Bell Bottom Blues Revisited
My August 29, 1969 copy of Life Magazine came in the mail today.
The summer of 1969 was a significant one.
The Who released Tommy.
I watched Easy Rider at the Eatontown Drive-In without a car.
I watched with my immigrant Norwegian grandfather, the first man walk on the moon.
The New York Mets began their comeback that would ultimately make them World Series Champs that Fall.
Sharon Tate met Charles Manson.
The United States Gulf Coast met Hurricane Camille.
Woodstock.
And for me maybe the most important thing to happen that summer, I got my first pair of hip hugger, bell bottom blue jeans.
WT Grant was a department store in Little Silver, New Jersey back in the 1960’s. Little Silver was the next town over from Oceanport across the small bridge over the Oceanport Creek, then a short hop through the Army’s Fort Monmouth, and across the Little Silver Bridge. Little Silver had Mike’s Toy Store, the Dairy King drive up ice cream, and a small WT Grant department store.
On one of those trips to WT Grant late in August, in the summer of 1969, before school started the following week and I would begin the eighth grade, I convinced my mother to buy me a pair of bell bottom blue jeans. They were a little big but I didn’t care, I had my first pair of bell bottoms.
In addition to my bell bottoms that day, I also convinced my mother to buy me a copy of the Life magazine that I had picked up from the magazine rack. The one about Woodstock, with Norman Mailer on the cover, and the Manson murders inside.
I remember the ride home, flipping those pages and absorbing the photos. Once home I spent hours in that magazine reading and imagining…me in my bell bottoms at Woodstock…the horror of the Manson murders and the beauty of Sharon Tate.
Life Magazine back in the day was big with many photos and stories.
The world as we knew it was changing in the 60’s, there was lots of turmoil, tragedy, social unrest, and scientific advancement.
Those bell bottoms signified a change in my life too. Later that school year those jeans (along with my handmade macramé belt) would get me some trouble and would keep me out of my eighth-grade graduation until my sister could bring me new clothes.
I would wear that same pair of bell bottom jeans through the four years of high school that followed with a little help that they were big when I bought them, eventually cutting the threads out of the seams at bottoms to make them longer, and the fact that I just plain didn’t grow much from the time I was 13 until I graduated high school.
The world was different then, but probably really not so much different. We still have turmoil, tragedy, social unrest, and scientific advancement now.
But back then we had magazines, now we have Facebook and Instagram.
And I don’t have hip hugger bell bottom blue jeans anymore. But at my age and with the size of my belly I wish I did. They would have a more practical application for me today.
The realization that the sun is setting sooner crept over me as I finished my ride and headed back to my truck last evening.
Just like the lift the extra daylight was in the spring that seemed so liberating, the impending darkness as the days get shorter is signaling a change that will soon be limiting.
The summer of 2018 is coming to an end already.
But just as fast as I think this summer went, the winter months will go by too, and before I know it the days will be warmer and the sun back out longer.
Because unlike that long lazy summer of 49 years ago, that is how it seems to be now.
Time seems to move faster.
I don’t know why that is, it just does.
“Bell bottom blues, don’t say goodbye.
I’m sure we’re gonna meet again,
And if we do, don’t you be surprised”
(from Bell Bottom Blues by Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock)
