An Anecdotal Backfire…

I don’t think it was a Tuesday.  Might have been a Thursday.  In any case it was early in the summer of 1968 and early in the afternoon and I was hanging out at a friends house.  His mom was headed downtown, and knowing we were headed in that general direction later yelled at us going out the door “you boys want a ride?”  Of course we said yes knowing full well we’d bail out and hike back, but hey, anything to cut the miles on the feet.  We put a lot of miles on our feet that summer.

Now Mrs. Baggins (not her real name, of course) was a rather conservative woman, she had to be really, she was married to a most prominent man in the community, prominent in his church as well, and Mrs. Baggins full embraced the conservative culture his position demanded.  Of course back then I really had no idea there was any other culture, being as how my mom was of the same sort, a rabid John Bircher who didn’t allow much by way of any external culture into the home.  It was her way or the highway if you get the drift, to her Democrats were without a doubt servants of Satan.  Yea, one of those.

Anyway, half way to where we were going to bail Mrs. Baggins copped an attitude, and I mean big time.  She turned to us and with a tone of voice I’d later learn means distilled malice said “Let’s go laugh at the hippies.”  

She cut away from the main road to take us down the little lane that runs along the edge of the beach in Oceanside.  It’s a slow little road, pedestrian choked, think the speed limit was all of fifteen miles an hour.  So instead of a quick ride to within a few blocks of our destination my buddy and I were subjected to her ogling, and utterly mocking, the young folk on the beach for a lot longer than we wanted to listen.  Oh dear lord, the expression on her face to see the California girls in their really very modest (by today’s standards) bikini swimsuits.  Didn’t know what to think about what she was radiating about the boys (being all of 12 and innocent having absolutely no idea what a case of the hypocritical hornies look like), but it was distinctly uncomfortable and riding plenty of wattage to jump the Pacific and be heard in Tokyo.  We were within a couple of blocks of where she’d have cut back for the main road when the traffic got snarled, bringing us to a complete and total standstill for almost five minutes. Those five minutes changed my life.

The little lane was, probably still is, lined with cottages facing the beach, and we stopped directly in front of one where two handsome young bucks were sunbathing in front of their quarters.  They were definitely gentlemen of leisure that afternoon, kicked back with a beer and watching the pretty girls put on a show on the sand.  They even had music to go with the show, they’d put rather large speakers in both front windows of the tiny cottage.  Good speakers they were, sitting on the road I could hear the music quite clearly, it was very good fidelity for the day.

Anyhow, that was the first time I ever heard the Moody Blues, the guys  were listening to “The Afternoon, Forever Afternoon” they were, an utterly enchanting music.  Of course Mrs. Baggins all but hit the roof, fuming and sputtering and all but slobbering on herself in utter outrage that, that hippies  could have a music so delightful.  She dialed on her contempt to combat max, my buddy quailed, retreated, withdrew.  But she was his mom, not mine, I had a little more maneuvering room.  I remember looking at her turning red with outrage while looking at them smiling and waving, looking at her puffing up like an adder turning her nose up in the air, looking past her at the pretty people on the beach, and then looking away from her with a very major decision made.  I didn’t put it in these words, I really didn’t know these words back then, but the sentiment was instant, absolute and final, translated into the modern it would read “fuck her with the horse she rode up on, I’d rather be there, with them where there’s some beauty in life than with some frigid hate filled bitch like her.”   

That was the moment I quit being a conservative and started down the path to where I am now.  Odd, but yea.  I never went back, never really looked back.  

The moral of the story?  Beware letting your bigotries go naked in public because you never know when they might become the point of negative comparison that will turn someone in the exact opposite direction.  So yea Mrs. Baggins, thanks for taking me to laugh at the hippies. Sorry (not) that it backfired on you so big.