Hippies and Crew Cuts

Interesting and evocative.

Yes this is interesting!!

Many of the long-haired Viet-Nam vets returned with some serious PTSD problems that even hard drugs and a 180 degree lifestyle shift couldn't repair. Manson spent 17 of his (at that time) 34 years behind bars prior to his nastiness in California. That's where he went nuts, not in the jungles of Viet-Nam, but Viet-Nam did its mammoth share of brain-twisting.

Jesus had been crucified
For having long hair and
Playing the electric guitar
Plugged into lightning,
Grounded by spikes

I love that metaphor.

Thought you might my friend, thus the ping...

Thanks Dennis!

Denise, my favorite lines too.
Brother, you can write and rock at once. Jesus Christ, rockstar

new

Very interesting.

Thank you for sharing with Watching The Wind Blow By

I wish I had a good comment. But, alas I don't. So...

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I'll give that poem "two thumbs up", even though long hair wasn't the real beef with Jesus! :) A pretty cool amalgam of creative thought. you should be a poet!

Thank you posting to the Triple Name Club. Now Featured.

A poet?, me? Maybe someday...

Interesting post. If you remember, it all seemed so normal back then. What do you think they'll be saying of our time, 40 years hence?

Some hairdo huh - Jesus and the Electrics - LOL - thanks for sharing :-)

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Manson led no one, outside of that insane family, and i have to say I don't care for that intimation....

Maybe Timothy Leary, but never Manson.

I forgot T Leary, and my poetry never tries to please all the people all the time. But with that said, you have a valid point and besides in 1969 I was 6 - what do I know.

(However, Hippiedom did exist in my household and my oldest brother was honestly at Woodstock. Funny thing about Woodstock, today, about 1 million more people say they were there then was actually there; but Alan was).

Hmm, I do have to point out though that my poem above says nothing about Manson leading anyone, anywhere. To many he symbolized 'hippie', that's what my poem says.

Manson was unworthy to lead a dung beetle through manure.

He only symbolized hippie to crew cuts, and others that hated hippies, he was no hippie, but whatever....

Not picking a fight chief. Just wanted to clarify I wasn't proposing Manson was a leader of any kind. And I give you he may not have been a hippie (I don't know) but I remember when my uncles (crew cut uncles) seen him on TV, they called him a hippie.

And thank you for stopping by.

i was honestly at Woodstock too, Robert, and I honestly hated just about every minute of it. The only reason I even relented to going was because my friend told me that Bob Dylan was going to be there. He wasn't.

I can still see Richie Havens opening the show, beads of perspiration glistening all over his shiny, ebony chest. He was attractive in an earthy sort of way so that kept me amused, but I didn't like his music. The best part, if there was one, were the two cute guys from Michigan who set up camp next to us with a cooler and some refreshments. We had taken off on the spur of the moment with only a king sized bag of peanut M&Ms. We were close to the front and it was loud and hotter than hell the first day with all kinds of weirdos mulling about, announcements of babies being born, and for people who were literally and figurately high, to "please get down from the towers."

Of course, everyone knows about the torrential rain the second day. I was flithy, hungry, had to pee, (refused to use the porta-potties) and all I wanted was a nice long shower followed by a nice long bath and maybe my August issue of Cosmopolitan.

Alan used to tell us it was the second day that he lost his clothes. You on the other hand seem to have one really good memory.

As for Bob (my #1 favorite poet), I think that's the weekend we were on the way to Juarez in the rain and it was easter time too and we were out on Hwy 61 chasing Moses and some moos but we never really made it cuz we were helping the founding fathers endorse the reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse; you now the highway is for gamblers better use your sense and take what you have gathered from coincidence - and as we drove along the watchtower, princes kept the view while all the women came and went, barefoot servants too, Old Bob wishes he could have been at Woodstock, cuz I just know he rerally missed you too...

Most of it is a blur, but there are some things that I'll never forget, probably just because the experience was so traumatic for me.

Wow. You really tied that all together with amazing dexterity.

Thanks Heidi.

WOW ! ... what evocative writing ... brings back the memories ... probably what it was supposed to do (?) ... I generally dislike poetry but I more than like this ...

I was growing up through that age, just ahead of it, too old to actually be a "head" ... I was in the Navy snooping around off the coast of Vietnam, probably, they wouldn't tell me, supporting the Rangers who were "in there" secretly doing the CIA stuff before the actual "
troops" went ashore.

So that was prior to the day, as far as the average person knew, of the difference between the crew-cuts and the long-hairs ... I was crew-cut from outward appearances, but only later found out that I was a long-hair deep down inside ... relatively speaking ... meaning I was never ever a "real" radical ... maybe, it seems now, just always a step ahead of my time, never ever really comfortably fitting in.

By the time I got out of my 6 year service obligation and returned to civil life ... things were "heating up" on all fronts ... the long hair and the crew cut "conflict" had begun in earnest ... but I was still too busy just getting back to the old visions of what civilian life was supposed to be all about, plus, school and get a job, in whatever order, to advance my "career" of supporting my family, then just 3 of us.

My very first experience concerning the long-hair leanings that I had evolved into with growing out of "side-burns", of all things, was the moving from the West Coast through my job to Montana ... big difference in life-style and outlook of such things. I was warned first to never talk politics with "them" short-hairs over there unless you agreed with them.

By the time I moved back to the coast, things were getting more interesting, I decided to check some of it out in a voyeuristic sort of way, I went to see the movie "Woodstock" which had just come out in Portland and I went to a "music festival" (a very small one) to mingle with the "hippies" to see what they were about ... I found it all "freeing" ... that it seemed to be about actual mutual loving respect as human to human ... very peaceful really.

Within weeks I attended my first really big real "Rock-Festival" ... in fact two of them in two states the first weekend ... all by myself, right in the very middle of the center of it all, sleeping out in my sleeping bag right in the middle of it having smoked some grass for the very first time and quenching the dry throat with "Electric" kool-aid ... not realizing until the next day when I asked someone what the word "Electric" meant (laced with LSD) ... what a "trip" !!!

Then finally with the new week, back to family and job ... the real life ... but I have always sympathized with the "REAL" hippies, those that were in it for the right reasons of changing the world ... not for those hangers-on who came for the "free love and drugs", the "party animals" ...

WOW Jerry, your experiences & perspectives rival anything I have, even with two hippie brothers and a sister dating a Green Beret crew cut.

Could I suggest one more read? It's fun an short, you see last night I turned a bunch of Gatherers into hippies with Dylan’s Unwritten Dream but whether you come by or not you have my gratitude for your grand comment here.

:+)

*~breezing thru~* leaving comments*~trying to earn some points~*gotta fund a trip to Europe for my daughter*~have a nice day~*