The Whole Earth 20th Anniversary Human Be-In

If it didn’t happen to us, it didn’t happen. We’re the us generation. And now we wallow in misty, water-colored memories of the way we weren’t.

Twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper started to play ... 20 years ago today, you threw your comb away ... 20 years ago today, you decided to run away ... 20 years ago today ... 20 years ago today ...

Twenty years ago today, we thought we’d never grow old. In fact, we thought we’d never grow up. Now we go to wear-your-peace-buttons-and-paisleys parties singing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” like a bunch of guys in straw hats and blazers singing, “Sweet A-do-line ...”

We, of course, were better than other generations because we were for Peace, Love, Good Vibes.

Go, Boomers! Beat Depression-Era Democrats!

What do we know about vibes anymore? Vibes are what tells us to sell bonds and buy gold.

We feel better about what we didn’t do than what we did do. We were against war. We didn’t fight the bad fight. But how proud can you feel about dropping acid and having deeply profound but inarticulate thoughts? Go ask Alice when she’s 10 feet tall.

Yes, I remember where I first was when I heard “Sgt. Pepper” during the Summer of Love. I was in Paris on the Left Bank. I had just seen a copy of L’Express that had a cover story on “Le Phenomenon Hippie.” The magazine informed me that I was away from San Francisco when San Francisco was the most happening place on Earth. And in front of a cafe, a group of hippies was singing, “We are Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ...”

We called them street people when they were young and charming and smoking their first joints. Now they are aging, homeless, burned-out, high-risk intravenous drug users.

I was 23 during the Summer of Love. The year before, I had my first real job, as a high school teacher in San Lorenzo. I saved half my $6,000 salary to spend the Summer of Love in Paris. I loved Paris. I learned about Marxism, existentialism and the perfection of green beans.

Yes, 20 years ago today, I ate my first haricots verts. Twenty years ago today, my first brioche, first baguette, first bifteck avec pommes frites. How I enjoyed playing grown-up. Twenty years ago, my first tomato salad, near the Sorbonne with the Sgt. Pepper singers outside. Twenty years ago, my first taste of Lenin and Lennon.

So we will be going through our generational anniversaries. Twenty years since the Summer of Love, 20 years since the first joint (three years since the Betty Ford Clinic), 20 years since we shortened our skirts to the pupik (15 years since we’ve worn them), 20 years since we painted the kitchen orange and purple, 20 years since we first called a policeman “pig” (15 minutes since we called one to investigate the stereo rip-off from our car), 20 years since we gave the peace sign and said, “Like, you know, man ...”

And yet, let’s not fall victim to Sweet Adeline Syndrome. Let’s not sentimentalize everything that happened because it happened when we were young. Let’s separate the leaves from the stems. After all, in these 20 years, we have evolved from “Do Your Own Thing” to “Do Your Own Thing — But Not in My Neighborhood.”

Yes, for whatever reason, we questioned the war against the Vietnamese. Who cares whether we did it out of fear for their death or ours? The sheep wouldn’t be rounded up, shipped off and turned into lamb chops with nary a baabaa-baa.

But we also paved the way for a Haight-Ashbury and a People’s Park filled with depressing victims of the ’60s. Every time I see a longhaired guy begging for his dope money, I think of the naïveté of 1967.

Now the ’60s Look is a cute new fashion statement. This year kids don bellbottoms and minis as last season they tried on ponytails and chinos to look ’50s. Let’s remind them that the faces on their Janis and Jimi Tshirts were no happier than last year’s poster boy and girl, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

Let’s tell it like it was. Death to the running dogs of revisionist history! The Summer of Love was also the time when Detroit and Newark nearly burned to the ground.