnson in 1964 (absentee from Canada), which didn’t matter., the war was escalated anyway.
(I don’t remember the term Greasers.
My parents were born in 1900 and 1908, and saw the advent of everything (cars, electricity, flight, recorded music, etc.), so new things no longer shocked raised their eyebrows.
My brother grew his hair long around 1966. And got a lot of flack about it.
Nixon was seen as “old school.” My parents loved him, I hated him. My father said everybody did what Nixon did in Watergate and they were just picking on him. He hated Gerald For.
Greasers still existed in New England until the middle 1970’s. The 1950’s crew regarded them as imitators.
I remember my mother stating in 1968 after watching a Beatles documentary that "their music is really good. And she adored the whole folk music, and loved Bob Dylan.
Long hair was simply not allowed at my semi-rural high school. My first day at college in 1970 was a real eye opener.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen eye to eye with my parents on politics or culture. They are conservative and religious in thought and deed. The more I learned about Nixon, the more I disliked him and that continues up until this day. (the Ehrlichman revelations about the marijuana criminalization, for example)
Not many “greasers” out in the sticks where I grew up but the second part of the question was the most intriguing one of the bunch. There is a pretty big difference between older boomers and younger ones, imo, the older ones following the traditional paths where they wanted to lead adult lives with traditional patterns and we younger ones rejecting many/most of those ideals and taking entirely different paths in thought and deed.
My parents were born in 1929 and 1930 and knew how to work hard and squeeze a nickel but they still live their lives like it was 1959 in many ways. And are pretty comfortable with that. We don’t have much to talk about, still.
There were people we called greasers in my area (suburbs of D.C.) in the late 60s. What I remember is the guys typically had short hair, wore Chucks, and listened to soul music. There was some tension between them and those who had longer hair, wore trendier clothes, and listened to British rock. They weren’t thought of as anachronisms so much as having chosen a different and less progressive path. I only had interaction with those still in high school.
I actually don’t remember. But our town was fairly conservative, so it took awhile for it to catch on.
I had a negative view of Nixon back in 1960 (when I was eight) and was delighted not to have Nixon to kick around any more. I didn’t like him at all when he got elected. My parents worked for JFK in 1960 and, like me, much prefered Hubert Humphrey. I couldn’t vote yet, but Humphrey was (and in some ways still is), my political ideal.
I graduated high school in 1970 and greasers were still fairly active (though the actual greasers did not exactly match the stereotype). There was a subculture that kept their hair short and had a strong car culture, with the ideal being the '57 Chevy.
I won’t say they embraced it, but they didn’t actively dislike it.
Born in 1947. Graduated high school in 1965, college in 1969.
Had to be when I went to college. There was certainly no long hair in my high school. Went into college with a crewcut, graduated with shoulder-length hair. My father was not happy.
My parents both voted for Nixon. My father was a long-time Nixon supporter and advocate, but after Watergate he (while remaining a staunch conservative) absolutely hated Nixon. He felt that Nixon had betrayed him. I wasn’t into politics at all in college. My first real girlfriend in high school, OTOH, dropped out of college to canvas for Gene.
I never thought of them as “greasers”, but many of my old high school buddies probably continued to fit the description. Lots of Ducktail haircuts.
The first truly long-haired non-celebrity that I saw up close was a kid that was in my senior class in 1966. He showed up with long hair and the school sent him home to get a haircut. His hair was down to his neck or thereabouts. He kept showing up, they kept sending him home. They finally suspended him until he and his parents threatened a lawsuit and the school relented.
Most of us didn’t care that much if we were under 18, and I was. A lot of us were too busy getting stoned and the rest of us were trying to get laid. My folks voted for Nixon both times. I voted for him in 72.
The greasers morphed into the stoners. They were the badasses (in their own minds, at least) who smoked cigarettes out back of the gym during school and smoked weed before and after school. I don’t recall any animosity between the late teens and the late twenties back then, but maybe I just didn’t notice it.
Both parents born in 1910. Both of them thought the counterculture people were pathetic losers and for the most part, they were absolutely right.
I was born in 1954, so I barely make the cut. My parents were born in 1924 and 1926.
By 1966 the cooler kids in my neighborhood, especially the guys who had bands, were sporting long hair, ranging from Beatle haircuts to much longer. The kids in my crowd thought long hair was cool, and our parents mostly did not. Because my parents were strict, my hair length was a source of frequent arguments, which I lost. My hair didn’t reach past Beatles Rubber Soul length until I got to college in 1972.
My parents were lifelong Democrats, not fans of Nixon. Their votes that I recall them talking about were for Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and McGovern. I feel fairly certain they voted for Democrats for President in every election in their adult lives. I voted for McGovern in 1972.
I lived in a blue collar neighborhood in Baltimore, and there were definitely greasers alive and well there into the 70s. I don’t recall any animosity between young adults and teens in the 60s. Plenty of animosity between parents and teens, though.
My parents, born in the mid 20s, were pretty much repulsed by 60s culture.
