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CELEBRATING HIPPIE PAST
Published on January 25, 2002
© 2002- The Press Democrat
BYLINE: Mike Geniella
The Press Democrat
PAGE: B1
Local writer Andree Connors and her flamboyant hippie home-on-wheels typified a counter-culture movement that three decades ago began to redefine Mendocino County.
Gutting the interior of an old International bakery van, Connors used strips of old redwood, lushly colored fabrics and treasured trinkets from around the world to create a unique mobile residence that she inhabited for several years.
To those mystified by her desire to live in the renovated van and roam the region, Connors once wrote, ``Lifestyle is only limited by lack of imagination. There are many wonderful ways to be in this world.''
Connors died last year of breast cancer, but her colorful van is a lasting, vibrant testimonial to life on the back roads of Mendocino County.
Before her death, Connors donated the van to the Mendocino County Museum, which is now using it as a centerpiece for a new exhibit paying homage to a movement that, while faded, remains tightly woven into the county's socioeconomic fabric.
Museum curator Elaine Hamby describes the ``Wonderful Ways to Be'' exhibit as an exploration of the youthful idealism, creativity and activism surrounding a cultural phenomenon dating to 1969, when the first large influx of so-called new settlers arrived in Mendocino County.
``Anyone living on the North Coast 33 years ago will remember the dawn of a demographic shift that is part of the Mendocino County cultural mosaic even to this day,'' Hamby said.
Rebecca Snetselaar, the museum's curator of collections, said that by the early 1970s the back-to-land movement had exploded, with thousands of newcomers leaving urban areas and flocking to a still-rugged, remote county with a population of about 55,000. Mendocino County was then dominated by big timber, livestock and agricultural interests.
Today the county has about 85,000 residents, and some of them are second-generation sons and daughters of counterculture parents.
Over time, they have reshaped the county's political, social and artistic landscape.
Curator Snetselaar said the transformation has not always been quiet.
``They came to create their own vision of society, and to the consternation of many longtime residents, they were very vocal about their views on politics, the environment and the status quo in general,'' Snetselaar said.
As a result, old-timers were rankled by the newcomers' quirky leftist politics, free-spirited lifestyles, and the introduction of marijuana cultivation, an illicit cash crop that would soon grow to eclipse the value of all other agricultural endeavors combined in Mendocino County.
``It will be interesting to see how this exhibit is greeted in some quarters. There are people who are still not happy about the changes we've seen,'' Snetselaar said.
She said, however, that the exhibit reflects the museum's goal to document the multilayered history of the county, from exhibits of baskets made by native Indian populations to the display of historic farming and logging equipment.
``The counter-culture movement is yet another chapter in the county's history,'' Snetselaar said.
Mendocino Coast author Bruce Levene, in a recollection prepared for the new exhibit, wrote that when he arrived in early 1969, ``This little place in California was the last American Bohemia. There have been other places like it before, but this was the last one, and there will never be another.''
During the 1970s, when the local counterculture movement flourished, Levene said he rescued hundreds of music, arts and political posters from billboards and fence posts and preserved them. Now part of the museum's permanent collection, the vintage posters are included in the new exhibit.
``As soon as an event was over, I would take down the poster and I would save it. Now, if you ask me why, I can't tell you. I just thought it was a very important time that I was living through,'' Levene recalled.
Also included in the new exhibit are photos and excerpts from the ``New Settler Interview,'' a monthly journal that's still published after three decades.
Snetselaar said the works of publisher Beth Bosk and photographer R.D. Dienes provide intimate snapshots of an era that is all but a distant memory for mainstream society.
``I don't think they set out to record history, but in fact they did, and thanks to their work, a movement has been preserved for posterity,'' Snetselaar said.
Bosk will attend Saturday's opening of the exhibit, and be on hand to sign copies of a collection of her interviews called ``New Settler Interviews: Boogie on the Brink.'' Proceeds of Bosk's book sales benefit the county museum and the Willits Friends of the Library.
You can reach Staff Writer Mike Geniella at 462-6470 or mgeniella@pressdemocrat.com.
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