The Hippie Handbook
by
Chelsea Cain
Illustrations by
Lia Miternique
for Marc Mohan and every kid named “Sunshine”
Contents
Dedication
Introduction
How to Wear Your Hair Like a Hippie
How to Dress Like a Hippie
How to Tell Time Like a Hippie
How to Anthropomorphize Inanimate Objects
Hot to Pick Up a Hippie
How to Name Your Hippie Baby
How to Macramé
How to Care for a Fern
How to Tie-Dye a T-Shirt
How to Make a Skirt Out of a Pair of Old Jeans
How to Grow an Avocado Sprout from a Seed in a Jar
How to Make an Origami Crane
How to Amble
How to Hitchhike
How to Drive Like a Hippie
How to Change the Oil in Your VW Bus
How to Take Care of Birkenstocks
How to Teach a Dog to Catch a Frisbee
How to Make Sand Candles as Holiday Gifts
How to Draw Psychedelic Letters
How And When to Flash a Peace Sign
How to Meditate
How to Howl at the Moon
How to Choose a Mantra
How to do a Sun Salutation
How to Find Spiritual Enlightenment
How to Start a Commune
How to Build a Compost Pile
How to Milk a Goat
How to Dance Like a Hippie
How to Celebrate May Day Like a Hippie
How to Make a Dandelion Crown
How to Celebrate Your Birthday Like a Hippie
How to Make a Vegan Chocolate Birthday Cake (Serves 8)
Stuff to do Around a Campfire
How to Play “Kumbaya” on a Guitar
How to Cook Like a Hippie
How to Grow Tempeh in Your Bathtub
How to Decorate Your Home Like a Hippie
How to Dumpster Dive
How to Clean Your House Like a Hippie
How to Paint a Mural on the Side of Your House or Minibus
How to Pick a Suitable Hippie Job
How to Panhandle
How to Organize a Protest
How to Tree Sit
How to Smoke Bananas*
How to Recognize an Undercover Cop
How to Get a Copy of Your File from the FBI
How to Join the Peace Corps
Essential Hippie Movies
Essential Hippie Books
Hippie Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Illustrator
Copyright
Introduction
I spent my early childhood in a hippie commune in Iowa, and I guess one way or another I have been trying to get back ever since. As the child of hippies, I can say with the utmost confidence that there is no better counterculture in which to grow up. The craft projects alone would keep most kids stimulated for the better part of a decade. How many toddlers today know how to macramé a sweater for a goat?
We lived in an old, white farmhouse with several outbuildings that served as shelter for various dogs, horses, sheep, goats, and chickens, and who-ever couldn’t fit in the house. My dad had decided not to go fight in Vietnam, and so he and my mother were living “underground.” (For many years, in the later part of my childhood, I thought that when I was a baby we had all lived in subterranean tunnels.) They had spent some time traveling in Europe, become homesick, and returned to the States. As Midwesterners are by nature taciturn, Iowa seemed as good a place as any to hide out. They moved into the farmhouse and pretty soon friends started to drop by. Months passed. The friends never left.
There wasn’t a lot of money. We ate what we grew in the garden and served millet casserole because it was cheap and fed plenty. For years we didn’t have a telephone, or a TV, or flushing toilets. But we played music on the porch for fun and I got to wear whatever I wanted and run free in the cornfields and help the adults plan The Dream at night.
My parents were back-to-the-landers. My dad, in his eventual trial for draft resistance, stated his profession as “subsistence farmer.” My parents and their friends believed in living outside the war machine, off the grid, out of the box. We made candles and clothes and hanging plant holders, not because these things weren’t available elsewhere but because not buying stuff was a radical act of social resistance.
This do-it-yourself approach was a defining aspect of the hippie trip. Between 1965 and 1975, hippies figured out how to do a lot of stuff. This book is a collection of some of it. These are not just timeless skills; they are the tools of a movement, as useful today as they were pre-Watergate. How many neo-hippies have gone to a Phish show only to embarrass themselves with their poorly executed tie-dyed apparel? How many young-hippies-turned-old-hippies no longer remember the nuances of composting?
Suffice it to say, this is the book I wish I had had growing up. Being a hippie is not easy, and comprehensive resource guides are few. The movement has changed. Yet hippies have persevered, and the skill set has remained remarkably consistent. Maybe if more of us had access to the movement’s means, we might better protect its ethos. (I imagine a world in which all people have the ability to make sand candles.) In any case, I hope that this small guide will promote understanding, as well as an increase in May Day parties. After all, hippies are the dolphins of our species: playful, resilient, social, fetishized by some, dismissed by others. They represent all that is optimistic and outrageous and youthful in each of us. Plus, they have the best hair.
CHELSEA CAIN PORTLAND, OREGON
If you are a hippie, I hope that you find this book handy. If you are not a hippie, beware. Once you know the joy of a good barefoot amble, it’s a short road to selling homemade beads off a batik blanket in Berkeley.
See you there.
How to Wear Your Hair Like a Hippie
THE BASICS
Shampoo as rarely as possible.
Cut your hair as rarely as possible.
If you have to cut your hair, cut it yourself or have someone—preferably a roommate or hitchhiker—cut it for you.
Braiding is OK.
NEVER shave legs or underarms.
HAIR ACCESSORIES
Kerchiefs (especially rolled and tied around forehead)
Native American braid ties
Tooled leather barrettes
Beads
Rubber bands
Roach clips
NEVER bikini wax.
From left to right:
Roach Clip
Barette
RECIPE FOR NATURAL BLOND HIGHLIGHTS
Squeeze fresh lemon juice into a bowl. (One nice-size lemon should do it.)
Add one teaspoon of salt and stir.
Work into hair.
Expose hair to midday sun for at least two hours. (Attend outdoor Phish concert, Rainbow Gathering, or other peaceful event.)
Rinse and air dry.
RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS
Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Pure-Castile Soap (also good for shaving, shampooing, massage, teeth cleaning, and bathing)
Eucalyptus oil (A small amount rubbed into the scalp has an invigorating, aromatherapeutic effect. Too much will make hair look oily—which, of course, may be the look you’re going for)
Observing a trend in folk circles involving barrettes with long strips of leather and feathers dangling from them, I wandered at age eight into a small, sweet-smelling store in Key West, Florida, to purchase a similar contraption. Mine was even better. The leather strips and feathers were not sim
ply attached to a barrette but could instead be affixed to any sort of barrette with a handy silver clamp. Later I would learn that I had purchased a roach clip, but by then I had already worn it in my hair for most of third grade.
From left to right:
John Lennon
Cat Stevens
Jimi Hendrix/Art Garfunkel
From left to right:
My Dad
Bob Marley
Facial Hair Archetypes: Male. From left to right:
My Dad
Bob Marley
Facial Hair Archetypes: Female. From left to right:
Joan Baez
Bob Marley
Anything goes.
POSSIBILITIES
Go naked (but wear sunscreen).
Wear a costume:
Jesus. Biblical chic is easy and always in style: tunic, robe or caftan, sandals.
Oh, pioneer! Think Little House on the Prairie: Long skirts and bonnets for women; breeches, work boots, and suspenders for men. This is the back-to-the-land gold standard. You should look like you have just raised a barn and are ready for a hootenanny.
From left to right:
Jesus
Oh, Pioneer!
Rock-star bohemian. Marianne Faithfull. Recently deposed Eastern European princess. Anything trimmed with alpaca. Tons of bracelets. Long-sleeved leotards.
Counterculture casual. Old blue jeans, preferably torn and/or patched. East Indian–style shirts or skirts that you have made yourself from a pattern of your own creation. Leather vest and bare skin. Bare feet or, possibly, clogs.
From left to right:
Rock-star Bohemian
Counterculture Casual
Mix-and-match. Edwardian top hats, boas, thrift-store evening gowns. Mix patterns, colors, fabrics, and eras.
Mix-and-Match
At any given time I had more than a dozen leotards (which is a lot of any one thing for a hippie to have), in every color you can imagine. I spent a lot of time as a kid trying to figure out how to pee without taking off my leotard. I had heard women talking about this. I knew it could be done. Some had snaps in the crotch, which made peeing easier, but most did not. Peeing while wearing the snapless kind required pulling the leotard crotch to the side with one hand in order to avoid getting it wet. I was in my mid-twenties before I mastered the art of urinating fully clothed.
CLASSIC ITEMS FOR EVERY HIPPIE’S WARDROBE
For men
Arizona Birkenstocks
Old blue jeans with an American flag patch or peace dove on rear pocket
Work shirt
Surplus Navy pants
Any item of clothing that fastens with leather laces
For women
Calfskin lace-up boots with fringe (regrettably dubbed “squaw boots”)
Moroccan caftan in basic blue
Leotard (long-sleeved, black), worn braless
Ankle-length East Indian skirt
Fringed, embroidered shawl
Hippie accessories
Face paint (rainbows, unicorns, etc.)
Armpit/leg hair
Silver bracelets (at least a hundred, worn all at once)
Mexican jewelry of any kind
Indian jewelry of any kind
Native American jewelry of any kind
Favorite gems (amber, turquoise, or cat’s eye)
Anklets that jingle
Hats (floppy, vintage, wizard hats, Cat-in-the-Hat hats)
Granny glasses
Statement buttons (“Take a Hippie to Lunch,” “Immoral Minority,” “Impeach Nixon,” “Ban the Bomb,” or “Ban the Bra”)
Leather belts
Purses (ethnic woven, hemp, or hand-tooled leather)
Anything beaded
No watch
How to Tell Time Like a Hippie
Look at the position of the sun.
When the sun is directly overhead it is noon. That means that if the sun is somewhere between the eastern horizon and directly overhead, it is sometime between sunrise and noon.
If the sun is somewhere between directly overhead and the western horizon, it is sometime between noon and sunset.
If you can determine the exact time of sunrise and sunset (through your local newspaper), you will be able to more accurately gauge the time as indicated by the position of the sun.
On overcast days, ask everyone you pass what time it is.
Don’t worry about the time—it’s the day of the week that’s important.
Don’t worry about the day of the week—it’s the month that’s important.
Hippies enjoy a casual relationship with time. Most hippies do not like to wear watches, since watches imply that one has to be somewhere or do something at a particular time, and this goes against hippie mores. This can present a problem for children, who occasionally require being picked up from, or delivered to, some sort of organized activity. My mother and I once went three days before we realized that daylight savings time had kicked in. I have compensated for the lack of time consciousness in my upbringing by developing a neurotic impulse toward punctuality. When I arrive for an appointment (dinner at your house, for example), I am not on time—I am thirty minutes early. Even if it means sitting in the car out front for a half hour before I come to your door.
Between Sunrise and Noon:
Noon:
Between Noon and Sunset:
How to Anthropomorphize Inanimate Objects
Perhaps it is the hippie’s spiritual nature that leads him or her to enthusiastically imagine that all inanimate objects have feelings. Is it hard to believe that a bulletin board can have a soul? If you are a hippie, the answer is no.
ANTHROPOMORPHIZING TIPS
Name the inanimate object—a coffee mug, for example.
Talk to the coffee mug.
Consider the feelings of the coffee mug. How does it feel in its situation? (How would you feel in its place?) Is it rarely used? Does it have a chip?
Does it long to be around other coffee mugs? Is it jealous of the teacups?
Take action to make the coffee mug happy.
From left to right:
“Doug”
“Hank”
When I was a kid, I named everything around me: my bed, all my necklaces, the Doug firs by the bus stop, the Holly bush in our side yard. I once had a deflated bicycle tire that I had found on the road in Key West, and I cared for it all summer. His name was Hank. Although I have mostly weaned myself of this habit as an adult, my boyfriend and I had a window we called William until quite recently. William was replaced by a prettier window and taken away on a neighborhood clean-up day. It was very sad.
Hot to Pick Up a Hippie
WHERE TO MEET A HIPPIE
Phish concerts
Rainbow Gatherings
Dog parks
Head shops
Pottery fairs
Kite stores
Vegetarian cafés
Hemp rallies
Burning Man
Cooperative natural food stores
College campuses
Fair-trade craft stores
Protests
Banjo lessons
Belly-dancing classes
Renaissance fairs
Reggae festivals
ICEBREAKERS
“You look just like Ali McGraw!”
“Want to sign my petition?”
“Can I offer you a non-GMO, organic meatless patty?”
“I’d like to make you an outfit.”
“Didn’t we meet at the psychedelic symposium?”
How to Name Your Hippie Baby
Wait until you’re introduced.
Think noun: August Autumn Bear Rainbow River Summer Trout Tuesday Winter
Think weather: Breeze Hail Rain Storm Sun Sunny Sunshine Wind
Think horticulture: Basil Begonia Blossom Clover Daisy Earth Fern Flower Heather Iris Jasmine Lavender Leaf Magnolia Marigold Meadow Moss Petal Ro
se Saffron Sage Seed Sunflower Thyme Violet Willow
Think fantasy: Avalon Bilbo Dragon Frodo Galadriel Grimm Merlin Morgan Pegasus Puck Ranger Rogue Tolkien
Think place: Asia Carmel Chelsea China Dakota Desert Fillmore Georgia India Ocean Tibet Zion
Think Carlos Castaneda: Aurora Bud Cassiopia Cloud Cosmic Eclipse Haley Leary Light Rainbow Sky Skye Skylar Skyler Soul Spirit Star Starbright Stardust Starlight Starr Starshine
Change C to K: Amerika Elektra Krystal
When in doubt give your baby the last name of someone who played in the Monterey Pop Festival (e.g., Crosby, Hendrix, Joplin, Redding, or Shankar).
My parents waited until I was six weeks old to name me. They were actually waiting until I “named myself,” and it seems I must have taken a while to decide. My grandmother, who was finding it difficult to explain to her friends that her granddaughter did not yet have a name, kept asking my parents how long they were going to let this go on. “How can we name her?” my father asked.
“We don’t even know her.” Finally, one day my mother was nursing me while listening to Judy Collins sing “Chelsea Morning” and I gurgled. They called me Chelsea Snow: “Chelsea” because I liked the song, and “Snow” because I was born during a blizzard.
OTHER POSSIBILITIES
A
Alice
Allegra
Alma
Amethyst
Andromeda
Angel