The Pretty Little Hippie Chicks Are Grandmas Now.
The Pretty Little Hippie Chicks Are Grandmas Now
I work side by side with three beautiful hippie chicks. I know DU explodes when the term “chick” is used and for this essay I am willing to stand up for the word. But I will also appease the anti-chick crowd by also calling them, simply, beatuful women. And for those who will be mad at me for objectifying women I’ll also call them just simply beautiful people. But they were hippie chicks, fair and square.
These three ladies all came of age in the late 60s and their retirement is quickly approaching. It was the topic of conversation at breakfast the other day. And I find myself in mourning. I just love working with these ladies. They are strong, and committed and are always thinking of the next step, the next project, the next thing I should be getting ready for. Good Lord!—at times it is like having three extra moms who are ready to chew you out or cheer you on-depending on the day and the situation. Sometimes they do both at the same time.
They entertain me with tales of their youth. Most often fashion related. One just described her favorite outfit her senior year. White go go boots and a wiglet were part of it. I gasped, "You were a hippie chick?!" "Oh Yes! I WAS a hippie chick!" Then they were all giggling and talking about their favorite outfits, their senior pictures, and suddenly there they were…the three grandmas were three 20 year olds talking about gogo boots, and ponchos and fringe, lime green coats, straight ironed hair, bare feet and wiglets! They were just lit up from the inside talking about that brief time of their life when they were young and carefree and barefoot and, seriously, I could suddenly see them as they were then. Young, with flowers in their hair. Knitting ponchos and being ever so groovy. They were beautiful hippy chicks.
And it was all just kind of shocking when that picture went away and I was looking at three grandmas who are about to retire. And I find myself feeling very sorry for myself this evening that soon enough they will not be part of my day. I miss my hippie chicks already.
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I'll just bet these three ladies will miss you too...
There is almost nothing like being appreciated!
Their retirement is approaching....so love them while you still have them...as you so very clearly do.
My friend Julie got sent home from cotillion one afternoon because she wore her white go-go boots and that was Just Not Done! 
Go-go boots and empire-waist dresses and flowers in your hair and maybe a flower painted on your cheek. All girls' hair was long and parted down the middle. Guys' hair was mostly just long. Everybody wore beads and fringe. A very cool time. I fell in love with shawls then and still love them to this day.
Ahhh... those were the days. I got in on the very very tail-end of it. Just barely. Our kids often bragged to their friends - "yeah, my parents were hippies."
I don't know who came up with that, but it is sooooooo true.
Remember that old saying, "Youth is wasted on the young?" Did you ever see Six Feet Under? The dead father is a character & in one episode he stated, "Life is wasted on the living."
It would probably really make their day if you gave them a copy of this message. 
I was in Chicago in 1968 during the "days of rage", the Chicago 7 and everything else. The LSD was the real thing and everything was groovy, can your dig it? Far out. Everything seems so lame these days. Cities were burning then. Occupy? Whoopdedo.
I was just telling someone a few days ago about how I was approached by the owner of a "go go bar" back in 1970. He wanted to hire me as a dancer in one of those elevated cages. I was all of 19. Hot pants, mini skirts, love beads...
When I informed him that I had a rather ugly chest scar from recent lung surgery, he replied that sequins would take care of that.
It would take a hell of a lot more sequins "to take care of that" these days. 
I did take it as a compliment though. I don't think it even mattered whether or not I could dance...which I couldn't.
Thank you from another hippie chick grandma.
...and I'm sure she would have showed you a little 
for that lovely post.
when i think of those days i always remember the pencil test.
was thrilled that i didn't have to wear a freaking bra until my mid 30's. now they hang down like the playboy granny.
Sorry, don't mean to ruin this thread. 
I met him at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial when he performed there for holiday ceremonies one year.
Dear God, the pencil test. I remember that. I barely passed at that time. By the time I'd had babies, I was able to pass a whole-box-of-pencils test!!!
We had another one, too: the ruler test. That was in Catholic school, where the nuns made you kneel down and they'd measure from the floor to where your skirt hem hit you, and if there was more than a two-inch difference, you were in trouble! We were in uniforms when we weren't wearing our flowers and beads and fringe. I remember wearing a rosary around my neck one day and the nuns were horrified! One of them told my mother, in a hushed voice with ominous tones - "you know, she's a borderline hippie!" 
Man, those were the days.
Remember going to the CYO dances? The boys were on one side of the hall, the girls on the other. If, by chance you did get a boy to dance with you, the priests were on patrol on the floor to make sure you weren't too close together.
That was in the days of the 'grinder.'
Remember my gf putting kleenex on her head because she had forgotten her hat.
I started out as a beatnik. Coffee houses, long straight hair, dressed in black. Soooooo Bohemian!
I went to the super market in Florida yesterday.
There, in the parking lot.. was an old school bus... all painted up with love flowers and peace signs.... with Vermont License Plates.
My heart skipped a beat.. could it be? Are there still real Hippies out there?
In a few minutes a nice lady and her son came out of the super market. They had their hair braided in dread-locks, and were wearing Dashikis , sandals, and tie-die. I couldn't believe my eyes? Yes... They do live.
We had a nice conversation, and she told me she and her son came from Vermont, and were headed to Key West for Spring Break.
It was so nice to see her.. just when I was about to give up hope. I gave her a bag of fresh apples that I had just bought and wished her well on her cruise to Key West.
She reminded me of Janis Joplin, who painted love flowers on her Porsche in 1967. (That car, BTW, is on display at the Rock Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.)
I remember seeing Janis Joplin and Big Brother at the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey,California. Oh where art thou these days? Where did they go? Five years here, five years there, and before you know it.. you are 65 years old and posting on DU? . lol
I had birthday #65 yesterday.. and it hit me very hard. I realized that we are living in times more stressful than any before. Even the Chinese proverb...."May you live in interesting times", has hit home more than usual.
So my point? I guess I don't have a very complex point. to make. My friends sent me a birthday card that said, "Remember when Joints were something you enjoyed"? LOL Yes.. I remember...
All we can do is keep-on-keeping on.. and fighting the machine... until the day we die. At least we know we had friends and good times along the way. We may well end up fighting until the day we die.
God Bless to all....
& Welcome from and aging "hippie". "All we can do is keep-on-keeping on.. and fighting the machine... until the day we die. At least we know we had friends and good times along the way. We may well end up fighting until the day we die." and thank you for this. 
and happy Social Security birthday. 
That is a GREAT one!!!
Check the band playin' "Sister Ray"!
We knew they had no clue what the name meant.
was looking through old family albums and said to his mom, "Wow, Nonnie was hot!"
heh heh... no wonder I'm nuts for him.
Every once in a while, I run into one of those women, and I can still tell they've still got it goin' on. And they're just as beautiful today as they were back then. Still tuned in.
Girl From The North Country (Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan)
back in the early 90s. I was divorced for the second time (she was also a "hippie chik" and tracked down this lady after having lost touch with her for 30 years or so. Surprisingly enough, I actually found her and she was just as beautiful as before. Older of course, but just as beautiful. We had a nice little fling worthy of our 60s background (albeit not as athletic) and parted as friends after a few months.
It was great to see that some of us are older and wiser, but still pretty much the same. Oh and a few years later, I remarried my second wife hippie chik a second time. We're still together. I just can't stay away from 'em.
Former "hippie chick" (no offense taken) and recent grandma of a Hippie Chick in Training.
with the term. Nice read and thank you for your essay. I enjoyed it muchly.
and seeing us as we still remember ourselves. I still expect to look in the mirror as see my former self. I loved those days. Youth is great. And I am grateful to know that there is a young person who can appreciate us.
I even still have one of my hippie chick maxi-shirts, and since it is a wrap-around, I can still wear it.
And dang proud of it. 
Well, she's still alive and kickin'
?
... Uh.... strictly chords that might have incorporated the occasion stretch across the frets. Geez... I still have a recently re-strung acoustic guitar (because my friend's son wanted to try to play). Well, he never followed through, so now I have this guitar that was tuned after being restrung neatly packed into it's case... I wonder if I'll get it out and play again.
Of course, I will! Eventually... and particularly when I see stuff like this and hear stories like yours!
here. Was the first to wear hot pants and jeans to school. Got called to the principal's office for it too, but the ACLU lawyer I contacted fixed that for me.
Moccasins, bell bottom jeans and halter tops. I was the first in my little town to wear a halter top and it was a scandal because I didn't have a bra on. LOL - I made the halter top myself because that little town had never seen them.
Ah, the good old days of hash and Pink Floyd.
We all have 'em, and it was ever so brief. Thanks for -- well -- thanks.
Hekate
Being a hippie chick doesn't mean, and never meant, walking the plastic fashion runway in go-go boots, wiglets and fringe in order to be hip. I'm sorry, Don, but it seems to me your whole conception of hippie chick appears to be based on some system created image.
This gnarly old hippie chick never wore go-go boots or wiglets, whatever the fuck wiglets are. I'm writing this (in bare feet) from a little cantina on a remote beach in Mexico. I just had dinner, beers, and tequila (in bare feet) with two old friends of Ken Kesey. I'm the only one left in the bar now; it's like 30 years ago here, the twilight zone.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but I'm feeling a bit insulted right now. I'm also sorry that you are going to lose your friends from your workplace, they sound very sweet.
Peace and Love and trying to end wars and making the world a better place, etc, is what we were/are all about.
Once a hippie chick, always a hippie chick.
Peace
but I would like to think the OP is talking about what we got out of all of the social awareness movements at the time. I think it affected us profoundly and many/most of us have carried those moral imperatives with us throughout our lives. I know I certainly have. The wiglets (we used to call them "falls" and the go-go boots were just silly styles manufactured by Madison Avenue, but that doesn't negate the values we learned back then. Hell, as I'm typing this on my laptop I'm sitting in the floor, cross-legged, in my micro-macrame studio. (I'm not kidding.) I'm still a liberal (oftentimes WAY too liberal for DU), I still work on important causes (GMO's and fracking are my latest), I still protest, I keep myself informed and try to remain self-aware. Those were certainly lessons that weren't taught to me at home. These were things I learned about in the 60's and 70's. Anyway, just another perspective.
I still have all my hippie values intact, and then some.
Just could never understand the generalization that "people just naturally become more conservative as they age." 
Ick! No way.
I've gotten more liberal. Way more liberal. Especially when I see what conservatism has brought us. 
They paved the way for all the women who came after them.
I married for the first time outside under a weeping willow tree at sundown on the summer solstice of 1971. My hippie chick bride wore a white lace mini-dress and knee-high white gogo boots. I wore purple lace bell-bottoms, cowboy boots and a leather vest. Flowers in our hair, Kahlil Gibran, a Sufi prayer rug - the whole nine yards. We got an ounce of blonde Leb and a half dozen microdots as wedding gifts. She was amazing - one of a kind. She died 20 years ago and I still talk to her sometimes.
But life is really odd sometimes. I knew another woman back then, another hippie artist chick, and she and I were very good friends for the decade of the 70s. Then we lost each other for 30 years, until we suddenly re-connected three years ago. And you know what? She's who I should have been with all the time. Being with her is like coming home to myself. In some ways we're not 20 any more, but in all the ways that count - we are I will now draw a veil of propriety across the remainder of this tale.
What a time to be alive, then - and now. Let's hear it for hippie chicks from the Age of Aquarius - and of any age at all. Years are but moments in our lives - suck the juice out of each and every one.
And I even watched Dobie Gillis!
But I went in in '67, and when you finally got a pass into town your low quarters gave you away and the hippie chicks wouldn't touch you. 
Had a nice interlude with a Colombian nightclub singer in Panama, but she was only after my GI life insurance, knowing I was headed to VN...
But more power to you, Brother! 
P.S.--I did get to meet Scott McKenzie at the Wall...
They were a one-hit wonder, which was at least one good thing for him because when he left to join the Army he was given $15,000 cash and a brand new Chevy to buy out his rights. The group later plummeted, and I think Danny commited suicide by jumping out of a Vegas hotel room window.
My friend went into SF and JFK personally handed him his green beret...which he left, many years later, at his brother's panel on the Wall.
At a party at my place one year, I surprised my friend by playing a recording of "At the Hop." When I asked him which part he had, I think he said he was the third or fourth "ba."
I remember that being released and its still played at R & R dance venues here in the UK.
btw- they were not just one hit wonders in the UK.
They have a home here locally, and one in Vietnam near her family. Bill and his lovely wife, Hoi, are involved with our local Vietnam Veterans of America chapter.
Next time I see them I'll tell Bill you said he wasn't a one-hit wonder.
after a Big Sur Folk festival. She is still going, still singing, and still a lovely soul...
Music was everywhere then! (and I don't mean in ipod earphones)
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Well that's horrifying Yes it's one of those movies that triggers long-lost childhood nostalgia when I see the decor, cars and even the colour of the film.
To some extent its though time has stood still.
I haven't been there or even thought about it in years. We used to go up regularly in the late 60s, early 70s for reasons I won't go into here The college and most of the town had community bikes that one would use and leave it for the next person needing a ride.
I did the mini's and Go Go boots, ironed my hair, set it in soup cans, had a fringed poncho and a little black cap. I went from that to flannel shits, patched Levis, beads and sandals in the 70's. It was fun buying clothes at Goodwill--used Levis for $.50!!
My escapades are another matter.
I always felt sorry for the people our age who were brought up Catholic. My parents were nonreligious (thank you for that, Mom and Dad), but the few Catholics I knew seemed so devoid of the fun loving spirit. They were so repressed. Hell, I married one, so I know whereof I speak
My friend and I wore "Granny dresses" to school and were sent home.. Someone took a photo (for the yearbook), and it ended up in the newspapers as a "dress code protest ".
Thanks for the walks down memory lane.
Those were the best of times, and also occasionally the worst of times.
I miss them terribly, especially the sense of hope that we had (however naive it may have been) that we really COULD change the world.
My hair is still long...down to my bum or hip length, depending on whether or not I have trimmed it.
I feel glad to know that you will miss those old hippie chicks when they retire.
There is too much bashing of boomers, both in the press and sometimes on DU.
The bashers don't seem to realize that we could not stop many of the unpleasant changes to our society which began in the late 1970's.
We scared the he!! out of the greedaholics....and they have fought against the changes we were trying to make, ever since. 
anyone else here remember going up the creaky stairs to Different Drummer? Ah, those were the days!
Thanks, Don, for a great thread and so many memories!
She is one of those "hippie chicks" and I know she's going to love this discussion.
Thanks for the OP and the smiles. It's nice to know my mom was in such good company.
I consider myself a hippie chick, even though I am a few years younger than your friends. I got my go-go boots in 7th grade & my favorite outfit was my boots with a denim mini-skirt & a blue poncho my grandmother knitted for me. No kidding! Actually, she knitted a green one for me & a blue one for my cousin & we swapped. I'd put my Yardley lip gloss on & I felt on top of the world.
Hugs to you & your hippie chicks.
Thanks all for the memories and a delightful read. Made my day.
