As 1969 rolled around and the decade was ending, I wasnsix years old and living in a temperate Southern city anthousand miles from New York. Conflict came fromnwanting to stretch my feet into my brother’s half of thenbackest-back of our fake wood-sided turquoise station wagon;nVietnam had no meaning for me. I must have sat on mynDad’s lap as he watched the news, but I don’t remember then”living room war.” All I have are blurry memories of firstngrade. My idea of pill-popping was half an orange-flavorednchild’s aspirin. I was a 36-inch-high square; I was out of it.nSomewhere out there were the Columbia student strike,nthe Harlem protests, the antiwar flag burnings, women’s lib,nproblems in the schools, the riots at the DemocraticnConvention in Chicago, the King memorials; but not at mynhouse. Remember that Richard Nixon was elected Presidentnin 1968, and even though he just squeezed through on thenpopular vote, and even though, yes, it probably would havenbeen Bobby Kennedy if he hadn’t been assassinated, still, anyear that elected Dick Nixon was not a year of real politicalnrevolution. The middle class was unmobilized. (A letternfrom a Mrs. Mildred Dodge of Sylvania, Ohio, that ran innLife in ’68 read: “Thank you for bringing us the wholesome,nencouraging and beautiful picture of youth embodiednin the Nixon-Eisenhower engagement.” Richard Nixon’sndaughter Julie was to get married to David Eisenhower innDecember. “Such a sad contrast to the poor, lost childrennKatherine Dalton is managing editor of Chronicles. Fromn1984 to 1988 she lived in New York City. An earliernversion of this piece appeared in Metro.n24/CHRONICLESnHigh TimesnThe Late 60’s in New Yorknby Katherine Daltonnnnliving in caves!”)nBut in certain pockets out there in the wider worldnbeyond my backyard, in the universities and bigger cities, itnwas a revolution, all right — a cultural and sexual revolutionnin this decade when lowbrow became highbrow and highbrowsnlike Susan Sontag defended the switch, when thensubculture became the culture, and the culture purposelynran amok.nTom Wolfe, referring to his 1968 book The ElectricnKool-Aid Acid Test, told an interviewer:n”Everything I learned about what [Ken] Kesey and hisngroup had been doing kept leading to something else, intonmore involved things. At one point I thought I’d nevernfinish — I was reading books on brain psychology, onnreligion, on sociology, books on psychology, cognitivenpsychology, all sorts of things.n”I was gradually coming to the realization that this was inna way a curious, very bizarre, advance guard of this whole.npush towards self-realization, and all these things that peoplenare trying to avoid facing up to as the main concern. I thinknit’s very comforting to be able to say that we’ve got the samenold problems: we’ve got war, we’ve got poverty.n”That way we don’t have to see that the main problem —nif you want to call it that — is that people are free all of ansudden; they’re rich and they’re fat and they’re free.”nIn 1968 Wolfe was already sporting those white suits.nNew York had two favorite sons running for President:nBobby Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller. Joe Namath andnthe Jets won the AFL tide in December. Poet MariannenMoore was alive and well and living in Ft. Green, Brooklyn,n