'Joe Bob's America' part 2

He also doesn't skimp on drug terminology. Marijuana alone occurs in the form of bhang, ganja, leaf, bud, Maui wowie, Michoacan, alfalfa, boo, bud, cannabis, cheeba, chronic, devil weed, dank, doobage, dope, grass, gunny, hay, hemp, herb, hooch, juanita, kief, leaf, loco weed, M, margarita, Mary Ann, Mary Jane, mu, muggles, pot, reefer, scuzz, s--t, smoke, sweet Jane, sweet Lucy, T, tea, Texas tea, the kind, vitamin T wacky weed, wacky t'backy, wana, weed, Nam black, Panama red, Lebanese blonde--and I may have missed a few.

There were also many ways in the sixties to PACKAGE your "recreational drugs"--and, come to think of it, I do believe the hippies invented the term recreational drugs. You could get a bag, a B, a bee, a can, a deck, a dime bag, an eighth, a five- cent paper, a five-dollar bag, a fix, a geezer, a 1/2 can, a half piece, a kee, a key, a ki (hippies weren't big on spelling), a kite, a lid, a matchbox, a nickel bag, an O.Z., a packet, a piece, a pound, a Prince Albert can, a quarter bag, a sixteenth, a smudge, a spoon, a tael, a 10 cent bag, a toxy, a trey, or a Z.

And, of course, as long as you were stoned, wasted, high, bombed, tripping, nodding or whacked out, any real hippie would need to dance. Can't remember those moves that went out of style every five minutes? Check out McCleary's entries on the Boogaloo, the Breakdown, the Bristol Stomp, the Bump, the Chuckie, the Clam, the Electric Bump, the Funky Broadway, the Frug, the Hitchhike, the Hustle, the Jerk, the L.A. Hustle, the Lock, the Mashed Potato, the Monkey, the New York Hustle, the Philly Dog, the Pony, the Ride-a-Bike, Skanking, the Scooby Doo, the Skate, the Slop, the Swim, the Twist, Walking The Dog and the Watusi.

You see why this book is irresistible? H.L. Mencken, a man who would have hated the hippies, would have loved this book. It perfectly catches the fusion of beat generation slang, the lingo of jazz musicians, the blues terminology, the British Invasion terms and the ghetto patter that resulted in a new dialect that most people don't even recognize it's seeped into the whole culture, spoken as often on Wall Street as the Berkeley campus. It makes you think that ultimately the hippie's greatest contribution to America was to reinvigorate the language.