CaptEquinox
(4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Mar 13th 2017 at 8:31:46 AM
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This is actually a very savvy use of a little-remembered fact. Many hippies worked for the U.S. Post Office! We think of hippies as disdaining "real jobs", but that's the trope, not reality. Lots of hippies were more than willing to work, but many employers wouldn't hire anyone with even slightly long hair, beards, certain types of jewelry, etc. The USPS had more latitude.
You can see this in the early years of Doonesbury where Zonker worked as a mail carrier.
Edited by CaptEquinox I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. - Tolkien
CaptEquinox
(4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Dec 14th 2016 at 10:24:52 AM
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Should the "real life" information I've included here be put in a Useful Notes article? This would distinguish the real thing from the caricature that the "new age retro hippie" is meant to be.
I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. - Tolkien
Kagame
Raygun Goth
Since: Aug, 2015
Raygun Goth
Example: In the Brin novel The Postman, the narrator acquires the eponymous uniform from the corpse of a "neo-hippie" who had himself taken up the duty of delivering the mail. There is some reflection on the apparent contradiction of an anti-establishment type putting on a uniform and volunteering to serve The Man, but on the other hand, that a lot of hippies are very civic-minded volunteerists.
(I first read it as a 3-part serial in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, a long time ago; my memory is a bit spotty. I hope another Troper will take this up for a proper entry.)
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