Italian Ice and Hippies

Just me and Kate today after work because Jack is on his school trip to Washington DC. We went to Chillie Willie's for italian ices and sat on a bench together watching the traffic on Laurel Road. I had the Almond Joy cream ice, while Ms. Kate went for Cookie Dough. Kate asked me what the building directly across the street from us was. Told her it looked like an office, and then realized the building was once the mysterious "Hippie Place" we used to pass by on our way home from school around 1968. The door would be open sometimes and you could peek in and see hippies sitting around on cushions on the floor underneath a black light. There were posters that glowed in the dark and the place smelled of incense. And probably pot. Hard to tell at 8 years old. Now it's just an anonymous office space, and Kate won't be walking by it unaccompanied for quite some time. Children below the age of 13, in 2006, don't go anywhere alone. I stand somewhere in the middle on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I remember for a while finding pornographic cards sprinkled around the path we would take home from elementary school as a kid, and not one of us told our parents about it. Maybe the world is as dangerous as it's always been, and we've just gotten smarter about protecting our children. Gotta get some sleep before returning to "the dark place" to quote someone I used to know. Below is a poem by Richard Brautigan, an excellent hippie poet and writer. Read Trout Fishing in America! Night all.

At the California Institute of Technology


I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.

Richard Brautigan