In September of 1968 I started the 7th grade. Meanwhile "the 60s" was sort of an off-stage, but all-pervasive, presence that gradually seeped into the bubble of our self-enclosed junior high school world. On day Doug, one of the taller hipper kids in our class, brought in an album by the Fugs for show-and-tell. The Fugs were about the dirties, hairiest, freakiest critters any of us kids had ever seen. If I remember right, there was a little flip-book that came with the album and you could flip the pages and watch a little movie of the Fugs stripping off their clothes all the way down to their public hairs. When our homeroom teacher Mr. Pitz got a load of that Fugs album, well, ole Doug was suspended for two whole weeks. Doug would be the first, but most definitely not the last, casualty of the Culture War that was "the 60s" in our 7th grade classe.
It was the age of "turbulence, upheavel, and political dissent." And we 7th graders did our part, fighting and protesting and winning the right to wear blue jeans to class. "The people united will never be forced to wear corny plaid trousers!" So there. Another crucial issue was hair length. And with our parents over every inch over the ear, as if some kind of Battle Line was being drawn. Which it was.