~
Almost 50 years ago in 1972, when I first got my Beemer (links below), as a present to celebrate the purchase of my new bike, a friend gave me this special pipe that had been made at the height of the hippie movement in the late sixties; it was well used when I got it. It is made of some kind of horn, maybe a goat's horn, 8 inches long and beautifully bound in strips of well-worn leather.
The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into Greenwich Village in New York City, the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, and the Old Town community in Chicago. The origins of the terms hip and hep are uncertain. By the 1940s, both had become part of African American jive slang and meant "sophisticated; currently fashionable; fully up-to-date". The Beats adopted the term hip, and early hippies inherited the language and countercultural values of the Beat Generation in the 1950's (a wonderful time to have experienced). Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic music, embraced the sexual revolution, and many used drugs such as marijuana and LSD to explore altered states of consciousness.
In 1967, on the West Coast of the United States, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park and the Summer of Love in San Francisco . . .
. . . and the Monterey Pop Festival
popularized hippie culture, leading to the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast (link below).
I enjoyed many happy hours of smoking my pipe while tripping to the music of Led Zeppelin, Captain Beyond, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Can, The Beatles, The Stones, Black Sabbath and on and on.
Of course, I would not only just trip but dance and gyrate madly in my studio at times to the fantastic dance song by the B.T. Express from their Non-Stop album, Peace Pipe; somehow the song and the pipe went together perfectly.
Peace Pipe was a BIG hit in the dance clubs in the mid-seventies; not only here, but all over the world, even in Japan.
45 rpm record
Japanese issue
At a later point, someone gave me a bull
scrotum that had been tanned and formed into a hard, circular container
which I used as my stash box.
Both the pipe and the tanned, bull testicle, stash box made a very handsome set and I was
ready for anything.
After
almost fifty years or so of having the enjoyment of my pipe, it is time to
pass it on to a younger generation with good wishes, great love and grand health.
Wikipedia ~ Testicles as food
B. T. Express ~ Peace Pipe
B. T. Express ~ Peace Pipe (live)
PBS ~ Summer of Love | American Experience Scott McKenzie ~ San Francisco
Dedicated to Rick on his birthday!
Styrous® ~ Saturday, May 29, 2021
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