My older sisters; my cultural guides to finding myself

The other night, I was watching a Neil Young concert documentary during which the most recognizable voice of my generation tells the story behind his revelatory song Old Man, released on 1972’s Harvest album.

The poignant ballad, in which the young singer, then just 24, compares his life to that of an old mentor, was written for the caretaker of the Broken Arrow Ranch Young had just bought, suddenly flush with cash after a few hit songs.

Onstage, holding his acoustic guitar, now himself the old man, Young joked that when he wrote that song he was  “you know, a rich hippie for the first time.”

And, you know, when I heard that, it brought me back to a time in my life when the word hippie meant something, when it was a loaded word spit bitterly by an older generation, but one which rang like rock music to my young impressionable ears.

I was 15 years old in 1972, just discovering singer-songwriters like Neil Young.

Too young for Vietnam, I still watched the jungle battles and anti-war demonstrations on our black-and-white television at home in suburban Syracuse, N.Y.

And I felt a part of the scene.

That’s because I had four older sisters, all of whom had survived, some just barely, their 1960s growing pains.

They were hippies, two of them in particular. They made me want to be a hippie, too.

But they all influenced me.

My memories play like a black-and-white music video, with my sisters as central characters.

They were wild about music, first those mod British Invasion hits on smaller .45’s — the Yardbirds, Kinks, Zombies, Troggs, Small Faces and Dave Clark Five — bands with mop haircuts and backbeats.

Then, later, it was on to richer, sometimes heavier, hazier, full-length LPs and artists like Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, Bob Dylan, early Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones.

In Rochester, the two hippies took me to see comedian George Carlin and the flaxen-hair folk troubadour Shawn Phillips, who performed before a hyper-politicized young audience, the pot smoke hanging heavy in the air.

It was my own Woodstock.

I felt lucky to have been exposed to that music, that counter-culture. It was certainly much cooler, more advanced, then anything I could have found on my own. 

Looking back, I see now that my sisters gave me that music. They passed down their own rebellious cultural associations, whether they even knew it or not. 

Maybe it all just came my way via sheer osmosis.

But there was more. 

It was also the slang they used, the attitudes and opinions that changed with the regularity of popular fashion. It was the way they danced, the way they hid their cigarettes from my parents and then, later, hid pot they smoked.

It was the outlandish personal choices they made, several of which rocked my poor parents’ world.

I would, of course, do much of that same thing myself with my own outlandishness.

Because growing up that two-story house, watching my older sisters make their way, struggle to form their own personalities, I was a hungry sponge with red hair and big ears, ready to hear it all, good and bad, ready to absorb everything I could.

I remember when my eldest sister, Sue, came home one time from her new life in Washington, D.C. I was just a kid; I don’t know why she even bothered. But she took me out to her car parked on the street in front of our house and played me the song Hypnotized by Fleetwood Mac.

She loved that song, was moved by it, and she wanted me to hear it and understand why.

As I listened to singer Bob Welch’s trance-like lyrics, I now realize that Sue, a redhead like me, was offering a small part of herself through that music.

She was showing me, her kid brother, a possible glimpse into my own future, teaching me how to become independent and liberated in my own way.

I was hypnotized.

A few years later, my sister Dale got me stoned for the first time. She’d moved out on her own and I went to visit her at her apartment not far from home.

Her friend Dana was there and I remember her words.

“Is he cool?”

Well, I certainly was not, but they got me stoned anyway.

Later, my sister Peg became my best friend while I attended college in Buffalo. She was married and worked in town and I don’t think I would have survived those years without her patient listening ear and good counsel.

I never got lonely, ever, because I could always, always call Peg.

But of all of them Pat was always the wildest, a hippie chick who didn’t seem to know how hip she really was. She had a flip attitude and a rebel streak.

Pat launched out of our family home like an inmate sprung from her cell, to wage a desperate search for herself, praying in the end to like what she found. 

I remember that night the 1960s revolution playing out on the streets came home to roost in our little tract house. 

I was ten, maybe 12, huddled in the living room with my younger sister and brother, when Pat’s new boyfriend came calling to meet my parents. She’d met him in Boston, as I recall, and now they were going away to California together.

We looked out the window that cold late autumn night and saw him come walking up the street. Long hair. Flowing clothes. He carried a large curved staff, like a biblical shepherd. His name was Brad.

He sat in our kitchen and told my father his plans. It was like All in the Family and my my normally mild-mannered Dad played the role Archie Bunker and Brad was Mike Stivic.

It was a battle of wills and of generations, with my father just trying to understand.

“Why don’t you marry her?” my father asked.

“Because I don’t love her that way,” Brad said.

My mother walked into the kitchen from her waitressing job, took one look at Brad, burst into tears and went to bed.

Pat went to California and later came home, Bradless.

I respected her for that. She had taken that first precarious flight. 

And survived.

Later, Pat and Sue drove out west together, taking flight with their friend Pam, the only one who had a driver's license. So, the trio picked up hitchhikers to help with the driving. Pat also got behind the wheel.

Problem was, she'd never driven before.

But she drove anyway, like an inmate sprung from her cell.

In the coming years, I took my own flight. I grew long hair and a cow-catcher red beard, broke my parent’s hearts and frayed their nerves, hitchhiked across country alone countless times, once to visit two of my sisters who lived in a log cabin just outside Eagle Nest, New Mexico.

Pat was still wild, still carefree, trying out selves. 

One day, we hiked up to the top of nearby Mt. Baldy. We took hits of acid along the way, me for the very first time, commenting on the colors of the trees.

It was a good trip and a memorable moment of my life.

Again, I was hypnotized.

Later, I found my own influences. Punk rock and a profession.

And it all came rushing back to me as I listened to Neil Young talk about his relationship with that old ranch caretaker, the old man who inspired that young hippie to write a song that would move an entire generation.

That song was a thank-you, intended as an honor. 

And it inspired me to write this, my own heartfelt love letter to my older sisters, those girls-turned independent women who helped shape me as a boy and as a man and who continue to make my life richer.

Sue now lives Florida, Dale in California, Peg in Buffalo and Pat, unbridled Pat, lives in Alaska, a spiritual healer who has blossomed into the wisest of us all.

So, girls, we’re all older now, farther apart, our parents are gone, but we’re still family.

Look at how the time goes past.

I’m rolling home to you.