Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) by Brad Whittington Read Free Book Online

hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans, fringed leather vests, headbands, necklaces of various kinds.
    “Oh, look,” Mom said, pointing out the window.
    “Hippies,” Dad said, using the same tone of voice he would have used to identify a hippopotamus or giraffe in the zoo.
    Hannah giggled. “Hippies!” she repeated.
    I was intrigued. “What’s a hippie?”
    “Young people who live in communes and grow their hair long and wear necklaces they call ‘love beads’ and take drugs and protest the war,” Mom explained. She didn’t mention the “free love” thing, which I didn’t realize until later, of course.
    “That’s stupid,” Heidi said.
    I looked back out the window. “Why are they called hippies?” I expected them to have very large hips.
    “I don’t know,” Mom said.
    Dad volunteered some etymology. “It comes from the word hip, which came from the word hep, which means fashionable or knowledgeable about the latest trends.”
    “Hippies,” I whispered to the window as the park faded from view, certain that these hippies were pieces in the puzzle forming from my AM-radio-sponsored lessons in pop culture.
    The reference to drugs fascinated me even more. I had heard of acid, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, of people hearing colors and seeing smells and smelling music. I was very curious about how the senses could trade places, and I wondered what red sounded like. Was it loud? Soothing? Alarming? Obnoxious? Hypnotic? Stories of bad trips and acid flashbacks added a darker, menacing tone to the magical stories. Why did these hippies risk such dangers for the experience? What was I missing that made the reward worth the risks?
    From that day forward I listened hungrily to the evening news whenever I saw a protest march or a love-in, grasping for details that would enlighten me about this new world. My tastes in music shifted from pop hits to music with more edge to it. From the Supremes doing “Keep Me Hanging On” to the Vanilla Fudge version, from the Monkeeys to the Stones.
    I also started wondering about the Creature again. I periodically peered through the fence, sometimes catching a glimpse of her brogans jutting out of the box. When it got colder, she disappeared like the robins. One January afternoon I ventured through the gap. The box had collapsed into a soggy ruin. I propped it up. The tattered blanket was still inside, now hardly more than a rag. Nothing else of the Creature remained.

    The next Saturday M and I walked to the library, bundled in hats, mufflers, mittens, and overcoats. A low gray blanket shut out the sun. Melted snow left behind a mantle of gray slush that mirrored the sky. The world seemed a muted dreariness. We kicked at the slush with our boots as we trudged along. I told M that I thought the Creature had left.
    “Don’t even mention her, man,” he said with feeling. “It’s bad luck to talk about witches.”
    “She wasn’t a witch, just a lady hobo.”
    “Oh, she wasn’t? Didn’t you hear her put a curse on me? She tried to turn me into a pig!”
    I stopped and looked at M. “What?”
    M stopped and turned back. “Yeah, man. She said, ‘You will be cursed and become a ham,’ or somethin’ like that!” He shivered, but not from the cold. “And,” he added resentfully, his eyes narrowing into slits, “she said somethin’ about me being a slave. I missed some of it when I cleared that fence.”
    I laughed, puffs of breath floating around my head. M was not amused. He walked on.
    I ran to catch up, almost slipping in the slush. “M, she wasn’t putting a curse on you; she was quoting the Bible.” (Sometimes it comes in handy to be a PK. Not very often though.) “Ham was Noah’s third son. After the flood and the ark and two of every animal and the seven of some kinds of animal that nobody ever mentions and the rainbow and all that, Noah got drunk and was lying naked in his tent, and Ham made fun of him, but the other two sons walked into the tent backwards and