John Korb:
CLASS OF 1968
Ross Road Elementary SchoolClass of 1968
Palo alto, CA
John's Story
I was raised in an era of Cold War McCarthyism, ‘Duck and Cover’, and Disney-flavored fascism in a neighborhood where author /counterculture figure Ken Kesey actually lived before moving to the woods and acquiring a troupe of Merry Pranksters. On any given day, one might run into Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia (who worked at Dana Morgan’s Music and first jammed at Kepler’s Books where I used to hang out perusing photography journals), or even Dylan before he got his teeth fixed. It was an era of Healthy Questions; and many paid the price for asking them. Sometimes marriages didn’t work. My parents’ was one. We did the ‘Better Homes & Gardens’ bit, and it was shallow and a sham. Church on Sunday, PTA meetings, you name it. Kids were dying in Vietnam, and as Country Joe McDonald put it in a sing-along, ‘Coming home in boxes’ (and by the way, we never ‘Stopped’ the War—we lost it very badly). Jo...Expand for more
hn F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were shot on our own streets. Living in the shadow of Haight-Ashbury, there were also many drugs. It was Owsley territory. That part was a shame. It was never a solution, never part of healthy counter-culture—only more mindless consumerism in a different form; and some kids didn't graduate because they ceased to breathe.
It’s amusing to me, in a twisted kind of way, hearing people that I knew back then talking about how maybe they found Jesus and Capitalism and that they’re ‘better people’ now—just because I knew them then; and they haven’t really changed. Maybe they just found a nicer suit and tie? I don’t know how you can rationalize it. I don’t try. I just know that things aren’t better now. Not by a long shot. And in my sixth decade on this goofy planet, I don’t sentimentalize a lot, or miss my classmates at all. I miss the Healthy Questions.
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