HIPPIE CHRISTMAS-1969

It was December at Southern Illinois University, and bombs fell on Vietnam as we all got ready to party at Rich and Vera's house...and we dropped wine, grape juice, vodka, whiskey, and all types of other innebriants into a portable aluminum washtub set up on the floor of their kitchen. A couple of huge blocks of ice would keep the magical formula cold...and we had buds of wonderful gooey marijuana which we rolled into hava-tampa sized joints...and their was Owlsely acid...sp?...1000 micrograms a hit if you really wanted to psychedelicize yourself.

The stereo played Gracie Slick, Big Brother, The Chambers Brothers, and Morrison and we were in our groove after final exams and were celebrating the "real" Christmas before the idyllic Illinois Central train brought us back into the realm of straight AmeriKa...back to mommy and daddy...THE ENEMY...and their warnings about drug addiction and the peace movement and the evils of abortion and anything that was connected with the SDS, the Black Panther Movement, Abbie Hoffman, Alan Ginsburg, or Gay right, or feminism, ad infinitum...but we don't want to think about those things now at Rick and Vera's...

So we dance and play drinking games or play with jello, (especially if you're tripping) or put Mazola Oil on the kitchen linoleum floor...and roll in it to your hearts content with your loved one...and screw, screw, screw your brains out...so you don't have to remember that you got lottery #40 and that you were going to Vietnam for 2 years as a grunt in the infantry...and that you'd rather have more foot powder to keep jungle rot from between your toes, than a million bachelor of arts degrees...

The American economy was bad, and there weren't any jobs, and people were rioting in the streets, and children were nestled in their nice warm beds, thinking of Santa Claus, and the rich were getting richer off the war, and kids were dying over there, and we vowed that some day we would fix this mess, 'cause the whole world was watching...but we lied and were co-opted by the system and things are even "worser" now 'cause we just wanted to make money and it goes on and on and on, just like that night at Rich and Vera's house...except then, we were more honest.