"6:00 - 7:30 Pre-awards cocktails at V Lounge (all-access passes only).
6:00 - 9:00 Peace, Love, & Wavy Gravy: A celebration of fellowship with legendary activist Wavy Gravy. (Yoga With Wavy Gravy at 6:30)".

There's a tough choice. I arrive fashionably late, a bit after 6:30. There are perhaps a dozen people present, mostly at the back near the vendor booths. Near the front, a slightly stout, elderly man in brown and khaki lays on a blanket, contemplating the sky, serenely. No one is doing yoga with him.


Day 3, finale:

-So. Any food here, gentle hippies? No? Hold that thought.

****

-From the heart of Bricktown, it's the 9th Annual Bricktown Blues & BBQ Festival. Onstage: A. J. Johnson and the Why Not. I buy some ribs, sniff out an open picnic-table banch, and listen to "Rainy Night in Georgia" as the sun sinks.

-Prominent majority demographics attendng the Festival include bikers, middle-aged black dudes in spiffy hats. Prominent minority demographics include The Comedian from Watchmen, who sticks his cigar in mouth and applauds meatily as a trumpet solo finishes. In the northwest corner of the grounds, a neon-lit trailer sells lottery tickets. Southeast corner, the US Navy gives away beanie babies with "navymoms dot gov" embroidered on the tummy. Blues.

***

-Okay, back. People have started to drift in from cocktail parties and elsewhere. I do a round of the vendors. Gourmet foods places, OKC Arts Council, crafts shops, Stella Artois. Nab a cup of jalapeno lemonade from the Prairie Gypsies. Here's something called the Seva Foundation with a "Gifts of Service" catalog. Sponsor cataract surgery in Nepal in your loved one's name: $25. One year of midwife training, $100. Install a fresh-water pipeline for a remote village: $15,000. Hm. Yoink*.

-Sun setting. Couple of eight-year-olds do cartwheels. Sweet-voiced coffeehouse folk singer up front. Towards rear, guest of honor has changed into exactly this outfit (substitute black bowler for red-felt) and sits benevolently as couple snaps pictures. Young all-access-pass woman behind me shrieks. "What, babe?" "Fuggin', fuggin hippie most knocked over my beer. Hippie! Hey, hey, check out old clown guy. What's his deal?"

-The Oldest Living Hippie moves slowly these days. An assistant stands by as he shuffles to the podium, clad entirely in rainbow tie-dye, cane in one hand and invisible-dog leash in the other**. He has donned a red clown nose for the occasion. Wavy Gravy beams out over the crowd, then speaks, firmly and clearly. "It is so awesome to give this check to this Oklahoma City human rights group for all they've done spreading peace. All we're asking is... give peace a chance. Everybody! All we're asking..." (General silence. I am aware that's a song lyric. No clue on the tune. Sorry, man.) "...peace a chaaance! Give me a hug!" Chair of human rights group hugs him, tentatively.

-Movie. Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Move is about as skeptical and hard-hitting as you'd expect for a movie that canonizes its subject in the title - the most embarrassing thing it's prepared to discuss is his son Howdy Dogood Texarkana Truckstop Gravy's successful court petition to change his name to "Justin". But it's solid on its main purpose, which is reminding you that yonder faintly ridiculous old man has done and continues to do more for the forces of harmony than you will ever dream of, Sparky. Brief resume:

.....Got his start as Hugh Romney, one of the most acclaimed beat poets in 50's Greenwich Village. ("Snapping your fingers is quieter than clapping, and the Italian restaurant upstairs hated us, kept calling the cops. Everybody wants it to be this big story.")
.....Emcee and head of security, logistics, food preparation, first aid, and brown-acid rehabilitation at Woodstock.
.....Happily married for forty-five years, has run day camp for kids for thirty (Footage as he teaches young campers meditation, rainstick juggling.)
.....In 1973, decided to shame US government into Bangledeshi typhoon relief by taking two brightly-painted busloads of hippies on cross-country trek from London to Dacca. Did. Or, at least, made it as far as the closed India-Bangledesh border, having toked merrily through Iron Curtain, Turkey, rural Iran, etc. The early seventies were a weird-ass time, geopolitically..
.....From there, he and idealistic doctor friend*** spent a month in Nepal, distributing left-over medicine and performing cataract surgery. Back in states, talked doctor friend and Indian-spiritualist friend*** into setting up charitable foundation. Has since, through benefit concerts, personal appearances, Grateful Dead charity gigs, pumped umpty million dollars into surgery, midwife training, literacy, clean water in the rural third world. (I will later fish "Seva Foundation" pamphlet from earlier out of back pocket. "Board of Directors: Michael E. Bird, MSW, MPH; Wavy Gravy")

-Credits. Crowd applauds. Many stand, pivot to applaud in the other direction. From over the crowd, a liver-spotted hand raises a ridiculous bowler hat, tips it to the world.




*The enlightened gifter anticipates possibilities that have not yet arisen.
**There is a plastic fish on said leash. He is following his fish.
**Having one on your Rolodex was de rigeur back in sixties/seventies druggie days, I understand.