BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Arne
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:22 AM

You mean like this?

;-)

I do have to spend a little less time schooling "Martin", Teribus, and BB, and work a bit on updating the web pages. My serious stuff is here (along with some better pics)...

Cheers,

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:24 AM

Some people define themselves by who they love: 0thers define themselves by who they hate.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:55 AM

Surely there are another two categories Jerry
The people that define themselves by who loves them:
The others who define themselves by who hates them:
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 12:53 PM

"Some people define themselves by who they love: 0thers define themselves by who they hate."

Brilliant statement, Jerry. And so true. Matter of fact, the latter case is what causes just about all the trouble in the word. (and on this forum)

Regarding hippies and drugs...I always thought that the drug craze was the primary thing that misdirected and wrecked the youth movement, and I also think the establishment planned it that way. The CIA moves drugs, billions of dollars worth of drugs annually, from the Third World direct to Mainstreet, USA. The laundered money keeps the USA solvent. It's been happening that way since quite awhile before the hippies were ever seen, and it's happening on a far larger scale now. The 2 biggest sources of illegal drugs for the CIA are Afghanistan and Colombia.

I loved the youth movement at the time, but I was never in favour of the drug culture. It was a very big mistake, and it wasted a lot of lives. You can't take chemical shortcuts to enlightenment without paying a heavy price for it, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:01 PM

There is another catagory -people who worry way too much about how others define them.   

The problem I had with "hippies" back in the day was that they were the most conformist group of all! If you did not have long hair you were distrusted. If you did not smoke pot, you were distrusted. If you did not listen to the music of the minute, you were distrusted. If you shared an opinion other than the prevailing group and media inspired voice, you were not distrusted.   Hippies were the largest clic of all-time.

I am 48 years old, I have long hair, I do not do drugs, I have my own thoughts. I refused to let my life be defined by a sterotype and fit into someone elses preconceived notions.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:07 PM

That's exactly the problem I had with hippies, Ron! At first I was starry-eyed in my idealism about the movement. After a few years I reached the point of just being broken-hearted about the conformist hypocrisy of it all. I began to feel contempt for most of the people in the hippy mainstream...precisely because of the unthinking conformity and prejudice you allude to.

Being the guy who never smoked either dope or cigarettes and never got drunk either, I was always somewhat the odd man out among those young fools.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:22 PM

I was in the same boat LH. I never smoked, drank on occasion but nothing seriously, wore my hair a reasonable length, and was made to feel "different". Hippies were not the peace and love image that they tried to make themselves out to be. The media created the image and the blind followers fell in line. As soon as Vietnam ended and the threats to their own well-being ended, they joined the mainstream.   It was an easy out and a way to avoid the problems of the day.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:33 PM

Yup, pretty much the way I saw them too, Ron. I'll say this, though, among the hippies were a few really sweet, gentle, lovely people. Those individuals I value having known. It just goes to show that in any general group of people at any given time you can find a few gems.

I'll say this too...the hippy movement was a hell of a lot more appealing (at least to me) than the punk movement that followed it. ;-P (or the rap and hip-hop stuff now, God knows)

I find starry-eyed idealism and lyrical romanticism much preferable to self-hatred, deliberate ugliness and self-destructive nihilism, or the idealization of "gangsta" culture.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:34 PM

Listen to the pictures flow
Across the room into your mind they go.
Listen to the strings.
They jangle and dangle
While the old guitar rings.

That's a really beautiful piece of writing. Great images. Thanks, Gordon, for writing it in the first place, and thanks, Peace for posting the words. And thanks to the Minstrel of the Dawn for reminding us of it.

Well do I remember in the mid-Sixties, all those high school kids hanging around the coffeehouses trying to be cool and trying their damnedest to be hippies. Although most of the kids were nice enough, some of them were real pains in the ass. They were often disappointed because we weren't all sitting around smoking dope (that they could try to buy or bum). They were so incredibly clueless!

I never was a hippie, even though some of the kids thought I was because I played the guitar and sang folk songs. Being immature, they were given to thinking in stereotypes. I note that there are still a few of those kids (at least one of the pain-in-the-ass variety) still around these days. They're older now, but in all that time, they haven't grown up very much.

I was that awkward age. I was too young to be a Beatnik and too old to be a hippie. I never smoked dope, shot up, snorted coke, or dropped acid. I did drink unhealthy amounts of coffee. Also an occasional schooner of beer. I enjoyed a little good wine with dinner from time to time, and still do; and although I smoked like a chimney (tobacco), I quit twenty-eight years ago. I was all in favor of civil rights and took a dim view of the Vietnam War, but other than that, I was fairly conservative back then. I've seen a lot more of the world and I've matured a lot since those days.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:59 PM

I do agree with you LH. In fact, most of the "hippies" that stuck it out and are still with us are some of the kindest and considerate people I know. I also think that they are the true noncomformists and live their lives to meet their own standards, not some preconceived notion of how they should behave.

I guess it was a bandwagon thing, or maybe because I came "of age" at the tail end of the hippie movement.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Kaleea
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 02:01 PM

Didn't inhale then, or pop pills. Still don't inhale, but I pop arthritis pills. I'm still fangerpickin' songs on my old 1964 J-45, but some of them are the way-back-then-hated-Bluegrass, cause-everybody-else-only-listens-to-rock, so-I-had-to-hate-it-too, cause-we-were-all-nonconformists kind of songs. I wear tie died T shirts alot. Sandals most of the time, too. Course, in San Diego most people wear sandals.
If today is the first day of the rest of your life, have a nice day, man.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 03:02 PM

Here's an ol' hippie for ya.

. . .and another,

. . and another.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Brass Monkey
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 03:03 PM

I thought a hippie was something that held your leggie on. I now feel completely bewildered and feel my leggies have no support in this new technological age. When are you lot going to start the revolution?

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 03:04 PM

Just a bunch of ol' useless folks who'll never change nothin; if y'ask me.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 03:08 PM

Sorry, Brass Monkey--I cross posted with ya.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 05:04 PM

I dunno about Bluegrass being "hated", but some of the most enjoyable music I can remember from those 3 Days at Woodstock was old timey with the Hog Farmers after we'd closed down passing out the free food.

I think hippies back in England tended to be a different variety from Americans thiough - not so much butterflies as squirrels, (turning into badgers as they grew older).
.........................

On tonight's TV:

The Dark Side of Hippos... a fat and cuddly vegetarian or a fearsome and aggressive killer? This eye-opening documentary special reveals a shocking side to these almost cartoon-like creatures...

Violence is central to hippo society – female hippos are hugely protective mothers as males often kill their young, and with only one in 10 males ever getting the chance to mate, fights between males are often to the death. The programme features survivors of hippo attacks and investigates what brings out the dark side of hippos.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 05:32 PM

Poster I saw once that I wish I had:

Two almost sexless entities in tie-died clothes & fringed jackets, beads, long hair and wisps of smoke curling around encounter 'standard' person:

Standard person: "What's going on?"
Long haired entities: "We're fighting the rising tide of conformity!"
Standard person: "What's all this then?"
Entities: "This is our uniform."

----------------------------------------------------------------

I knew 'hippies'...even met Alan Ginsberg in a poetry reading/coffee house..*grin*....but was too busy to study how to be one. (And when I was in Lawrence, Kansas, the Attorney General of the state, Vern Miller, raided the hippies and tear-gassed them...right up the street from my house. I always thought I had made the right choice about who to look like.)

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 05:38 PM

You guys who are in your late forties really missed the so called "hippie movement". Your image of "hippies" seems to have been formed by the shop-worn media stereotype and by the movement's detritus. Events such as Altamont, the Manson murders and the growing extremism of political movements such as the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground really spelled the end of the peace and love, flowers in your hair, peace brother, stuff. By 1970 people in the "movement" had either gone the back-to-the-land route, got involved in radical politics or social change movements or got jobs and "rejoined" society. Most who were living the "hippie" lifestyle by this time were Johnny-come-latelys who thought that the "movement" was what was portrayed in the media so they assumed the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll part of it without any of the "spiritual" aspects such as community, self discovery and the celebration of life.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 06:08 PM

I would consider Alan Ginsberg as being more in the Beat Movement than a hippie. This included poets and writers like Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Burroughs, and a whole bunch of others. They might be just a bit ticked off to be lumped in with hippies, who followed a few years after.

Offhand, I can't really think of any hippie poets and writers, at least none who were up the standards of the previously mentioned Beats.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 06:20 PM

Yes, I came to the hippie movement too late to enjoy those early innocent days of the "summer of love". The whole thing had turned kind of dark by 1968, and I got into it beginning around '69. A lot of bad stuff had happened by then, and it just got worse after that. Most of the people were Johnny-come-latelys, as you say, and much of the optimism had vanished. Matter of fact, it was becoming a sort of undeclared war mentality...with disaffected youngsters on one side, the police, the army, and Nixon on the other.

I got hassled by police many times because of the long hair and general appearnance, but they were Toronto cops, so they didn't beat me up, at least. Just bothered me.

I wore a lot of leather and denim, fringed jackets, wide leather belt, and a leather hat, and Frye boots, but never the tie-dyed stuff or the beads.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 06:32 PM

"I wore a lot of leather and denim, fringed jackets, wide leather belt, and a leather hat, and Frye boots,"

Well you were just asking for it, weren't you? (smiley face)

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 07:02 PM

Yeah. ;-P There was a long list of frustrated Toronto cops who could not succeed in finding any dope on me or any record of illicit activities, despite the fact that I apparently fit the visual profile for "druggie" in their handbook. As my retired friend Roger (former RCMP officer) says: "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it IS a duck." And I grin and say back to him..."Not always, Roger."

Thank God I did not live in a place with cops corrupt enough to plant drugs on me and then prosecute or it could have messed up my whole life.

That has been known to happen in a few places to more than a few people.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 07:04 PM

well Don, Ginsberg hung around way beyond the Beat movement... and associated with LOTS of folks. He might not have liked any labels, but from talking to him and watching what he did and where he went for a couple of weeks, it seemed like he kinda liked 'helping' those who were tweaking the establishment.

It was a fascinating time!

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 07:15 PM

I betcha!

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 07:22 PM

and wow....here is a very detailed account of all the events I referred to. I knew about half of the folks mentioned in the article, and was a member of the Philosophy club, Dialectica, that invited Ginsberg to speak. Oh, we had fun tweaking the English Dept.!

Ginsberg, as I have mentioned before when his name came up, was amazing in that when someone was speaking, he gave them his entire attention. I never met anyone, before or since, who made me feel so listened to.

And during that 'reading', he was masterful.....starting slowly and innocuously and letting Dr. Sowards relax....then gradually, like slowly heating a kettle with a frog in it, he 'raised the heat' until by the end, he was reading and saying anything and there was no perceptable place to have stepped in and stopped him.


say....maybe I was an honarary hippie for awhile there...☺

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Bobert
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 08:40 PM

First of all, I am an "Old Hippie".... Who cares??? Well other old hippies do and we know who we are...

Lynne knows and GUEST 8:35 am knows...

Martin was **never** a hippie... Hippie is a mindset... Kinda like ridin' a bike... Yeah, even back in the 60's and early 70's I had this inner red light that went off when I was around folks who just wanted to get stones or get alid that din't have a clue and these folks, like Martin (not to be pickin' on Marty) went on to live lives that had nuthin' to do with the heightened consciousness that hippies internalized...

I still keep up with my old hippie friends... Yeah, they are older... And grayer... But other than that they have stayed true to their hippie-ness... People who have met me go, "Yeah, Bobert is an old hippie..." But like I said, who cares other than other old hippies...

Peace

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Janie
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 09:43 PM

What Bobert said....

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Barry Finn
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 09:50 PM

When my father came home wounded from WW2 he became (or was?) a beatnik so, even though I didn't know him until later, it wasn't a far walk for me. If I weren't physcially falling apart so often & busy getting patched up, I'd swear that I'm still that same hippie kid I was 40 yrs ago, no older, just wiser.
Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:20 PM

"You guys who are in your late forties really missed the so called "hippie movement". "

That just isn't true. Those of us in our late 40s would have been around 13 in 1970 and we saw more than you think. We saw the reactions from parents and our "older" brothers and sisters. We may have been better observes than you think!

Every generation goes through a spiritual awakening and a celebration of life. The "hippie movement" played into the hands of the media and became more conformist by creating their own culture - far from what was mainstream. Remember "trust no one over 30?" The hippies celebrated their moment, but unfortunately they were too self-absorbed to look beyond themselves.   The self-discovery that generation made was nothing different from the discoveries made by teenagers throughout the 20th century. Just better press.

Changes? Any generation that succeeds in getting Richard Nixon elected twice has to be considered a failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Beer
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:21 PM

Still have my head band that I purchased in 1967. There is no hair for it to hold any more though. In reading the threads I'm surprised in a way that in order to be a hippy you had to do drugs. I never did drugs, and was considered as a hippy. What is a "Hippy anyway?".
Beer

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: frogprince
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 10:46 PM

The reactionary idiot's definition of a hippy that I've heard a few times says that they frequently injected their drugs into their hips.
Clueless, I always figured.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: MBSLynne
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:19 AM

Hey guys! Lets really shock the younger generation and have a Mass Mudcat aged Hippy Love-In!! Who's in?

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: MBSLynne
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:22 AM

Strikes me the hippy thing was very different in the US from England. I guess I only really caught the echo of it, being in Western Australia at the time

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: bobad
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 08:10 AM

"I'm surprised in a way that in order to be a hippy you had to do drugs."

You've got that right Beer, it seems that some of the folks on this thread can't dissociate the term hippy from the media creation of drug crazed, long haired, sex maniacs. Drugs were certainly around but, at least in my circles, they were not a major focus of every day life there was way more interesting stuff happening. Of course some experimenting took place, and that was perfectly normal and healthy (IMO) for the inquiring minds of our youth. Some people may have overdone it and entered the realm of abuse but I feel that is what the media overplayed for the sensationalism market, in fact from what I see there is more of a drug problem today than there was back then.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Midchuck
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 10:00 AM

...in fact from what I see there is more of a drug problem today than there was back then.

Unfortunately, that could perfectly well be true and still allow there to have been a great deal of drug use back then.

But I don't think as much of what the hippies did was heroin or crack cocaine - the stuff that really f***s up most people who use much of it.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 10:02 AM

Lynne...there's a BIG difference between 'hippy' and 'hippie' *grin*, (although a few were both)

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 01:06 PM

"By 1970 people in the "movement" had either gone the back-to-the-land route, got involved in radical politics or social change movements or got jobs and "rejoined" society." - Bobad

Thats a very accurate statement of what became of old hippies.

Lets face it. Every generation has their day.

One thing that the hippie generation had that nobody else had was electronic rock and roll. It was a time of enormous musical expression and exciting concerts. The way we dressed is still copied now. Just look at women's fashion today.

We were unique. We no longer swallowed American propaganda and unlike our parents didn't believe that the government could do no wrong. My disillusionment began when Kennedy was assasinated and was fuelled by the civil rights movement and the Viet Nam war. Thats history and so are the beads, long hair and flowing skirts.

The music is still great.

What I don't understand is how Martin can still be hung up on the fact that he never fit in and was always considered to be a fake.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Azizi
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 03:17 PM

I was never a hippie.

But from 1967 to mid 1969, I was a member of a secular Black cultural nationalist group-the Committee for Unified Newark {CFUN}. The most prominent leader of that group during that time was poet/playwright/activist Amiri Baraka {LeRoi Jones}. This Black nationalist "movement" was not a cult-though admittedly, in retrospect, my opinion is that it was quite close to a cult. However, it was absolutely NOT a Black separatist or "kill the honky" group. CFUN emphasized the importance of African culture, Black self esteem, and Black group esteem. Since we could never really know which African ethnic group we belonged to, we took bits and pieces from several traditional African cultures and reshaped them into our own Africanized African-American images. For instance, we mixed standard English with Black street lingo, and snatches of Swahili and Zulu words. CFUN was also the first Eastern USA "community" to celebrate "Kwanzaa", itself a hodgepodged Africanized African-American holiday that was created by Oakland California activist Maulana Ron Karenga. Indeed, it is my opinion that the Kwanzaa holiday "caught on" in African American communities in large measure due to the support & promotion of Amiri Baraka.

Men and women in this group {as well as other Afro-centric African Americans during that time} sported big, wide afros. "Afros" were also known as "naturals" because the hair isn't straightened with chemicals or heat. Nowadays, most Black women and Black men wear their naturals much closer to the scalp. But back in the day, the bigger the afro, the better. BTW, it was very rare {and still is very rare} for girls younger than teenagers to wear "afros".

Although I never liked this style for myself, some women and girls also styled their hair in braids with or without beads attached. Other times, some women and girls would also wear their hair plaited in "cornrows". This was before the days of "extensions" {artificial hair added to women's hair for length} or "locks" {Rastafarian "dredlocks"}for women or men. This was also before the days when many Black men wore their hair in cornbraids-though some may recall Stevie Wonder wearing his hair in braids with beads on the end.

Instead of tie dyed clothes, the men in our group usually wore regular American clothing, or for special occassions dashikis with American style pants, and sometimes a kufi {Muslim type small hat}. In the summer months, the women wore material wrapped around as a ankle length dress. Most often we wore wear material wrapped around as a long skirt along with a tee shirt or sweat shirt. Women would also wear geles {material that was tied on the head. For special occassions, those who were lucky wore wear traditional Yoruba {Nigeria} buba {blouse}, lapa {skirt}, shawl, and gele {head wraps} or Senegalese dresses or two/three piece outfits.

Afrocentric Black women wore necklaces made of small beads and multiple silver or gold bracelets. We'd also wear Egyptian ankh necklaces. Black cultural nationalist men wore big wooden "tiki" necklaces or Egyptian ankh necklaces instead of beads. Some Black nationalist women got their ears pierced and wore two or three earrings in their ears at the same time. Often these were large hoop earrings but not "the door knocker" earrings with an initial that became "ghetto vogue" in the 1980s. Some Afrocentric Black women got their nose pierced. And some women got their lips pierced and wore small hoops or studs in their lip {this was before the time when women got their tongue pierced and wore stud earrings in their tongue}. But I was happy with one earring in an ear at a time and no nose ring, lip ring or tongue ring...I'm much too squeamish for any of that}.

Alot of members of the group {including me} thought we were poets. There was also music {conga drums those days instead of the West African djembe drums which since the 1990s have been omnipresent at Black cultural events}. And alot of women-more than the men-were in to African dancing. CFUN also had boot dancing men-and fine, fine brothers they were too!

For nutritional reasons, most members of CFUN stopped eating pork. Many became "pseudo-vegetarians"-we ate cooked chicken, and turkey, and some {but not me}also ate fish. When I think back on those days, I realize that there was little talk about religion. In the early days Amiri and Zayd and Mfundishi and other leaders of the group were Sunni Muslims. But that was the very very early days. At one point there was talk about "Unkulunkulu"-a Zulu name for the Supreme God. There were moral teachings but there no theology or metaphysical studies, teachings or ceremonies. I'm not sure why this was, but that's how I remember it.

And members of this group {and other Afrocentric Black folks in the USA and elsewhere} took on Arabic, or Yoruba, or Akan, or Swahili, or other traditional African first names. CFUN was the first Eastern United States "community" to celebrate the Kwanzaa holiday that Maulana Ron Karenga created in Oakland, California.

For a sense of the culture of Committee for Unified Newark {CFUN}, read this article about the Sprithouse , a meeting place that I remember being called the Hekalu {Swahili for "headquarters"}.

My experience in CFUN serves as a bases for my informal study of African cultures and other African Diaspora cultures. These cultures are my primary areas of interest, and {I feel} rightly so. Yet, it is a pleasure for me to learn about other cultures and find out similar cultures throughout the world were and are now, and probably will always be.


Azizi Powell

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Once Famous
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 03:23 PM

Foolish Guest, I was no fake. I was there for the 1968 Democratic convention. Like I said I just grew up and am happier for it.

This great song by a country act, The Bellamy Brothers speaks volumes.


Old Hippie

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 back yard 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

He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too friggin' 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
Yeah 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...his 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 forced him to become a man while he was still a boy
And in each wave of tragedy he waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more

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...his 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...his new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: number 6
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 03:30 PM

Was I a hippie ... no, there was too much music around and in me then to get caught up in that social phenomena.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 03:50 PM

Now that Martin has detailed his phantasy opponent we can take turns breaking down his mental image of what we're like. He won't believe it, of course, because once he has a picture of someone, that's who they are, as far as he knows, and change isn't an option. Kinda sad, but hey, every group as someone who is stuck in the past, and in this case, it's old Martin.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: number 6
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:07 PM

For most people change isn't an option ... people naturally fear change. Most people I'd say base their opinion on someone based on their mental image ... rather than accepting the person for what he/she is.

Just had throw this in ... but, I feel it still pertains to the topic of the thread.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:18 PM

I had long hair (in the days I HAD hair); went to anti-war demonstrations; went to peace rallies; carried an FN-C1 for a bit; had a beard for a while; never wore beads; never wore sandals until my hip replacement; smoked grass; wore jeans, but would sooner have had a glass of liquid manure than wear bell bottoms; never carried flowers for their power; was nonviolent at demonstrations but woould not tolerate attacks on the street from anyone. Hippie? No. Do I give a rat's ass if people think I was? No. So, having said that, am I an old hippie? No. Old bastard maybe, but not an old hippie.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:20 PM

Or maybe yes.

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:22 PM

Are we to interpret this as a lyric request for "Hello,Goodbye" Peace?

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:24 PM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: number 6
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:26 PM

Good one Peace !!!

I am what I am ... take it or leave it.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:43 PM

I still hate the same things today that I did then, and admire the same things. Unreconstructed. The days when I had to try to pretend to be a respectable citizen to get by have passeed and gone, and I can revert to type. It's a great feeling.
.........................
Before the clone threads start multiplyiong lets get the puns out in the open:

Old Mudcat Harpies
Of Mudcat Happies
Old Mudcat Drippies
Old Mudcat Lippies
Old Mudcat Strippies
Old Mudcat Shippies
Old Mudcat Chippies...

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: Peace
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:45 PM

and Dippies

Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat's Old Hippies
From: frogprince
Date: 01 Apr 06 - 04:49 PM

For those a bit kinkier, Mudcat Whippies...