‘Hippies' recall life back in the '60s

MERCEDES – Joe Nettuno remembers planning a trip to the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.

He and some fellow motorcyclists wanted to hit the road and go see what later became a legend. But there was one problem: Someone would have to stay and watch the motorcycles.

Nobody volunteered, so Nettuno, now 62, said he and his friends went to Florida to another concert at the Winter’s End Pop Festival.

Nettuno was recounting these memories Friday at the Hippie Party Dance at Encore’s Paradise South RV Resort, 9099 N. Mile 2 West Road. Residents were decked out in tie-dye T-shirts, headbands, flowers in their hair, and peace signs on their bell bottoms as they danced to the music of James Marvell and Faye, a husband and wife traveling duo that performs music from the 1960s.

The duo performed some memorable hits including "Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees," "Cherish," "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "American Woman."

Marvell also hailed from the peace movement of the 1960s. Back then he was part of the music group Mercy, and in 1969 the group’s song "Love Can Make You Happy" shared Billboard’s Top 10 with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles.

While Marvell, who was dressed in the same colorful shirt he wore in the 1960s, was part of the peace movement, he never got into the drugs.

"That era was supposed to be peace and love. The drugs destroyed it," said Marvell, whose thick dark hair descended from his headband down to his shoulders. He spoke out at the time against the whole drug craze, which didn’t make him very popular with the crowd at that time. Soon after, he went into country music.

Nettuno was dressed in bell-bottoms with yellow and red inserts, and a red, white and blue headband with strings of beads trailing down to his shoulders, much like the way he dressed back then. He did smoke a lot of marijuana in the 1960s, drank a lot of cheap Boone’s Farm wine, and used mescaline. However, a class in organic chemistry steered him away from using LSD.

"Mescaline leaves your body, LSD stays in your brain," said the 62-year-old Nettuno, who retired six years ago from his career as a semiconductor engineer with IBM and Phillips. He has a pension from Phillips, and he and his wife have spent the past five years traveling the country in their motor home, spending their winters in the Valley.

He said he stopped using marijuana when the price rose above $20 an ounce.

"Now it’s so much stronger than what they had back then," he said. "We didn’t have stuff that was laced with all this stuff."

Nettuno was on Long Island, N.Y., when the phrase "Hell No, We Won’t Go!" erupted in protest against the Vietnam War, which he strongly opposed but not violently.

He said there was some grumbling in the park Saturday that he and other peace activists of that era were opposed to American soldiers.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," he insisted. "We didn’t like that Americans were being killed for something we didn’t believe in. I am still opposed to most of the wars we’ve had since then. I feel it’s a terrible waste of American youth."

Although he still considers himself liberal, his views have mellowed over the years.

Back, he was in school and had few possessions. He hitched rides to school until he found out the hard way that people wouldn’t pick him up when it was raining. He bought a car.

"You grow up, you see reality," he said. "There used to be an old saying that if you are not a Communist when you’re young, you have no heart, if you are not a capitalist when you get old, you have no brain. I still tend to be on the liberal side. I don’t put a big priority on possessions. It’s not really that important to me. I still cringe when I watch Fox News."

He’s still rather disenchanted with politics, even the current state of affairs, and when IBM "dumped" him after 23 years of employment he became distrustful of corporations.

Vicki McGrath, 57, was a teenager attending Routt Catholic High School in Jacksonville, Ill., from 1968–1972.

"We would go backstage and smoke dope during lunch," McGrath said. "The marijuana cigarettes would be in a hard pack."

As she and her friends grew older, still in high school, they became more resistant to the political establishment. She wore the bell-bottoms and headbands and was definitely part of the hippie movement.

"We were all resistant because Vietnam was going on there," she said. "We refused to do anything. ‘Well, we are going to the Vietnam War. All these guys are going off to war and die.’ We were at the tail end of the war protests.’"

She hasn’t smoked marijuana since college. She still considers herself on the liberal end of the spectrum. On this particular evening, she wore a single set of beads for jewelry.

Mary Lou Coutts and her friend Marilyn Ballard were married and raising children by the time the peace movement began. On Friday, however, they were very much in the spirit of the evening. They went shopping at some local thrift shops and purchased some colorful garb for the party. They wore headbands and flowers in their hair.

Ballard, 67, had a yellow top with the word "Woodstock" on the inside of the neck. She already owned that but didn’t remember where she got it.