Were you a "hippie" back in the day? Are you an "old hippie" now? Are you just a hybrid hippie now.?

I was too young to embrace the 60's, but do remember and liked the hippie culture/movement back in the early to mid 1970's!

I babysat for two hippie moms (1970's), one of which I built a close, long-lasting friendship with, and to this day I still see myself as a granola/crunchy type, minus all the frills and thrills.

Will touch more on this in the morning!

Love this started topic, Kayelle! :love:
 
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I arrived late to the party but I do have a fondness for old Hippies.

IMO the Hippie movement ushered in a more relaxed, don't sweat the small stuff, lifestyle that we all seem to enjoy.
 

Heck yeah....flower power
Fringes on everything I wore
Extreme flared long pants
Hot pants....the exact opposite to flares
Platform shoes....not that I needed them because I was tall
Mini skirts or hot pants with knee high fringed boots
Long hair (my own) I could sit on but it was so super curly like sheep's wool
Using a cloth to prevent scorching and the ironing board I ironed most of the crinkles out
No Dafni hair straightening brush like I use now
Peace Man

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No, I was behind the curve, a functional only child, and my parents were beyond conservative. I can remember feeling vaguely threatened by youth culture of the day, and was slow to assimilate much of it. I'm actually younger thinking now than I was then, so I guess you could call me a retro-, stealth, or gray panther hippy...who's with me? Fight the power!
 
He turned thirty-five last Sunday
In his hair he found some gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the backyard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone
Sometimes when it just don't make no sense

Yeh he gets off on country music
'Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too frigging old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock
And the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy
And the silence made him cry
Yea he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

He's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they force him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And behind each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more

'Cause he's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

Well he stays away a lot now
From the parties and the clubs
And he's thinking while he's joggin' 'round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
'Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species
Will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo
Just up and fade away

He's an old hippie
And he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie
This new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust, yeah he ain't tryin' to change nobody, he's just...
 
The concept freedom has no boundaries was destined to fail. Everything has boundaries and failure to recognize and navigate those boundaries is careless and fruitless.
 
peramangkelder said:
Heck yeah....flower power
Fringes on everything I wore
Extreme flared long pants
Hot pants....the exact opposite to flares
Platform shoes....not that I needed them because I was tall
Mini skirts or hot pants with knee high fringed boots
Long hair (my own) I could sit on but it was so super curly like sheep's wool
Using a cloth to prevent scorching and the ironing board I ironed most of the crinkles out
No Dafni hair straightening brush like I use now
Peace Man

View attachment 114069
Click to expand...
Groovy, Peram! ✌

I relate to so much of what you mentioned.
 
I was more of a "folkie" than a "hippie". I had the long hair with bangs down to my eyelashes and wore bellbottom jeans and ponchos and carried my guitar around everywhere ('cause you just never knew when a hootenanny might break out). We'd get a mite annoyed if called "hippies".

I did have one really hippie-dippie outfit, though, that I dearly loved. "Elephant bell" jeans (very, very wide at the bottom with tiny bells sewn on) and a big gauze hippie top. I had packed it away and when I got pregnant, I converted the jeans into maternity pants and wore the outfit one day to the base. The base commander got one look at me in my full glory, called my husband in and told him, "YOU TELL YOUR WIFE TO WEAR SOME PROPER CLOTHES AND STOP PARADING AROUND LIKE A @#!&%#* HIPPIE!" Hippies were not welcome on military bases.....apparently it was some form of leprosy and might be contagious.

The only hip-ness I'm concerned with these days is trying to avoid a broken one.

1967: Trying to find a hip new joint.
2020: Trying to find a new hip joint.
 
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I was too into politics and the movement, but generally speaking, yes. The two got mixed with the Yippies. Abbie Hoffman was a neighbor and a very nice man. Lots of fun he was.
 
Kayelle said:
Did you even care about the Hippie culture then or now? Did it have any lasting value for today?
I'll be back.
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I consider myself fortunate that I did not need to be 'up close and personal' with it, but as the sister of a United States Marine and Vietnam veteran I did not have a positive opinion of the subject. My viewpoint then and now: "Peace: yes! Disrespect our military: NO!"
 
jujube said:
I was more of a "folkie" than a "hippie". I had the long hair with bangs down to my eyelashes and wore bellbottom jeans and ponchos and carried my guitar around everywhere ('cause you just never knew when a hootenanny might break out). We'd get a mite annoyed if called "hippies".

I did have one really hippie-dippie outfit, though, that I dearly loved. "Elephant bell" jeans (very, very wide at the bottom with tiny bells sewn on) and a big gauze hippie top. I had packed it away and when I got pregnant, I converted the jeans into maternity pants and wore the outfit one day to the base. The base commander got one look at me in my full glory, called my husband in and told him, "YOU TELL YOUR WIFE TO WEAR SOME PROPER CLOTHES AND STOP PARADING AROUND LIKE A @#!&%#* HIPPIE!" Hippies were not welcome on military bases.....apparently it was some form of leprosy and might be contagious.

The only hip-ness I'm concerned with these days is trying to avoid a broken one.

1967: Trying to find a hip new joint.
2020: Trying to find a new hip joint.
Click to expand...

I too was more of a "folkie" than a "hippie". The "folkie" came first and they were better known as "beatniks" in the coffee houses of the day.
My first year of college ('62) a bunch of friends got together and we purchased an old run down house in the heart of town, and we turned it into a "Coffee House" .
We had a blast doing all the "way cool" decorating and opened for business with big success. We always had live folk music (think Kingston Trio)
and often special events like very brainy poetry readings . We had a cover charge to pay for expenses and all the coffee you wanted. Drugs and alcohol were not allowed and never an issue. We sure learned a lot about business and life lessons. It was one of the best years of my life, and we sold the place at a profit making our benefactors (parents) very happy.
I married in '63 and was always a responsible person but the Hippie movement was a wonder to me. I thought the idea of "Turn on, tune in, drop out." was bizarre thinking and that Timothy Leary who forged a career as a noted psychology professor and researcher before becoming a major, highly controversial advocate of psychedelic drugs during the 1960s, was a nut case. I was just never interested in drugs in general, and the thought of "tripping out " sounded like a nightmare to me.
However, I did identify as a "flower child earth mother" and I actually still do.
My favorite blouses are still the gauzy peasant tops.
 
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By 1962, I'd finished my 4 year military hitch, we'd been married 6 years, had 4 kids, and I was working and finishing up my engineering degree at night.

Not too much time for a "scene" at that time, "hippie" or any other.
 
jujube said:
I was more of a "folkie" than a "hippie". I had the long hair with bangs down to my eyelashes and wore bellbottom jeans and ponchos and carried my guitar around everywhere ('cause you just never knew when a hootenanny might break out). We'd get a mite annoyed if called "hippies".

I did have one really hippie-dippie outfit, though, that I dearly loved. "Elephant bell" jeans (very, very wide at the bottom with tiny bells sewn on) and a big gauze hippie top. I had packed it away and when I got pregnant, I converted the jeans into maternity pants and wore the outfit one day to the base. The base commander got one look at me in my full glory, called my husband in and told him, "YOU TELL YOUR WIFE TO WEAR SOME PROPER CLOTHES AND STOP PARADING AROUND LIKE A @#!&%#* HIPPIE!" Hippies were not welcome on military bases.....apparently it was some form of leprosy and might be contagious.

The only hip-ness I'm concerned with these days is trying to avoid a broken one.

1967: Trying to find a hip new joint.
2020: Trying to find a new hip joint.
Click to expand...

Same here... more of a folkie.
"Peace: yes! Disrespect our military: NO!" Great quote there JaniceM (y)(y)
Vt..jpg
Speaking of old Folkie's........ :)
 
I was in the Navy during the entire Hippie era and was more than a little baffled by the whole thing.

One of my brother-in-laws became a hippie for about 10 months. The main thing I remember from talking to him is that he spent a lot of time hungry and cold. Out of desperation, he called me when he was broke, hungry, and stuck in a small town in central California. I scrapped together as much money as I could on a Sunday and wired it to a Western Union office near him. He was in bad shape when I picked him up at a Greyhound bus station. You don't want me to describe what he smelled like.

In the mid 1970's, I did take an elective college course on "Contemporary American History" which largely focused on the hippie movement. I also took an elective course on equal opportunity and race relations. Both courses were worth my time and did provide glimpses into aspects of American life to which I had little previous exposure. My objective then (and now) was to better understand the world we live in. Maybe, just maybe, I made a little progress., .... but the world is a moving target when it comes to understanding it, and I can claim no expertise at all.
 
I was a plastic hippie in college in the early 70's. I had the long hair, smoked a lot of weed, did many acid trips (also peyote & mushrooms).....I used the lingo..."far out man" and I faked meditation. But the deeper structures of intimacy, creativity and personal liberation from one's inherited prejudices were outside my frame of reference. I did have a good time though. Two summers hitchhiking cross country are particularly good memories. I learned a good bit of fieldcraft living out of a rucksack too.
 
It depends on your definition of "hippie". Did I have the platform shoes? Yup. The madras wide collar shirt? Yup. The zodiac appropriate pendant on a gold neck chain? Yup. The "new" polyester extra wide bell bottom pants? Yup. The Patchouli after shave? Yup. Some weed? Yup. How about the 'you gotta try this" stuff? Yup. Going to discos? Yup. Dancing the "Hustle"? Yup. Was I upset that no one, in my small college in Worcester, Mass, wanted to riot. Yup.
And now, 50 years later...... you change........Dude, I'm commenting in a Senior Citizens Forum.
 
Nah,

My first college roommate from Miami was about as close to any I'd seen on the West Coast. His parents had hopes of him becoming a doctor. He lasted about two quarters until the freedom got to him.

Dude played his conga drums (he wasn't Michael Carabello) and stayed stoned too much for making the grade. Big Deadhead. He never made it to Med school, one of my buddies said he had retired from a Lenscrafters as an optician few years back.
 

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