Book Review--Roberta Price, Huerfano

Roberta Price's memoir of living on the Libre commune in Huerfano County, Colorado really made me think about a lot of things in my life. The book itself more than holds the reader's interest. Price writes well and shares innumerable stories about her seven years on the commune, between 1970 and 1977. But the book is far more than a series of amusing stoned out anecdotes. There are some of those (giving the pot-butter infused donuts to the unsuspecting cowboys stands out), but Price, looking back three decades, really thinks hard about her life and the commune movement, neither romanticizing nor condemning those years.

For Price, leaving the East and living an alternative lifestyle, especially in the West, really seemed revolutionary in those heady post-60s years. A graduate student in English, she drops out of SUNY-Buffalo in 1970 with her husband David, who taught in the American Studies Department at the school. These two highly educated people rejected the lives of their parents, their class, and the establishment to go back to the land and survive in what they considered a more natural way. Over the next seven years, they do a lot of drugs, tentatively experiment in free love, build a house around a boulder, learn all sorts of working-class skills from building a house to making cheese, and try to create a new life for themselves. To some extent they succeed; though the results are ultimately far from revolutionary.

It's important today to remember just what these countercultural kids rejected. We live in a nation profoundly impacted by the 1960s and 1970s. For people too young to remember that era, it's hard to understand just the impact the thousands of disaffected youths had. The United States in the late 1960s was in trouble, and not for the traditional reasons that pundits give such as students protesting in the streets. That was the effect of the problems, not the cause. Not only was the nation enmeshed in the disaster of Vietnam, but fear of nuclear holocaust still flowed through the public, rivers caught fire and factories spewed pollution into the air, whites had abandoned the cities, leaving them to rot; young women saw their talented mothers wasted in post-World War II domestic arrangements, etc., etc. That generation not only helped see in the end of the civil rights movement, but also worked for the women's movement, the environmental movement, the gay rights movement, Native American movements, etc. They opened up fashion for more alternative personal/political expression. They made at least some Americans understand the impact we had on the land and what we put into our bodies with the industrialized food we ate. Price's generation changed America more than nearly any other generation in our history, and I argue those changes have nearly all turned out positive.

Yet, as much as I have gained respect over the years for the 60s generation and some of what they did, I can't get over my disdain for hippies. (Note--the review is going to turn personal here, so if you don't care about that kind of thing, stop reading). I grew up in Springfield, Oregon. Springfield is about 5 miles from Eugene, still a hippie haven after all these years. Springfield developed as a working-class alternative to Eugene, and retains that identity today. My parents bought into this fully. My Dad is slightly too old to be part of the counterculture generation and my Mom never stepped down that road. They, and especially my Dad, who spent his life in plywood mills and had served in the Navy in the early 60s, showed nothing but disdain for any sort of alternative lifestyle, and they burned that into my skull early.

I mention this because I often wonder what I would have done in the 1960s and 70s. Would I have gone to Vietnam? Would I have dropped out and tuned in? Would I have joined the counterculture? Would I have been a hippie hater, supporting the values of my parents? I think, and I have to place myself back in my mindset when I was 21 or so, is that the answer would have been none of the above. I don't see how I could have supported Vietnam or even gone to fight--I've always been quite the skeptic about American foreign policy. But at the same time, it's virtually impossible to see myself becoming part of the counterculture. Having grown up around hippies, I constantly raised my eyebrows at their actions, ways of speaking, and in younger, less understanding days, their use of drugs, embrace of alternative sexualities and domestic relations, and garish fashions. Even today, I find their romanticization of Native Americans frustrating and their often facile analysis of the world infuriating.

For some reason, I find my knowledge, and of this I'm pretty certain, that I could not have embraced an alternative lifestyle, somewhat sad. I'll be honest, I'm more or less a square. More to the point, when I was younger I certainly would have qualified that way. Truth be told, I'm far more receptive to new ideas now than I ever have been. Given that I have a general distrust of new things, I don't want to give anyone the idea that I am hip. I never have been and never will be. I remain skeptical both of traditional ideas AND of any sort of alternative to tradition. Where does that leave me? Kind of on the outside of everything and everyone.

I blame my Lutheran background for this (and a lot of other things too!). From before I can remember, this insidious version of Protestantism wormed its way into my soul, making open shows of emotion nearly impossible (in fact, it's very difficult to write this), teaching me guilt without redemption or forgiveness in this or the next life, and drilling into me a sense of propriety and responsibility to no one in particular, yet to everyone and ultimately probably to a god that I can neither believe nor entirely disbelieve in. I wear the scars of Lutheranism on my face like I've been slashed with a knife. I can try to recover but I ultimately, there is no plastic surgery that can erase this. Alcohol can help, at least in social situations, but no science or medicine and provide a cure. I just can't fit into any sort of large group, nor can I embrace any form of alternative lifestyle. Hell, I get visibly uncomfortable when people start talking about their zodiac signs--it's just too religious for me and it smacks of too much belief in anything.

How does this confession relate back to Roberta Price's book? Because a part of me has a ton of respect for the people who rejected the values of America circa 1965. There was a lot about this country to loathe during the post-war years. But as much as I might possibly have wanted to throw away that America and as much as I want to leave so much of today's America behind and start over, I know there's no way I could or can. I couldn't have fit into the counterculture any more than mainstream culture. I just couldn't handle the communal, non-private way of life, the open embrace of sexuality and the human body, the embrace of the alternative to the parts of American culture I loathe. Why do I know this? Because I have trouble dealing with those things today and I sure as hell couldn't have done so in my early 20s. And I guess it bothers me. I feel like I'm missing key parts of the human experience by these problems of connecting, even though I know my own perspective has a great deal of value as well.

Enough with the confession. You want to know how much I liked this book? The next time I teach the 2nd half of the U.S. history survey, I am assigning Huerfano. I don't know what better praise I could give.