more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday
I belong to the Hippie generation, but I never was a real one.
The hippies came out of the student's revolution in the 60th against the establishment. They wanted to change the family rules and go back to nature. I love nature but I loved my comfort too. I also was for mariage and an only love at time. Living in a community in the rural countryside, and sleeping all together with cows, goats and dirty men was not really my cup of tea, and I also wanted to know who was the father of my child. I loved the idea of peace and love (pronounced with a French accent "Piss and laugh") and no war. The French accent made me always laugh.
What I liked very much was the Hippy fashion. I didn't wear any flowers in my hairs, but I loved the long skirts and the "wrinkle" look. I had trousers with flower patterns and I remember a suede jacket with broderie outside and goat fur inside. I still have a blouse from the 70th which is in fashion again and which I digged out to wear it after all these years.
At that time a lot of Belgian boys and girls went to Australia or to the Spanish Islands, where they lived in Hippy communities. They are probably today all respectable fathers and mothers, with a house a garden grown up children and a cat and a dog. Gone the time of living in "nature"and community.
There are still some hippies left on the Spanish Islands. I saw some, now my age, the men with long thin hair grey of course and the women with grey pigtails. They look a little out of time.
In retrospect, the hippie generation had direct global influences on music, television and film. It also made its mark on politics, fashion, hairstyles, the arts, and religion, including an emerging interest in Eastern philosophies and meditation.
Ah, you and I are from the same time! I also liked some of the Hippie stuff but alas, I was a young mother and while they were making love not war, I was was making bottles and changing diapers! But now some of my friends call me a 'latent flower child' ??? Probably cause my hair is to my waist:) Oh, and another thing they influenced was drug use...not good. Funny thing, my mom was a combination of hippie and biker, so I guess she made up for my normalcy:)
ReplyDeleteI am very slightly younger. During the heyday of the hippies, I was a child. Like you, I like some of their philosophies on nature and living in community, but I am also a believer in family stability and a partner for life.
ReplyDeleteI also was a little younger and did not understand the Vietnam problem. Those were very exiting times to grow and live
ReplyDeleteDrugs were every where. I loved the flowers and wore long skirts with frills. But I did not take drugs I just watched other people doing it and I believed in family values. In the end the hippies found out they could not beat the system from the outside so they decided to destroy it from the inside and today is the result.A broken economy. Somewhere along the way the hippies lost their direction.
I am also from the hippie period, but never a hippie myself, though I was a member of Women for Peace ans some other peacemovements. We went to the great demonstrations in The Hague and Rotterdam against the nuclear arms. We took the children with us and made banners. It was wonderful. But I don't think I could walk now all day like we had to do then. Your post brought back those memories. My daughters were more hippie like than I. Now they are hardworking serious women, very much like I was.
ReplyDeleteI was always too selfish and comfort loving to be a hippie. I had two babies in the sixties and a mortgage. Then in the seventies I broke free and went to London to live for five years with husband and two children. Travelled through France, Italy and Switzerland, 2adults and 2 children in a small car and very small tent. Now I have settled again, my children have grown, own their own homes and tell me they will never move again.
ReplyDeleteSome of those pictures take me back!!
ReplyDeleteI missed the hippie generation but I so wish I'd have been around to indulge in some free love!
ReplyDeleteThere's still lots of peace loin' and repsecting ways we can keep the hippie flame a burning :)
Lots of good and not so good came from that era. My friends always ask if I did the hippie thing since I grew up in the sf bay area. My answer yes and no...spent plenty of time in haight ashbury but always went home for my showers...heehee. I had to laugh at Vicki/Jake's comment...what normalcy?! If you've followed her blog you know that more of her mother might have rubbed off on her than she knows. Haahaa.
ReplyDeleteThat was my generation, too. I wasn't much of a hippie, but I did like the muslin tops and raggedy jeans.
ReplyDelete=)
And the pendulum keeps swinging... :-D
ReplyDeleteOh these pictures are just great! I have got to find a gas station like that now, very cool! I like how you featured it all in Black and White too!
ReplyDeleteI like hippy fashion but not the idea of going back to nature and sleeping with the cows. Pfft, I like myself and those around me to be clean.
ReplyDeletewhat a lifestyle, you have " occupy the government land?" Here, the government is getting tidied and is eviciting them.
ReplyDeleteOh, I so love your description of the hippie time! ha ha... I wouldn't have liked to be a hippie either though - even if I had the age for it...
ReplyDeleteBTW: your Google ad in the end of the post is showing me a Swedish datingsajt - which actually is the one where hubby and I met each other in 2003! Getting a bit nostalgic from an ad now... *giggles*
Like Jake, I was feeding babies and making formula. My mother, who had no imagination, was glad for that, and told me so. Had it not been for my children, I would have been right in the mix!! Oh, except for the drugs. I was always scared of those.
ReplyDeleteI'm from the hippie generation too, and like you, loved the fashions and music and events and all, but didn't buy into the whole deal. I still have one or two bits of clothing from those days too, and some disintegrating jewellery too!
ReplyDeleteYou're right, the hippie generation had a great influence on a lot of things, often for the good, but often for the bad (drug culture etc). On the whole I look back on my time on that scene with affectionate nostalgia ... and I well remember the burning pavements under my bare feet! I must have spent the entire late spring to autumn barefoot for two years running!
I agree, I just kept looking at all the pictures, thinking they look so comfortable in all that loose clothing. That I could have gotten into big time.
ReplyDeleteDana
I missed this by a bit, but I do appreciate some of the movement~music and fashion. Of course, I love living close to nature, and I could handle sleeping with a goat! ;-)
ReplyDeleteacid a dollar?! oh my!
ReplyDeleteI still have a pair of purple velour bell bottoms from the 70s which I wear as a costume sometimes. Since I do tie dye, it's easy to add a tie dye shirt.
When asked, I say no, I was not a hippie, but a hippie wanna be. I wasn't into free love and drugs.
Recently, I watched 1968, a documentary with Tom Brokaw--very interesting.
I think about the closest I came to being a "hippie" was my bell bottom pants which I dearly loved!
ReplyDeleteI was a bit later in the hippie era and did the whole bell bottom thing and thought about living on a commune. Briefly. Until I realized they didn't bathe every day.
ReplyDeleteUmmm...
Okay.
So much for that idea.
What a fascinating look back...your mosaics really capture the feeling of those times.
Hooray for a wonderful link for the letter H.
I'm going to send this link to my husband. I think he'd get a chuckle out of it!
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