Were greater in number than they ever were.
Most of their age peers weren't protesting or "tuning in/dropping out," but getting jobs, going to college for reasons other than protesting, getting married and having families, listening to lounge music not rock, buying homes in the burbs, and all the rest of the "square" life.
They were the ones who whined about how there was a "black" student union, but not one for whites (ahem) at their college. The ones who skated around protests to get to class and hated having classes canceled because a protest was now out of control. The ones who never went to college and resented the ones who could get out of the draft, or who had the luxury of protesting when the squares were holding down a job and supporting a young family. The square women weren't wearing mini-skirts and the square guys didn't have long hair.
The squares were people like my mother, in the same age contingent as John Lennon or Bob Dylan, who not only had little idea who they were--but didn't care to or have time to, because they were busy working and raising a family. Just like all of her age peer friends. She was the NORM, and the hippies WERE NOT. That's what everyone forgets.
The squares were out there, in massive numbers, and nobody paid them any mind at all. They didn't get the press that the hippies/activists got, so too many people failed to realize they existed--or how many of them were out there.
That's why the hippie contingent have been flummoxed since Nixon and r-gun about how non-liberals could win office. They missed how so many of their square peers were right under their noses and living a life not much different from the one most Americans had lived before the sixties.
Failing to grasp how many late silents and boomers DID NOT buy into the 60s mythos is precisely why we're where we are right now.
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