The Hippie Chick

  I don’t know what happened to The Hippie Chick.  I looked her up on The Great and Powerful Internet and found nothing.  Of course I was looking her up by the name that came to her in a dream, not her "real" name.  I reckon she doesn’t use that dream name any more.  The Internet Great and Powerful came up with nada.  And I never knew the name her mama called her.

  The first time I saw The Hippie Chick she had pulled in behind me at the gas station in Bisbee, Arizona.

  I was fueling up when she pulled up in her old VW bus.  She got out and looked around.

  Hippie Chick was festooned in a long skirt, a flowsy blouse, a homespun shawl and beret and no shoes.

  “You’re an Ecotopian aren’t you?” I said.

  “Ecotopian?” she asked.

  “Ecotopia,” I said, “One of the ‘Nine Nations of North America.’  Basically from San Francisco to Vancouver, Pacific on the west, Coastal Range on the east.  The name is from a book I read once.”

  “Oh,” she said smiling, “Yeah, I’m from Portland.”

  “Bicycles!” I said.  Portland is a very “bicycley” city.  Or so I’ve heard.

“You’ll find you’ll want shoes around here in The Southwest.  We have a thing called…”

  “Goatheads,” she piped up.  “Yeah, I know.  I’m just in a barefoot mood today.”

  As time went on I’d see The Hippie Chick around Bisbee.  Then one day she was at Muriel’s dance studio.  Muriel was who I hung around with in the 1990’s.

  “Her name is Jenny Crow,” said Muriel as we watched The Hippie Chick get back into her VW bus.  “The name came to her in a dream.  It was a dream of a talking crow who told her to leave Portland, go to Bisbee and find the love of her life, he’d be skateboarding.  And to honor the crow she took its name as her own.”

  Muriel turned and went back to doing some paperwork at her desk.

  I didn’t say a word.  I just watched The Hippie Chick drive away.

  Well Jenny Crow found her man, the town’s only skateboarder….who had no visible means of support…but that was the way of a lot of Bisbeeites.

  “Jenny Crow invited us to her wedding,” Muriel said one day when I came home from work.  “It’s supposed to be when that comet is closest to the Earth and Mars is in some house or some shit like that.  Her parents are coming along with some of their other friends.”

  So we went to Jenny & Skateboarder’s wedding (I never knew his name). It was held outdoors at night under the comet and Mars and other celestial bodies.  It was a true "Kumbaya" time, what with the forming of a circle, holding hands and chanting and stuff.

  Next thing I knew The Hippie Chick was hauling a baby around everywhere she went, many a time breastfeeding while she was in motion.

  I’m all for organic and natural stuff so I’m all for breastfeeding; most of my kids got their start that way.  Being exposed to this natural nutrition source for babies I’ve come to know there is etiquette about it:  moms are generally discreet, covering the kid and the breast with a blouse, jacket or blanket.  Some women’s tops even have little buttoned flaps for easy access.  I’ve seen moms breastfeeding at malls, parks, even a couple of churches in my time. 

  But as with all things, there are people who believe they have rights to do as they please.

  Jenny Crow was one of these people.

  One afternoon Muriel handed me a list and sent me on my way to the local supermarket.  I had been in the back of the house and didn’t know Jenny Crow had come to visit.  I walked into the living room and there she was, sitting on the sofa with her top totally off breastfeeding her kid.  She made no move to cover herself.  I quickly looked down at my list.

  “Milk, eggs,” I said, confirming with the wife.  “We need some bleach and Comet too.”

  “Mr. G!” exclaimed Jenny Crow.  Back then a lot of folks called me Mr. G.  “Mr. G!  You’re not buying bleach and Comet, they’re killing the environment.”

  Oh now she wants to have a conversation with her boobs showing, I thought to myself, me and the busty, bare-chested young woman in my living room.  By this time, The Hippie Chick had stopped breastfeeding and was sitting there with the contented kid in her lap, her bust fully exposed.

  I started to laugh.  I could not have a serious conversation under these circumstances.

  “It’s not funny, Mr. G.” said Jane.  “We Americans are killing the planet.  You should go to the co-op and get some Bon Ami, it doesn’t hurt the environment.  They also have a really good detergent that’s just as good as bleach.”

  And she still sat there.  The kid was smacking its lips and looking around at the room.

  “Well, okay,” I said, stifling further laughter.  I pondered admonishing her for not being more discreet but then I thought better of it.  I knew this would open up a whole new can of worms.  My moderate beliefs and ethics were hopelessly outnumbered in Bisbee, even in my home.  Muriel often spoke of the injustice of how men are allowed to walk around bare-chested while women aren’t.

  “I’m off to get some bleach and Comet,” I said as I walked out the door.  It was my way of telling Jenny Crow she hadn’t changed my mind.

  It’s generally understood there is a decorum to breastfeeding.  You no more flagrantly expose breasts in public than you would stop at the curbside in downtown “Anytown” to urinate or cut loose with a loud barrage of flatulence in a restaurant.  All are natural processes, but there is such a thing as manners.

  Some months later I was part of a group that took Jenny Crow and Skateboarder some groceries.  Jenny didn’t work and Skateboarder said he kept getting attacked by brown recluse spiders and had to quit work....and went back to skateboarding.  He showed me the bites one time.  They sure looked like cigarette burns to me.

  Jenny and Skateboarder had taken up residence in an old school bus.  Most of the seats had been taken out.

  We sat in the bus on a hot summer night, its itty-bitty air conditioner struggling to keep the inside cool.

  Hippie Chick was telling everyone about the amenities of her digs, including the self-composting toilet on board.

  “It’s not working as well as we’d like but we’re going to use the compost from it in our garden next spring,” said Jenny.

  I made a mental note to myself:  Accept no vegetables from the hippie couple next summer.

  “Oh,” said a friend putting groceries in the fridge, “It looks like you have a nice hamburger package here.”

  “Oh no,” said Jenny, laughing, “That’s Namaste’s placenta.”

  Namaste’ was the hippie couple’s newborn.  The placenta is…well, you don’t need me to explain that.

  “We’re going to cook it and have a family meal on her first birthday,” said Hippie Chick.  “We’ll be inviting all of our friends.”

  I made another mental note to myself:  Accept no dinner invitations from the hippie couple next year.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.  “Why not dig a hole, put that in it and plant a tree over it.  I’ve heard people do that too.”

  “Eating it creates a strong family bond,” said Jenny Crow.  “And a bond with our circle of friends.”

  I may yet write a book about my time in Bisbee.

  Folks may call it a work of fiction.

  It seems when I tell Bisbee stories to my eastern New Mexico friends they think I either make the stuff up, that I lived in a hippie commune or spent time in an open-air asylum.

   Let me tell you something…I CAN’T make this stuff up.