Hoodlum Chic

"I felt like I should be out stealing hubcaps, like Mad Magazine said teenage hoods did, but I was too weenie for that.  See even now I am describing law abiding folks as weenies.  What is the matter with me?" - Uncle Ken

It sounds like Uncle Ken was one of those bad guy wannabees that I was talking about.  Of course he wasn't really a bad guy, but he wanted to look like one and act like one in order to be perceived as being "cool".  I know that hoodlum chic was fashionable in some circles at Gage Park High, and I observed it again in the army, but it was by no means unanimous.  What one subculture, or clique,  considered cool was not what another one did.  It was a matter of which group do you want to identify with?  

I don't remember observing bad guy chic after my army days, indeed it seemed to be going out of fashion during the last year or so that I was in.  Now that I think of it, it was mostly the older kids who followed that regime.  As they moved on, they seemed to be replaced by the long haired hippie types.  Most of them weren't real hippies, anymore than Uncle Ken was a real hoodlum, but they walked the walk and talked the talk.  According to his own accounts, Uncle Ken made the transition from hoodlum chic to hippie chic when he got into college.  (Not to be confused with hippie chicks.)

I never identified with the hoodlums, but I might have joined the hippies if they hadn't gotten so political.  I remember when an old army buddy came up north to visit me a year or two after we both got out.  His political views had veered to the left, as mine had veered to the right, since last we met, and he said that I was a disgrace to my beard.  Truth is, I hadn't grown a beard to make any kind of fashion statement, I had just gotten tired of shaving when I was in the army, and I threw my razor away the day I was discharged.  I had to go but another one shortly thereafter because nobody would hire a bearded guy in those days but, as soon as I had been at the paper mill long enough to join the union, I threw that razor away as well.