Christian hippies and licence plates

There would seem to be an oxymoron right there. Christian hippies. The uptight Christians on the one side and the free-love hippies on the other.

But things are not what they seem.

My path intersected with the Christian hippies back in the early '70's. Hard to believe now, but "Christian hippies" were actually a viable news trope for a time. Made the cover of Time magazine if I'm not mistaken.

So there I was, back-packing across the continent, and after seeing the sights and viewing the views from Amsterdam to Napoli, I ran across this crew of American kids in Darmstadt.

They had somehow (praise Jesus) driven a school bus (praise Jesus) all the way from San Francisco to Darmstadt Germany.

Praise Jesus.

Without licence plates.

Praise Jesus.

Years later I would personally drive from here to there on occasion without licence plates, or "tags" as they are called in some of the states.

As in from Vancouver to Minneapolis for example.

Jesus had nothing to do with it.

The cocaine and mescaline binge did.

After all, you don't just drive across a continent without licence plates with nothing more than Jesus on your team.

But back to the Christian hippies.

Vancouver to Minneapolis was nothing if you drove your school bus all the way from San Fran to Darmstadt without tags. Turns out my hippie friends were refugees from the Children of God cult. From what I learned later, you'd have to be pretty fucked up to leave that cult.

They were "Christians" but they had it all.

Sex.

Drugs.

And of course Jesus.

No wonder they made it onto the cover of Time magazine.

The Children of God were led by a guy named David Berg. Apparently he liked to keep all the hot chicks for himself, so eventually the less photogenic gals rebelled, in what is known as a "schism" in the history of  Christianity, and started their own cult.

My buddy Happy Jack drove from Calgary to Vancouver once with no licence plates. He and his girlfriend only found out later that the hitch-hiker they picked up twenty miles into their journey was wanted for murder.

Jack was the only guy I ever saw who took LSD with a needle, although I'd heard of it before.

In fact, I met this guy on a train ride from Milan to Napoli who swore he'd taken LSD by injecting it into his eyeball with a syringe.

Sounded like bullshit then and it still sounds like bullshit.

There are things you do and there are things you don't do, Jesus on your side or not.

Then again, one time when I was in rehab I met a kid who fired a syringe of Jack Daniels into his arm, because he couldn't find anything else. His dad caught him just as he was turning blue and got him to the hospital.

That's not nearly as funny as it used to be before I was a dad.

But it does go to show you that in the world of addiction anything is possible

Anyway, I hook up with these Christian hippies, and eventually I have to get back to my real life, and I'm so hooked on their Jesus that I come back to my small town and quit school and work 80 hours a week at a gas station and send my Christian hippie friends all my money because money is just the devil anyway and then one day I get a letter back from my hippie Christian friends.

"Thank you and praise Jesus! We have used your generous donation to pay off our personal debts! Praise Jesus!"

What the fuck?

Me and Jesus haven't seen eye to eye ever since.