Total Eclipse of the Heart

The children at Horace Mann Elementary School took us back to the 60's last Thursday, in a concert that turned the gym into a festival of love.


The evening featured pony rides in the parking lot; a hoe-down in the gym; a collection of collages dedicated to the important people and events of the 60's; kids dressed in the appropriate attire: beads, tie dyed shirts, leather boots, shades; and to top it all off, an impressive performance of some of the better known songs from the era reinforced by a slide show.


Although I was born in 1964 and thus came of consciousness during the '70's (about the only person I know who can lay claim to that remark), this was the music of my youth. I remember listening to my sisters pound out their versions on the family piano. When I was old enough to take piano, I often bypassed my assigned lesson to play songs out of my sister's 60's music books. (Plus, you have to keep in mind I did go to Macalester.)


The music seemed to mean something, seemed to indicate an important part of the cultural revolution I was learning about in my American History classes. As a kid said Thursday night, "It was the first time people challenged their government." Well maybe not, but the idealism of that statement says something about what people of the time were smoking, drinking and thinking.


What was odd about the evening however, was to think that those kids of Horace Mann, like their peers throughout the country, probably view the 60's as some unimaginable time period that occurred somewhere right after the Jurassic period. I remember when I was a kid (after I walked seven miles to school in ten inches of snow, with girl's boots), I used to think of the 1940's, which was a pretty significant time in my parent's lives, as something that happened only in books, not in actuality. But heck, there are people who work at our stores that were born in the 70's...


I guess my observation for the night, was like that spunky, little heroine in Miss Saigon, the kids are being given an outline, a representation of what the meaning of the time period was. Peace, love, a time of change, of movements and of JFK and MLK and BFK and the Great Society. The race in space. Imagine... But anyway, the kids sang, and sang well whether it meant anything or not: Blowin' in the Wind, Yellow Submarine, We Shall Overcome, Puff the Magic Dragon, Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Ballad of the Green Beret, Surfin USA, 409 and many, many more! It was a virtual re-creation of my 45 collection.


"It would seem to me the people in control of the media must be 60's people, and they'll continue to push forth the 60's until they're dead. Then a new group of people who were raised in the 70's will come in and we'll have a big 70's revival in the year of 2000. The 60's will be forgotten. Nostalgia is more of a mental thing. It has no ring of reality. It doesn't really have much to do with what's going on today."


-The writer of Blowin In the Wind


Speaking of which, if an entire era can possibly be about something, here's what I see: I was taking Max the Cat for his walk the other day when it was very windy out. Every time there was a gust of wind, Max would take off like an Indy 500 car. I would huff and puff to keep up, but my Mama Cass legs would only spin so fast, and ultimately Max's leash would snap and pull him back. His perpetual race against nature hopelessly lost. As the kiddies will eventually learn, the answer my friend, is blowin in the wind.