Remember When!

Remember When!
By popular demand, here's the anonymous poem that Richard read on our recent show about the 1960s:

Remember when hippie meant big in the hips
And a trip involved travel in cars, planes, and ships?
When pot was a vessel for cooking things in
And hooked was what grandmother’s rug might have been?

When square meant a 90-degree angle form
And cool was a temperature not quite warm?
When roll meant a bun and rock was a stone
And hang-up was something you did to the phone?

When fixed was a verb that meant mend or repair
And be-in meant simply existing somewhere?
When neat meant well-organized, tidy, and clean
And grass was ground cover, normally green?

When lights and not people were switched on and off
And the pill might have been what you took for your cough?
When camp was to quarter outdoors in a tent
And pop was what the weasel went?

When groovy meant furrowed with channels and hollows
And birds were winged creatures like robins and swallows?
When fuzz was a substance that’s fluffy like lint
And bread came from bakeries, not from the mint?

When jam was preserves that you spread on your bread
And crazy meant balmy – not right in the head?
When swinger was someone who swung in a swing
And pad was a soft sort of cushiony thing?

When far-out meant distant, way up in the blue
And making the scene was a rude thing to do?
When dig meant to shovel and spade in the dirt
And put-on is what you would do with a shirt?

Words once so sensible, sober, and serious
Are making the freak scene like psychodelirious.
It’s groovy, man, groovy, but English it’s not.
Methinks that our language is going to pot.

Source: kpbs.org