The 1960's, so long as I wasn't going to be drafted and go to Vietnam.  

The space program, fast cars, fast women, "free love" (w/o AIDS), before the '68 GCA when you could mail-order anything you wanted.  And still register full-auto's and destructive devices.  (There's something about a Solothurn that intrigues me....)

Of course, there was the civil rights movement to make things interesting, too.

And I'd really like to have been in the Texas Schoolbook Depository to see if old Lee Harvey was the "lone gunman," and cap his ass before he shot Kennedy, if he was.  Or capture him and keep him alive if he wasn't.  "Magic bullet" my ass.

And I would dearly [i]love[/i] to whack James Earl Ray just before he pulled the trigger.

No wonder the U.S. is so fvcked-up now.  The 60's did it to us.  What a schizophrenic decade.

Actually, I'm still fairly happy with the way things are now, overall.  

Yeah.

Except for that "possibility of dying" part.

about 5 10 years before Christ died


i'd spend some time building a boat to get over there and see what the hell the fuss is all about

1890 0r about, it was a time when if a man called you a son of a bitch, he meant it, and could die for it, a time when you carried the law on your hip. No law except for the law of common sence. A lot less misfits back then also.

  KBaker, I really agree with the first part, but would like to ask a couple of questions...

 What would have been so different if JFK and MLK had lived, would it have made that much of a difference?

 How did the 60's f#%$ us up so bad?

 No flame, just curious about your thoughts.... fullclip

Post WW II.  Life was good and simpler.  The U.S. was on top of the world.  Think of it.  No MTV.  No rap.  Baseball players made normal salaries.  Football players were tough bluecollar guys like Johnny Unitas.  You could go into a small-town harware store and buy a surplus Garand for $50 or so.  Big gas guzzling V8s, with chrome and fins.  Sliderules and vacuum tubes.  Grand movies and larger-than-life stars.

Damn, wish I had a time machine. [:D]

Rome, first or second century AD. As long as I could be born as a equite (middle class).
Your memory and your ability to think could put you on top, with the right breeding.
Slaves for every need, the greatest city on earth, and protected by the greatest army ever put together.
Baths and business all day, feasting and drinking all night. No TV, but the games were grand.

First choice would be Judea about 1900+ years ago.

Second choice would be the 1880-1930 period, when technology really got going.  I'd love to see the first Tesla-designed AC electrical generators being installed by Westinghouse at Niagara and started up.  The Pittsburgh steel mills, dirty as they were.  Locomotive shops.  Ford's River Rouge plant; iron ore in one end and cars out the other.  Hoover Dam (or Boulder Dam, depending on your political inclination) being built.  Turn of the century paper mills with paper machines only four to 10 feet wide and running a fast for the time 300 to 400 feet per minute, instead of 20 feet wide and 6000 feet per minute.  McCormick's farm machinery plant in Chicago.  Subways being built under Manhattan.  The Wrights, Donald Douglas, Glenn Curtiss, Gerard Vultee, Larry Bell, Jack Northrop and their contemporaries at work.  I could go on.  

But I'd still have to know what I know now, in 2002.


Noah

Id go back to the 70's. And I wouldnt break up with Mary.
BP

Tie between Rome while Augustus was runnin' sh*t, and Greece, around 500 BC. No single reason I can pin down, though; I'm just fascinated by the history of ancient Rome and Greece....ancient Egypt must have been mighty fine, too, for the upper classes.

Texas in 1880.

Arock

I would spend a few months reading upon Civil War history, chemistry and modern firearms engineering.  I would then go back to 1861 and present myself to the service of Jefferson Davis!  There would be a lot of payback to those damn ole yankees!

If I did my job right KBaker wouldn't have to worry about saving MLK's butt.

It's not so much about JFK and MLK living as the manner of their deaths.  I honestly don't believe that Oswald was the "lone gunman," and it pi**es me off that the conspirators got away with it.  MLK wasn't a saint, but what he was doing was overall right and good, and James Earl Ray's actions made it worse and made it take longer.  Not to mention the fact that the '68 GCA was a direct result of those two assassinations.  That's not to say that something along those lines wouldn't have passed eventually, but there wouldn't have been as much impetus behind it.

How did the 60's fvck us up?  Boy, I'm glad GB allows more than 3500 characters now.[8D]

IMO America started its decline in the 1950's with the Korean "police action" and McCarthyism.  The people who came back from WWII after winning the last "good" war got to go back, or watch their younger brothers go fight another damned bloody war.  And anyone who has gone to war will tell you it's not noble or honorable or gallant - it's hell.  Between WWI and WWII there was enough time to romanticize, but not between WWII and Korea.  WWII was supposed to make the world safe, but here we were interdicting Communism and worrying about the Russians having the bomb. That kind of thing makes people uneasy.

When things went to hell in a handbasket in Korea, America started becoming disillusioned.  The invasion of the Chinese and the firing of McArthur didn't help.  And, we also started the "consumer society" at about the same time - conspicuous consumption and planned obsolescence really got moving.  Teenagers, who always rebel against adults, rebelled a bit more.  And McCarthyism, while the Red Scare was real, threatened our normal way of life by attacking the rule of law as we had always practiced it.  We began to not trust our government.

We didn't win Korea.  First real war we didn't.  It was very poorly run, and not all that well followed here.  The men coming back were not treated the same as WWII vets, and were more disillusioned than normal.  By the late 50's the nuclear family was starting to unravel.

Then came Vietnam.  This one didn't even start as a police action.  It just kept gradually building.  In the 60's when teenagers rebelled, the parent's let them.  Dr. Spock told them to.  Besides, they were too busy self-actualizing and consuming to care much about the kids.  It was a decade of "if it feels good, do it."  Hedonism is fun, but it's destructive to society.  Hell, it's the antithesis of society.  And we REALLY started to distrust government.

The 60's was the first time that kids said "I don't want to be like my parents" - and made a point not to be when they got older.  They lost respect.  They did what they wanted, when they wanted and were accountable pretty much to no one.  And when they woke up one morning and were 30 years old, they didn't know what to do.  But they had kids, and didn't know what to do with them, either.

The current educational system mess can be traced back to the late 50's, and 60's.  The lack of parenting can too.

A society can stand a small percentage of the ignorant and irresponsible, but there has to be some threshold at which the system begins to slide into failure.  I think we have or are rapidly approaching that threshold.

Comments?

This is easy.  1939, San Francisco.  I'd be a pre-war private detective, join up in '41, and if I survived, go back and live there until things started to get 'weird'.

1920's. Something about a "young", wild America!
AB

A TRUE TEXAN!

It's still a Good idea.

50's just becouse

Storm'in the beach or dropping in from the sky on D-Day, and hopefully surviving and fighting till wars end.

Death, Dismemberment, horror and all I would take my chances. Live or die that would be my choice.  I think of 6 June 1944 as the most important day of civilization up to this point.

Anywhere in the West 1800 - 1900.

The Fur Trade, the cattle drives, westward expansion, Manifest Destiny.

Arizona: Wyatt Earp and the Clantons. Texas:  John Wesley Hardin, and the Taylor-Sutton feud. New Mexico: Billy the Kid, Pat Garret and the Lincoln County War. Wyoming: The Johnson County War. Montana: Alder Gulch vigilantes. California: The Gold Rush. Anywhere West: The Indian Wars.

Bill  

First age of Middle Earth.

Juggernaut

Hey, finally someone who agrees with me. Screwed up kids growing up to be screwed up adults having screwed up kids growing up to be screwed up....

The shinging era of knighthood if it was as chivalris and noble as the King Arthur tales. I know it wasn't though and castles were cold and drafty.

Maybe the early part of the colonizing of America, when our relationship with the Indians weren't so strained. But I think we pissed most of them off pretty early.

Has to be the future. Love to live in a star trekish time when everyone is happy (except for the klingons), everyone has a job (except for Harry Mudd), and phasers were everywhere. Best star trak time would be the current Enterprise series, space travel is still brand new and there's a whole universe to explore.

Crap I forgot about that. Even bought LOTR on tape this week.