Reply #133: Thanks. I'm 66 years old now. [View All]

[MineralMan]

I pretty much joined the "counterculture" in 1964, when I dropped out of college and set off on a cross-country journey that lasted almost a year. I ended up in Selma and Birmingham, and listened to Dr. King speak after crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge. I smoked tons of dope and got involved in all sorts of civil rights and anti-war activities. Anyone looking at me would have called me a hippie, but I wasn't, really. I was a freak, certainly, and a politically active one. The "hippies" were something else, by my definition. They were the hanger's on, the dopers, and the folks who couldn't get out of their chairs to actually do anything useful.

They'd show up at protests, but were there for the social ambiance, the music, and to scrounge some weed. They added to the numbers, but not to the activism.

I ended up enlisting in the USAF when my draft notice showed up, spent four years doing that, then rejoined the movement in 1968 in DC, while still serving.

I still don't know what a hippie is. Don't care much, either. I do know who the people who were doing the work were. They weren't hippies.