Hip
Twice in as many days, someone had mentioned it.
Among country singers and Republicans, the term hippie was often modified by the word dirty.
I had seen the tall, elderly black dude shuffle in to the weight room that morning and sit at the stationary bike to exercise.
I had finished my rehab workout.
As he left, we began to talk pausing by the table where I was entering my daily post-workout numbers.
“Your name?”
“Pete…, yours?”
“Jim…Jimmy,” he said. “How ya doin’? How long ya been here?”
(What was someone with no drawl doing here?)
“Been near Leesburg at the farm 25 years, but the family’s been here forever…”
A smile broke out on an indifferent face: he sat on the edge of the pool table on his way out.
“You look like a hippie with dat hair,” he grinned.
“It’s not so simple. They call it chemo-curls. After I left government, I swore I’d never get that sort of haircut again… you in government, too?”
“Yeah, Interior…”
How the conversation arrived there, wasn’t clear later.
“That a guitar in your tote?” I asked.
“Naw, my wife’s mandolin. She teaches a class here at The Center…Wait, you say you made wine?”
“Yes, commercially. I had to quit to do my rehab program, and when that ended I came here to work out…”
“We made wine. Dat’s why you look like a hippie. We’d start with grape juice…”
It was fascinating: Jimmy remembered hippies and wine. He looked on my recent curls with no small appreciation of good times long past.
“What did you call it?” I had to ask several times. It was his accent but it was worth pursuing.
“Chaw beer,” is what I think he said. “…see, you start with raisins and get some yeast…”
“What kind of wine you like?” I asked Jimmy as part of my winemaker past. It is curious and entertaining and tempting to try to link psychology with preferences in wine.
“Sweet,” he said ruminating on his own history.
“Red or white?”
“Naw, anything sweet…”
***
Saturday morning, the usual Men’s Group met early and as it was concluding, a friend, a traffic engineer working for government smiled at me.
“No really, I like your long hair. In fact, you wouldn’t believe it but there is a little of the hippie left in me, too, although being in government…”
As I left for other activities, I made a note to myself.
Hadn’t thought about hippies or the 1960s, or the jargon (Mother Nature), the phrases or the philosophy in a while.
Was there a philosophy?
The flower children, the bell bottoms, the indulgences (we won’t go into detail here). What were the essential points of behavioral philosophy, or was it all a scam to avoid final exams on the excuse of protesting the war in Viet Nam?
Was Henry David Thoreau the first hippie?
Maybe there was more there besides the want of a military haircut...
Where are they now?