Ok, I have to admit it. I was a fake hippie in the 60's/70's. At the time I didn't think I was but it took a few years afterwards to finally realize it. For those of you too young to remember, I suggest you just listen to the music of our era--easier to understand than trying to read about it.
In high school in Kansas City I can remember the day that 'hippies' became a possibility. A guy,Phil, from California, transfered into Northeast High School. He wore shirts that had spots on them and wild rose colored glasses. For a few days some of our gang made fun of him "Dumb guy,looks like a girl with his long hair and pink shirts". But increasingly outside of Kansas City, people were turning on and tuning in to the 'freak movement'. I was in a band at the time and we were doing 'soul' music. But we started hearing Jimi Hendrix and
Janis Joplin and the San Francisco sounds and we realized that something was happening. Kansas City was usually 5 years behind either coast. We had a
nightclub out on Westport Road that opened called "The Trip". They featured California sound bands and had these lights that projected onto the walls that were actually peoples hands in colored water that made you think they were projecting hearts beating or other weird objects in time with the rather eccentric music of the time. I was working at the State Employment office at the time and there was a 'hippie' who came in for casual labor--day jobs--who we called the "Cigar Store Indian". We called him that because he wore leather outfits and a headband. Right about this time they started having 'happenings' out in Volker Park. So I figured I would go out and find out what it was all about. Volker was right across the street from the Nelson Art Gallery and the hippies were living in Westport mostly. On Sundays we had free concerts out in the park and we had thousands show up. We also had weird people,like the guy who used to strap himself up to a cross and impersonate Jesus on Sundays spouting bible verses. People would come out there,get stoned (smoking pot was becoming the in thing) and listen to the music and check out the opposite sex.
When I graduated from Northeast High School in KC in 1969 I still had short hair but that summer I let it grow. The cast of "Hair" came to KC and it made history because they did a nude scene and the City Council voted that they would not allow public nudity. The cast used a parachute and got around the law. I was given tickets and went and one of the cast members invited me to go to the cast party. It opened my eyes. People,outside of KC, actually smoked pot in public and had sex with people they weren't married to. I decided that as an 18 year old man this was a life that might be interesting.
Right about this time, I had a friend named Harold and we went to a potluck dinner with some 'hippies' in the northeast area of KC who owned a house. They had just been given a job in New York and wanted to sell their house. After dinner they asked us if wanted to buy a house. I was 18,Harold was 20 and Harold was married. We thought about it and said "Sure" and with $300 down we bought a 3 bedroom house at 3219 E. 10th Street,right off of Benton. Two weeks later we formed the Great American Phrog Coop or GAP for short. The rules were simple. Harold and Janet threw in $100 a month, I threw in $100 a month and that paid the house payment,utilities, and left over a bit of money for a case of beer each month. I bought a bunch of used furniture and soon had a stereo and television and a brass bed. I bought a new VW bug with an 8 track player.
We weren't sure where we were going in life but we knew that music,good wine, and food and friends were part of it. We thought that being hip was part of what life would be forever. We were sure that our generation would change the world,that war and bigotry and 'straight' people would be done away with and we would be living a life of charmed oneness with the gentle people of the world. Heck, we might even move out to the country and live off the land.
I was recruited by a group to go Sufi dancing out on Troost Blvd one night a week. Sufi dancing is a rhymatic chanting and dancing where we would look each other in the eyes and be chanting some phrase in Arabic and it would make you feel 'high'. A woman in the group took a liking to me (see my above picture--I was a cute guy..ha ha) and the next thing I knew she invited me to visit her 'family'. What was different about her family was this. They all wore orange robes,drove orange cars,ate and drank only orange foods or drinks, and meditated as a group every night after dinner. I went and we had pumpkin soup,orange jello, and orange juice. They then put on a weird tape entitled "Tubular Bells" which was weird bell music and we laid on the floor and were guided through images of flying through the air,etc. I realized that she and I had little in common so that didn't work.
I next dated a secretary who was named Sage and worked in the Probation Office where I worked. She came over to our house for a dinner and she drank more of the cheap red wine than anyone else. My roomates in the commune came up and told me that the neighbors were complaining because my date for the evening was nude,walking the porch rail on the 2nd floor of our house. I didn't realize it because I was busy watching a simulcast---a new type of show where you turned your tv on and your stereo at the same time..ha ha
There were 2 other communes in our area and we formed a group called the "Extended Family". We got together every Friday night for dinner, a "Mass" and
political talk. This group had lesbians living in it, a strong man who was trying to convince his wife to allow him to have a group marriage, and a nun. I started hanging out with the nun a bit. She was still trying to figure out if she wanted to be a nun or not and had taken a sabbatical. One of the couples of our group decided to get divorced. In typical hippie fashion we decided to have a "Ceremony of Dissolution" and around a circle with wine we affirmed their new life.
Summer of 70 was a wild time. We went to a nightclub in the River Quay alot and listened to great music performed by talented people who worked real jobs during the day and sang at night. We drank Imported beers and tried to be hip. I wrote articles for the Foolkiller Newspaper, a group of people who were trying to change the world. I got involved with a group of people who were trying to change the world by shutting down a crooked car dealer--we picketed for weeks. We formed a group called The Government Employees for Peace Now and did theater on our lunch hour about how the US was propping up the Vietnamese government as a puppet government. Even Mayor Wheeler,our Mayor joined the group. I was studying Gestalt therapy and was co-leading some groups for rich suburban woman who weren't happy with their affluent lives and was dating some of them also. It was a heady time and looking back I now realize that I lead a charmed life.
My life as a 'psuedo hippy' lasted until 1977 when I moved to Fremont Nebraska to be a therapist and probation officer with people and their families involved in alcoholism. One of the other counselors at Immanual Medical Center in Omaha,Jack Hurst identified me as someone who needed a father. He took me aside one day and said to me "Dean,it is time to hang up the beads. Your hair is too long. Your hippy days are over." He took me to JC Penney's and bought me my first suit. He took me to his barber and had him cut off my braids and he lectured me that life was best lived with some intention. Jack was
probably 60 years old at the time. He had been a wild younger man,fought in the war, and was in many ways a man's man. But he saw in me a guy who needed a father figure. He served that role for me and I loved him,no questions asked. He taught me to sail. He talked me into thinking about marrying and in many ways even picked wife #1 for me. He taught me how to ski. He got me thinking I wanted more out of life than a cheap apartment and loud music. Jack died last year and a part of me died with him. He was the guy who taught me what it was to be a man and wherever you are,Jack, I send my love. You were the guy who helped me evolve into the good person I am. God bless you,guy. For a former "Marine" to help a hippie join the mainstream was a leap of faith on his part.
We were going to change the world and we did in some ways. But the world changed us. I look in the mirror and I see a leather faced older guy looking back. If I hear music, like In A Gadda Vida that is on this page, I start dancing in my heart. If I smell incense I think of the old GAP commune and the times I had there. If I see a nun I think of the women I dated ..ha ha.....but in my soul still lives a hippy. A guy who thinks we can change the world if we all stick with the basics of loving our fellow folks,living simple lives, and listening to our soul. If I could find my beads, I would probably wear them again because you can get away with that when you are older. For those reading this web page who were once hippies I urge you to consider that we didn't waste our youth---we lived a thing that was magical. Sometimes I still think about chucking it all and
buying a Harley Davidson and taking off in pursuit of the ultimate lifestyle. But it would interfere with my nap so I only dream about it....ha ha.....
Rock on, my brothers and sisters. Rock on. Dean Hughson 10-24-00
