Stinky Hippies

While we lived in Germany, from '66 to '70, all the great hippie events were occurring in the States. Woodstock, Kent State, Haight-Ashbury, the prime of The Grateful Dead, the overdoses of Janis, Jimi and the Lizard King, all that dropping out, turning on, and tuning in. My parents, being a little older, listened to such stalwarts as Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Joan Baez, proto-hippy, folksy music, along with their eternal favorites like Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. My dad went off to the Army every day, and my mom kept up appearances by having her hair done every week and wearing psychedelic and fashionable mindresses. Ian and I would flash peace signs to the soldiers in the convoys on the autobahn as we passed them in our Mercedes. It seemed the thing to do. Some of those boys flashed it back because we were cute, blonde kids; some just looked unhappy, or angry, or both.

My dad read to us from Newsweek about these things, which seemed as foreign and fantastic as anything we got out of Alice in Wonderland when our mom read to us before bedtime. They were colorful, so exotic in their freedom and rebellion, nakedness and naughtiness. Something about their steadfast belief that love would conquer all appealed to my little girl nature. So along with wanting to be a stewardess, a ballerina, and a concert pianist, I also dreamt of one day being a hippy, and saving the world with love.

We moved to the US in my eighth year, where nothing was like what I had thought it would be. Where were the hippies? Where was all that ugly Americanism I had been indoctrinated against living in German society? Where were all those rich people and important politicians from Newsweek? I was confused by the poor, insular culture I experienced first in the Adirondacks and then again Maine. What was going on? Where was I?

By the time I turned 9 I started meeting "real" hippies, but they were so different from the exoticized, glamorous tribe portrayed in the media I didn't recognize them. They were "homesteaders", living on old farms, raising livestock, growing as much of their own food as they could in our thin Maine soil, and discreetly smoking pot with other grownups during parties. I recognize them as hippies only now. With their long hair, listening to radical FM rock'n'roll radio in its infant stage, posters of Big Brother and the Holding Company on their walls of their old farm houses, struggling to keep their idealism alive after such disastrous hippie events as Altamont, struggling to eke out an existence on their ancient, rockbound farmsteads.

Then Tony Montanaro, the famous mime performer, moved to South Paris and started his Celebration Mime Theater. All of a sudden we were inundated by hippies, "real" hippies. Some of them moved into the farm down the road from us. My mom befriended them, or did they befriend my mom? One way or another they became our babysitters, when our parents thought such a thing was necessary. I spent time down at their apartment learning about organic food, patchouli, even then a potent and odd smell, which my mom and I agreed smelled like rotting log in sunshine, and accidentally about pot, being an inquisitive kid. I took mime lessons for almost two years, something it was felt would be good for my physical coordination while at the same time stimulating my imagination, (like I needed that). I have to admit it was fun, and challenging, not merely limited to mime. We also learned some yoga and basic dance theory. At the same time the hippies taught me about being connected to the natural world, and respecting on another.

Somewhere during my adolescence I discovered Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar, finally realizing that hippies had not become extinct like some strange breed of rare and wonderful animal, but rather had adapted to the changing world. And still my little girl nature wanted to believe in the redeeming powers of love, and still the hippies seemed to me to be the living emodiment of this ideal.

Fast forward to college. Suddenly we are the hippies, late teens just entering our first flush of freedom, filled to the gills with idealism and self righteousness. Talking about philosophy, smoking pot, experimenting with sex, taking hallucinogenics, convinced that we would save the world, romping around the great outdoors "sans cullottes" more often than not. We continued the long tradition of experimenting with vegetarianism only to end up with anemia for our conscientious efforts to respect "all life". We listened to The Dead, following them when we could, took acid to The Doors and Pink Floyd, and went to the appropriate meetings, like Women's Awareness. But somewhere in the midst of all this learning, life started to intrude it's weary head. How hard it was to hold all these idealistic beliefs close when they often couldn't stand up to the cold, hard scrutiny we were learning to bear upon all things intellectual and idealogical.

Then we graduated. Talk about a frigid dose of reality. No wonder the homesteaders I knew as a child were tired and cynical. You can't drop out, turn on, and tune in, and still make it, much less get ahead in this tough world. Love no longer seemed to have much cachet. We have to remember, though, that this was the '80s, and reality had become hard. Instead of The Grateful Dead we had The Sex Pistols, instead of pot, cocaine; and partying set your mind free, oh yes indeed, so free that some our minds never truly came back.

I forgot about hippies and went about the task of living my twenties. I spent a winter in the Caribbean, where some old hippies went to fade away, others to escape from the long arm of the law, and when I returned to Maine imagine my surprise when I came across the latest batch of hippies! Freshly graduated from college or still making their way through, there they were. Long hair, rebellious nature, organic dirt eating, patchouli wearing, Dead or Phish following, idealistic idiots. My heart went out to them, while at the same time I wanted to shake them until their teeth rattled. "Wake up, wake up! Love does not conquer all!"

One of my most crunchy couple friends in particular struck a cord in me. We became very close, even though their idealism was so much more unrealistic than mine had ever been. It made me nostalgic, I missed the magic of believing in pure love for all, and tried to come back to it. It didn't work, indeed their marriage stopped working, and the pure "All Love" started to show the fangs of righteousness and judgement. Once again I gave up on hippies, and for a while I also gave up on the redeeming nature of love. It just didn't seem there, there was no there there. It all seemed ridiculous and childish.

Now I am in my forties, and as all things are cyclical in nature, my thoughts on hippies have come back around again. Indeed they were a mess, an experiment that could not sustain itself, but somewhere in all that flailing about, there was a nugget, a kernel of truth, an eternal truth. Love. It is the redemption, but must be applied with a true and discerning eye, most especially to ourselves, and then to the world around us. The hippies failed because they became self-righteous fundamentalists, because they lost sight of what love means.