In 1969, when I was not yet 8, my oblivious dad got the bright idea to take us to Canada for a vacation.
I will never forget the trailer camp we stayed at one night.
It was full of hippies, naked, dancing and screaming, burning draft cards and bras in trashcans.
Looking at them through the trailer windows was like a glimpse into Dante’s Inferno.
The campground had no hookups so we had to use the public bathrooms.
My dad marched me, my mom and my gramma to them with a .44 Magnum stuffed under his shirt.
They screamed and hooted at us all as we made our way to the bathrooms.
I’ve hated hippies ever since that night.
My first actual hippie was at Disneyland in 1968
Sixth grade
Pirates of the Caribbean ride in line
Beads really long hair and embroidered jeans and Indian stoyle shirt smelling of patchouli
His woman had similar garb and a tank top no bra which even at eleven got my attention lol
My mom Miss Mississippi of course had to talk to everyone and so struck up a conversation withe her
They were foreign from Denmark lol
I think my dad liked the girl too honestly
I sat on 707 alone coming back from NYC with my first bell bottoms and it was a milk run plane
Idlewild JFK to Atlanta to Montgomery to Jackson Miss to Shreveport to Dallas
I got on and the stew sat me next to a preppie hippie who was attending college in Nea York and headed home to Dallas
He looked out for me the whole trip honestly....he smoked I was curious even then...tobacco
My uncle was in mid school in 1963-65
His best buddy went to Timothy Leary event in New Orleans and became a follower and dropped out and moved to Millbrook and then the West Coast and by the 70s was living in a commune in Hawaii with a family
That’s my first hippies I ever recall
We used to see them in the French Quarter a lot....cops there hated them
I was a long hair smoked weed a lot and tripped but we weren’t hippies
We had guns and were sorta redneck though soft about race compared to the klan which was around then
My kids like to say I was a hippie though
We were more like libertinians with arms and attitudes and idealism admittedly and quite randy as well....hell what’s your twenties for
1969. If that was Canada by upstate New York in August you must have run into Woodstock’s overflow.