Day 38 – Hippie with a red beard…
I don’t know if I can even paint the picture with words of the climate/culture we lived in between 1970 to 1972 when I first really found God and then graduated from college and moved from football/education (emphasis on football) to studying for the Christian ministry.
From 1968 to 1972, my college years, the entire world turned upside down. The Viet Nam war, protests about everything, the Haight-Asbury district of San Francisco and the birth of hippies, the psychedelic music and drugs, long hair and beards, rejection of “normal” values, Jesus movement, peace/love/rock-and-roll…it was a mind-bending time to say the least.
On the campus at East Carolina, from 1968-70, our football team was pretty isolated and insolated from outside culture. Back then players went home for the summer, unlike my two boys who only got maybe two weeks at the end of the summer to come home. But in the summer of 1970, players went home to NY, NJ, TX and places all over the East Coast and were exposed to a new culture, including drugs. These were things that they had not seen on our sleepy campus in Greenville AND they brought it back with them to ECU in the fall. My junior year in the fall of 1970, I even came back with long hair and a full beard.
I knew I would have to shave it, because the coaches didn’t like long hair. You didn’t have to be “high and tight” like the military, but pretty close. One coach even told us, “Boys, I got a theory about long hair”, then he spit some tobacco juice out and said with a big grin, “I can RUN it off!” Anyone with long hair or facial hair immediately went to the bathroom and shaved it off. I will admit that after I graduated, I grew a full beard and have had facial hair ever since.
We only had about 4 players out of 70 on the football team who were African American, and they were allowed to have mustaches, because the coaches said, “it was a cultural thing”. Of course, they didn’t know what they were talking about, they just didn’t want to cause any waves at the time. The rest of us had to be clean shaven and live in the dorms unless you were married. Even Phillip Bilado from Philadelphia, I think, had to shave his face. Now, why is that a big deal. Well, he was a red-head, a giant of a man who would shave in the morning and by 2PM practice it looked like he had a 3-day growth on his face. Phillip could grow a full beard in 24 hours, but he had to be clean shaven as well.
Anyway, in the mist of all this as Earl and I were sharing our experiences about God with everyone, a man from California named Jim, I forget his last name, came to Greenville to help with the ministry there. Jim was about 6’3”, skinny as a rail (blown away by a strong wind, as they say) with a full RED beard, handle-bar mustache (which he constantly twisted with his fingers), hair down to his shoulders and a chain smoker…non-filter no less.
Earl and I had the brilliant idea that we should take him up to the football dorm to talk to the players. Talk about naïve, we were the epitome of innocence. At first the players looked at him like, “Who the hell is this, hippie?” But Jim had no fear and an endearing personality, so as soon as he started talking people listened.
We were up there all afternoon and at suppertime we made the totally illogical decision to take him to eat in the Football Players dinning room. Obviously, Jim stuck out like a sore thumb and soon a manger came over and said Jim would have to leave. Now, here is the interesting part…the players protested! They wanted him to stay. These burly, hard-nosed players were standing up for the hippie. So, we put some money together and paid for his meal and he ate with us.
We were fearless in those days and God more than covered our naïve mistakes, but it was a glorious time and one I am very proud I was a part of. There are more stories which I will be sharing over the next few days, but for now, I will move on into my day.
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