Emme Dibble:My name is Emme Dibble, the date is September 23rd and I'm here with Nancy Ruth Peterson. Alright, my first question is just kind of, what music and artists did you listen to primarily during the 60s?
Nancy Ruth Peterson:Well, I started life in college as a music major
NRP:So, where everybody else is listening to Elvis and The Beatles, I was doing Bache and Beethoven. So, I like The Moody Blues who else I don't know that's a hard qustion for me.
ED:I just got a record of a The Moody Blues
NRP:but yeah, I was sort of the outlier I guess
NRP:Some Broadway things like the Fantasticks which was a musical that was very good very interesting very fun very much a sort of I guess Cinderella story but yeah that's a hard question for me to answer because I can't even tell you what well Hey Jude and some of the classics but I can't tell you what they were even singing, I do remember watching the Ed Sullivan show when they were on which was crazy because when they got to New York people just went nuts and it was a huge police presence to try and control the crowds you know it was amazing but that was television stuff so
NRP:I don't know I'm not good on that one
ED:no that's awesome did you continue studying did you say?
NRP:I, sort of, yeah, I as a hobby more than anything
NRP:but yeah, I dropped out of as a major became IR an English major
ED:What were your thoughts on the Vietnam War, and did it change how you felt about America, or was it super prevalent?
NRP:It was, we watched it on tv. So, it was a constant presence I guess you would say. Certainly, the first time we were all seeing it. Here, hah, in our little world, it was less, you know the protests and stuff were less prevalent here than in cities, but I was trying to think, the Navy building was burned, and I think the football stadium
NRP:It was an arson fire, but I can't remember when those were, but I would guess in the sixties
NRP:The Navy building for sure and it was where, I don't know what's there now when you go up the hill past the engineering buildings
NRP:it was kind of right there and it was a wooden structure. I don't know what's there
ED:I think there might be a newer building there honestly
NRP:I think so and it was sort of by where Brink Hall and those buildings are but they have since moved I think over to old haze I think or some place.
NRP:yeah, I don't, and they combined with Washington state and it's a whole different ball game there were some protests here probably Moscow is more politically active now than maybe it was then. Or I may just not be aware. I graduated from high school in '63 graduated from college at '67 started at my first job in '67 and you know my world was occupied
ED:You were kind of building your life during the 60s
NRP:Right the one thing, the protests in 68 in Chicago, at the Democratic Convention.
ED:was that like one of the biggest?
NRP:yeah, and reporters were arrested on the floor of the convention it's like really what are you doing and that was certainly a stark indication of where the country was going. we think we're divided now it was really divided then you know it was amazing
ED:I have people compare it a lot nowadays to times now
ED:Do you feel like its not nearly the same do you think we are heading the same kind of I don't know, is it similar?
NRP:its similar in some ways but that was an I don't know quite how to say this without being really political whether that was an idealistic war or not, this was not our war why were we there why were we intervening in somebody but you know it was also communism that we were fighting but I think seeing it on television, seeing the body bags, made people more aware we hadn't been in a war since the Korean conflict which was a police action technically not a war, now, we're divided by one person who is leading what I would consider to be almost a cult and lying whereas then it was sort of a broader picture [Future, communism]
NRP:now you know my political
ED:are there any other big moments like that that you remember or maybe changed like your views, your families', or just like the town? or was everybody kind of
NRP:things just kind of spun along here of course President Kennedy was killed, I don't know exactly what else I think people became far more that was probably at the beginning of the political activism in this town and Moscow is pretty politically active
NRP:Has always been sort of or is more liberal than a lot of the rest of the state even with our conservative church influence here it's still a liberal town and that may have started them yeah
ED:Was there any connection with like the students?
NRP:yeah, and I think the students became far more aware of politics and what was going on and you know the world at large we were, had been sort of I don't know quiet I guess and that ended I honestly don't remember any like student protests or anything but there again I may have just been oblivious too, I was in my happy little place doing my happy little thing and [change, culture]
NRP:yeah so, I don't know... the decade certainly changed many things with the assassinations which we haven't had since thank goodness. It was interesting to me that you're doing the 60s I thought oh I get it all right yeah you know oh good, and 68 seemed to be the high watermark there were all kinds of things going on at 68 which I don't know I can't even remember everything but good job picking that time I don't know if it was you or your professor
ED:It was our professor, our class is surrounded around, it's called The Long 1960's
ED:Yeah, and I'm actually not in history I just I like the 60s
NRP:it is interesting yeah
NRP:yeah, yeah and you think about the fashions and the interior design and all of those things that you walk into a house, and you go oh this is lost in the 60s you know, and it could be the 50s could be the 70s but it's the 60s we blame yeah its interesting.
ED:do you think we've had any like to the same extent cultural shifts since?
NRP:oh, I think we're having one right now, yeah.
NRP:In some ways the same way in some ways that was a shift to more and I don't know that you could say liberal but certainly more awareness and more involvement and um because of the war because of even things like the Bay of pigs and that were reported a lot more significantly we still didn't know the private lives of our leaders. Kennedy obviously was not a monogamist man but that was not reported in the news like it would be now I think now the shift is toward conservatism that we don't want to pay taxes we don't want to have anybody telling us what to do we want to and I I was a longtime teacher and the fact that people are going to school board meetings and saying to trained educators you don't know what you're doing here is what you need to teach my kid or what you can't teach my kid and those things critical race theory to my knowledge I taught for 38 years I never taught critical race theory and I don't suppose anybody is yet but people think they are and therefore they're going to protest and they're going to say you can't do this and if you do we're taking our kids out and you know so I think the shift and maybe it's the highs and lows the yoyo thing of what we all do highs and lows the yoyo saying of what we all do what we all go through
ED:yeah, do you remember any wide scale book bans like we're seeing in Idaho today?
NRP:No, nope and in fact you know if we occasionally had the librarian who would tell a kid that you can't check out that book what I would be to march my fat self, down to the library and check it out and hand it to the kid and there was no comeback like I was an adult, but that was one little minor thing you know. Yeah, the banning of books just gives me the chills
NRP:and we need to teach people how to think you can't spoon feed them the party line that haven't drank the Kool-Aid and then expect them to function in a further society and maybe one of the big things is the shift toward laptops cell phones my phones in my purse you know and we're so dependent on all of this we're constantly bombarded with information or entertainment or each other or whatever if we don't talk to each other. I walked down the hall of the school where I used to teach and I don't remember I don't know why it was even there it was after I had retired and it was lunchtime and there was a circle of kids in the hall sitting on the floor and they were all on their phones you know thumbs going and I said what are you doing and they said we're talking to each other, they were texting each other they were sitting next to each other
NRP:They were 14-15, I was appalled you are here use your voices!
NRP:yeah, but there you go
ED:this isn't one of my we've kind of gone through this is a little extra if you want to answer it
ED:I took a mindfulness class a couple weeks ago actually and it had me thinking when I was thinking about questions for this meeting just kind of was there like a certain level of presence in daily life that people had that just isn't, I don't know I think we have a lot of trouble communicating with each other and I don't know
NRP:well and I think that's part of the going back to being able to think instead of somebody on my phone telling me what I should say or do or be thinking about I had to do it myself, and therefore its more difficult certainly but good grief I worry about kids. For one thing I'm afraid that we're all raising a generation of deaf people because of the volume of their headphones and their earbuds and of course you know kids are you guys are immortal and you don't realize, and I didn't either I'm not pointing fingers because I didn't either but you don't realize long term consequences of some of these things and we have no idea what the long term consequences of all this technology are. It will be interesting I won't be around to see it, but it will be interesting.
ED:Was, in terms of environmental problems like the awareness was that anything that sparked or is that kind of a new?
NRP:here that's interesting that you bring that up because we were very aware of Panford and the radioactivity and radiation emissions and we grew up basically drinking irradiated milk if you think about it because they would release the radiation it would fall, the cows would eat the grass that it was on you know and I in my high school class all of them grew up here there are at least three with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and whether that could be directly related or not but certainly the government unities for people with cancers and things to seek reparation there medical issues but three out of a class of 120 is pretty high percentage really there have been certainly other classmates who died of various cancers but whether any of it could be related to that so that was our big environmental issue which now is you know past they buried a lot of that figuratively and literally over there. But as and then the spray plants going over of course and you have experienced that living here we were always aware of that you know we did not run to them we ran from them if we saw somebody about to dump their load on a nearby wheatfield and when I was a kid certainly and in the 60s the wheat fields were far closer to my house than they are now because of the expansion of the 10th and East
NRP:so, a little bit of that, climate change as a global issue I don't think was anything that we had thought about
ED:are there any just like maybe whole values like of the general community that changed throughout the time or was a kind of more like did it bring people together at the end?
NRP:yeah I think it did the interesting thing about Moscow is that the community, see my family was involved in the business community and the university community and I'm thinking no professors and so forth and so on it has always meshed pretty well with the business community better than a lot of small college towns if you look 6 miles West that has been more of a separate business and academic community and not come together but I don't think that particularly changed unless perhaps they separated a bit more than they used to be but at this point I'm not terribly involved in the social part of that so I don't know
NRP:Here, we are in the Historical Society we're still very much a combination of academics and businesspeople and tradespeople you know retirees mostly.
ED:So this didn't come out till I want to say the late 70s to the public but project MK ultra, are you aware of when the government was doing project MK ultra it was like the LSD testing on they were testing with different
ED:it was like volunteers I read a book from Ken Kesey, the one who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
NRP:oh yeah pardon my nose
ED:you're alright that time of year
NRP:fall, I don't have covid
ED:ha-ha I believe you, that's what got me into the 60's I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and then I read The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test about Ken Kesey and his life but I don't think information was released to the public until a couple decades after.
ED:are there were there any just like favorite parts, clothing, books about the 60s that you missed or just loved
NRP:Of course, I was an English major so I was reading classics mostly and Ann Rand who is a very conservative author fascinated me probably about that time maybe a little later before that Jack Kerouac On The Road the whole kind of hippie dippy groovy thing, George Karl oh and to go back to music which I guess I could do I really liked progressive jazz felonious monk and some of that genre was more interesting to me than the popular pop stuff there's a reason why all Hampton was involved in Moscow because of the jazz great love of jazz in this town Jazz Festival was huge and just starting then, so interesting the co-op I don't know exactly when that started but it started as a little tiny kind of a hole in the wall place down on 3rd St and you walk in and there were great burlap bags of lentils and split peas and beans and things open and with scoops in it and you just open with scoops in it and you just scoop some out, put in not a plastic bag for sure paper bag and that has grown huge it's huge yeah there's two places now
ED:Yeah, I have yet to walk in there but yeah Ive been meaning to. Moscow is interesting, at least to me it has always been so different from the rest of Idaho
NRP:and other places wish they had a co-op. I ran into my cousins son and his wife on Saturday at the market and they were here for the ball game from boise and they come early so they can go to the Saturday market because really you don't have a farmers market in boise? Well Boise you know its not like this one.
ED:Its true its not like this one
So its we have our little traditions that we hang onto so:
NRP:Yeah were sort of sitting here in a relic of the past.
ED:yeah I love this building I was showing my mom I was sending her pictures of the outside of the mansion
ED:when you were pulling up she also super into all of this
NRP:what year in school are you
ED:Im a junior so this is my third year
NRP:so you've acclimated to all this goofiness here
ED:yeah I want to say although I still kind of feel like this is my first real year with how things were with COVID yeah so still learning
NRP:right it's a lot different to go to class with other people than to sit at a computer at zoom now
ED:or not able to really talk with anyone 'cause you're saying so far away if you are in person
NRP:but what would we have done without that which would colleges and universities just shut down
NRP:I don't know either schools it's interesting to think about that too
I did see something interesting though in New York how they said we don't need any more snow days NRP:right exactly
NRP:I used to love snow day
ED:yeah that like broke my heart
NRP:What are you doing to these poor kids.
ED:Oh my gosh don't even get a snow day but
ED:Yeah even just the extension of that that's
NRP:well it's in the 50s we were dealing with the polio whole thing and but school was never canceled certainly for that and it wasn't as, it was a little more random I guess but certainly as dangerous people had their whole lives affected we talked about long COVID I've still got a couple of acquaintances that are on still use crutches because of their polio you know so it's not the first pandemic but and certainly won't be the last but and I don't know you know did we overreact did we under react should we have acted sooner should how do you know I don't know
NRP:and there again there were as many different opinions on that as there are people so it's crazy but I'm glad you're back at school back on the campus and doing the campus thing
ED:yeah I absolutely love it
NRP:did you go to the what was going on yesterday?
NRP:Well and there was something that my Rotary friends were popping kettle corn on the campus there was music maybe up by the library or something
ED:I think I remember seeing a couple stands of student things I don't know yeah, I'm not sure what that was but the Boris symposium I meant to go to last night that's happening still next week
NRP:yeah, that goes on for a while and that's great of course Governor Borah or Senator Borah governor not senator had a connection to this house because he was married to one of the McConnell daughters
NRP:yeah, he was married to Mamie so
NRP:probably the most influential Idaho politician ever and the next would be for church I guess I think Jim rush would like to think but he doesn't have the stature of the other two, he's chair of the Foreign Relations Committee which was what Borah was but that was during the war, World War Two so. For a small state we've had some powerful politicians national politicians
NRP:Borah and Church or the two that come to mind certainly and McConnell was the first US senator from Idaho and governor of Idaho but I keep looking over there cause there used to be a portrait of the man Idaho Historical society decided they wanted it back well it's theirs and they didn't have it they have portraits of all the governors and they didn't have him so Mr. McConnell went South so to speak
ED:ha-ha dang, I think that is all of my questions, but is there anything else important that you'd like to share?
NRP:I can't think of anything in particular, it was an interesting time to be alive that's for sure
ED:Yeah, the days seem different
NRP:Yeah, yeah you never knew quite what was going to happen. Yeah, I think we're good
ED:Alright, thank you so much for talking with me