As I’ve previously mentioned, for much of my adult life, I’ve thought of myself as a retired hippie. Or I’ve simply been called one by others. One of millions and, unlike many, one who’s not embarrassed to admit it, that was a time to remember, no matter how short we’ve fallen from its promise and potential, even though I’m not so sure how much I’d want to go skinny-dipping with others these days or even sleep on the ground or a mattress on the floor.
That said, I’ll also admit that much of my first year after graduation from college in the height of the hippie movement was deep misery and loneliness punctuated by playful discoveries. The writing of Richard Brautigan definitely fits in here.
What’s often overlooked in the era is that the central element was the hippie chick. Plus, personally, I was without one, since mine had moved on and left me stranded. (Oh, misery, oh, woe, I am sounding pathetic, but let’s move ahead.) My novel, Hippie Farm, celebrated her in her many guises, even if you can’t even use the term “chick” anymore without being corrected. At the time, though, it was a badge of honor and invitation – one leading, in this case, to that rundown farmhouse in the mountains outside a college town I definitely restructured in terms of fiction.
A second novel, Hippie Love, retold the same plot line from a different perspective, one more of a what-if optimism. I would love to have heard that story retold from their impressions. Ouch? Were they as lost as I was? One I’ve been in contact with all these years has shared her insights, helpfully, and another, reconnecting much later, barely remembered who I was. And here I had thought she might be The One. Oh, my.
In the light of the publication of What’s Left, those two books were then greatly revised and newly released as a single volume, Pit-a-Pat High Jinks. Compressing the two was a major effort, but ultimately satisfying, at least for me. So much happened personally within that short span.
The inspirations cover quite a cross-section of people, with one becoming a United Way executive, another a U.S. Attorney, yet another one an OBGYN physician. Not that you would have guessed it at the time. As for most of the rest, I have no clue. Some were real losers, likely lost to drugs now. Others, tragically damaged. Being hippie wasn’t always a quest for enlightenment, justice, and equality. And when it was, it was countered by powerfully invested self-interests. Sometimes I’m surprised any of us survived, even before we look at the Vietnam veterans on the other side and their continuing traumas. Not all addicts, by the way, were hippies.
Flash ahead, then, and I don’t see youths today finding community anywhere, much less a shared cause. This is supposed to be an improvement?
Contrary to many people who lived through the era, I saw much that happened needs to be remembered and often cherished, even comically. It’s a place where people can begin rebuilding. I’m holding on, then, in my Quaker Meeting as one root to be grafted.
Look closely at the women, especially, and see how much of the legacy continues in spite of everything. (The kids today have it right, their perception of hippie as a girl thing.) Or, as they say. We’ve come a long way, Baby.
Yet that hippie label, I should add, has undergone its own transformation, rarely positive. Alas. Especially for us males.
Most of them, I hope, come across better in the book.
Still, it’s an account of history as we encountered it.
You can find Pit-a-Pat High Jinks in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. It’s also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain it.
Jnana's Red Barn 