I Remember the 70's (But Just Barely)

So thank god for cameras, however primitive they were back in the early 70's!  I graduated from high school in 1968, quite a tumultuous year in its own right, and my father immediately whisked us from the San Francisco Bay Area to Birmingham, Alabama.

We haven't been right since. 

Of course I mean that in the literal sense, as in, "right in the head."  But in my case, that also means in the political sense due to the fact that I turned into a raving commie leftist pinko liberal, which actually occurred in ALABAMA even before I moved back to California.  I think that might be a little-known fact that Ripley's Believe It Or Not might be interested in . . .

I went through three colleges and three jobs in the space of three years, finally said AAAACCCCKKK! to the Deep South and returned to San Francisco.  I started to meet people almost immediately (I was young, blonde, an actual 21 year old virgin who was practically wearing a sign that said "I'm young, blonde and a virgin.  Come take advantage of me!")--and eventually became friends with two women who are STILL my BFFs. 

We decided to rent a house together in the Haight Ashbury--this was after the Summer of Love but believe me, you wouldn't have known it from the looks of the place: hippies everywhere, blacks and whites co-existing peacefully, naked babies, long hair, major amounts of drugs, blah blah blah.  It was soooooo groovy! 

Since we were all poor our main form of entertainment (other than ingesting illegal substances when we could afford them) was walking a few blocks to Golden Gate Park and hanging out with friends and people-watching.  One day we saw two hippies pushing a shopping cart.  Inside the cart was a third hippie, completely nude and passed out cold.  I mean, what are friends for if not to dump your naked self in a shopping cart and wheel you through a major public park, hmm?

When we saw this hippie mom allowing her hippie child to pee on a trash can I remember saying, "If a grownup dude did that he'd get the pigs down on him hard.  But when a kid does it, it's cute, isn't it?!"  Guess what?  Not an hour later a grownup dude stumbled up and peed all over the trash can.  He wasn't arrested but we definitely didn't think it was cute.

(Coming from the lilywhite suburbs of Lafayette CA and three subsequent years in Alabama, one of the first things I noticed after moving to San Francisco was the high number of integrated couples, nearly always black men and white women.  It was so much the norm that I remember a black comedian making the comment: "I saw an amazing sight today!  A brotha and a sistah TOGETHER! And I don't mean brother and sister, I mean BROTHA and SISTAH!").  Apparently he was in Golden Gate Park the same day I took this photo of The Peeing Baby.

Back in Birmingham, my sisters were also doing the hippie thing, although Susie seems to have opted for a more, shall we say, sedate look.  Of course she could pull off any look (and still can BTW) and be ravishing.  Although I have to say that Sally (with the specs and her then-husband Curly) and little sister Cynthia (RIP, baby sis) were pretty cute, too. 

(In another aside, Sally still looks darn good too.  Wonder if she still has that Wilma Flintstone necklace, or is that the one Tink used when she actually WAS Wilma Flintstone a few Halloweens ago?).

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!