Doc said:
OK, I'll play too.
Welles,
Being from Santa Cruz, you don't look as 'Hippy' as I expected.
(I've visited Bonnie Doon and Red, White & Blue beaches many times...when I was much younger).
Doc,
Haw! I survived the HippieDippie revolution in many ways, including hair down to my butt, doing all sorts of street arts and 'theatre', being in a hot air balloon and aerial phenomenon flying circus, and acquainted with the bands etc. I had been in the Air Force, repairing medical electronics in a hospital just north of San Francisco during the convergence of the Viet Nam era and the earliest evolution of the Beats into Hippies, prior to 'the summer of love.' During that time 30,000 wounded came through the hospital. Faced with those competing living choices, I rejected 'reality' in no uncertain terms.
In those days, which seem many lives ago now, I also homesteaded. My nearest neighbor lived 4 miles away. I wandered through many of the major communes and lived 'on the road' for many years...never realizing I was 'homeless.' As life went on and hair was thinning with baldness the obvious result, I had to either give up on vanity or go nuts. It was extremely cathartic to give up on vanity. Besides a bald hippie with a long fringe looks stupid.
How I look now is more a nod to comfort with undertones of hats due to skin cancer aversion. My dress is decidedly from the sticks as I've lived in rural circumstances, by preference, for the last thirty years. I'll admit that no one can categorize me by a look. When they try, their analytical capacities immediately fail an unstated but real test of, um, depth perception.
I don't fit preconceptions worth a darn...and prefer it that way.