The young man lay on the shoulder of the road, his thumb projected up into the air. Nearby, a sign was propped against the street sign with the message, "San Francisco or bust."
My dad was not impressed, "One more hippy that will go bust. No-one in Arkansas is going to pick up a hitchhiker too lazy to at least stand up and ask for a ride."
I am not sure if my dad was right or wrong but the young man on the side of the road was representative of a generation of youth that wanted to tune in, turn on and drop out of a society they disagreed with.
The 1960's was a period of social unrest with civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War as the rallying points of protest. Centered in San Francisco and the urban East Coast, many young people were attracted to the music, life-style, and ideals of the hippie community.
Arkansans, more conservative and rural, were probably less sympathetic and less politically affected, yet they were still influenced by what has become known as the "hippie generation." Groups of hippies saw rural Arkansas as an ideal place to form rural, self-supporting communes. They were often distrusted by the locals, so it was difficult for them to fit into the clannish communities of the Ozarks and Ouachitas.
One such group, the Dan Blocker Singers, made it big as performers in Hollywood, then eventually moved to Greer's Ferry and started a commune. The word "commune" still invoked visions of what Arkansans viewed as the far-left, but it wasn't the typical long-haired, pot growing or free-love group.
The group performed around the state, including at the lodge at Mt. Magazine, and they were blamed for everything from vandalism to murder. Eventually, community antagonism resulted in the dissolution of the commune. Dixon Bowles, one of the group leaders, remained in Little Rock and founded the well-known Aristotle internet service.
Another communal group moved into our community and started a small, rural farm enterprise. Using an old chicken house, they began raising animals, tilling the land and rebuilding the old run-down farmhouse.
They knew little about rural life, but came to realize communal farming was not the ideal lifestyle. It ended rather quickly when winter approached. They decided to use a wood stove for heat and ran the stove pipe into the ceiling like they had seen locally, but it never dawned on them that an exit chimney or flue was required. The attic soon caught on fire and ended their communal experience.
I always felt sorry for them. They were a friendly group and always yelled and waved at us kids as they drove past in their van painted in psychedelic patterns.
The hippie influence filtered into our schools a little later than main-stream America. Guys began wearing pants with large, flared bell bottoms, letting their hair grow long and dressing in brighter colors.
I vividly remember my purple and white striped bell-bottom pants, my dark purple shirt and my natural fro. Even more vivid in my remembrance are those mini-skirts, getting increasingly shorter as the girls mimicked some model called Twiggy.
Eventually, to counter the effects of the short skirt length, our local schools began to allow girls to start wearing pants. Of course the top still had to be of such length that the girl could grasp the bottom of the tunic when her arms were full extended.
"Lucy in the Sky" and "Looking Out My Back Door" were just great songs to me, not a part of a psychedelic drug music industry. I still list Creedence Clearwater Revival as one of my favorite singing groups. As the Arkansas '70's kids reached draft age and began entering college, pot, LSD and draft cards became a more familiar part of the vocabulary.
The hippie movement of the '60's resulted in improvements in Civil Rights and perhaps hastened the end of the Vietnam War. Then it gradually faded into our collective memory to be replaced by the starched-collar, get-ahead Yuppie generation. But it remains as a unique period in American and Arkansas history.
Another communal group moved into our community and started a small, rural farm enterprise, Varnell recalls. They knew little about rural life and came to realize communal farming was not the ideal lifestyle. It ended quickly when winter approached. Courtesy photo/Curtis Varnell