A guide to wearing baseball hats

[Al Agnew]

Since I grew up in those times, I remember them well.  Yes, there was a huge divide between the "hippies" and those who supported their main cause, and those who pretty much hated them.  I was kinda in the middle...most of my friends hated them, as did my parents, but I saw their point.  I wouldn't have been a draft dodger if I had had to make the choice (draft lottery number 305 assured that I didn't), but there was no way I wanted to go to Vietnam.

The anti-war people were their own worst enemy, though.  Right or wrong, they made it difficult  for people to respect them, with everything from too much hair and not enough soap (sometimes--I don't think you can paint them all with that broad a brush), to much of the "movement" devolving into the drug culture.  But a lot of what my parents' generation felt threatened by was their simple non-conformity.  It all started with, believe it or not, the Beatles.  They were the original long hair band, and their hair seemed to drive the older folks bonkers.  A lot of young people thought it was cool simply because their parents hated it, and emulated them, leading to the kind of stuff that made the "hippies" what they were.  

I've always found the whole "nonconformity" thing curious.  The first bunch of people who do it are the nonconformists, but pretty soon a whole lot of people are conforming to the nonconformists, and it's no longer nonconformity.  Kinda like tattoos and piercings these days...it all started out as a nonconformist protest kind of thing, and now if you're a 20 something and don't have a bunch of tattoos you're not cool.