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Hay’s Daze: Four hippies in a garden shed

It was way back in the Hippiezoic Era when guys had long hair, girls had short skirts, and cars had chrome. Back when 95 per cent of all motorcycles were Hondas under 300cc’s, and only big cities had a McDonald’s, which according to an ongoing tally underneath the yellow “M” arches had only served a meagre 100,000 customers or so. Instead of the official “kazillion jillion” they have served by now.
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It was way back in the Hippiezoic Era when guys had long hair, girls had short skirts, and cars had chrome. Back when 95 per cent of all motorcycles were Hondas under 300cc’s, and only big cities had a McDonald’s, which according to an ongoing tally underneath the yellow “M” arches had only served a meagre 100,000 customers or so. Instead of the official “kazillion jillion” they have served by now.

Reality TV hadn’t even been invented yet, and even more importantly, nobody was crazy enough to elect a reality TV meathead as a president of anything. That’s how long ago I’m talking.

This was around about the time most of us reprobates had somehow graduated from high school (some of us more than once) and had spent an unsettling summer hitch hiking to B.C. and trying to figure out what to do with one’s self. In the future, like. Jobs, career, life goals – that sort of heavy stuff that adult-teen life-novices are faced with. Then, at the very last minute – sometime in the middle of August – three or four of us made a decision. A spur of the moment, what-the-heck-why-not? kind of decision.

“Hey,” someone said. “University. I think I’ll go to university.” And the rest of us thought for 15 seconds or so and said. “OK. Me too.”

So, somehow, three weeks later four of us young long-haired galoots are actually registered at U of C and moving into an apartment in the city, away from home for the first time. To say it was a tad difficult to find an apartment that would rent to four mangy Hippies of the Apocalypse would be a gargantuan understatement. Most of the places would even let us in the door to have a quick look-see, let alone live in their hallowed halls.

So we had to, um, compromise. In the sense that we had to take a completely unsuitable and overly expensive place that nobody else in their right mind would take.

Picture this: Four 19-year-old musician-type males. A basement suite. A bachelor basement suite, that is. One small room including a kitchenette and a bathroom. One tiny window above a small table, two chairs, and four single beds. In one semi-clean room.

It was like an army barracks without the nice stuff. It was like a jail only less comfortable. And boy, do you get to find out how well you didn’t know each other when you try to live together in an apartment the size of an average garden shed.

And that first university experience didn’t go much better. Suffice to say I came back home with my tail between my legs after four months of misery. And I don’t think I left home again for about a decade or so.

You see, what got me thinking about those dark days was a news story I heard on the radio the other day. A university in Ontario has offered music students an opportunity to live in a comfortable environment rent free. The catch? The free rent is at an Old Folk’s Home. With the old folks. A kind of social experiment if you like. And three music students are already doing it. These 20-somethings have been living at the Oakcrossing Retirement Living center since October with about 150 folks that were around when the Titanic was just a row boat.

So how does it work, and how is it working so far? Are they having keg parties in the hallways? Is it Animal House for fossils?

You’ll have to check out these pages again next week to find out.

Harley Hay is a Red Deer writer and filmmaker.