Psychedelic Games of the 60s

[6_bleen_7]

The other day I was thinking of my distant youth, and overcome by a fit of nostalgia, I searched the Web for evidence of some of the bizarre games we used to play when I was a tyke. I got pictures and everything-isn't the Internet great? And it was brought home to me just how trippy these old games were. But living in the late 60s and early 70s

Comments

[samwibatt]

Goodness! I'd forgotten all about Thing Ding, but the memories came a-stormin' back. I don't remember finding the robots especially threatening, though with my present-day sensibilities I do think they're kind of industrialist-brutal. Oddly, I did find Psyche-paths disturbing, even having a nightmare about it once.

[6_bleen_7]

Really? Was it perchance a four-dimensional nightmare? Now that I think of it, Psyche-Paths tiles are two-dimensional regular polygons with one-dimensional shapes of color affixed to their upper surface. The significance of that will be lost to every reader of this journal, save one.

[samwibatt]

Heh, no - the nightmare occurred when I was little, about 6 or so. It had to do with a big poster depicting a Scary Face drawn in a Psyche-paths sort of squiggly style. As was often the case in my early nightmares, everyone around me thought the poster was cool and enthused about it with an overly-bright-eyed intensity, and only I knew it was menacing. Your point about how the world was full of magic back then is well taken, but there was definitely a dark side to it.

The scariest dream I ever had as a kid was a similar one about a big machine at Lagoon (for the non-Utahns, Lagoon is the local amusement park). This machine turned children into stuffed animals, presumably to be given away as midway game prizes. Everyone kept insisting that I had to get in it, as they were planning to do, even though they had seen its effects.

[6_bleen_7]

Oh yes; I remember that fear was much purer back then; none of this gnawing worry about trivial things.

You know, your scary dream about Lagoon could be allegorical. I remember that when all our friends were getting baptized (which in the Mormon Church happens around age seven or eight), you were getting serious pressure from your friends to join in the eternal fun.

Certainly a few people we knew in high school got put through the stuffed-animal machine during their missions. I recall a couple of real hell-raisers, guys with great wit and few inhibitions, who came back from their missions completely zombified. They were now responsible Elders, with a sacred calling to complete their MBA, become a brainless business droid, and pump out as many children as their wives' physiologal limitations would permit.

[samwibatt]

Interesting thought. I'm sure the dream happened before the pressure ramped up to get "bab-tized" (as it was so often pronounced). Definitely I'd osberved other examples of peer pressure by then. The dream was also before the dreaded Peapod-groupthink incident, so I'm not sure what would have inspired it.

I do recall one thing in kindergarten - we were each given a line-drawing of a squirrel to color, to distract us while the teacher left the room for a few minutes. I remembered having heard of "red squirrels" so I decided to color mine red. Once that was well underway someone noticed that I wasn't using brown, and shouted it to the whole class as though reporting a murder. Many of my classmates then did this weird little stylized gesture we had of covering the mouth with one hand, bugging out the eyes, and saying "Ohhhhhhh!" as in "Ohhh, you're gonna get in trouble!" I don't think we'd even been ordered to use brown, and I couldn't see why coloring a squirrel the "wrong" color would be such an offense against the State anyway. I got

[6_bleen_7]

The Peapod-groupthink incident? Did that have any connexion to "Mister, some day you'll just have to conform!"?

[samwibatt]

No, this was in about third grade, when some of the Kool Kids from my class discovered that the vines on the playground fence had seed pods that looked like pea pods. That meant, of course, that these things were peas, and therefore edible. I pointed out that other things came in pods, too, and that peas were gross anyway (as many kids agreed). But no, one of the swaggerers insisted that these were peas and must be eaten. Most of the kids then swarmed all over the vines, picking the pods and eating the "peas".

The next day was the lowest attendance day I ever saw at that school. I think the vines were wisteria (though that might not grow in the western U.S.), and was certainly something toxic. I don't remember even getting any smug satisfaction out of the whole incident. It was just stupid.

[6_bleen_7]

Funny, I don't remember that at all. I do remember the "pea" vines being thoroughly infested with greenies, however.

I know where one can find at least one handsome wisteria trellis in the western US: the Japanese Garden in Seattle. But yeah, I thorougly doubt that it would grow on its own in Utah. (The greenie vines had been cared for, if I recall.)

Another bit of wisteria trivia: The "-to" ending (better transliterated "-tou" or "-toh") that occurs in three of the top ten Japanese surnames, Sato (the most common), Ito and Kato, refers to wisteria. The kanji character is a bear: 藤.