Although Streamers was not staged until 1976, it was started several years earlier, in 1969, when the Vietnam War was still in progress. The period of Rabe's own service (1965-1967) is the referent time, a point at which the country was being divided over the efficacy and morality of that war. Lyndon Johnson was then president, having succeeded John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

The 1960s were an exciting decade, a period of great turbulence and change, some of it violent. Advances in civil rights were undertaken by Johnson and a compliant Congress, completing programs begun by Kennedy to create what became known as the Great Society. Arising at the same time was a movement known as the Counter Culture, prompted by such gurus as Timothy Leary, who advised America's youth to use mind-expanding drugs like LSD and to "turn on, tune in, and drop out...