". . . dancing to the Dead, fucking your brains out, and living off other people so you didn't have to get a real [job]."

I was at the awkward age. I was too young to be a beatnik and too old to be a hippie. I was pretty--what they used to call--"straight arrow." Still am.

I was right in the middle of the folk scene during the Sixties, and I only knew a handful of people who even came close to fitting the description quoted above. That's the kind of sterotypical picture that the media tried to paint back then. Not that there weren't some, but the noise made about them far exceeded their numbers.

Most of the people I knew who even aspired to be "hippies" were high school kids who had bought the stereotype (from the media) and took to hanging around a few of the coffeehouses, making general pains in the ass of themselves by trying to be "cool." Most of them couldn't keep up with the conversation.

The screwing, dope-smoking bunch (and granted, there were some) were emphasized all out of proportion in an attempt to discredit those folks who were into peace and civil rights.

I was there. And you know what? I remember!

Don Firth