Do You Remember Being Seventeen?

pchrise said:
AZ only if you were born after 1915 he died in 1998 @82
like this song
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I saw Sinatra at Mission Beach Ballroom. I was a boy. My Dad had the Master lease on Southern California's biggest Ballrooms. As Jimmy Dorsey described the ballroom in Billboard Magazine "It is huge".
 

I was still under the control of my mother and step father, being used to baby sit 7 younger children no make that 6 my youngest brother was not born untill I was almost 18, I left home shortly after I turned 19 and most of the kids were put in foster homes as they didn't have a baby sitter any more ...
 
Went into the U.S. Army at 17, in Oct '69, have bittersweet memories, but generally had a "going somewhere-doing something" excitement. A couple songs were playing on the radio when I was in Basic Training:



 
Yes, I remember. I was saving every penny I could get my hands on - baby-sitting, picking fruit, working as a dishwasher in a restaurant - so that I could make my escape to California immediately after graduation from high school. I literally started counting the days when I was 16.
 
Glinda said:
Yes, I remember. I was saving every penny I could get my hands on - baby-sitting, picking fruit, working as a dishwasher in a restaurant - so that I could make my escape to California immediately after graduation from high school. I literally started counting the days when I was 16.
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Was it the Summer of Love (1967) by any chance?
 
Mrs. Robinson said:
Was it the Summer of Love (1967) by any chance?
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I turned 17 in 1968. My family put a capital D in Dysfunctional so I decided at an early age I would leave for San Diego, California immediately after graduation from high school. I chose San Diego because my grandparents lived in a nearby town at that time and I hoped I could fall back on them if necessary. As it turned out, I found a job within a week and, after a few months, moved from the YWCA to my first apartment. I'd like to say, "Yeah, I went to California because I wanted to be a hippie and live for the moment, etc." but that wouldn't be true.
 
Ah,OK. So many kids came out for that summer-and so many of my friends headed the 20 minutes north to spend the summer there. I just assumed you might have as well. That whole summer brings back memories.I am,at this moment emailing back and forth with my bff since age 14. She is coming from Oregon (that`s where all the hippies from San Francisco went after that summer) to visit the end of April and look for a retirement home. She`s a vet but had a stroke about 8 months ago so she`s ready to relax a little. And yes,at 65 she`s still a hippie lol! I am sooo looking forward to her visit-haven`t seen her since 1989! Have seen her daughter-our daughters are 2 weeks apart and are BFFs as well. I think it will be fun!
 
Mrs. Robinson said:
Ah,OK. So many kids came out for that summer-and so many of my friends headed the 20 minutes north to spend the summer there. I just assumed you might have as well. That whole summer brings back memories.I am,at this moment emailing back and forth with my bff since age 14. She is coming from Oregon (that`s where all the hippies from San Francisco went after that summer) to visit the end of April and look for a retirement home. She`s a vet but had a stroke about 8 months ago so she`s ready to relax a little. And yes,at 65 she`s still a hippie lol! I am sooo looking forward to her visit-haven`t seen her since 1989! Have seen her daughter-our daughters are 2 weeks apart and are BFFs as well. I think it will be fun!
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I've been trading email with a friend from high school who initially came to San Francisco, then settled in Sandy, Oregon. I'd love to see her again but don't know if that will happen. I hope you have a wonderful time with your friend!
 
I DO remember being 17 -- lots of momentous stuff that year. Graduated high school on crutches, first full time job (part time job became full time); really bad car wreck (boyfriend and I were heading home from the local bowling alley and were hit head on by a speeding drunk without headlights -- hence the above-mentioned crutches); JFK was assassinated (one of those life moments where you remember exactly where you were, what you were doing and even what you were wearing); the love of my life was drafted and went off to war, never to return. Not the best year, but certainly a memorable one.
 
I do remember being seventeen. I never had more fun in my life. It should've been illegal. Sometimes it was. I used to go to all night slumber parties at the last minute without giving my parents much notice because there were no cell phones in those days and parents couldn't keep close tabs on teenagers like than can now.

My girlfriends and I were hitchhiking and we got picked up by a guy who started making lewd suggestions and we became frightened and decided to bail out of his car at the next red light. It worked like clockwork and the guy was left behind very much bewildered as we took off running where he couldn't get us. We were lucky we lived to be 18.

I experiemented with halucinagens for the first time. But not the last. I could sit and watch a wall for hours. How interesting.

I was a junior in high school and caught mono. My throat swelled up so tight I couldn't even swallow my own saliva. I thought I'd never eat solid food again - ever.

I went on a ski trip though I don't ski. After supper was served and eaten, men at the bar bought me drinks so long as I didn't order the same drink twice. By the end of the evening I could barely walk. One of the cute guys who worked at the ski resort held me in his arms all night long by a roaring fire in a fireplace that extended half the length of the resort. I though it was all so romantic and that my life was going to be very exciting.
 
Glinda said:
I turned 17 in 1968. My family put a capital D in Dysfunctional so I decided at an early age I would leave for San Diego, California immediately after graduation from high school. I chose San Diego because my grandparents lived in a nearby town at that time and I hoped I could fall back on them if necessary. As it turned out, I found a job within a week and, after a few months, moved from the YWCA to my first apartment. I'd like to say, "Yeah, I went to California because I wanted to be a hippie and live for the moment, etc." but that wouldn't be true.
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In 1969 at the age of 17 I wanted to go to San Francisco, wear flowers in my hair, protest the war, party and get high. How this would be funded didn't figure in to this airheads plans.

On my first trip to San Francisco in 1994 the first place I wanted to see was Haight-Asbury.
 
merlin said:
Yes same here, I also blamed my father for all the ills in the world, I was always slamming doors and being generally obnoxious! Looking back I don't think my teens were particularly happy, what with hormones and general contrariness. :mad:
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I was not a happy teen either. My dad and I just never got along. My parents seemed to me to be much stricter than other kids parents.
 
1966 and O-Level exams over and done with, starting on the first of two years in the 6th form leading to A-levels. Mods and Rockers were the youth culture at the time and I was of the latter persuasion in a school full of Mods ... a difficult time for me. Bought my first bike, a Triumph T200 Tiger Cub, as a box of bits and rebuilt it over the summer holidays. Went to the Earl's Court motorcycle show and ogled all the bikes and promised myself a BSA 650 Spitfire when I started earning (never got that one as by the time a year had passed, British bikes were in decline, due to complacency and the advent of Japanese machines).

Musically I was never into the Beatles, preferring The Stones, Yardbirds, Cream and The Who. The following year saw the first offerings from Pink Floyd, Hendrix and the US acid/psychedelic rock bands. Got drunk a lot, got stoned a bit, got over it and somehow got decent A-level results.
 
Ameriscot said:
In 1969 at the age of 17 I wanted to go to San Francisco, wear flowers in my hair, protest the war, party and get high. How this would be funded didn't figure in to this airheads plans.

On my first trip to San Francisco in 1994 the first place I wanted to see was Haight-Asbury.
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It all sounded so romantic,didn`t it? In reality,the kids were hungry,sick,drugged out,sleeping on bare filthy mattresses on dirty floors. Girls were being raped and given diseases. There was an entire group of my friends at that time that all suffered from gonorrhea. Yuck,huh? They all spent the summer of `68,right after graduating,in the Haight trying to recapture what they had experienced in `67 but it was a whole different world by then. Then they all moved into a house on the coast together for about a year and it was not a good scene. Happily,today they are all happy,healthy,successful adults (old people now,LOL) and I am in touch with most of them. So don`t ever feel like you missed out on anything-it wasn`t all it was cracked up to be.
 
This is a good thread like to keep it going. I was a Junior in HS. in Muskogee Ok. drinking white lightning when it was available to me on the weekends playing snooker at pool halls and I was pretty good and won a lot of the money available on the game. Going to fights that were announced with my HS buddies which there were plenty. Going to Lake Tenkiller at the cliffs and jumping off 50 footers. Dragging Main Street. Great times.
 
merlin said:
Yes same here, I also blamed my father for all the ills in the world, I was always slamming doors and being generally obnoxious! Looking back I don't think my teens were particularly happy, what with hormones and general contrariness. :mad:
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Rob said:
1966 and O-Level exams over and done with, starting on the first of two years in the 6th form leading to A-levels. Mods and Rockers were the youth culture at the time and I was of the latter persuasion in a school full of Mods ... a difficult time for me. Bought my first bike, a Triumph T200 Tiger Cub, as a box of bits and rebuilt it over the summer holidays. Went to the Earl's Court motorcycle show and ogled all the bikes and promised myself a BSA 650 Spitfire when I started earning (never got that one as by the time a year had passed, British bikes were in decline, due to complacency and the advent of Japanese machines).

Musically I was never into the Beatles, preferring The Stones, Yardbirds, Cream and The Who. The following year saw the first offerings from Pink Floyd, Hendrix and the US acid/psychedelic rock bands. Got drunk a lot, got stoned a bit, got over it and somehow got decent A-level results.
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rickary said:
This is a good thread like to keep it going. I was a Junior in HS. in Muskogee Ok. drinking white lightning when it was available to me on the weekends playing snooker at pool halls and I was pretty good and won a lot of the money available on the game. Going to fights that were announced with my HS buddies which there were plenty. Going to Lake Tenkiller at the cliffs and jumping off 50 footers. Dragging Main Street. Great times.
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It is really good to see what others did at seventeen at the ages we are now it makes it easy to forget how young we were and the fun we had or not, after the apendix thing I went back to Brasil south america and came back in 69 no longer a teen but still very young. Went to Visalia and worked in a nursing home, my first exposure to seniors and decided would not be like that. That being wearing undwear on ones head.
 
Of course I remember being 17. Graduated from high school in the hometownI hated. I moved 2 hours away to Nursing School and I felt like I could finally breathe.. I loved my parents, but they were just too over protective. When I turned 21, then I felt like I could carry on an adult conversation with my parents.
 

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