Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Hippies!

They knew how to chord a guitar, how to live together, how to relax, and how to live on a shoestring (and off Mom and Dad mostly!) And they didn't know about money or power – that would have been way too square! Hippies were a brief respite on this road of life, one of those strange eras that only come around once a century of so, and it was good in the beginning, before the underbelly of society took control of the movement and made drugs dirty again.

I saw it come down in the Haigt Ashbury of San Francisco - the innocent optimism of the beat generation giving way to the money and influence of the 70's. The trip was over, and all the hippies copped out, bought Corvettes and settled down to become Reaganites, and the eighteen year olds that could get away with being a hippy could no longer pull it off at 40. But they would always be hippies at heart because they tasted freedom, if only for a moment in time, and that's something people these days will never know. They lived their ideals, and although their ideals were far too naive to last, they lived for a wondrous moment.

Now, we don't live - we invest. Our 401ks become our only promises of freedom someday, a day that never comes as we work well into our 70s, obediently giving all of our money to Wall Street so that they can gamble it away. And as we try to keep our dreams intact, we forget what they were, as our social foundations crumble around us, our values sacrificed to the prostitute we know as financial security. The hippies knew all about money, and they knew that money would never make them happy, not even contented. That's why they gave all their money away.

But in time, they forgot. The temptation of stuff was too much, and communal living, full of love and caring for each other, quickly turned into moneymaking. Why hold a good man or woman back by the drag of the rest of the community?

The hippies soon became history, but I often wonder what the country would be like if the hippies, as ridiculous as it seems, would have prevailed, and instead of Ronald Reagan; Bobby Dylan would have been elected?

I can see it now: Socialized medicine, people sharing homes, driving old cars and busses, getting together every day after work to play guitars and play with the kids. Marijuana would be legal, and alcohol illegal as well as all other violent drugs. The only way we would ever go to war is if someone actually invaded our country with a large army. And we would have scrapped all of our nuclear weapons by now. Maybe someone might intimidate us with theirs, but at least they wouldn't unleash them in a preemptive attack! What for; a bunch of stupid hippies!

And business would be all about the employee, not the distant stockholder that never picked up a shovel, and 401ks would be replaced by nice places to live, good food, shared medicine, and love all around. Everything would be non--profit, as the entire society looked out for each other.

Idealistic? Sure. Wildly idealistic? Yep. But look at what we have now. Everyone is scared to death. Insurance companies reneging on hurricane policies, medical policies, and cherry picking only the people and areas in which they can make a killing. Kneejerk rushes to war without a clue about what we are doing. A military build up that will certainly be used someday, because it has never not been used.

And a life that has become a rat race, with not enough guitars. We have even forgotten how to chord . . . n