WHY THE '60S NEVER SEEM TO FADE AWAY

SACRAMENTO -- This week, sadly and for obvious reasons, the Kennedy funeral
procession returned to American television screens -- in particular, the
still powerful image of little John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's
casket as it rolled by. I was a Fresno third-grader the first time I saw
this signature moment of the '60s, live, on a black-and-white television.
Then, as now, I wondered if the 3-year-old boy knew what it was all about,
this idea of death, of his father never coming home.

This month in Berkeley, an echo of the Free Speech Movement has been
getting heavy media play. A lockout at KPFA, the alternative radio station
with roots deep in the lively turmoil of the '60s, brought out waves of
street demonstrators -- ``the true graybeards of the '60s and '70s,'' as
the San Francisco Chronicle described them.

``We want mediation, not facilitation,'' Larry Bensky, a displaced on-air
personality dubbed ``the God of KPFA,'' thundered to the protesters, ``and
that doesn't mean sitting around a table, holding hands and singing
`Kumbaya.' ''

My childhood memories of Berkeley's contributions to the '60s are not as
vivid as those of the Kennedy assassination. In fact, sometimes in Fresno
it seemed as though the '60s were something happening somewhere else, on
the other side of the Altamont Pass. I do recall, however, my older brother
getting caught once by my folks with a copy of the Berkeley Barb. The
results were not pleasant.

Out Of This World

Also this week, the Apollo moon landing has been everywhere, with public
television specials and the newspaper recollections of various
participants, from Neil Armstrong on down. Again, I remember that July
night 30 years ago. What I remember most is standing in the back yard and
gazing up through the valley sky, as if the ``fire on the moon,'' as Mailer
called it, could be seen with a teenager's naked eye.

Add to this list of 1960s echoes the capture last month of Symbionese
Liberation Army fugitive Kathleen Ann Soliah (yes, the SLA was of the '70s,
but much of what is attributed to the '60s actually happened in the next
decade; it's part of the phenomenon).

And the ongoing political knee-jerkery over medicinal marijuana. . . . And
the recent controversies in Orange County over South Vietnamese refugees. .
2E . And the start of a presidential campaign in which the question of
what candidates did, or did not do, in the Vietnam War will once more be on
the table. . . .

The '60s are not dead.

They are with us still, casting unshakable shadows across life and public
discourse in this country, defining in many ways the national debate. And
with California being ``America, only more so'' -- Stegner's phrase -- and
also the sound set for many moments known collectively as the '60s, the
undying decade seems especially alive in this state now.

Many Last Breaths

A few years ago, upon the death of Jerry Garcia, I tried to compile a list
of all the times the '60s were said to have died: At Altamont Pass, with
the Hells Angels raising lethal hell at a Rolling Stones concert; with the
Manson murders in the Los Feliz hills; with Jim Morrison in the bathtub in
Paris; on the embassy rooftop in Saigon, as the last American helicopter
left; with the fiery assault on the SLA hideout in South Los Angeles, and
on and on.

Why this comic effort to keep declaring the '60s dead? Not much ink or air
time is wasted marking when, say, the '80s died. Why does this time known
as the '60s keep coming back?

The '60s mattered: in many ways, on many levels. They were, as a friend who
lived in the thick of all things '60s likes to say, ``the last great time.''

Big stuff happened, some of it ugly, some of it wonderful. Basic ideas --
everything from the presumption of a national goodness to the confines of
earthly gravity -- were challenged. To revisit the Berkeley radio
protester, it wasn't just ``holding hands and singing `Kumbaya.' ''