Baby Boomers: The Strangest Generation

When Hippies Came To Our Block

• John Ward

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SPEAKER_00:

So it's me again. It's been a while. And I've been busy. I got a lot of stuff to do. This isn't what I do for a living. It's just something I do for fun. But people keep listening, so every once in a while I sit on the patio, light a cigar, mix up a drink, and put out a podcast, and people listen. So this story popped into my mind. And I've been thinking about it for a while. And it's about what happens when hippies move into a rust belt American, steel-working, blue-collar, gritty, white neighborhood. And at first you'd think, you know, hippies. Counterculture, fuck the man, hate Nixon, hate the Vietnam War, do drugs, listen to good music. You'd think that we'd have some things in common. These blue-collar kids. We dress the same. We do drugs. We like their music. We're, you know. We could have some common ground. But don't let looks fool you. It really didn't work that way. So when I was a kid, talking about maybe 73, 74, 75, Nixon, Manson, Weather Underground, Abby Hoffman, all this stuff had been going on. And we're watching it on TV. We're seeing their hippies. We know about Woodstock. We kind of get it. You know, but they're out there. They're in a coast. They're in New York, they're in Greenwich Village, they're in San Francisco, LA, but they're not where I live. But kids kind of look like them. We look like them because we're poor. We don't have money. We're wearing my cousins' hand-me-downs. They're dressing like slabs because their counterculture, anti-the man, all that stuff. And any teenage baby boomer kid is gonna relate to that anti-establishment shit. You know, we're gonna think that's cool. Until they move into your friggin' neighborhood. Now I hate to say that because it sounds so bad. You know, like somebody different moves into your neighborhood and things aren't gonna go well. But when somebody moves into your neighborhood and things don't go well because the people that move into your neighborhood are friggin' criminals and disruptive and evil, then things shouldn't go well. And in this story, things do not go well for anybody. So let me set the stage. I live in a block. I live on a street. I live in the middle of 30 other streets, just like my street. Every street has its little gangs, its little cliques, its little, and you don't go there, you don't come here, you just stay in your lane. And you don't really travel too far out. We're Irish, we're Catholic, we stick together. We're isolated from the rest of the world, really. We are so isolated. We were we didn't know anything. When I got out into the real world, out of that neighborhood, and found out that like Protestant preachers can get married, I was shocked. You know, when I when I found out that nuns were not in every religion, I was shocked. So when somebody like a group of hippies moves in, we were shocked. So let me let me uh just explain. Maybe 30 houses on the street, maybe 60, both sides of the street. Alright? I live in the middle of the street with my mom, dad, three sisters. We have six poodles. I still don't know how to explain that. My mother was an animal lover and uh made a living by boarding and grooming poodles in the basement. My dad was a steel worker, like everybody on the block was a steelworker. At one end of the block, there's this little brick house, and there's an old man there. Lives by himself. Nobody knows nothing about him. He's old, he's got gray hair, he's got a ponytail. We don't get the ponytail with an old man, but you know, he lives next to a house. There's seven brothers. Seven friggin' brothers. No girls, mom, dad, seven brothers. I'll tell you, I fucked with one of those brothers one time. Pat. Fucked with him. I don't even know what I did to him. And I was out playing basketball one time after whatever I did to this kid or whatever I said. And I don't know if you've ever gotten hit so hard in the middle of your face that you just go down. Well, one of the brothers came up. I remember somebody passed me the ball playing baseball. I look up, and this fucking guy just cocks his arm back before I had a chance to even move. And I'm a skinny look, knocked me right between the eyes. I went down. He's on top of me, he's choking me, and I went unconscious. I was like in, you know, the afterlife. I was I was going. I guess they pulled him off me. I I don't really even remember what happened. And uh it's kind of inconsect consequential to the whole story, but they this guy, this old guy lived right next to this family of seven. All right, and every family had seven, four, six kids. That's the way it was, and they all ran the streets and we all played sports, and we all caused trouble and fought and shoveled snow and did everything that we did back then. So I'm in the middle of the street. This old man is down at the end, and then at the other end of the street is what we would call the government homes. I think now you'd probably call them projects, I don't know, but they were government homes. And there was a lot of them. And people lived there, they were transient, in and out. A lot of people that lived there were mothers with kids and no father. I know I had a lot of friends there. Um I can't remember one father in that whole place. I uh a lot of the kids that lived there, their dads were killed in Vietnam. The one guy, his dad was a cop, got shot, killed. Um but they were all right. They were, even though they were transient, they were with us, right? Like we were kind of a little better because you know we had a house. But we didn't even know that. All we know is that there's a bunch of kids down there, right? There's chicks, there's dudes, there's pot. You know, we'll go down there, we'll play, we'll fight, we'll play football, we'll play hockey. They're all right. They're with us. We'll take care of them. But a lot of daughters down there without fathers, without brothers, single women raising kids. So, one day, this tricked out, weird-looking psychedelic van shows up in front of this old man's house. The uh the guy with the ponytail. He would just stand in the driveway and just look at shit. He was out of it. Nobody bothered him, nobody cared about him, you know. I mean, you kind of looked out for him. He must have had a son or somebody who became a hippie out on the West Coast or down to Greenwich Village or wherever, you know. And uh, this van shows up. So we're all like, all right, that's a weird-looking van. It's got a fucking bunch of painting on it, and you know, it's a hippie van. We got some hippies in our neighborhood. So the first thought is, okay, hippies, you know, you can probably get some good pot. But we knew instinctively, and through our fathers and mothers, stay away from that place. There's hippies over there. Stay away from that place. All right, we're gonna stay away. I'm not gonna bother with them. Plus, they're kind of weird. And man, if you were a hippie, I got nothing against you. I, you know, you dress that way or whatever, you're a fake hippie or a militant hippie or a you know, just somebody that went to Woodstock, whatever. I think most of the hippies now are grown up and probably were for IBM and stuff like that, but we just kept our distance. I had three sisters. We were Catholic. My father understood one thing. Hippies stand for free love. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. It was at CSN, and they preached open sexuality. Now, this is a 70s thing, it's happening. People are doing coke, it's kind of transitioning from you know hippie to friggin' disco to, but we're stuck in the 1950s. Our people, right? We can't do that shit. We don't know nothing about coke. We can't afford that shit. We got we know nothing about disco and you know. And the hippies weren't doing disco at all. But they believed in having sex with just about anybody. Now I'm what, 15, 16? Shit, I'll have sex with anybody, man. You know, I don't care. I mean, it that sounds great to me. But my dad's like, look it. You got three sisters, were really died in the wall Catholic. I remember uh when I was about 19, I thought I got a girl pregnant, and she told me, and I mark I was I was like really doing well in college and stuff, and uh she told me she was pregnant. No, no abortion, Catholic, no, we're getting married. I marched into her father's house. He lived out in the suburbs, he was they were kind of well off and he couldn't stand me. But I was willing to marry this girl, quit college and get a job at the steel plant to raise this child. That's how we were. Hippies would just fuck anybody, they didn't care. So, you know, I would have fucked anybody too if I could have, but I couldn't because yeah, the girls didn't do that, as Billy Joel pointed out some years ago in his song Only the Good Die Young. So, deal is this you see any of the girls in the neighborhood hanging out that house? You're gonna have a talk with them. Now there's three tiers of dudes in my neighborhood when I grow up. There's young punks like me. You know, that's where it starts. You see a girl hanging out there with one of your sisters or something, you talk to the girl. You talk to your sister. You talk to your sister's friend, you talk to the little she that lives down the street was hanging out there, you talk to them. She keeps going, then it goes up a tier to the maniac guys. The guys that wear a numb, a little too young for numb, the guys that were really demented. I don't know why or how this happened to some of the people that I grew up in the 70s, but some of the guys were really kind of lone wolf, like treacherous people. So if the 14-year-olds couldn't keep a girl away from the place, it was gonna go up a level to these guys, and they weren't gonna talk to the girl, they were gonna talk to the hippies. So it comes to pass there's a sweet little girl in the government house. Anne Marie, I'll say her name was sweet little thing, always laughing, pretty little girl. Minor, she's a minor. Word gets out that uh she's going into that place. So me and my buddies grab her, tell her, stay away from that freaking place. Those people, you know, they got serious drugs. They believe in having sex with anybody. You ain't got a dad, you ain't got a brother. You're one of us. Kinda. I know you'll probably be moving out of here soon because you know you're transient, but you know, right now we're all you got, and we're telling you stay the fuck away from those people. Alright. She starts dressing different. She got a headband, she got a friggin' bell bottom, she got beads and friggin' tambourines and sandals and shit. Alright, we're looking out for her. So in a kind of weird side story. You know, the Catholics, we go to church every Sunday. If you don't go to church on Sunday and you don't have a good excuse, you're condemned to die in hell. Just so you know. That's that's how it is. If you don't go on Christmas or Easter, you're just there's no way out, you're going to hell. And, you know, we believe this. You know, to a certain point. And Catholic Church is great. It's about 42 minutes. It happens on 12 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and the priest knows he's got to get you out of there by one because that's kickoff time in the NFL. So it goes fast. You kneel, you stand, you shake hands, you pray, you kneel. Everything is really regimented, really well rehearsed. You could do it in your sleep. I remember the priest we had, he was an old German drunk guy, and uh you'd say like the Our Father, and then you'd move into the next prayer, but he would be talking so fast that he would finish the Our Father before anybody, and he would move into the Hail Mary, and we're still doing the Our Father, and he's just trying to push to get the hell out of there. I was an altar boy, by the way. And uh I'm telling you right now, every altar boy drank the sacramental wine, and many a recovering Irish alcoholic in a Catholic church, when they brought that uh wine in, eat his body, drink his blood. Many had relapses in church because they happened to drink that wine. I think they went the grape juice eventually. No one of the Protestants thought we were weird. We had a song, sons of God, hear his holy word, gather around the table of the Lord, eat his body, drink his blood, then you'll know the signs of love. I mean, when when we came here from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and the Protestants were all here, they must have thought, my god, these people are friggin' cannibals. Anyway, I'm getting off course. So we're in church one Sunday. All right, the hippies have been there. The little girls kind of hanging out there, we're hearing about it, we're talking to her, we told our dads, yeah, we talked to her, you know. Suddenly a friggin' uh door opens to the church, and we're about 10 minutes in. One of the hippie dudes walks in, right? He comes into our church and he stands in the back because you got crowded there. You had to get early to get a seat. And uh a lot of people stood in the back. But the motherfucker's got no shoes on. He's got no shoes on. Now we're not known for our fashion in church at all. In fact, it was played down. You don't come to church looking like you're rich or you know, you don't want to show up the Lord. Jesus was poor, you look poor, you know. Women gotta wear hats to hide your hair, blah, blah, blah. Dude walks in, he's got no shoes on. Now, to us, this is disrespectful. You gotta wear some shoes. You're in public, right? Now, this old German drunk priest, he's looking at the dude, and he senses this frigging tension in the air. Like he could light a match and the place would have blown. Everybody's crating and turning around looking at this guy. But it doesn't change the fact that he is in a Catholic church. And he knows the words, and he knows when to bow, when to kneel, when to shake hands. He knows the prayers. So it's like, okay, wait a minute, he's one of us. But he's got no friggin' shoes on. What the f what now the priest is panicking and he's like just goes completely off course. And sermons in Catholic churches last about five minutes, and they're really boring, and uh they are uninspirational. This guy starts freewheeling, and he starts talking about how Jesus probably didn't wear shoes when he walked through, you know, Israel and and Gaza and Bethlehem and Nazareth and Judea, Jerusalem. And I'm thinking, man, I never thought about that. Did he wear shoes? I of course he wore shoes. He gotta wear shoes. And Jesus had long hair and a beard, he's saying. And I'm like, yeah. Jesus got long hair and a beard. Every friggin' show I ever saw he did, but who knows what he looked like. He probably looked like a really dark-skinned Mediterranean Jewish guy. And I'm pretty sure he wore friggin' shoes. So now we're confused. He's Catholic. He knows the prayers, the priest is kinda coming up with some shit. Alright, it's not like we're gonna walk out and kick this guy's ass and shit. But god damn it. Where's your friggin' shoes? Plus the game starts at one, right? We gotta get home. So nobody's got time for this shit. So it just adds to the confusion. So this little girl. She keeps going. We see her going in and out. Now the friggin' maniacs are called up. The dads run the show. Irish Catholics are really a uh paternal society where fathers in the end run it, or at least they think they run it, but when it comes to shit like this, protection, providing, they run the show. So it's kind of like in the wind. These desperados, these malcontents, these psychos got free reign. First thing that went was the van. Somehow it caught on fire and exploded late one night. Next thing that went was all the wind chimes, the bongo drums, the peace signs that were on the porch. Gone. Next thing that goes is the windows. Now, you know, we got cops in a fire station and stuff around us. We got a cop that lives six doors from Miss Hippy House. Guy was a maniac. He this guy was so tough. He was a Vietnam guy. And uh we had a professional football team that um used to uh well they played in our city and they would sometimes come down to our neighborhood and try and hit on our chicks and stuff like that. And this guy he would just wait for one of these NFL guys to get in a fight with one of our local psychos, and he would run. This guy would crush them, he would crush them. He loved it, he lived for it. So he's kind of on our side. He's like, you know, I got my INE's guys, you know, nobody's really the cops don't care that their shit is getting busted up and blown up and broken. They don't give a shit. They're not responding. This guy's like, no, no, no, you guys are all right, don't worry about it. Then comes a day. It was a weekend. The Lan Marie goes missing. The Lan Marie. Her mother's walking around the streets saying, Yeah, you see my daughter, haven't seen her in two days. I don't know where she is. Radars on, antennas are up, gloves are coming off. Where the fuck is this little girl? Well, the cops are looking into it, the cops, the cops. Some of the mothers actually in the neighborhood were, you know, calling the cops, trying to help this poor mother, this poor single mother find her kid. And the cop let the word out. Clandestinely let the word out. Last time she was seen was getting in that hippie van. Oh no, it was a hearse. They blew the van up. They had an old hearse. She was last thing getting in there and driving out to this hippie like commune or whatever it was. She was a little kid. So they're investigating. They're looking for her. Cops go up, they're knocking on doors, they're talking to the hippie boys, the guy with no shoes, the old man with the ponytail, the bongo drum player. Nothing. Nothing. The psycho guys are ready, but the dads are in charge. Something's gotta give. Three days later they find her. Beaten raped overdose. Man, I hate to say stuff like this on a podcast. It's so depressing. Well, they found her at that park, that commune. And the whole community just was an outrage. Neighborhood cop is half trying to call them off. Now now it's up to the dad. Now it's on the dads, right? The teens are out, the psychos are out, now the dads are gonna take care of this shit. They ain't waiting for the cops. The cops are pulling back, the cops don't care. Firemen, you light that place up? The firemen ain't coming, right? They want these people out of here. Now my dad was a baseball coach. Reason he became a baseball coach was because the older kids in the neighborhood kept um fucking with me. They hung my dog, they broke into our house and stole his uh cash. The psycho kids. My dad, this is how cool my dad was. He goes down to the beach here where all these psychos hang out. And he says, look it. After all this shit happens. He said, I'm starting a baseball team. Saturday morning.

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SPEAKER_00:

John's Church, Diamond. I got a glove for every one of you, I got a baseball. You be there. Eight o'clock. I'll come and knock on your door and get you. Son of a bitch started a team. He started a baseball team with these derelicts. Just an aside. Back to the Lan Marie. The neighborhood had had it. My father came in the house. Just around dusk. And he told me to stay in the house. I don't know what's going on. I said, just don't come out. There were some badass dads in my neighborhood. My dad had a lot of bats. He coached a baseball team. I look out the window. And those men are walking down that street with a lot of bats. A lot of baseball bats. They went in that house. They busted in that door. They dragged those sons of bitches out. And like I said, it wasn't a pretty sight. They got what they deserved. They killed their little girl. Uh two of them went to jail. The only one left was the old man with the ponytail. The couple of dads went in and walked him out. By now his house was trashed. It was nobody knew, you know, where he was gonna go. He was just a sad old guy. And the next day every hippie was gone. Jail, hospital, Frisco, hate Ashbury, Woodstock, Granite, wherever the fuck they went, nobody knew, but they weren't coming back to our freaking neighborhood. And they weren't fucking with our kids. But a lot of hippies were just rich kids avoiding the draft. They were gonna wind up in Columbia or Canada, Columbia University or Canada. A lot of them were manipulators that were gonna sell drugs. Charles Manson, The Weather Underground, instigators, rioters, protesters, and let's not be confused here. They got themselves involved in civil rights. They sort of helped black people, I think. But then, you know, at the Civil Rights Act of what '64 with Lyndon Johnson, all of a sudden black people became Black Panthers, going, you know, along with this hippie trend. And I don't know how that well that worked out for them. They kind of looked out for civil rights for women, they kind of sparked a lot of change, but in the end, they did a lot of damage, man. And they're not looked on as a positive American force. And I can't comment on the whole of hippieism in America in the 60s and 70s. I could just tell you my story of when hippies moved in to a steel plant neighborhood and killed a little girl. And it's sad but true. And I wish I had something more positive to tell you, but that's the way it was. Y'all have a good night, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.