Au Naturel

In Austin, TX, we have more aging hippies per capita than anywhere else in the world. In the late sixties and early seventies, women walked down the street bare-breasted, pot was an hors d'ouevre and people stopped using deodorant.

Thirty years later, their influence resonates in the Austin pschye, and there are still folks that believe in the old ways. They practice it almost like a religion that offers up smoke, body odor and nakedness to the gods.

We're one of the few municipalities in the country, by the way, to have a publicly owned nude beach, aptly named Hippie Hollow. (Well, its more of a pile of boulders on the side of a man-made lake than a beach, but "nude pile-of-boulders" just doesn't roll off the tongue.) I don't object to it being there, and the city's owning it has allowed it to remain as pristine as the side of a man-made lake can be.

Visiting it, though, makes one thing clear: modesty has its place. The only thing more unpleasant to look at than an old hippie in a thong is an old hippie without one.

(Also, it ain't just old hippies hanging out. A naked dirty old man is still just a dirty old man, regardless of what's hanging out. But that's another topic.)

Whether or not there is correlation between too much LSD use and a rip in the space-time continuum that keeps them living in a world that no longer exists, I do not know.

All I know is that their psyches are bleeding all over the place, and we need a pretty big mop to clean up the mess.

A lot of young kids get drawn here by the myth of hippie heaven without even considering the inherent inconsistencies. They eat organic food but don’t care where their drugs come from. What herbicide is lacing their pot or which solvent was used to cut their coke they never consider. And I won’t even go into the rest of the drug inventory.

They buy expensive organic cigarettes while living lives of paupers without considering that a naturally-occurring carcinogen is going to kill you as quickly as a man-made carcinogen. And, the cigarettes may be marketed by a Native-American company, but there ain’t too many reservations in this country that could ever grow tobacco.

Or corn, for that matter. (Remember that when Chickasaw Vodka comes on the market.)

I’m amazed by the folly of it all. Organic cigarettes, organic beer. Which part of organic vices makes sense.

This all begs the question, though, of what we call "natural". As my sister, the one-time chemistry grad-student points out, there really isn't any such thing as un-natural. Chemicals are natural. That many of them come from petroleum doesn't make then un-natural. Petroleum, after all, is a naturally occurring substance, the result of pressure and heat on decaying organic matter. God made cucumbers, but he also made oil.

That's not a real popular point of view in Austin, so I mostly keep it to myself. Wouldn't want to provoke the granola-Nazis.

I'd be willing to bet, though, that they all have their secret, chemical-laden vices, like my occassional craving for chili-cheese Doritos. They contain no redeeming value as food and very definitely were not organically grown. I can just imagine them putting on sunglasses, a ball cap and big floppy sweat shirt and stealing into a convenience store on the other side of town to conduct their illicit transaction: "1 box of Oreos, please. You guys don't have cameras in here, do you?"

I buy organic veggies when I can, but not because I’m worried about anything except quality.

I grew up eating fresh, locally-grown produce, and it’s the best you can get. I’m still floored by the way a good tomato tastes like the sun. Or a good cantaloupe makes the entire apartment smell good. I miss the corn my grandparents grew, fried up in a big old cast iron skillet. It tasted better than any I’ve ever had. Especially the white corn. I can’t find it anywhere, organic or not.

I also buy cigarettes that are marketed as being all-natural by an Indian tribe. But I buy them because they’re cheaper than anything else I can find that’ll fix that little nicotine itch. And I don’t see the point of spending any more that I have to on something that may kill me.

As for the herbicides in the pot or the solvents in the coke, I don’t worry. That’s someone else’s mistake to make.

Been there. Done that. Ain’t goin’ back.