It was a man's world.

I heard this song yesterday while driving. 

I think it's a song about being disillusioned by the 1960's

The hitch hikers and wanders stopped sitting at freeway off ramps looking for a ride.

I've never witnessed anything like those days again.  It was around 1973.  I remember encountering returning vets, and hippies.  To me they were all part of an adult world that was peculiar. 

It many ways it seemed selfish.  If we picked up a hitchhiker I had to move to the back seat, and they got to do all the talking.  Encountering a vet there were boundaries and do's and don't's

and you better listen the first time 'cuz I'm not sayin' it again.  (my way or the highway)  Hippies acted like they lived in a wonderland, but theirs wasn't a familiar place to my imaginary world.  It must be drugs that take you to a different place, not the place of childhood hopes and dreams, and wonder.   Vets demanded you live in the here and now, no pretending.  

"and be free once more"