Perspectives
When Traveling Hippies Met Hard-Core Cowboys
Or, discovering that what you thought was going to happen…was wrong
In the summer of ’73, two long-haired hippie college grads piled into a Chevy van, along with two puppies and a bunch of camping gear. They took off on a cross-country trip, looking for America, and themselves. It was essentially a national pastime of the era.
Being hairy, scruffy, and mostly shirtless, they expected the heartland to give them trouble. The American culture war was underway: longhair “freaks” against the well-trimmed Establishment types.
They slept in National parks, campgrounds, and twice, under duress, in cheap motels. Here and there they had good experiences — the pretty girl pumping gas in South Dakota made them want to settle in the Black Hills and never leave.
Because there was a growing gas embargo, a guy at a station in Colorado was kind enough to call ahead and find out that there wasn’t any gas in Nebraska. Head for Wyoming, he said. Which they did.
Wyoming is a big, big state, and it was easy to get lost. They kept heading for the mountains in the distance and never reached them. It got to the point where they were on a lone, flat highway and worried about fuel.
Up ahead: the only building of any kind that they’d seen for about 100 miles.
It had a gas pump outside, but no attendant, and the large one-story building had smoky glass windows.
“We gotta go in,” said George.
“Okay,” said Loren. “Leave the pups in the car — it’s not too hot.”
They pulled open the doors.
This was a general store in the largest possible sense. At one end was a laundromat, next to a dry goods and grocery section. In the center were a couple of pool tables. On the immediate left and running the long length of wall was a bar. A bunch of close-cropped, rough looking cowboys, complete with dusty cowboy hats, sat drinking in midday. Some of them were wearing holstered guns.
The cowboys playing pool, the people doing their laundry, and the guys at the bar all stopped and stared at the hippies.
Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. You could hear the laundry machines churning.
George leaned over to Loren and whispered, “Easy Rider.” (If you don’t remember the movie, the two hippies on motorcycles get blown away by a guy with a rifle in the last frame.)
The proprietor was a tough, no-nonsense, middle-aged woman. While George and Loren were considering a run for their lives, she pressed up against the smoky bar glass and peered out at their van.
“HEY,” she shouted in her cigarette-roughened voice. She had looked at their license plate. “These boys are from NEW YORK!”
George says Loren grabbed his arm; Loren says George grabbed his arm.
But the cowboys at the bar gave out a WHOOP, some of them slapped their hats against their thighs, and came stomping over.
“Well goldam, how you boys doin’?” “What the hell’s goin’ on back East?” “You been on the road how many weeks now?” “What you driving? A van? How’s that buggy on gas?” “You guys want a drink?”
Talk about perspectives. These pure West, straight-shooting straight arrows were as warm and friendly as anyone the boys had met. They shared funny stories, laughed at their adventures, gave them precise directions, even offered to chip in and buy them some gas.
It said a lot about the American character nearly 50 years ago, when an outsider wasn’t viewed with suspicion or fear. There’s a quote attributed to William Butler Yeats —
There are no strangers here, Only friends who have not yet met.
— that seems apropos. By the time they hit the road again, everyone in that one-store town had expressed an abundance of humanity and easy affection. The cowboys never once mentioned the hippie lifestyle and appearance. The two east coast hippies dropped the thought that the cowboys were conservative, mainstream, gun-toting bigots.
Just people. Everyone was just good people. Even the puppies took a liking to the dudes in the big cowboy hats.
The entire trip took months, and some of their interactions were less generous, to be sure. But there was no violence in anyone’s heart, and no hatred worn on any sleeves. Perhaps perspectives were softer then, and more malleable; personal filters could still be changed by openness and kindness.
It’s a memory that George and Loren still hold dear and laugh about. It’s a story they continue to tell, though it sometimes plays more like a fantasy than the truth. But it happened just that way.
Want to see those puppies and read about a scary experience?
And Lee J. Bentch is a writer worth discovering: He has interesting takes on things we don’t usually think about.
