Damn Hippie Vans George R. Frost   © Copyright 2026 by George R. Frost

Image by gweno333 from Pixabay

You never know when you will collide head-on into history. You may even end up in a chapter as a minor character in a major even. That’s what happened to us when dad decided he wanted to go on a nice peaceful Sunday ride on a hot muggy August afternoon. Little did any of us suspect we would find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of major historical event.

At the time I was getting ready to start the eighth grade at St. Matthews, parochial school. The school was run by the Franciscan nuns. They wore the traditional habits that made them resembled penguins. Their ensemble included a black dress to their ankles and a white head that completely concealed everything except for their faces. At first glance, they did appeared to be penguins which is what we all called them behind their backs. Rumor quickly spread that the nuns all shaved their heads since we never saw any hair on their heads, because of the head covering. I would be glad to move on to high school after the school year was over. St. Matthews was not a fun place. But once again, I am off topic which is an occupational hazard for a writer.

After several days of rain, the sky finally cleared and even though it was muggy and stagnate seeing the sun finally break through motivated my father to declare he wanted to go on a drive into the country.

“I think we should go on a drive into the country to look at lakes.” He said enthusiastically to mom.

“Oh George, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Stephen has some kind of bug and isn’t feeling well.” She shook her head.

“We’ve had several days of rain. Look, the sun is out.” He pointed to the window.

“But it’s still muggy. I don’t know.” She looked out the picture window into the lake the rain had left in our back yard.

“It’ll do everyone good to get out of the house for an afternoon.” Dad pressed.

“Oh, alright.” She finally gave into the pressure.

My father loved to go on drives through the countryside of New York State to look at lakes. If you know anything about upstate New York, you know that it has more lakes than just about any other state except perhaps Minnesota. Old native stories say that the Finger Lakes was where the Great Spirit once left his hand print which create them, but he must’ve had eleven fingers since they include Canadice, Canandaigua, Cayuga, Conesus, Hemlock, Honeoye, Keuka, Otisco, Owasco, Seneca, and Skaneateles (pronounced Skinny Atlas). As it turned my father’s love of lakes had been passed down to me. So, on that August morning in 1969, dad announced that we would go on a Saturday drive to Dryden Lake which was located on the border of Onondaga and Cortland Counties.

Close to where dad grew up, Dryden Lake was six miles long and about four miles across with an island in the middle. During his two-week summer vacation two years ago, he rented a cabin and took us to there to get away from it all. The cabin he rented had a row boat. I would spend most of my time on our vacation in the row boat pretending I was Tom Sawyer. Free to travel to the island, I would explore or sit on the shore of the island with my sketch pad doing some landscape drawings.

Mom and dad would lounge in the Adirondack chairs under oak trees near the cabin’s shore drinking cold drinks from our while my brother Stephen would sit at the end of the dock with fishing pole and a wormless hook since he did not like handling the slimy worms. Tom would play near the shore building sand castles. Life was good here.

As it turned out, New York had a rich history. It seemed history was just about everywhere you looked. After all, New York was one of the thirteen colonies. In class we learned that nearly three quarters of the battles of the American Revolutionary War were fought in New York. The Battle of Saratoga, considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War, took place not far my home. We lived near Onondaga Lake which at one time was one of the most polluted lakes in the country.

On the eastern shore was a cool French fort built over two centuries before. We had visited thee on occasion and I got to climb the ladder up to the battlements.

The Iroquois Confederacy was once one of the most powerful native alliances that included the Mohawk, Onieda, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora tribes.

During the 1820s, immigrant Irish labored to dig the Erie Canal which connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River that runs all the way to New York City which became one of the most prosperous commerce centers in the world.

The Seneca Falls Convention, held on July 19-20, 1848, New York, marked the beginning of the women's rights movement in the United States, featuring the Declaration of Sentiments that called for equal rights for women.

Tracks of the Underground Railroad ran right through New York on its way to Canada.

During this time, Richard Nixon was in the White House. We were knee deep in the protests over the war in Vietnam. The war had gone on for almost ten years and things weren’t getting any better.

Hippies or damn Hippies as dad called them, were protesting our involvement in the war all across the country on college campuses. Hippie types were growing their hair long, wearing little or no clothing, never bothered with personal hygiene flashing the two-finger peace sign and speaking in very hip English. From my perspective, Hippies were just part of the American landscape. Most of them seemed pretty friendly and gregarious, but guys my dad’s age felt they were lazy and good-for-nothing. Many of them had moved to communes or up north to Canada to avoid being drafted.

The more prevalent they became, the more dad held nothing but contempt for these lazy no-good draft-dodgers. Little by little, Hippies were infiltrating the homefront. Some of my classmates were growing their hair longer and told everyone to turn-on and drop-out. Some of the older students were talking about hiking to Canada when they turned eighteen to avoid registering for the draft. My father told me if I had to run off to Canada, not to bother coming back home.

So on that muggy August afternoon dad decided to go for a drive to Dryden Lake. To get there we would have to take the New York State Thruway. The trip would take about an hour. We knew the routine. On the way we would stop at some of the farm stands selling vegetable and fruit. New York apples are the best as far as I was concerned. If mom bought a bushel basket, I would grab one off the top and eat it as we rode on the rural roads to the lake.

Even though we had to pay to use the Thruway, it was considered a convenient super highway at the time. Built when Governor Nelson Rockefeller was in office, this super highway was worth the toll according to dad. The money collected would be used for the upkeep of this super highways. Governor Rockefeller promised to terminate the toll on the Thruway once enough money had been raised to maintain the super highway, but the governor never quite got around to terminating the toll. To this day, the Thruway is still collecting tolls.

The nearest entrance was two miles from our driveway; it was easily accessed from our house. With my two younger brothers sitting in the backseat with mom, we rode down Kirkville Road passing the Carrier Plant. Once we passed the huge Carrier complex we would drive onto the Carrier Circle where the toll booth was located.

But when we got to the circle, dad came unexpectedly to a complete stop. Traffic around the circle was at an absolute standstill. The shocked expression on his face told the whole story. As the heat and humidity of a late summer day made the situation even more uncomfortable, dad was astounded at the traffic snarl.

“George, what is going on?” Mom asked as Steve and Tom began to get fidgety in the heat and humidity. Stephen easily got car sick even though mom had given him some Dramamine before leaving.

“I don’t know.” His face was already turning red, “It’s just a traffic jam.”

“On a Sunday?” Mom shook her head as she waved a magazine to keep the boys cool. It was not working. “There is usually no traffic. Not a single car.”

The entrance to the Thruway east was completely jammed with multi colored Volkswagen vans with stickers of flowers and peace signs. Behind the wheel were long haired and heavily bearded Hippies. Some of the vans were being driven by women who did not wear bras. I craned my neck to get a good look since I had never seen a braless woman. One of the women drivers noticed me trying to get a sneak peek, so she took off her bikini top and held it out the window like a pendant. I nearly left the vehicle as I tried to get a better look.

Smoke billowed out of the open window of some of the vans. At first I thought the vans were on fire, but when I caught a whiff of the smoke, I knew what type of exhaust was being left behind.

“Damn Hippie vans!” He exclaimed as he slammed his hands on the steering wheel and repeated even louder, “Damn Hippie vans!”

“George!” Carole, my mother, chastised him for the harsh word he had used with my two younger brothers sitting next to her in the car. What also concerned her was that some of the Hippies driving these colorful vans with their windows wide open had heard him. I figured most of them were too numb to take issue with my father’s rants against them.

“Look at all this, hon. What are all these vans doing here?” He was confused as well as angry, “What the hell is going on?”

Two swear words meant he was really boiling mad. The only time I heard him use a sentence with multiple curse words in it was when he took me golfing. As the traffic jam got even worse, if my count was accurate, he surpassed his golf score for curse words.

I, on the other hand, was fascinated looking at all the damn Hippie vans. Hippies, to someone my age living in upstate New York, was a novelty something along the lines of a tourist attraction. Having grown up in a city of dull gray skies and bland buildings, the brightly colored vans and odd odors emitted from the strange cigarettes whey were smoking was something I had only seen on the nightly news along with reports from Vietnam.

The images of the war were of violence and human suffering. The I saw images made me uneasy. In a few years I would be eligible for the draft. My father told me that running to Canada like a number of young men had already done, was not an option for me. His enlistment in the United States Army included a tour of Pusan, South Korea during the war. He would not tell about his experience there, but the two purple hearts hanging on the left pocket of his uniform stored in a locker in the basement told the story he would not tell.

According to my dad, Hippies were the reason the Vietnam War was going badly. Now on Carrier Circle, he was facing his worst nightmare.

“Damn hippie vans.” He yelled and shook his fist, but the driver in the van next to our car held out two fingers.

“Peace man.” He smiled which further enraged my father.

“George!” My mother scolded him as Stephen became fidgety because my father had raised his voice. He had learned when dad raised his voice, someone in the car was probably in trouble. That someone was usually me, though. Tom, on the other hand, sat there quietly munching his crackers.

“Damn hippie vans.” Dad continued to rant as he tired without success to edge the car closer to the Thruway entrance. At this point we had been parked on Carrier Circle for nearly an hour. Stephen was getting cranky since he did not ride well in a car.

During one of our excursions in Canada, mom was feeding my baby brothers bologna sandwiches when Stephen vomited what he had eaten all over the back of my shirt. It was a bad memory for both me and him. I did not want a repeat of that. I loved lakes just like dad, but I did not want to tempt fate as far as my brother was concerned.

“Damn hippie vans.” Dad had finally had enough and decided to turn on an exit off Carrier Circle. Leaving the damn hippie vans behind, he headed home on one of the only family excursions that was not to be.

As we drove home, I could still hear him still grumbling, “Damn hippie vans”

Walking in the front door, he looked utterly defeated. I had never seen him like this. This scared me the most. Mom patted him on the back in order to soothe him, but it did not seem to be working.

“What the hell?” He plopped down on the couch and grabbed the Sunday newspaper off the coffee table, “Why were there so many of them?”

“I don’t know.” Carole sat in her chair worn out from it all. Stephen was feeling car sick and because his stomach ached, he was whining. He had curled up in mom’s lap while Tom played with some of his building blocks completely oblivious of the family drama that had taken place.

Dad still baffled by the hippie van traffic jam on Carrier Circle, turned on the television to watch the evening news with Walter Cronkite. A sly smile ran across his face as he announced, “Good evening and welcome to the Nightly News. Our lead story comes from a small farm in Bethel in upstate New York where the final day of Woodstock ended with rain and mud. Despite the weather, the concert there attracted record crowds to this small community causing major traffic jams throughout the state.”

So, there it was, Woodstock had prevented us from reaching our destination. As Walter Cronkiet spoke, pictures of the outdoor concert there showed the massive crowd attending the final day of Woodstock, on August 18, 1969.