Member-only story
I Would Like to be an Old Hippie
But I was never a young one
In 1985 The Bellamy Brothers sang a lament about a 35-year-old finding his first gray hair. They described him as an old hippie who didn’t know what to do. I’m 68 and rarely find a hair that isn’t gray. But the feeling is familiar. And not just to me, but to so many of us.
We get caught up in the changing of society. We live among the evolution of ideas and culture. New ways. Old ways. Ways that are stuck somewhere in between. And sometimes, we don’t know what to do.
I wasn’t a young hippie. I was only 9 years old during the Summer of Love. I graduated high school in 1974 with my hair still above my ears. Although I enjoyed the occasional underage beer, I never ventured anywhere close to pot or acid. I listened to psychedelic rock stone-cold sober rather than stoned out of my head. I was at the same time relieved at our withdrawal from Vietnam and disappointed that I would not go there and be a character from a John Wayne movie.
No, I was not a hippie and no, I was not at Woodstock.
If anything, I was the antithesis of the hippies. I was the first in my family to graduate from college. I was an officer in the Air Force. I spent 26 years in law enforcement, including time supervising multiple drug squads.
