Since we are discussing crazy times... Where were you?

[p7fl]

1963: 13 years old, a friend a I hitchhiked to Idlewild Airport and took a flight to DC.
Not sure what we were thinking other than taking part in our national tragedy.

[SteyrAUG]

Let's drop back...
2008 housing crisis / stock crash
2001 sept
1980s aids epidemic
1970s gas crisis
1960s JFK/MLK assasination
1960s Vietnam/Draft

In these other crazy times, Im looking for a good story to change the subject... Anyone have a story in the above list, or other crazy time that didn't make it on the list?

Not a crazy story , more like dodged the bullet story.
I was about to be graduating Sr High in June of 1975 fully expecting to be drafted and shipped off to the cluster fuck in Vietnam.
The fall of Saigon happened April 30 1975.....a month and a half before graduating.....unbelievable.
Me and a whole shit load of other young bucks got a new lease on life that summer.

Psst. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1972. Unless you got drafted into the CIA you wouldn't be going to Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 was basically the evacuation of our Embassy and as many friendly South Vietnamese nationals as we could.

The news basically ignored the facts and ever since then has tried to link the 1968 Tet Offensive event when the Embassy was attacked with the fall of Saigon in 1975 as if one happened on Friday and the next one happened on Saturday.

[Jeepsnguns]

Let's drop back...
2008 housing crisis / stock crash
2001 sept
1980s aids epidemic
1970s gas crisis
1960s JFK/MLK assasination
1960s Vietnam/Draft

In these other crazy times, Im looking for a good story to change the subject... Anyone have a story in the above list, or other crazy time that didn't make it on the list?

Not a crazy story , more like dodged the bullet story.
I was about to be graduating Sr High in June of 1975 fully expecting to be drafted and shipped off to the cluster fuck in Vietnam.
The fall of Saigon happened April 30 1975.....a month and a half before graduating.....unbelievable.
Me and a whole shit load of other young bucks got a new lease on life that summer.

Psst. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1972. Unless you got drafted into the CIA you wouldn't be going to Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 was basically the evacuation of our Embassy and as many friendly South Vietnamese nationals as we could.

The news basically ignored the facts and ever since then has tried to link the 1968 Tet Offensive event when the Embassy was attacked with the fall of Saigon in 1975 as if one happened on Friday and the next one happened on Saturday.

Thanks Steyr, I just googled "U.S. military draft ends, Jan. 27, 1973. On the day in 1973, as the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls."
I'll be damned!!!! My memory is flawed!!!! I would have bet money the war ended in 1975.

[SteyrAUG]

Not a crazy story , more like dodged the bullet story.
I was about to be graduating Sr High in June of 1975 fully expecting to be drafted and shipped off to the cluster fuck in Vietnam.
The fall of Saigon happened April 30 1975.....a month and a half before graduating.....unbelievable.
Me and a whole shit load of other young bucks got a new lease on life that summer.

Psst. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1972. Unless you got drafted into the CIA you wouldn't be going to Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 was basically the evacuation of our Embassy and as many friendly South Vietnamese nationals as we could.

The news basically ignored the facts and ever since then has tried to link the 1968 Tet Offensive event when the Embassy was attacked with the fall of Saigon in 1975 as if one happened on Friday and the next one happened on Saturday.

Thanks Steyr, I just googled "U.S. military draft ends, Jan. 27, 1973. On the day in 1973, as the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls."
I'll be damned!!!! My memory is flawed!!!! I would have bet money the war ended in 1975.

And there is a reason for that. You think fake news is a modern thing that requires the internet? You guys were being force fed 100% hipppie / protest propaganda. You guys probably were sweating bullets thinking you were gonna be drafted into Vietnam because nobody who knew the truth was going to tell you any differently.

Just like the Obama kids were grossly misinformed, there was a deliberate program of misinformation on all fronts from entertainment, newspapers and all forms of media. If you asked 100,000 persons in 1974 how they feel about the Vietnam War, I guarantee you that 95% would reply along the standard line that "The war is wrong and we should pull out our troops", never mind that it actually happened already two years prior. They were trying to hang to Vietnam war on the Republicans and gain the White House in 76, which they did largely as a result of presenting the Vietnam war as a Republican thing, even though it was Kennedy who first committed advisors and Johnson who escalated it acting on the advice of McNamara.

The worst part of that entire event is Hanoi won the war with the US public perception. The Tet Offensive absolutely devastated the North and their ability to conduct operations in the South. Their losses were simply unrecoverable, however the US media, most specifically Cronkite, presented the event as an serious American setback where we lost the initiative and popular support. The South Vietnamese weren't ever going to invade and capture the North and we weren't gonna do it for them so everyone realized something of a stalemate was achieved and this is what allowed the US to withdraw in 72 confident that the North couldn't effectively invade the south and Nixon gave assurances that if they did, the US would be back.

And that is what kept the North in the North for three years. So what changed? Watergate. Nixon's resignation in 74 led the North to contemplate that the US may not be able to keep their pledge to the South and when Ford became President they realized he didn't have enough power to compel Congress to recommit troops to Vietnam and that is when they decided to invade and Saigon fell.

But most newsreels and documentaries tell a different story. The Tet Offensive destroyed our effort to wage war, the South was invaded and we pulled out our troops with our tails between our legs with the fall of Saigon. It's as ridiculous as suggesting we lost WWII to Germany because they unified 44 years later.

But that is what your TV showed you, that was the popular narrative presented by most of your educators and that is what the typical "I don't know shit yet" high school graduate believed. Don't feel bad, there are still dumbshits who actually believe we never went to the moon.

[joel]

I enlisted in June 1974 ON my 17th birthday.
There was no draft at the time.
The local recruiter was happy to see me.

[Springfield]

I turned 18 in 1972 and registered with Selective Service as required by law, but already there was alot of talk about ending the draft. In the Jan 73 SS lottery my birthday got 26 - but I knew I wasn't going to get drafted because it was a formality. Funny, in June of 73 I decided to enlist . . . .

[SteyrAUG]

I turned 18 in 1972 and registered with Selective Service as required by law, but already there was alot of talk about ending the draft. In the Jan 73 SS lottery my birthday got 26 - but I knew I wasn't going to get drafted because it was a formality. Funny, in June of 73 I decided to enlist . . . .

Perhaps the safest time in US history to do so.

[AirForceShooter]

[

2008. Clancy's bar on Wall Street laughing at all the brokers
2001 Sept. 4 blocks from the World trade Center.
1980. Happily married and not screwing around.
1970. Had a friend with a gas station. Had a pump in the back for friends and famiy.
1960. until 1963 in high school Vividly remember JFK. School close for a week. MLK not so much.
1960's . Spent most of it in the USAF traveling the world. Did 67-68 in Nam

AFS

[glockeyed]

gas price 2008

https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=FL

[dammitgriff]

2008 - working here in S. FL. living in a 2 bedroom with wife and my first child... lost my job early 2009... got a better one 4 days later

2001 - junior in college (NCSU in Raleigh) walked into the cafeteria for breakfast, TVs were on but muted, saw one tower burning, didn't think much of it... walked into first class an hour later and people told me... bolted to my dean's office to use her phone to call NYC (close family member worked there)... I will never forget dean's face when I told her I need to call NYC...

1980s - a kid in communist Poland (born August 1980)... playing with sticks and stones like kids should have few vague memories of martial law, tanks on the streets of my town, empty stores, food lines, the general nasty attitude of store workers, and the thing I remember the most were the shortages: near daily shortages of water, electricity, gas in our apartment (blok) we lived in on the 3rd floor. remember a big water canister parked in the neighborhood where you would bring a bucket to to get some water if non was coming out of your faucet. remember taking "baths" in a small bucket of water. remember my mom waking up and heating up the house in the winter using the 4 gas burners on the kitchen stove because the central heating was... having a shortage due to capitalist saboteurs yea that's the type of shit they told us in schools... oh and the best part... school field trips to local potato fields to pick up potato bugs dropped by American spy planes... I kid you not that was the propaganda pumped into kids 24/7. of course nobody REALLY believed it but nobody could REALLY say it... my Dad did, the f'ing Polish arm of the KGB had a thick file on him and they came knocking when they found out he managed to escape to the USA... my mother and I were supposed to join him soon after but we were told by the government that we are not allowed to get a passport until HE comes back... and we knew what would happen to him if he DID come back... so that was the end of that family's integrity... I have exactly 3 memories of my father before he left when I was 2 years old, 1 involves him playing with me by rolling a tennis ball and me fetching it for him, 2nd involves me in a hospital after I tripped and busted my forehead open on a furniture corner fetching said tennis ball LOL, and the 3rd and last was the day he left... I'm standing in the room near the apartment door and watch him leave then I watch him from the window as he waves to me. I was 2yo. next time I saw him it took the fall of the CCCP and fall of communist party rule in Poland... it was 1994, I was 14.

good times

Now that's a story! Thanks for sharing.

my pleasure! I know you guys probably heard this a billion times from other migrants form commie countries but... I just can't believe people here in the USA buy into this socialist / communist crap. I gave up on explaining to young ones about the pitfalls of such systems, now I only educate my children... worse yet, I personally know people who came here from commie Poland, Cuba, or India (basically had huge communist influence into its form of government) and they still, after escaping such systems, spew this crap... like yea it can be done RIGHT this time here in the States... I just shake my head and walkaway when this crap comes up around me... so so sad...

Just like every other country ruined by communism and socialism, we will learn the hard way.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
~ H. L. Mencken