The Hippie, Nixon, and Me

Woodstock (Written by Joni Mitchell; Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)

Life’s full circle comes in the most unexpected places. Sometimes I have flashbacks back to the day when I hear a song while driving my car, or when I am in a place that reminds of something from way back then; back to the glory days of bra and draft card burning, unbridled idealism, and the smell of tear gas in the air. This time I found it in my physical therapist's office at 8:00 in the morning.

While doing my pelvic thrusts in an effort to rebuild my wasted hip muscles and heal my broken vertebrae, I came across a child of God who was a few years older than me, still walking along the road to Yasgur's Farm. Betty was mid 60’ish and unkempt with waste long frizzy hair, no makeup, second hand store clothes and a mouth that would sink a battleship. She was annoying, and loud, and abrasive. She was the aging hippie personified.

I tried to do everything I could to ignore her, but she loved to talk and talk. And she did…talk and talk. There she was every morning working it out right beside me…talking and talking. One morning last week, she made a verbal note about a political story she saw on television and wanted to talk to me about it.

How are you?” she asked. “Fine” I responded. And I diverted my eyes hoping not to encourage her. I had an hour and half of therapy to go!!!! She continued “Looks like we’re in for some more snow. I am tired of snow!” I nodded my head in agreement. Then Barack Obama came on the screen talking about something or another and she said “I don’t like him. He is taking away my rights, and I know when someone is taking away my rights.” I did a double take. If ever there would be a picture of an Obama supporter, it would be her.

“If he doesn’t shape up, I am going to get my picket sign and go to Washington!” Whoa I thought. I finally relented and told her point blank. “Ma’am, excuse me for being so blunt, but you don’t strike me as the type to go and picket Barack Obama.”

She laughed. “I’ve marched all my life. I marched for women’s rights. I marched for civil rights. And protested the war with sit ins and love ins.” She went on to explain to me that she was radical campus activist back in the late 1960’s and early 70’s in with some pretty heavy dudes. She was hippie/flower child/freak…and still is. She told me that she bummed around the country. She even went to Woodstock.

This year was a Woodstock anniversary of note, and I had just watched several documentaries on the event as well as the Woodstock movie. She told me about the drug tents, and the sex and the mud. She saw Jimmie Hendrix and Janice Joplin and numerous others when she was sober enough to enjoy them. “They sounded better stoned!” she said.

Then she told me she was a campus activist at Ohio State the year that Nixon came to the oval, and she and her fellow protestors set to make themselves a major nuisance. I was stunned. It is a small world afterall because I was down at Ohio State the same time…except I was a Young Republican.

I told her about the dirty tricks that I was asked to participate in. The Nixon people called us and asked if we would distribute signs in support of the President on the oval. We went to pick them up at the dormitory back door, and there was a stack of signs that said “F--- Nixon” that we were supposed to give to people like her to make those of that ilk look bad. We didn’t do it. We put them along side the completely filled dorm dumpster.

She laughed again. She told me she and her compatriots found some obscene signs laying against a dormitory dumpster which they salvaged and brought to the oval. She didn’t care who made them so long as they expressed the sentiments she was trying to express…so to speak. In a perverse way, I guess the Young Republicans did their job!!!!

We spent the rest of the morning telling each other our political activism stories; and she commented how ironic life can turn out to be. Here we are at the far end of middle of age, forty years after Nixon’s visit to the Ohio State oval, still agitating: her from the left; me from the right. In this case, she doesn’t want the government telling her what to do about health care…and neither do I…and on that we agreed.

I think back fondly on those days. I told her she got the better end of the bargain. She got the drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll; and I got a navy sports jacket with gold buttons and tan slacks. Still, from our own perspectives, we stood for freedom. Freedom is bi-partisan. Whether you wear blue jeans with pookah beads and a peace necklace, or penny loafers and a Brooks Brothers suit; it is freedom that defines us as human and members of the great American family.

Like I said…life’s full circle: the hippie, Richard Nixon, and me.