Where Have All the Hippies Gone?

Long time ago. Rita recalls some favourite American Eccentrics…

For Americans, an enduring and beloved stereotype is the English Eccentric. Lauded in literature and film, the Eccentric retains his place of privilege in the pantheon of British life adored by Americans. The cast includes the Royals, cheeky Cockney lads, women with amazing hats, and little old ladies in thatched cottages serving tea and scones. But the Eccentric has a special status, as he is the one English stereotype of whom the English themselves are secretly proud.

I knew my fair share of Eccentrics during my life in England, many of them in my own family. And as a university student I entered the inner sanctum where Eccentrics are known to congregate. One of my history professors lectured while sitting cross-legged on a table picking his toes. He was known for his brilliant mind. A distinguished don famed for his sparkling wit dropped this bon mots at dinner: “If your name was Pass the Butter Please, I could say pass the butter please Pass the Butter Please.” Everyone at table chuckled dutifully and the little man, who looked like a guest at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, never spoke again throughout the entire meal. But for any doubters, his reputation as a first class Eccentric was confirmed. After all this exposure to the English variety, you would think I was prepared for any Eccentrics America had to offer. But when I landed in the People’s Republic of Berkeley in 1970 it felt as though I had followed Alice down the rabbit hole. A wonderland of strange creatures indeed.

The first thing I learned was that, like so many of the differences between the two countries, English Eccentrics are born but in America they are self-made, often by ingesting large amounts of illegal drugs. The Berkeley of that era was a mecca for drop-out hippies, stoned flower children not yet sobered up from the Summer of Love across the bay in San Francisco. They blended in with the student population of UC Berkeley so it was impossible to distinguish between them. On any given day the air in People’s Park was heavy with the scent of marijuana while mangy, underfed dogs, a compulsory accessory of the lifestyle, rooted for scraps in the garbage strewn everywhere. “Picking up trash is so middle class, man.” Feral children with dirty, pinched faces and blank eyes wandered the scene unsupervised. “Hey, they’re free, man.” Along Telegraph Avenue, the main drag, or should I say toke, robed Hari Krishnas jostled for space with earnest students handing out leaflets for noble causes and pan-handlers desperate for the next fix. There was a sense that anything could happen here, and anything did. The kidnapping of Patti Hearst took place a few blocks away from where I lived, the outlandish Symbionese Liberation Army seeming natural spawn of the prevailing psychedelic, apocalyptic mood. The safe, sane and cozy world of England seemed very far away. I hung out with law students and worked as a babysitter. My clients included a young mother who fed her toddler only brown rice, an “artist” whose children must never be disciplined lest it damage their creativity, and an Irish poet, the future Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who was on sabbatical at UC Berkeley. His children were cheerful and well behaved.

These are some of the American Eccentrics I encountered in those years:

The neighbor I first saw through a window, naked and covered head to toe in green paint. Then she lay down and rolled across a huge sheet of paper on the floor. It turned out she was doing an art class assignment to create a self-portrait. I never learned if she got a passing grade.

The spaced-out couple who declared their intent to start a family. But since they knew nothing about babies they said they would practice on a pet. So they got a goldfish. The next time I visited the goldfish was gone. “What happened?” I asked. “He wouldn’t do what he was told so we had to punish him,” the girl said. My next question was unspoken but she replied anyway. “We flushed him down the toilet.” This was related in all seriousness through a haze of marijuana smoke, with not a hint of irony or admission that it could be a joke. Thankfully, as long as I knew them, they didn’t have a baby.

But then there was the couple we picked up hitchhiking with their five year-old girl and tiny baby. When we reached their apartment they invited us in. In this culture chance acquaintances were treated as life-long friends. After all, when they asked the obligatory question “What’s your sign?” it turned out we shared a cosmic bond. Once inside the apartment I watched in horror as the mother opened the sagging drawer of a chest and casually tucked the baby in. Then she lit a joint and offered it first to the little girl, who put it to her lips and inhaled with expert ease. We got out of there as quickly as possible.

A young black man in a ragged dashiki who had a permanent spot on Telegraph Avenue where he would step into the path of pedestrians and ask “Do you hate black people?” while proffering a multi-page manifesto. Most people just walked on around him without a word. But one day, fed up with this repeated behavior, I stopped and said “No, but I don’t like people who stop me in the street to ask questions.” Nowadays that response would probably get me thrown into sensitivity training, but he was so startled he stepped back and let me go.

Some Berkeley Eccentrics did not fit the usual demographic of hippie dropouts and students. The only time our upstairs neighbors, a young couple of solemn rectitude, complained about noise from our apartment was when we had two Jesuit priests to dinner. One was a distinguished theologian, who shall remain nameless, as he has long since passed on to his heavenly reward. But on this evening he drank so much whiskey we had to run out for more; he fell out of and broke a chair; and sang Irish songs in a booming baritone that apparently made our neighbors’ bed shake. We did talk about theology a bit. In vino veritas.

Then there was the, to us, ancient sculptress who held court in a grand old Berkeley house for her dropout son and his assorted friends, who might include some-one he picked up hitchhiking just that afternoon. Cocktail hour began at five o’clock sharp and dinner would usually be produced at about nine, by which time the assembly could barely make it to the dining table. But she never faltered, however much she drank, and kept the company entertained with stories of the good old days in Berkeley, her world travels, and artist friends.

But of all the Eccentrics I encountered in Berkeley none could match… well, lets call them the Snapelys. This was a family consisting of Will Snapely and his three women, a kind of harem. They took it in turns to share his bed. Snapely was rumored to have a Doctorate in Philosophy, which had allegedly fried his brain. He rarely spoke, and then in a whisper you had to strain to hear, but he exuded a strange, powerful aura of control over the Snapely girls, as they were known. You couldn’t help thinking of the Manson family, but somehow this burned out philosopher’s aura was benign. The family made its living by hand-sewing oddly shaped hippie garments, the girls sitting cross-legged on the floor like a sweatshop in some third-world country. Snapely was fanatical about what they were allowed to eat. Not much, and at least one of the girls was skin and bone. Dinner at the Snapely’s was usually just brown rice and cauliflower, the whole head steamed to al dente texture, the only flavoring a sprinkle of black pepper, and presented on a platter looking just like a brain. Carved with surgical precision by Snapely it was surprisingly good, and to this day my family prepares Cauliflower a la Snapely. Two of the girls seemed zoned out on dope all the time and probably needed Snapely’s protection, but one was obviously very intelligent and I couldn’t understand what she was doing in this strange ménage. How long would it be before she decided to move on?

I’ll never know, and I wonder, where have all the hippies gone? When I see people of a certain age begging at traffic intersections all across the Washington area, I wonder if they were carefree flower children once upon a time. Most of all I wonder about that little five year-old girl. What kind of life follows growing up with parents who give you marijuana at such a young age? I know a little more of the story for some of the Berkeley Eccentrics I knew. The girl in green paint turned out to be a born matchmaker; she introduced my sister and one of my brothers to their future spouses. Then she married and divorced a millionaire and went to law school. My sister married the sculptress’s son and had a long, happy marriage. Her house and garden are filled with her mother-in-law’s works. As for those nameless hippies who passed through People’s Park so long ago, there are a few clues. Just the other day I read about a former hippie who is now a leading environmental lawyer. No doubt some are in corporate boardrooms, political campaigns and academia, and some in jail or nursing homes or begging on street corners. I heard a sad tale from a young woman recently. She grew up in a hippie commune. Her parents were productive hippies, involved in organic farming and good causes. Then they retired and moved to the Midwest and started listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio every day. Now she can’t stand to talk to them. She said they are always angry and ranting and full of right-wing conspiracy theories. What happened to those innocent, if doped up, flower children?

Long time passing.

Rita Byrne Tull is an ex-pat librarian who lives in Maryland.
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Rita Byrne Tull is an ex-pat librarian who lives in Maryland.

13 thoughts on “Where Have All the Hippies Gone?

  1. george.jansen55@gmail.com'
    George
    May 9, 2012 at 12:46

    I never thought I’d hear such a question from a resident of Takoma Park…

    “For Americans, an enduring and beloved stereotype is the English Eccentric. Lauded in literature and film, the Eccentric retains his place of privilege in the pantheon of British life adored by Americans.”

    I can only say that few Americans I know, and damned few that I respect, worship at that particular shrine.

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      May 9, 2012 at 13:14

      Yeah right, George, methinks you protest too much. Nobody hangs around The Dabbler for so long without a healthy interest in English eccentricity…

      • Frank Key
        May 9, 2012 at 14:05

        George would appear to devote his time to making disagreeable comments on everything Rita writes. This is curious behaviour. Perhaps he needs to get out more.

    • george.jansen55@gmail.com'
      George
      May 9, 2012 at 13:58

      That was intemperate. Read “whose judgments in related matters I respect.”

      • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
        May 9, 2012 at 22:43

        Perhaps we’ll award a whisky bottle this month for Intemperate and Unnecessary Shooting Down of An Amusing Opening Preamble of the Month.

  2. ritatull@comcast.net'
    Rita Byrne Tull
    May 9, 2012 at 15:40

    An additional anecdote – I repeated the ridiculous “Pass the butter please” saying to my family and it has spread like a virus. Recently I was amazed when my four year old grandson said it at the dinner table! He had heard it from his mother, my daughter. To most of the people who say it now its origins are a mystery lost in the mists of time.

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      May 9, 2012 at 22:37

      It is an excellent joke, a real thigh-slapper. No wonder he was proud of it.

      There are, if he did but realise it, innumerable variations available, which could be trotted out to ramp up the hilarity. “If your name was Pass the Salt Please…”, or “If your name was Excuse Me But Could You Direct Me to the Nearest Post Office…”, or even, “If your dog was called There’s a Good Boy Then…”

      They’d be rolling in the aisles.

  3. wormstir@gmail.com'
    May 9, 2012 at 16:39

    Intetresting that the UK’s current eccentric hunter Louis Theroux gets most of his subjects from the US

  4. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    May 9, 2012 at 18:18

    I hear the strains of Scott McKenzie as I read, it would be of interest to do a piece on eccentrics, broken down into two groups, those whose eccentricity is the result of banned substances and affluent parents and those who ain’t. The second group would, I think, have more mileage.

    Current English oddballs apparently horde stuff and require specially trained nutter fixers, or the business end of a Glock.

    .

  5. May 10, 2012 at 19:41

    Reporting from the San Francisco area, I can tell you that a certain number of those old Berkeley hippies didn’t go anywhere at all. They’re still selling beads on Telegraph Avenue.

  6. ritatull@comcast.net'
    Rita Byrne Tull
    May 11, 2012 at 15:45

    My other brother Stephen adds this piece of interesting trivia: “There is a famous photo of a hippie girl placing a flower in the barrel of a rifle held by a National Guardsman during the Berkeley Riots…..she later married an executive at Bechtel Corporation!”

  7. ritergrrl@hotmail.com'
    Jody Bower
    May 22, 2012 at 15:07

    They’re alive and well in Port Townsend, Washington state. Here the old hippie men are called “shed boys” and live in their trucks, on their boats, or in sheds they constructed themselves from scraps. They hang out in coffee shops all day and bore anyone who comes near them with long, rambling stories about nothing or political rants. They all play the guitar. When winter comes they find a woman with a house and move in, exchanging sex and home repairs for their room & board. In spring they’re gone again. The women have for the most part moved on, but we have a few who wear long skirts made of Indian prints and their hair long & parted in the middle still, and sell handcrafted soaps and herbal tinctures at the Saturday market.

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