An Old Hippie Looks Back at the Sixties

I have trouble remembering yesterday, much less 1969, the time of the "Peace Generation." In the midst of raising a teenager and caring for my widowed mom, the only peace I ever find, is when my head hits the pillow at night. But fumbling through the FM stations, I stumble into the world of my youth. And with one song, I am transported to a place of simplicity, where peace and love is the only reality. Who is this girl I see with her long, straight, auburn hair, tie dyed shirt, bell bottomed jeans, moccasins, fringed purse, and flowers in her hair? With astonishment, I blink my eyes and realize that it's me (though I'm now a steadfast conservative!) The walls in my room are covered with black light psychedelic posters, and smoke from my incense burner permeates the room. My record player is blaring with the sounds of Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe and the Fish, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, The Byrds, and Dylan. My first love is a guitar player with long hair, who wears Roger McGuinn sunglasses, and takes me to coffeehouses, where we sing folk songs to a room full of mellow yellow hippies.

I am still in high school, and live in Atlanta, but I dream of Haight-Asbury and the Summer of Love. The closest I actually got to Woodstock was the movie, but I watched it over and over, and pretended that I was dancing in the pasture at Yasgur's farm. It was a time of freedom, brotherly love, and the anti-war movement. But we weren't just rebellious teenagers; we had a cause. We thought that love could conquer everything, and for a short while, it did. Life was simple, and we were carefree and innocent. Like children running through a sprinkler, we danced and sang and painted our faces (and everything else) and stared into our lava lamps, and called everything "groovy." And the only thing that made us cry was hearing that a friend had died in the jungle of Vietnam, halfway across the world, and we couldn't understand why. So we sang along with The Beatles "All You Need is Love" and actually thought it might be true.

Thousands of hippies headed back to the land, or the garden, as the song "Woodstock" referred to it. We planted trees, shrubs, and flowers everywhere, and were referred to as "Flower Children." Another well known phrase of the times was "Flower Power." VW buses, with peace symbols replacing the logo, were painted in wild colors, and afforded transportation for large groups of people to go to festivals and concerts.

Unfortunately, it was a time of indiscriminate drug use. Many young people experienced LSD trips, and smoked marijuana daily. I guess, even then, I was somewhat conservative, not liking the idea of being totally out of control. I could get as "high" as I wanted, simply on the music and the atmosphere.

But I was just a "weekend hippie" and though I dressed the part, I was secretly glad that I could go home on Sunday night and take a bath. On Monday morning, I would go to my Civil Service job, and at lunchtime, the hippies on the sidewalk in downtown Atlanta, would call me "capitalist pig" if I wouldn't give them any money. The lines were clearly drawn in their world, but not so in mine. Saturday nights at the Twelfth Gate Coffeehouse, I listened to the Nitty Gritty Dirtband, and sang along to "Mr. Bojangles." But back at home, my mom insisted that I put pasties on the nude in my psychedelic poster, that hung above my bed. And to keep the peace, I obliged her.

Not everyone felt as loving toward us, as we felt toward them. If my memory serves me right, Ronald Reagan once defined a hippie as someone who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah." (I have to admit, he had a point!) With criticism like that, it was a good thing that we believed in our slogan "Make Love, Not War." Like it or not, hippies became a visible and vocal part of our culture. We spoke out against race discrimination, unfair legislation, and human rights violations.

For awhile, we changed the world, or thought we did. But in the end, most of us eventually joined the establishment, took jobs, got married, raised families and moved into surburban subdivisions. But all was not lost. We still have our memories of that magical time of peace, love and music. We will always treasure that moment, when the influence of America's youth brought about reform in our society. It was time that will not be forgotten.