The Summer of ’69 – Moon Rocks and Rock & Roll – 50 Years Ago: Part 1

By Deb Thomas.

Part 1. Green Cheese in July

Sometimes there are whole years which contain many milestones. They are filled with events that draw us right back into a particular place and time. You cannot know at the beginning if the year is a pivotal one in your life calendar—what the year will bring; you can only look back and recall the spectacular pluses or minuses. Some years however, never fade far in your memory. That year for me was 1969.

It was the beginning of being a teenager, and the year I discovered that as much as I liked science and math—poetry (and later on, the poetry of rock and roll) was also inspiring. In the January edition of Life magazine, I selected something to read in front of my eighth grade class; our hip English teacher Andrea B. Hancock had challenged my class with a sort of show and tell with our discoveries in creative writing.

That one poem symbolized both the concrete wonder of science and ethereal beauty of poetry; worlds collided. I read and memorized James Dickey’s poem “For the First Manned Moon Orbit” as it appeared in Life Magazine. The magazine gave the poem context against a ten-page photo essay of astronauts and photos of the earth from space. The poem can be seen as it was printed through Life Magazine’s free public archive at: (https://library.wustl.edu/james-dickey-and-the-apollo-program/)

For The Manned Moon Orbit

So long
So long as the void
Is hysterical, bolted out, you float on nothing

But procedure alone,

Eating, sleeping like a man
Deprived of the weight of his own
And all humanity in the name

                                               Of a new life
                    and through this, making new
Time slowly, the moon comes.

As we grow and age—we have cornerstone moments; that first day of school, that first kiss, that first car, and that first time away from home— which bring us to forever remember where we were. 1969 was quite a year; the summer in particular. We could all probably collectively list similar things from the summer of ’69; especially the moon landing, and the music festival known as Woodstock.

It was a big year and fitting to look back at some highlights (no order or emphasis on importance here) leading up to both the July Moon Mission and the events in August on Yasgur’s Dairy Farm, in Bethel, NY.

January, 1969. To begin the year, Russian and Chinese troops clashed along the Ussuri River in Northeast China. United Soviet Socialist Republic’s space program sent the probe Venera 5 (along with other Venera probes that year), launched from an orbiting Sputnik on a mission to send back information about Venus. Its probe sent data every 45 seconds for 53 minutes before it was crushed and burned approximately 15 miles over Venus (at that time the barometric pressure was 26.1 bar and temperature was 608 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface of the planet). Richard Nixon was sworn in as our country’s thirty-seventh President of the United States. Creedence Clearwater Revival releases their second album titled “Bayou Country,” containing their seminal 1969 hits Born on the Bayou, Proud Mary and Good Golly Miss Molly. Quarterback Joe Namath wins Most Valuable Player award at the Super Bowl III in Miami (Jets beat Baltimore Colts, 16 – 7 ). U.S. – Vietnamese Peace Talks begin in Paris. It’s goodbye to The Beatles as they give their last performance on Apple Corps London Headquarters.

Early in February, a one ton plus meteorite falls in Chihuahua, Mexico, and the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet has its first flight. On February 13, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) bomb the Montreal Stock Exchange hurting twenty-seven people in the blast.

March is busy. In March, Mickey Mantle told us he was retiring. NHL New York Rangers player Phil Esposito breaks Stan Mikita’s record (96) for scoring most points in a season. The supersonic jet Concorde observes its first test flight. Apollo 9 is launched in March and circles the Earth 151 times, or 10 days. A record high price of Gold at $47.00 per ounce is recorded. At the home of George and Patti Harrison in England, 120 marijuana joints were found. A made for TV movie; “Marcus Welby MD” hits the airwaves.   Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” is published. John Lennon and Yoko Ono have their first “Bed-In” for Peace, in Amsterdam. By March’s end, with a spectacular 88 week reign Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Beatles album fell off the charts.

In April of 1969, Melvin Laird, U.S. Secretary of Defense, announces a policy of reducing American involvement named, “Vietnamization.” Yet, many U.S. cities see enormous anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. Clashes between Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and Royal Ulster Constabulary result in massive riots in Derry, Ireland. In the 73^rd Boston Marathon, Yoshiaki Unetani of Japan wins in 2:13:49, while unofficially sanctioned 1^st woman, American Sara Mae Berman comes in at 3:22:46. The first human eye transplant ever is performed in April, Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing Bobby Kennedy, and American B-52’s drop 3,000-ton bombs at Cambodian boundary.

May brings the North Vietnamese into Laos. U.S. Troops defeat (only for a short time) entrenched Viet Cong soldiers on Ap Bia Mountain, in a horrid 10 day battle. The battle site would come to be known as Hamburger Hill. The enormous British ship, the Queen Elizabeth II leaves Southampton on maiden voyage to NY. Norman Mailer wins the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for his work, “Armies of the Night.” In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, there are race riots; later to be known as the “May 13 Incident.” Both abortion and contraception legalized in Canada and the last Chevrolet Corvair rolls off Detroit’s assembly line for good. Funnymen, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin form Monty Python. Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup against St. Louis Blues, 2 – 1. In Basketball, Boston Celtics ace LA Lakers, 4 – 3 in the 23^rd NBA Championship.

June of 1969 marks the end of Tobacco advertising in Canadian radio and TV. The last episode of Star Trek is shown on NBC. “The Ballad of John & Yoko” is released by The Beatles. A race riot breaks out in Hartford, Connecticut. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash combine talents in a Grand Old Opry Television special, Tommy James and the Shondells release “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” while the Smothers Brothers comedy Hour completes their last television show on CBS. Yankee player Mickey Mantle retires in front of 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium. Two-hundred thousand people attend Newport ’69, at that time – the largest music concert. Aretha Franklin is arrested in Detroit for disturbing the peace, in and Zager & Evans release “In the Year 2525.” In Greenwich Village, New York City, police raid the gay bar Stonewall Inn, and then in three days, 400 to 1,000 patrons riot against police, marking the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement.

In July, Rolling Stones release “Honky Tonk Woman,” Derry, Belfast, and Dungiven see the height of its marching season with widespread rioting forcing some families to leave their homes. Russia launches its unmanned Luna 15 Moon rocket. US troop withdrawal begins in Vietnam and IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is made generally available for the 360 mainframe computer, and we go to the moon.

It was just a few weeks ago that we celebrated the fifty year anniversary. It is important in the lives of those who were here to witness this via television, and to people of Earth, forever. It gives us reason to pause and look at our humanity set against the stars in the background. On July 20, 2019, many of us paused to remember what we did and for a brief time, became united in thought marking the time we first heard Neil Armstrong’s crackly voice came over Houston’s mission control speakers on July 20, 1969 to tell us all, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” An estimated 500 million people all over the world watched the live news feed. The push to have mankind visit the moon by the end of the decade, from President John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1961, had succeeded. In July, three men orbited Earth’s closest neighbor in space in the Apollo 11 in the Command Module. They would launch the smaller Lunar Lander, named The Eagle, with pilot Neil Armstrong and co-pilot Buzz (Edwin) Aldrin to the moon, with pinpoint precision in the moon’s Sea of Tranquility, a lunar plateau. Once on the moon’s surface they would spend almost a full day collecting rock and soil samples and take data for further testing. To relive those once in a lifetime command central words and watch as the lunar lander hits the moon, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1_nhshK2zU

Where were you when Neil Armstrong stepped on that gray and grainy lunar surface? Did you have an alarm set to remind you of the broadcast on television? Did your family gather with you to watch the landing? This summer NASA has planned activities to celebrate the fifty year anniversary of the moon mission. They have an updated list on their website also containing a new logo:

In July of that summer, the concrete technology and advances in science rocketed our world towards something bigger than ourselves. The moon landing forever changed us. With that one shining moment, we Earthlings—of all diverse corners of the planet Earth, held our collective breath, then cheered audibly at our achievement. In that moment, we were all united. We should engage in this again, to get to another new place where we can compound our greatest strengths. It is time for another moon mission; a giant leap for mankind, to unite us, once more.

August gives us Woodstock. The next big thing to happen in 1969 was a music festival in New York State. The entire year would be juxtaposed against the awe and amazement of scientific accomplishment of the moon landing, and the tangled chaos of war, against a background “An Aquarian Exposition.”

Although she did not appear at the festival, Joni Mitchell later would write the quintessential song that sears the image of that weekend with these words to the song forever;

Woodstock

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
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve 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 it’s the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve 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
111We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden…”

Coming in Part 2: Yasgur’s Farm and the events of the 3 Days of Peace and Music, and the way it shaped a generation.

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Websites perused for this article: https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/1969/ , and

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/07/apollo-11-moon-landing-photos-50-years-ago/594448/ ,

and https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-timeline, and

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-adds-events-to-celebration-of-50th-anniversary-of-historic-moon-landing.