Darn Hippies!

Yesterday, I had to laugh when I read the inscription on a refrigerator magnet that my oldest daughter pointed out to me. She had placed the magnet in a prominent spot and it read, “Hippies use the side entrance”. Both my oldest and the youngest child are slightly? upset with their father and his latest incarnation as a “hippie”. My middle child seems to think it’s OK. My grandchildren also think I’m OK. What none of them realize is that I have always been this person, this “hippie”.

So what is a hippie? An on-line dictionary states this…“Unconventional young person of the 1960’s. A young person, especially in the 1960s, who rejected accepted social and political values and proclaimed a belief in universal peace and love.” I guess that is almost right. Only the date is wrong. I started my quest for hippiedom in the late 1950’s. That is when I, along with my friend, Mike, decided to buy a 1949 Divco bread truck. We were going to convert the bread truck to a mobile home of sorts and go to New Orleans to live. My plan was to become an artist and live off of the income from odd jobs. Mike’s plan was to become a jazz musician. He was already a very good clarinetist.

We gutted the interior of the bread truck and painted it a lovely shade of orange. Then we found some green shag carpeting for the floor and a friend’s parent’s donated a living room set, a couch, two chairs and a small table. Does that sound “unconventional” to you?

Then reality set in when my father gave a firm “NO” to the plan. I was very disappointed and now, looking back on that time, I sometimes wish I had defied my father and made the trip to New Orleans. I really do love the life that God has made for me since that time, but I’m still curious as to what might have happened if we had snuck away early one morning and headed east as we had planned.

During this same time, (the 1950’s) my friends and I were becoming involved in the coffee house scene. And the best of the coffee houses was Positano’s, in Malibu. Jack Kerouac was the only author to read and stories of the “beat generation” were featured in all of the national magazines.

Recently, I found this story about Malibu life in the 1950’s.
“Positano's by Tom McBride
Positano's was a coffee house located up a steep dirt driveway off the Coast Hwy. just north of Topanga canyon. I lived there for a short time with a guy named Tony. Tony was a Hollywood type who drove a black '49 Cadillac and called it the "Bat Mobile" because of the futuristic tailfins. I drove a black '46 Ford woody station wagon which Tony dubbed the "Bum Mobile".

We rented a building on the property which resembled a small barracks. Neither of us worked in the mornings so Tony put up "blackout" shades on all the windows. When we got up it was always dark inside and we'd go blind when we opened the front door to find the sun shinning brightly at mid-day.

Nothing happened at a coffee house until night fell. Because the drive up to the house was treacherous, everyone was picked up at the highway and given a ride up the hill in a Chevy "TravelAll or CarryAll" (forerunner to the SUV's). Tony and I would stand at our front door and watch people arrive until it looked like a good crowd had gathered then we'd go into the 'club' and have some coffee or tea, play chess, listen to folk tunes and eat tofu.

This was the "beat" generation and most everything seemed phony to me during this era. This was pre-hippie. Synanon was operating as a drug rehab center in the old DelMar Club on the beach in Santa Monica and surfers were bums along with the rest of the younger generation. Yes, "The times they are a-changin'."

My own recollections of this coffeehouse are similar. We would park at the bottom of the cliff, along Pacific Coast Highway, and wait for a Ford station wagon to come down and pick us up. You had to be a member to enter Positano’s and that would cost you five dollars. (That was a lot of money!) The house was quite old and sprawled across the top of the cliff, with a great view of the ocean if you left the house and walked to the edge. But it was inside the house that attracted everyone. There were poetry readings, singers and movies, tables to play chess and chairs to sit in and read…if that was all you wanted to do. And all of this was happening simultaneously in the many rooms that made up this house.

So what happened to me between the 1950’s and the next century? Life happened and I had to conform and get along. But now I’m free to be what I always was…a darn hippie! And I will use the front door, thank you very much!