‘94 WINTER OLYMPICS / LILLEHAMMER : The Streets Are Lined With Silver : Alpine skiing: Counterculture family displays American flag as daughter Picabo streaks to second place in downhill, giving U.S. yet another medal. Seizinger wins gold.

The father, who dropped LSD with Timothy Leary, “before it was illegal,” who named one daughter Picabo Street and another Sunny Main, who almost moved to Canada during the Vietnam War, who wouldn’t look out of place among the Grateful Dead, stood starry-eyed in the finish area Saturday with an American flag draped over his shoulders.

“This makes up for all the times I wasn’t proud to be an American,” Ron Street said. “Today, I say, ‘God Bless America.’ ”

Picabo Street, his daughter, had won the Olympic silver medal in women’s downhill at Kvitfjell.

Imagine that. The hippy’s little girl.

Street, from Sun Valley, Ida., lost out on gold only because the world’s top woman downhill racer, Germany’s Katja Seizinger, brought her best stuff to Norway and posted an outstanding time of 1 minute 35.93 seconds. After Seizinger, who skied third, everyone else was racing for second.

It was sweet redemption for Seizinger, 21. Despite being named the international Alpine skier of the year for 1993, she took a pounding in the German press after crashing in last week’s Olympic super-G, a race she was favored to win. It also eased the pain of her fourth-place downhill finish at the Albertville Olympics two years ago.

Street, at 1:36.59, and Italian bronze medalist Isolde Kostner, at 1:36.85, were the only other racers faster than 1:37.

With Street’s performance, U.S. skiers have earned two golds and two silvers, and need only one more Alpine medal in the next eight days to match their most successful Olympics, the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, when skiers had three golds and two silvers.

Street’s success was somewhat of a surprise. She hasn’t won a world circuit event in her two years on the tour. Her best finish was second in a combined event at last year’s world championships in Japan. But her practice times here were excellent, including the day’s best time in the final downhill run Friday.

Still, she almost got into trouble during the race. Street shot through the first half of the run without a hitch but ran so fast into the tricky section called “the corkscrew” near the bottom that she got ahead of herself in the gates and barely salvaged a jump.

“She really shanked it at the bottom,” said Paul Major, the U.S. women’s coach. “She almost came to a stop at the end of that one jump. If she hadn’t had that, she’d have been in there fighting for the gold.”

After the race, Picabo’s freckle-faced grin was brighter than the snow. Three years after the U.S. ski team suspended her for insubordination, she had effectively proven wrong everyone who “thought I was a dirt bag.”

As for the Street’s family, well, their moon was in the seventh house.

Picabo’s mother, Dee--who raised two children, chickens and rabbits and cooked 18 years on a wood stove in the Street’s small two-bedroom home--held court near the finish area and took on the waves of reporters who wanted to know, real quick, “How’d Picabo get her name again?”

Dee, a folk singer and Joan Baez devotee, fielded questions with aplomb, explaining that Picabo, a small town in Idaho, was an Nez Perce Indian word meaning “shining waters,” though later was changed to Silver Creek.

Even better: Silver Creek wins silver. Baba, Picabo’s older brother, removed his sunglasses at the race finish to show reporters a scar near his right eye that was caused when Picabo hurled a cup at him in anger when they were kids.

“I think it was over chores, who had to vacuum,” Baba said.

Baba’s given named is Roland Wayne Street III, but father really wanted to name him Juan Way Street.

Nearby, Stubby, 54, recounted his reckless youth: how he failed in his first marriage; how he used to hang out at Berkeley with the acid-king, Leary, and how he got in on the ground floor of the “psychedelic revolution.”

Reporter: “So, you dropped acid?”

Stubby: “I thought everyone did.

“I’m a pothead.But I’ve never liked alcohol, tobacco and firearms. I’ve always been down on those.”

The Streets certainly put a new twist on the classic American success story. Yet, theirs is a tale of inspiration and devotion. Dee and Stubby, who moved to Triumph, Ida., from Reno, in the late ‘60s, have been married 27 years.

They never left their children with baby sitters. Together, the family cooked and cleaned and traveled. Had it not been for laws, the children would have been schooled at home.

Though precocious and headstrong, Picabo comes from common stock. She is not the spoiled-brat offspring of rich ski academy parents. Her father is a stone mason.

The Streets gave their children room to stretch, to succeed and fail on their own.

“They’d let us walk into things where they know we would hit the brick wall,” Picabo said. “Then they’d pick us up, brush us off and say, ‘On your way.’ ”

Picabo once insisted on celebrating her parents’ wedding anniversary, so her parents allowed her to drink herself sick on champagne, to the point, Picabo said, “that I never wanted to drink again.”

Yet, within the loose framework of 1960s attitudes, there was moral base. The Streets were well mannered and did their chores.

“It was ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ ” Picabo said.

Still, there were many Picabo potholes on the road to success. Her temper and competitiveness were fierce. Picabo was the red-haired, red-faced terror of Triumph, a two-horse-hitch town ruled by Baba and his renegades.

Picabo says she learned how to win by competing against the boys.

“I think that’s what makes me as tough as I am,” she said.

Picabo followed Baba everywhere, into and out of trouble.

“Once, she threw a stick at me with a nail in it, and it hit me in the back,” Baba said. “I turned around to chase her and she was gone.”

Through it all, though, family came first.

When Street was shipped home from the U.S. ski team’s summer camp in 1990, it greatly disappointed her parents.

Eventually, she joined them in Hawaii, where her dad was working on a construction project. Under his watchful eye, Picabo rededicated herself to training.

“My father set me straight,” she said. “I was wandering astray.”

Somehow, it all ended wrapped in an Olympic bow in Norway.

The Streets did not always think ahead, but the path to the Olympic podium was well rooted.

At 10, Picabo, already a top-notch ski racer, told her father she was going to win an Olympic medal.

“We caught eyes,” she said of the moment, “and he realized I was serious.”

Picabo said a lot of things, but no one dared dash her dreams.

In fact, a friend gave Stubby an American flag to hold in Olympic escrow.

“He said, ‘I’ll give it to you as long as you display it if she ever gets there,’ ” Stubby said.

The flag had been on display for years in the Streets’ living room. Saturday, it was displayed on Stubby’s back. He guessed there was more than one right way to raise an Olympian. And a family.