Ain't that the truth?
An old army buddy of mine grew up on the Wind River Reservation near Riverton, Wyoming.
He told me that prior to World War II, the cowboys and Indians in that area didn't like each other much and mostly kept to themselves.
After the war, many had served together, gained a mutual respect and discovered mutual interests.
When the hippies started showing up in the early 1960's, a popular male boding activity was to go to town, practice their lassoing on hippie motorcyclists passing through, then proceed to give them a good close haircut with a set of sheep shears. Sometimes, the activity was fueled by alcohol. Mostly, it was just for fun to show the hippies what they thought of their disrespect for the flag and all other things American.
One summer night, the local law enforcement was on high alert because a motorcycle gang of hippies had vowed to right into Riverton and teach the town a lesson.
The cowboys and Indians were waiting for them. The resulting fight produced nothing more serious than a bunch of split lips, scrapes and bruises plus a broken store front window. But the grand finale was a gaggle of hippies with new haircuts limping out of town southbound on highway 789 serenaded by a combined cowboy and Indian chorus singing patriotic songs.
That’s a great story. They didn’t even need Billy Jack to bring them together.
FWIW, I’m an early boomer (b. 1948). Dad was WWII, Korea, & we served concurrently in Vietnam. I’ll never understand how the Greatest Generation managed to produce so many hippies & misfits. The draft dodgers I kind of understand even there were many ways to enlist & never see combat, and maybe the majority of draft age boomers led more or less normal lives, but what drove the counterculture hippie movement totally escapes me to this day.
Grey ponytails are its only remnant.