Contributions to hippie culture fail to make the cut.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

John Bassett McCleary forgot to check in with Eugene before he wrote the "Hippie Dictionary."

Big mistake.

At 58, McCleary's an aging hippie who spent the tumultuous '60s photographing the musicians and social unrest that marked the decade. So give him proper respect for being there then even if it was the "be here now" generation.

But his 650-page tome on the era's cultural and political landscape fails to note our local contributions.

The author includes the Rainbow Gathering, but makes no mention of the Oregon Country Fair, a hippie institution that started in 1969 and is still a peace, love-beads, back-to-the-earth event of the first order.

Not cool, man.

The book lists hodad - an obscure insult aimed at nonsurfers and the kind of term a California boy like McCleary would know - but not Hoedads, the Eugene reforestation cooperative that helped replant the West's clear-cuts for two decades.

Dude, where was your head at?

Chalk up the local slights to typical Sunshine State regionalism, said Doug Green, also a Californian, but one who makes the yearly trek to Veneta to work as a back-up manager - or BUM - at the Country Fair. "We're a well-kept secret," Green said.

A book such as McCleary's - and the fair for that matter - celebrates the good that came out of the '60s, Green said: a consciousness about healthful food and the environment.

"The values of the '60s flowered; we didn't go away. A lot of people got married and raised a family," said Green, who at 58 is a grandfather.

"The Hippie Dictionary" isn't the sort of book a grandpa would necessarily want to leave out for the grandkids to see, however, considering the number of entries concerning drugs - bindle, bam, chase the dragon, grasshopper - not to mention sex - merkin, root, leg over, plow - to name a handful we can list in a family newspaper.

The music of the era - Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - gets plenty of play as do the writers - Ken Kesey and environmental essayist Edward Abbey - who inspired the EarthFirst movement.

And McCleary doesn't short-change readers in the things-that-make-you-go-huh? category.

How come "Tonight Show" host Jack Parr's trademark phrase, "I kid you not," was included? The guy was over 30, someone not to be trusted. But the book omits the eerily prescient "vast wasteland" reference to television by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minnow.

Then there's an odd little side-trip commentary in the definition of the "me generation," a group dinged for self-indulgence.

"Cocaine became the drug of choice of the late 1970s and '80s. Cocaine is a very selfish drug; it could be called a right-wing drug," McCleary writes.

So marijuana and LSD were, what, the drugs of a selfless generation?

Not that we're bent out of shape about it.

Caveats aside, "The Hippie Dictionary" delivers lively waysides on its trip down memory lane.

If you want to bone up on the '60s and '70s before heading out to the Country Fair, we've excerpted some of the lingo and people profiled so you can small-talk and name-drop with any hippie you meet.

Say what?

Words, phrases and places that only the truly embedded hippie will remember:

Head thing: A relationship that includes mental and not just physical aspects.

Knackered: Tired, a British term that made its way across the Atlantic with the music.

The lavender menace: A term coined in reference to lesbians during a tug of war between straights and gays over the direction of the National Association of Women.

Hawaiian woodrose: A climbing plant, East Indian in origin but grown in Hawaii, whose seeds produce a psychoactive reaction.

Merseybeat: The musical style that emerged from Liverpool, England, made famous by the Beatles, but also Gerry & the Pacemakers and other bands.

MacDougal Street: An east Greenwich Village street of cafes and taverns of late '50s and early '60s fame. Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix both performed there in their early years.

Say who?

Everybody remembers Jerry Garcia and Richard Nixon. Here are a few of the below-the-radar folks who mattered:

Rick Griffin: A key artist of the era who produced posters and comic books and created the skull image on the cover of the Grateful Dead's 1969 album.

Baba Meher: An East Indian guru who became known for his opposition to drug use in the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

William Nolde: Identified as the last American soldier killed in Vietnam.

Pogo: A comic strip created by cartoonist Walter Kelly, and its main character, Pogo Possum. One of the first politically oriented strips, Pogo's most famous line was: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

HIPPIE TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

"Hippie Dictionary": By John Bassett McCleary, Ten Speed Press, $19.95.

Online fun: Dozens of Web sites celebrate the '60s, but at Baby Boomer Headquarters, www.bbhq.com, you can take a quiz that'll take you back.

Oregon Country Fair: Dissed by the dictionary, it attracts thousands anyway. Join the retro fun Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets are $13 for Friday and Sunday, $16 for Saturday in advance, and $2 extra the day of the fair; available at the Hult Center, the University of Oregon ticket outlet and Eugene Safeway stores. For more information on the fair, see this coming Friday's Ticket section.

CAPTION(S):

"Hippie Dictionary" is by Californian John Bassett McCleary.