When I arrived in Ukiah I was a braindead airhead deadhead with little ambition and, thanks to hourly intakes of marijuana fumes, an IQ dropping faster than my ability to fill out paperwork to get food stamps. Or even read the paperwork.
A hippie in other words, I was. From that vantage point I was able to study the breed close up and for extended periods of time. Looking back it was thankless work except for myriad opportunities to mingle with marijuana-addled hippie chicks and then smoke more marijuana together and monitor each other’s IQ levels, then try to talk but not in complete sentences. Or did I already say that?
And yet I survived. What I learned from years of close observation was mostly appalling. Any hippie you (I) met had exactly the same opinions and outlook as every other hippie. We all hated Nixon, loved Tim Leary, and thought we could get “back to the land” by growing goats. We built, at least when we weren’t smoking marijuana, flimsy shacks (aka Class K Housing) without heat, plumbing, foundations or blueprints.
Or power tools, building permits or waterproof roofs.
All hippies dressed the same: torn-up worn-out jeans decades before “distressed” fashions gained traction. Dudes wore tie-dyed shirts, and their ol’ ladies wore garments that made them look like they’d just fallen from a fourth floor window through an awning. No hippie shaved an armpit and every hippie thought Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan were Messiahs.
I could go on and on. We all read Mother Earth News, One Hundred Years of Solitude and books by Carlos Castaneda. We listened to Crosby, Stills & Nash and avoided McDonald’s, Burger King and Captain Crunch.
Speaking of avoiding Big Macs, Hostess Twinkies, etc., let us pause in our hippie-bashing and concede one huge thing the hippies got right. Even addled hippies like me consumed far better food than when we were growing up. And I’m not sure how we did it.
I’m also not sure how or why American society opted for chemically adulterated, factory processed food instead of what humans had been eating the previous several hundred centuries. When did our parents decide that Kool-Aid was an acceptable beverage for children and started dosing us with it at age three?
And how did Wonder Bread earn the honor of being called “bread”?
Strange to get sent off to school following a hearty breakfast of Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs. But we did.
Among the glories of growing up in the Midwest were summers of nonstop corn on the cob. Fresh, hot, buttery, salted and perfect, corn was God’s gift to the Aztecs, who passed it down to us (a much better inheritance than virgins sacrificed atop pyramids).
But now look at corn. Instead of on the cob, today we find corn in our oils and as a substitute for sugar. Corn became gasoline. Salt became the enemy of anyone with any sense. Sugar made kids hyper. Meat was murder.
We sprayed cheese out nozzles from metal cans.
How did it all happen? My mom had canned tomatoes and peaches in glass jars and put them on basement shelves to be brought out in winter. A blink of an eye and suddenly peaches came in metal cans, colored a shocking bright yellow, and soaked in ultra-sweet liquid.
At the same time, clothes made of cotton and linen were replaced by polyester and rayon. Handsome wool suits were sent to Goodwill so dad could be outfitted in a powder blue “leisure suit” complete with a white belt. And then he walked around in public!
That was the point when the hippies looked around and finally said ENOUGH! Next they donned prim, ugly, brown paisley granny dresses and started baking whole wheat bread. The revolution had begun.
Today we go to the Ukiah Co-Op (well, not us, just you) to marvel at shelves loaded with grains, granola and quinoa in place of Frosted Flakes and Captain Crunch. Browse the joint for an hour and you’ll find nary a tub of margarine or a quart of Coca Cola.
Hippies, guilty as they are for their numerous crimes against civilized society (NO to fossil fuels! NO to cell phone towers! NO to Trump the King or Hitler!! NO to farmed salmon! YES to drugs! NO to female shaved armpits! NO to capitalism!) at least had the vision and courage to say NO! to TV dinners and Ban Lon shirts.
We salute them. We are all better off for their struggles.
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