Labels #2 and #3 : Hippies and Yippies (1965-1979)

The Rebellious Years

Between the years 1965-1979, we started to grow up and there was a longing and unrest deep within us. We were angry that the world we believed in, our parents world, dissolved. We really had believed in the myth and were bitterly disappointed that the myth was just a story. We decided to create a world of our own, with our own rules. In our world, everyone would get along; blacks and whites would mesh together as naturally as day and night. We would all hold hands, grow flowers and fruit, quit eating meat, and start smoking pot. The terrible war that our parents created was not part of our world. We would refuse to go to war and spit on those who did. The images of war on our TV made us even surer that we were right. We watched every night as our friends, brothers, and relatives were shot down in front of us. We heard stories that children and women had bombs. No one could be trusted. We listened to shell shocked soldiers explain how men would disappear underneath the ground and reappear several yards later with no skin. We learned we couldn’t trust our President and lost faith in the government as we listened to tales about Watergate from a mysterious informant named Deep Throat, so we were no longer babies. We became hippies and Yippies. We listened to Jimmy Hendrix and Janice Joplin. We watched “MASH” and “Saturday Night Live.” We declared we loved people, not things, not money like our narrow minded parents. We wore bell bottoms and purple beads. Our hair was long, our music loud, our voices defiant. We burned our incense and our bras. Our parents shook their heads and wondered what they had created.