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If You Could Go Back to One Point in American History, Where and When Would You Go? And Why? [1]

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Date: 2024-10-13  

In 1981, I was in middle school when I heard The Doors for the first time. I’d grown up with an eclectic mix of music but never heard anything like it. My brother’s friend had lent me the Doors Greatest Hits, and I got hooked. The melodies, Manzarek’s eerie organ-like keyboard and Morrison's lyrics, along with his late 60s charisma, evoked a longing for an era I imagined brimming with rebellion, creativity, freedom and promise. Over the next year, I either bought all their albums or got a copy by trading my home-made cassette tape of L.A. Woman with my friend’s (who I got hooked) cassette copy of his Waiting for the Sun. In my bedroom, I’d spend entire afternoons spaced-out listening to the Doors (and then Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd). No drugs required. The music transported me.

Years later, in American History, the teacher assigned us an essay: If you could go back in time to one point in American history to experience (not change), where and when would you go? I wrote about going back to a Doors’ concert in 1968, before Morrison’s alcohol and attitude ruined their live performances. I talked about the late 60s, the souring of the idealism of the youth of the Kennedy era and Civil Rights Movement to the more pessimistic ethos impacted by drug and alcohol abuse, the Watts riots (Yes, I know, that was the phrase I used) and the Viet Nam War which, I argued, culminated in and was symbolized by the disaster at the Altamonte Speedway. I got an A, even through I also threw in the change in tone in Star Trek...

Anyways, I’m a little older and wiser these days, and I would like to go back to check out the people who made the petroglyphs in a place like Coyote Holes. There are lots of interesting ideas about what they mean and what the people were up to when making them. One being, the people didn’t live there year ‘round, but met up for trade of goods and genes. I suppose my time machine could take care of the nasty microbes I got in me (don’t want to be no vector), as well as some babel fish tech to overcome the language barrier, but I haven’t figured out how to solve the problem of the when. We don’t know enough about those glyphs to properly date them. Perhaps my Time Machine could figure that all out?

Or, then again, maybe I’ve just been watching too much Dr. Who.

Anyways, how about you? Where and when would you go and why?

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