The Whole Hippie Thing Was a Lie

I am a baby boomer and I did take off from Virginia to California. I lived in San Francisco and was in a couple of serial relationships, did some clerical work. Had my clothes stolen by other girls. That's loving, isn't it? I moved to LA, went to a lot of movie and rock star home parties - they don't act any better than the parents in this movie, by the way! Still people just looking to see how they can use other people. I did this for about 5 years when I got tired of not having any direction, saw how the so-called "love" actually worked in the community (mostly it benefited the guys to screw around a lot without any responsibilities). Saw idiots get hooked on heroin and other stuff (thank goodness I wasn't THAT stupid.)

Eventually, when I was 24, I'd had enough. A movie producer I knew encouraged me to go to college and my sweet parents agreed to pay for me to go. I came back to the East Coast, and then I found that I loved learning. Instead of having that what a drag to go to school attitude, I had grown up and saw what an interesting world this is. I got an interesting job that involved travel and took me to over 80 countries. I now make a salary that's better than 90% of Americans, I go to church, I own a little house in Florida, I reestablished a great relationship with my parents and they never ever held my stupidity against me. And the movie producer that encouraged me to go to college? He died of an overdose about 5 years after I went back East. He was quite famous but I won't sully his name in this post. He did enough of that to himself with his actions and I am still grateful that he gave me the good advice to go back to school.

There were some bad things in the 60's that were put on the right path, such as women's rights and Civil Rights. But there has also been the acceleration of drug abuse, abortion used as birth control (I'm not against abortions in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life but I am against it if it was just because the couple was careless.)

Today, there is now less respect for personal privacy (watched in dept stores on cameras in the dressing room, airport searches and xrays, young girls being encouraged by music idols to dress like whores), more sexual violence against women, youngsters and grown women (both domestic and from strangers).

The baby boomers had no idea how good they had it compared to what their parents went through with the Depression and WWII. A lot of those parents offered their kids the opportunity to get educated and when the kids graduated, there were jobs available that were career jobs with benefits and pensions (instead of the paycheck jobs that are the type now mostly available, even to college grads. If you're starting out in the job market now, you better save your money, honey, because the company won't be looking after you in your old age.)

In a late 60's comedy, "How Sweet It Is", a kid tells his father that when he goes to Europe, he won't need to take much money because "love is all around". James Garner, who was playing his father and a professional photographer replied "I've been all around the world. Take a gun."