The Hippie Handbook: How to Tie-Dye a T-Shirt, Flash a Peace Sign, and Other Essential Skills for the Carefree Life

By Chelsea Cain and Lia Miternique

A groovy guide to hippie culture from the New York Times–bestselling author.

Brothers and sisters! Here at last is a light-hearted, free-spirited, groovy guide to the timeless hippie skills and activities that make the world a better place, one macrame belt at a time. In illustrated, easy-to-follow instructions, author Chelsea Cain—who grew up on an Iowa hippie commune—provides practical and playful know-how for the hippie and hippie-at-heart. Learn how to milk a goat, build a compost pile, play “Kumbaya” on the guitar, teach a dog how to catch a Frisbee, and get your file from the FBI. Discover the finer points of caring for a fern, choosing a mantra, organizing a protest, naming your hippie baby, and making sand candles as holiday gifts. Including primers on cooking, dressing, driving, telling time, dancing, and celebrating your birthday in classic hippie style, and a righteous appendix of essential hippie books, movies, and slang, The Hippie Handbook knows the score. Right on.

“Run us cheerily through the basics of the hippie lifestyle and beyond.” —January Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452103563

Chelsea Cain

Chelsea Cain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell thrillers Heartsick, Sweetheart, Evil at Heart, The Night Season, Kill You Twice, and Let Me Go. Her Portland-based thrillers have been published in twenty-four languages, recommended on the Today show, appeared in episodes of HBO’s True Blood and ABC’s Castle, and included in NPR’s list of the top 100 thrillers ever written. According to Booklist, “Popular entertainment just doesn’t get much better than this.” Visit her online at ChelseaCain.com.

Book preview

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.

image 1

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 simply 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.

image 2

From left to right:

John Lennon

Cat Stevens

Jimi Hendrix/Art Garfunkel

image 3

From left to right:

My Dad

Bob