This week marks the anniversary of both the first and last episodes of Star Trek. It still seems hard to believe that the original series only ran for three seasons between 1966 and 1969. But it acted almost like a time machine into the Space Age: The final episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet—definitely a 50s-era show—aired on September 3, 1966, just one day after Star Trek premiered. Then, on September 2, 1969—the day the very last original Star Trek was broadcast—we were swept into a whole new age when America’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) began dispensing cash at the Chemical Bank in New York.
Perhaps one of the most uplifting, memorable moments of the Boomer Age occurred on August 28, 1963 when 200,000 people participating in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
We still had hope – we still had both Kennedys, we’d made a breakthrough with the Soviet Union, the space race was exciting to watch, the nation was struggling with racism, but it seemed like a fight we could win! Five years later, when the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, Illinois, John, and Bobby Kennedy, Dr. King and even Malcolm X had all been shot and killed. The dream had become a nightmare in Vietnam. The DNC became a major battleground in the fight to get US out—and left the nation even more divided. Even more sadly, the dream had turned into a nightmare in our own cities—Chicago, Detroit, LA… But all these years later, while the 1968 Democratic National Convention leaves us with painful memories, we still remember with joy Dr. King’s speech, his beautiful, soul-stirring words. We remember those words and that day in August 1963. We remember how we wanted to stand up to be counted, to make our world a better place. As he, himself, put it: “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends… “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ “…With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” It may be tattered and worn around the edges these days, but somehow, I still have that dream!
Mid-August is generally known for its dog days, but that heat must occasionally cause a synapse or two in the brain to go haywire, leading to either a blown fuse or a power surge. That certainly appeared to occur more than once on the Eastern side of the Boomer Half-Century’s Cold War. Every time, it surely did manage to piss off the Western side, even if it was a result of their own prodding.
In August 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
In August 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 spy plane, capturing U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers, and then sentencing him to 10 years in prison.
In August 1968, The Soviet Union noticed that the Prague Spring had stretched pretty far into the summer, so sent 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks to Czechoslovakia to set the calendar straight.
In August 1979, Soviet dancer Aleksandr Godunov defected to United States. Six years later, i.e., August 1985, in an odd sort of tit for tat, Hans Tiedge, a top counter-spy working out of West Germany, defected to East Germany.
By August 1990, the whole Eastern Team of the Cold War was approaching retirement. Tiedge the Spy was probably none too pleased—after risking his life to cross the border—to find that East and West Germany planned to banish that same border. At the same time, Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union.
You wouldn’t think a snowball would have much chance in the northern hemisphere in August, but only a year later, in August 1991, that ball really began to pick up snow. When Gorbachev went on vacation that month a coup was attempted in Moscow, and he was placed under house arrest. That didn’t last long—within a day more than 100,000 Soviet citizens showed up outside the parliament building to protest the coup attempt, Gorbachev was released from house arrest, and by the 23rd of the month, he was back in Moscow giving his Cabinet a thorough cleaning. Not that it mattered – remember the snowball? It was really on a roll…two days later, Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union.
OK, not all 76 million babies born during the Big Boom actually went to Woodstock, NY in 1969 for the biggest music festival ever, but a significant percentage of those of us who didn’t actually attend watched the movie, bought the album, and sang the songs, thus foreshadowing virtual attendance. I came upon a child of god He was walking along the road And I asked him, where are you going And this he told me Im going on down to yasgurs farm Im going to join in a rock n roll band Im going to camp out on the land Im going to try an get my soul free We are stardust We are golden And weve got to get ourselves Back to the garden Then can I walk beside you I have come here to lose the smog And I feel to be a cog in something turning Well maybe it is just the time of year Or maybe its the time of man I dont know who l am But you know life is for learning We are stardust We are golden And weve got to get ourselves Back to the garden By the time we got to woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devils bargain And weve got to get ourselves Back to the garden -- Joni Mitchell
Let’s face it. Boomers are big on conspiracy theories, such as the supposed cover-up of the Roswell UFO matter featured in the BoomerZoo Almanac for the week of June 24. We didn’t invent conspiracy theories, of course—the Roswell incident occurred in 1947, when we hadn’t quite boomed as a group—but we’re really good at inventing new ones, while keeping as many old ones as possible alive. I’m sure our forebears would have been our equals in this matter, but they didn’t have our easy communication benefits: Photocopiers, email, the Internet.
Another conspiracy theory built by Boomers down the road from the event has to do with Marilyn Monroe, who
was found dead in her L.A. apartment apparently of a prescription medication overdose on August 5, 1962. As we grew older and stories about a relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn began to leak out, the idea of the Kennedys arranging Marilyn’s death in order to keep that relationship secret began to take shape, persisting through the power of those easy communication benefits.
Now, I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories – after all, I hardly know any one single person who can keep a secret, much less a whole government bureaucracy worth of people. And beside that, I just prefer to maintain my illusion that most people—even most famous people—are generally good.
Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
