If you knew Papo in the 60’s, you would think that the greatest scourge the earth ever had to endure was Hippies. My dad commanded a tank in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, liberated the concentration camp, Munchausen, got blown from his jeep by a land mine, survived a winter in Asia in the Korean War, and bivouacked for weeks in the Bayreuth snow while waiting for Germans to raise the Berlin Wall. But, I never saw him plan for an all-out onslaught, until he talked about Hippies.
They have long hair, bathe infrequently, sleep around in the open air, and smoke pot—which makes them bathe less, forget to cut their hair, do more sleeping, and smoke more pot. Then, in a final tragic chapter of their worthless lives, they gather in groups to protest anything and piss away the college educations their parents slave to provide them on any platter they can scrape up. Papo’s theory is that most Hippies don’t hatch out of poor folks, unless the Hippies need recruits to locate more munchies or drugs. They are the product of guilt-ridden, affluent, middle-class parents who feel the need to subsidize soul-searching behavior. And soul-searching just isn’t worth the paper its take to write books about it. Hippies, and Yippies, must know where their next meal is coming from because they wear the luxury of wallowing in their own filth and liberal ideology like medals. So, Papo’s rage came as no surprise to any of us when my brother Anthony decided to grow his hair below his ears in 1966.
As it was, Anthony and Greg emulated dirty rotten scoundrels. When they were six and eight years old, respectively, they loved to ‘pretend-play’ poker and spit chewin’ tobacco like Wild West saloon cowpokes. On one occasion, when my mother entrusted their care to me at a barbershop, they blew each other away in a floor-scraping shootout. Their final death scenes took them over tables where magazines were neatly stacked and across hair strewn on the floor to lay in bleeding agony at the front door where patrons stood aghast as they tried to enter.
Being in each other’s constant company allowed them both to sink to the lowest common denominator. The combination of their superior intelligence couldn’t mitigate the urge to collect their own methane gas in glass pickle jars in futile efforts to accelerate fires. Even into their 30s, after the acquisition of law degrees with honor, finding women who would adore them and bore their children, our family gatherings would suffer many memorable holiday dinners at the mercy of our two brothers. On one Thanksgiving, my mother realized that the one dining room table at which we had all sat for dinners in our childhood, could not seat the blistering growth of our family. It was then that she made the unfortunate decision to bring a smaller, somewhat lower table and place it two feet away from the larger, more prominent table in the dining room. As the Thanksgiving dinner was being laid out on a buffet, she said, “Greg and Anthony,” take all of the grandchildren and go THAT table,” pointing to the now, baby table. It wasn’t long before my brothers engaged the grandchildren in “We’re Indians, They’re Pilgrims.” I don’t remember who started it, but immediately after chocolate and pumpkin pie slices were placed in front of the ‘Indians,’ the food fight erupted. No one can recall if the walls got by with being washed down or had to be repainted, but it reminded me that the boys never left these men throughout their lives.
Long hair was the true harbinger of the decline of our family’s ability to laugh off such antics, however. The most searing memory was the night my brother, Anthony, returned home during his college years after sleeping off a hangover for days on the sofa of the Kappa Sig fraternity house. His all-expenses paid four-year college education, already endangered by a below-2.5 grade point, appeared to vanish. Earlier in the semester, he had been arrested for sticking his bare buttocks and spreading the cheeks out the window of a speeding automobile as his fraternity brother blasted the car of the Lafayette cops. And though my parents’ home was never the same after he rode one of our grandfather’s horses into the front door of our sun porch, my Dad drew the line in the sand when Anthony’s hair met his eyebrows. As my brother slunk through the glass sliding door of our kitchen, post-hangover, my Dad barked, “Get a haircut or you’ll never sleep in this house again!” By this time, my brother’s fraternity and girlfriend had anointed him with the name, “Tony.” Tony shot back, “I don’t have to do what you say anymore.” This was not the response my Dad was holding his breath for. Tony never saw the shove he got from my Dad coming, hurling him against the sliding glass door. Years of anger and disappointment washed over both of their faces. Both recognized it was time for my brother to leave home, his way. Dad wanted a haircut and respect for his values. Neat hair was proof of reverence and spoke to him of this. A trim top means a soldier is ready for battle. His boots are shined, his rifle is prepared to shoot, and his soul is clean enough to meet God. The Army can trust him to go onto foreign soil, remember who his enemy is, work hard to stay alive, and keep harm away from those back home. Long hair drags all virtue down with it. To my brother, long hair meant freedom from the cookie-cutter expectations of a father's unrealized dreams for himself.
My brother subsequently did lose his scholarship, flunked out of school, and allowed the military to draft him into the Vietnam War. He became a code breaker in an Intelligence Unit in Korea. He smoked pot, but found an opportunity to break the latch on Dad’s tight, shut heart. Tony was decorated for being a model soldier. He was honorably discharged and put himself through LSU law school and into a successful litigation career in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The severe photograph of Tony with lowered ears, his pink scalp peeking beneath his Army cap still hangs on the ‘honor wall’ of my family’s home. I suspect it’s one of Papo’s most prized possessions. It may even rank above the hand-built barbeque pit, his Cajun microwave, the seasoned gumbo pot, tall peach trees, carefully-tended blackberry bushes, and maybe even the riding lawnmower (a seat for his own soul-searching, though I doubt he calls it this). It takes a powerful life to erase the memory of Hippie hair. But, the little rascal did it.
