more hair

When I went to college, one of the things I was thinking was that I would be seeing people with beards. Beatnik types and maybe kind of radically thinking profs. Because we never saw a beard in Gage Park. It was something nobody had, because if you did, you would have to explain why you did it, and I think no matter what you said people would think you were weird. That’s sort of what I meant about how if you didn’t do what everybody else did people would think there was something wrong with you.

An odd thing is the Prez's. The last prez to even have a moustache was Taft and that was over a hundred years ago. There probably have been a few govs and senators, but I can’t think of any. I guess it’s just that anybody who gets into that rarefied atmosphere doesn’t want to take any chances at all, although Boehner is still proudly orange.

Well most of them are lawyers, and though most all businessmen are lounging around in Dockers and have long ago tossed out their strangling ties, lawyers still cling to suits.

But back to hair. I guess it did all start with the Beatles, remember how shocking their hair was? And it wasn’t even long, it was just uncombed. Like how could you not comb your hair? So rad. And then it just exploded, all the rock stars, all the youngsters without jobs, and what all. You know it all happened so fast. One day we were wondering why those lads from England don’t comb their hair, and two or three years later all our hair is down to our shoulders and we are smoking dope and listening to crazy music and openly dodging the draft.

I think it was because we were all so stoppered up by that 50s conformism, we wanted to do something else, but we didn’t know if we dared, and we had no idea what, and the blokes step off the plane and we are maybe we could do that, and we look at the guy next to us and he is tossing his comb into the trash, and then we look around and everybody is watching everybody else and then everybody is tossing away their combs. And there is the revolution.

Kind of reminds me of the Shah. The Shah seemed to be firmly in power, and then one day one Irani looked at another Irani, and said “You know, I don’t like that guy,” and the other Irani said, “Me either,” and the guys around them said, “Us neither,” and then they are writing up signs and marching and bam, the Shah is on the dustbin of history.

And there were certain things expected of you by other hippies, if you were going to be a hippie, you had to listen to psychedelic music, you had to smoke dope, you had to be against the war, but mostly, you had to grow out your Goddamn hair.

It set us apart, it was like wearing a campaign button, this is what I stand for. And I guess the same way people who wear campaign buttons think in some small way they are helping their cause because other people will see it, and just maybe it will make them more likely to vote for your candidate, so we thought we were helping our cause. And it kind of set us aside, mostly it was hard to get a job, but that was kind of good because we didn’t believe in jobs, didn’t believe in the capitalistic system, so we were taking a stand. Sure we could cut our hair and get a fat job and be rich, but we chose rather to stand up for our ideals.

It wasn’t uncommon to run into your hippie buddy, and he would be all like pissed off because he thought he was going to get a job, but then it turned out that the boss wanted him to cut his hair. Cut his hair??? Outrageous, how dare he??? Wasn’t this a violation of your rights??? What about freedom of speech??? “Well, I told him to shove it,” our disgruntled comrade would say, to the applause of all.

Crazy man crazy. I am exaggerating of course, but we did believe something like that.

Now it all seems stupid. Grow your hair out, cut it short, who cares?

Well I’ll get to that tomorrow.