Born To Be
I didn't go to many movies that year. Living on $180 a month didn't leave room for much after food and rent. But when Easy Rider came to Houston, Texas in the Fall of 1969, everybody on the VISTA project went. We went in groups because, after all, it was Texas. If I told you that after the last scene of the film, the one where Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper get blown away by shot gun toting rednecks in a beat-up old pick-up truck somewhere inside Louisiana, that some folks in the theater audience applauded, I'd be telling the truth. Long hair on men had not come to the South until later. Dope smoking, motorcycle riding, war-resisting, free-loving counter culture types were thought to be a major threat to democracy, at least one version of it. The hair and the marijuana would come a few years later, but on this day, many in that Houston theater were relieved when the forces of vigilantism restored order in the land. We weren't surprised. Back then we too had the