Friday, January 11, 2019

The Flower Child Era

Friday, January 11, 2019

Today, I began to think of what might be called

The Flower Child Era

after reading this article...


...which brought this song to mind:



Below, find a passage from a book I began writing (give or take) a couple of decades ago -- and, actually, became inspired to write back in 1987 (over three decades ago) after reading a portion of a letter that had been included in my medical records when our family doctor, Warren C. Polhemus, retired and gave them to me.

For the record, Dr. Polhemus thought that the entire situation that had inspired the letter was ridiculous.

"...Dick was so sweet. He told me that he always enjoyed reading my HODGEPODGE column in the school newspaper--and that he had remembered me from way back on registration day.

That incident had slipped my mind, but I'd remembered it then.

This good-looking guy (some member of the faculty I'd assumed) had taken my registration portfolio--only to find an important part of it missing. I'd been unaware that there had been anything missing.

He had teased me a little bit about it--and then told me that I would need to go to the office of the academic dean to have the matter settled.

When I'd gone to the office of the academic dean, I thought he had a very strange response to my problem--told me that, if I were going to succeed at this college, I would have to learn to act like everyone else. He didn't even know me, so why did he have the impression that I was somehow at fault regarding this matter?

When I think about it now, I think that his first impression had been pre-colored by what had been passed along in my school records (the same item that had pre-colored the dean of women's impression of me). That--and the fact that I had come there dressed in sandals, an ankle-length peasant dress, and long hair parted in the middle (which was, probably, a sure sign to him that I was planning on turning our respectable Christian college into Haight-Asbury or Woodstock).

Dick told me years later that I looked like a flower child that day--and, in fact, that I looked and acted like a flower child (without the vices that a lot of the older generation associated with being a flower child, of course) most of the time.

He said that he often missed the way things were back then--so do I, Dick. So do I. Perhaps, not in all ways, but there was something really beautiful and hopeful about those years that I want today's generation to feel and experience!..."


This blog-entry will be added to through August 18, 2019, which is the 50th anniversary of the final day of the original Woodstock get-together.

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