It's Spring and the Hippies Are On the Move....

When I first met my hubbie, he was in flight school for the military. Not what you would think of, especially from looking at him, as a hippie type. But while we were dating, he told me that one of his fantasies was to put his possessions into a backpack and walk/travel/hitchhike around the country, Beatnik/Kerouac style. I was impressed, because one expects guys in his line of work to be ultra conservative, and the hippie beatnik lifestyle isn't exactly that. But since I've gotten to know him (over 13 years in May!) I know that he is even more deviant than most people might think. Why? Because he looks all normal, but his heart is the heart of a radical wack-o. Really. (Not in a way you'd expect-- totally a surprising way.)

I thought of this yesterday because, as I was driving back the 7.5 hours from Shreveport to San Antonio, there were at least four guys hitch-hiking on the side of the highway. All of them, from the quick glance I got (driving at 70 mph you don't have much time for leisurely inspection of walkers) they looked like the typical hitch-hikey guy-- if not long long hair and unshaven dishabille, they were scruffy in other ways. But lots of them! I know for a fact I haven't seen that many hitchers in recent days-- it's not exactly the preferred mode of travel nowadays-- too risky for both hitcher and potential person picking them up. So my conservative guy would definitely look different from those fellas.

Andrew likes to say "It's warm weather and the hippies are on the move...." when he sees one of the guys on the road. Not completely enviously, but a little. You never know within whom beats the heart of a libertarian, tree-hugging guy. Especially deviantly because some of his other opinions are so different from the typical so-called "liberal" ones.

But if you know anything about Kerouac, he was not exactly the same type of more liberal, more stereotypically "hippy-esque" guy in some ways as Ginsberg and his buddies-- Kerouac was a little more on the "football playing, lumberjack shirt wearing" type of working class guy. That's more like my boy. And I like him thataway.