The 1960s was an eventful decade for me in many ways.
On January 2, 1960, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy would later be elected the youngest president in United States history.
Later that same month, on January 28, the National Football League announced Dallas as an expansion team for the start in the 1960 NFL season. The Dallas Cowboys would go on to become one of the favorite professional football teams in the country, dubbed “America’s Team,” and a regular Super Bowl contender.
And it was in the 1960s that I was born into this world in the rural Delta town located about an hour and a half drive from Memphis, Tenn. I was the youngest of three sons to my parents, who were farmers at the time. Heck, we were a fairly typical American family in the 60s. There was even a popular TV 1960s sitcom at the time that reinforced our family unit, My Three Sons.
July 1969 would later gain great historical significance than many people ever could have imagined. Men would travel and set foot on the Moon.
It would be on July 20 when a U.S. astronaut would walk on the surface of the moon, marking possibly one of the greatest travel adventures and technological achievements in all human history. I, like millions of other Americans, watched the moon landing and astronauts walk on the moon live on my parent’s black and white TV set.
I thought for many years that it was neat that I was the only one in my family born in the 1960s, an era of great change in the United States. Being a lover of great music, the 1960s represented some of the best popular musical artists perhaps ever in history. I was always proud of that, though in later years I realized the time also represented a great social and moral shift in our country’s mores that has led to a decline in everything from Christianity to the value of human life.
It was the 1960s when the Beatles would take the world by storm, President Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King would be assassinated, and flower power and free love unfolded while I was happily living the life of a carefree boy of the age of space exploration, GI Joe’s and Batman.
As a kid growing up in rural Missouri and later Arkansas, I loved watching the short-lived TV series, “Then Came Bronson.” Then Came Bronson began with a television film pilot that aired on NBC on March 24, 1969; and was also released in Europe as a theatrical feature film. This was followed by a single season of 26 episodes airing between September 17, 1969 and April 1, 1970.
There was a lot to fascinate a young boy at the time in the TV show. There was a sense of adventure in every episode. The central figure was James “Jim” Bronson, played by the actor Michael Parks, a newspaperman who seemed to have a keen sense of fixing practically every situation and circumstance he encountered along the road. Then there was, of course, the motorcycle he rode on his adventures — 1969 XLH 900cc Harley-Davidson Sportster.
Bronson was a true pacifist and tried to move everyone he met who would listen to him to examine their lives and motives behind their actions. While the pilot episode seemed to promise Bronson’s escape from the mundane was a full-blown adventure of self-discovery, the premise of each episode placed him at an important point of a person’s life acting as a catalyst for change.
Bronson, who had become disillusioned after the suicide of his best friend Nick, played by Martin Sheen, left for the open road of adventure following an epic falling out with his demanding and overbearing editor. He was disillusioned and tired of the dog-eat-dog world of publishing, keeping schedules, and the modern industrialized world.
Bronson’s Sportster was a travel companion that played a prominent role in many of his adventures to the delight of many boys like me at the time that dreamed of owning a motorcycle of our own. There seemed to be an adventure around every corner as Bronson traversed the countryside seeing new places and meeting new people.
You see, during the late 1960s and early 1970s practically everyone you saw on television and in the movies who rode a motorcycle was a criminal, a gang member, a hippy, or simply a punk. Bronson was different. He was a decent guy who chose his method of escape from the trappings of modern society on a motorcycle. It was Bronson’s iron horse of escape, so to speak. He was kind of like a cowboy riding a horse in the Old Wild West. Was Bronson a hero? Not really, but a guy who was sincerely trying to figure it all out. And he cared. He cared about people. He cared about society. He cared about nature. Bronson wasn’t a hippy or a gang member. He was like the guy who was a friend of your older brother next door. You trusted him. He had a conscious. He hated war.
And Bronson’s adventures were a bit edgy for 1960s television, especially to a young boy like me.
I remember an episode where Bronson encounters a witch along the road and ends up staying at a covenant full of witches and a domineering warlock. Pretty wild stuff for the time, indeed, but you have to remember the program aired during the era of drugs, sex, and rock-n-roll. All I remember is there were times I couldn’t always watch every episode when other family members were around. The channel oftentimes got changed when Then Came Bronson came on.
TV shows like Then came Bronson helped to further fuel American’s fascination and desire to get away from it all, and hit the open road for adventure and to discover the unknown. It was a 1960s version of what we are witnessing today in the nomad movement.
An opening sequence of the series illustrates how Bronson was considered “out there” adventure seeker for a husband and father sitting in a station wagon at a stoplight. The man asks, “Taking a trip?” to which Bronson replies, “Yeah.” The man asks, “Where to?” Bronson says, “Where ever I end up I guess.” The man shakes his head and says, “I wish I were you.”
When it comes to camper van travel that’s kind of how I approach it. While I may head out for on particular destination I often end up in another. The agile nature of a camper van affords me to do that with relative ease, especially considering I am self-contained and ready to boondock at a moment’s notice.
Rolling Home 