ELIZABETH, THE LITTLEST HIPPY

 AUTHOR'S NOTE: Edited 07/09/07 to include newly joined groups in distribution.

I remember when the very first “hippies” moved into our small, northern California neighborhood. The year was 1966.

Included in the group was a little, red-haired girl who was about two years old at the time whom I came to know as “Elizabeth”, her mother, MaryAnn, and her step-father, Kim.

I’ve never quite understood why some people called them “dirty hippies”... MaryAnn was the only person I’ve ever known who took every, single stick of furniture out of her house every weekend, scrubbed the inside of the house from top to bottom and then put all the furniture back inside.

Little Elizabeth was one of the most intelligent children I’ve ever known. She knew most of her colors and was able to correctly identify almost any animal from a photograph. (Except, that is, for my mother’s plastic pink flamingo lawn ornaments. Those she called “pink ducks”.)

Elizabeth had a way of crooking her forefinger, then twisting her hand around until the cattywampus tip was pointing at something... “Whazzat?” she would inquire and, when you told her what the object was (“Uhm... It’s a Volkswagen, Elizabeth.”). Invariably she would then look into your eyes with her pale baby blues and ask, “What does [the Volkswagen] say?”

I later learned that it was because she had one of those “Speak and Spell” toys by Mattel, but this one had pictures of different animals in a circle and a “pointer” in the middle that looked like a farmer in overalls, pointing his finger straight up over his head. When you pulled the string, the farmer would spin around and then stop, pointing to one of the animals. With the very next pull of the string, as the farmer spun around, a recorded voice would say: “The cows says ‘mooooooo’,” or, “The sheep says ‘baaaaaaaaah’”, and so on.

MaryAnn got a job waitressing at an Italian restaurant downtown called La Fontana, where she worked the lunch and dinner shifts. Her old man, Kim, was a cook at the Copper Penny Restaurant several blocks away and worked the late-night shift. The differences in their work schedules, left about two nights a week when no one was available to take care of Elizabeth for a few hours and I was fortunate enough to get the job of babysitting her.

My job on those two nights included feeding Elizabeth her supper, giving her a bath and putting her to bed until her mother came home from La Fontana.

Elizabeth (having lived the first part of her life, I’m sure, in a commune somewhere out in the country where clothing – especially for children – was probably an optional accessory) loved to wait until I had taken off all of her clothes to get her ready for her bath before she would take off running, at top speed, out the front door.

There we would go down the street -- me running after Elizabeth as fast as I could while yelling her name. Sometimes it would take me the entire block to catch up with her.

The family had a long-haired cat named “Ching”. Sometimes Elizabeth, in her childish enthusiasm, would chase Ching -- screaming his name at the top of her lungs as she ran.  I (being the cat lover that I am) would make her stop saying, “Stop that, Elizabeth! You’re being mean to poor Ching! Be nice!”

At the sound of my voice, she would immediately stop and then pause as if she was mulling over the implications of what I said. Then, she would immediately whirl back around and run after the cat again, shouting “I’MMMM SORRRRY CHIIIIING!!” at the top of her voice.

MaryAnn had labeled all of the objects in Elizabeth’s room using large block letters on 3x5 cards ostensibly to help Elizabeth in her reading skills. The door’s card said “DOOR”, the crib, “CRIB”, the window, “WINDOW” and so on… The large poster of Bob Dylan that originally came inside one of his albums showing his profile in black and the strands of his hair in all different colors had one of these labels, too. It read, simply, “DYLAN”.

I remember seeing who I assumed was Elizabeth’s biological father when they first moved to our street. He was a tall, good-looking, young man dressed in buckskins with long, wavy, thick, copper-red hair that cascaded from beneath a large, floppy leather hat.

During a light rain, I saw him pick Elizabeth up and seat her on one of his shoulders. He then pointed up to the sky and spoke to her at length. It was apparent that he was explaining the rain and where it came from to her.

Being Elizabeth’s babysitter had other “perks”… After putting Elizabeth to bed, I could wander around the house and admire all of their “objects de arte” displayed from room to room -- occupying myself for hours admiring all of their handmade items like driftwood mobiles, quilts, hatch cover tables and meticulously collaged walls. I could even listen to their extensive record collection if I put the volume down very low… Sgt. Pepper, the Byrds and the Rolling Stones…

I have never known such gentle people with such civilized ways and I shall never forget them.