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Son of a Hippie

I still see my father as he was in his prime. Smoking a joint after articulately separating the seeds from the leaves on a Eagles album, swigging down tequila to get to the worm and wearing a Daniel Boone raccoon hat, shorts, flip-flops and a brownish, tan tie-dye shirt. His happiness came from simple things such as music, football, marijuana, tequila, cooking, and a little love now and then. He didn’t vote once in his lifetime but never once complained about the welfare of the country either.

My family moved around a lot. Dad was in the garment industry and we moved to where the work was. If that meant moving to Bum-Fuck-Egypt, we were there. My parents separated when I was young, partly due to all the moves, but mainly because they had grown apart. Once a hippie, always a hippie, my father never changed in that aspect. Mom fell in love with that fellow but I guess she thought he’d evolve to something more. When she grew up and he didn’t they split-up and eventually divorced. My father finally did settle down in sunny Florida working at Disney World as a custodian. He worked his way up from wearing one of those ridiculous uniforms and sweeping cigarette butts off the main way to wearing a suit and being the head of the custodial department of EPCOT (Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow) before retiring.

Mom was a flower child in her own right with her bell bottoms, zip-up boots and frilly shirts. She was the type to sit outside at twilight and write a poem about her feelings -translating in beautiful ways her little observations of the surrounding landscape. She wasn’t a drinker or smoker as long as I knew her. She quit all that stuff before I was born. She quit for the welfare of the baby in her tummy. Because of me.

As a boy I’d go out for miles on bicycle or foot trekking through, what I imagined, the previously untouched, unexplored countryside. Even though I had a sister, every day was a lone adventure. I’d go hunting or fishing but I’d never kill anything I couldn’t skin or cook myself. I always had a respect for nature. Maybe that was just the country boy in me.

As a teen I was a long haired surfer-hippie kid who quit high school in the first days of my sophomore year, yet very un-hippie like, went out and attained a GED two weeks later and was in college while the rest of my class was finishing their uninspiring senior year.

I was named after Bob Dylan but it could’ve been much worse. Dad was also fond of the music styling of Alice Cooper.

Now, that I am at that proverbial age where innocence has faded away to realism, I look in the mirror, I look at my actions and who I am, and I finally understand that I am the son of a hippie and therefore a hippie myself. I realize that being a hippie isn’t about what you wear or what you do for a living. It’s simply a state of mind. A dying breed, perhaps, replaced by some nouvelle vague.

I mean who, at age forty, wears a mood ring and energy bracelet everyday. I don’t claim to have the patent on forty-year-olds that have an earring and wolf tattoo howling at the moon but those items do kind of mark who I am. I listen to my children’s music and enjoy it but it doesn’t speak to me as does the music from the seventies. I’m the kind of guy who would bring home the Placenta after childbirth to plant it in soil for beautiful blooming flowers. Of course the Hospital wouldn’t let me. Something about lawsuits, insurances purposes and such.

I’ve smoked my share of pot and experimented with harder drugs but nothing ever stuck except my fondness of beer and whisky. I like to write. I like to look at the world or meet new people and see their story.

Much like my father, I’m inspired by simple things and worship the sun, moon, earth and water. I’m equally drawn to the majestic mountains as I am to the vastness of the ocean and when I’m in either setting I’m on a constant high. Much like my father I’m a nomad. I tell myself that my family has endured many moves out of necessity but