A few years ago, while giving my East Coast friend Carol the nickle tour, we zoomed along a country road and slowed to a crawl at the sight of a quarter-mile lineup of old VW buses painted a rainbow of colors and interspersed with battered Volvo station wagons, converted school buses and the odd vintage Ford Econoline. We were just west of Eugene, where it is said aging hippies go for the last tie dye roundup.
"What in the world?" we asked. This was no place for a Grateful Dead tour stop, yet it was obviously a major gathering of the hippie-dippie tribe of yore.
Carol and I go way back. No, make that way way back, like to college in the mid-'60s. We saw Jimi Hendrix in concert and wore bell bottom pants. On weekends we'd hike into the East Village in New York to haunt poster shops and bead stores. We burned our quota of sandalwood incense and dipped moderately into forbidden substances. We were children of our time who've moved on, trailing some of the culture from those days, but by in large leaving it behind. As lesbians, we had to leave it behind because the concept of free love meant het love. Gay liberation was not the legal heir, just the love child of the make-love-not-war generation.
The sight of our long-lost half-sisters and -brothers on colorful wheels was astounding enough to draw me this year to join the lineup at the Oregon Country Fair, the annual vacation destination of thousands of past, current and wannabe members of the counter culture. I was looking for memories of the sights, sounds, smells and feel of those crazy younger days when I was too busy living to notice I was experiencing a cultural phenomenon. I'd expected a blast from the past, but when I arrived it was clear that even the hookah crowd has come a long way, baby.
We were greeted by scores of Parking Fairies, long-haired women and men in bright yellow shirts. To a fairy, they were well-coached in love-in-ese, wishing us a good experience. As Lover said later, they were the highlight of the day.
Which is all too accurate. I'd heard of '60s radicals turning into capitalists, but here were rows and rows of mellow men and maids hawking expensive handmade clothing, leather belts and bags, drums, wind chimes, healing remedies, furniture and kitchen kitsch-- kind of the flower child's Souvenir Shop. Restaurants and snack stands were set in wooded glens. Weathered fences gave the site the cohesive geography of a planned community ( the Fair owns the land ) and fanciful names gave wanderers direction. But to where?
We inched along the dusty pathways with pierced young men draped over their girlfriends and pot-bellied longhairs puffing unmusically into trendy Aborigine didjeridus ( a hollowed piece of bamboo 4-5 feet long ) , throngs of young women bare-breasted but for body paint, a few people in wheelchairs, middle-aged women with long white braids and more young males dominating every impromptu drumming circle. Perhaps a score of scattered, dazed-looking dykes in harem pants and little else floated in the crowd. I suppose I was the only one there in a button-down shirt.
At one point we lighted at a stage to listen to an a cappella group from San Francisco called "The Bobs," which by all rights should have been gay male. The woman wasn't and if the men were, their closet consisted of singing bawdy het lyrics to a cheering crowd. As Lover said, this was a woman's music festival-- only het and with men and meat.
Many people, lesbians included, return to the Fair year after year for the drumming, the entertainment ( we missed the African women's dance troupe ) , the crafts and, I assume, the almost-anything-goes camaraderie with like-minded people. For hours we walked on these incense-scented streets of dreams with non-gay people who are hearteningly still trying to break out of the puritanical mores of America.
There are major religions that espouse love, inclusion and healing that succeed wholly at none of these after centuries, so I have hope this relatively fledgling movement of good intentions will yet spread beyond the Country Fairs of the world. Until then, the season of love has not ended, but can be found, one weekend a year, on a bit of acreage not far out of town.
Copyright Lee Lynch 2001