Psychedelic Daffodil

Misguided Youth

This is about when we were young, and nobody knows quite how to explain it because when it happens, you don’t really think about it, that’s for later- when all the action is over and some time has passed. It’s like when everything comes together, and you don’t know why, but the experience is very special, and you have a feeling that’s special, but you’re too busy living it to care. That’s the way we felt in our little group. We didn’t even realize that we were a group at the time, we were just a bunch of kids that hung out together, and we thought that it was the way it would always be. Looking back we were very naïve, but that was the beauty of it. At the time we didn’t realize that we were just growing up and the transition into adulthood would be a whole different story. The glory days of just hanging out and experiencing life would give way to the everyday stress and toil of making a living. In the end we would be robbed of our innocence like countless others. We didn’t know we were only permitted a short-lived interlude of adolescent reverie, looking back for only a brief few moments in time. We had no idea that it wasn’t always going to be that way, when time eventually brought changes not always to our liking. We didn’t know that time marched on and that new fashions and styles would soon replace the cutting edge that we were proud of displaying. However, in that one summer, we were the blossoms of the current age and we relished in it. But our blossoms would soon wither, and a new group of young moderns would replace us as the avant-garde of the new age, if there ever was such a thing to begin with.

Perhaps it was all within our mind, quite possibly we were no different than the multitude of youth that came before us. But we were in that special age, where the economic prosperity of our progenitors had enabled us to be young and irresponsible. We remained carefree a little longer than our previous generations. We didn’t need to work to support the family, what little we made we could keep and spend on the flirtations of our fancy. And our parents supported us in this charade of prolonged youth, for we were living the dream they had desired.

And we were their children, and we appreciated their gifts greatly, even if we rarely acknowledged it. And there was an unsaid understanding that it was OK to be irresponsible now, even if only for a little bit, for in good time we would join the society they created. We would fear God, go to church and become responsible citizens, earning a living and doing our part to support our burgeoning country. But for now, we owned the moment, it was ours. We were young and invincible. We could take on the night, work all day, and look forward to tomorrow without misery or fear because we were the chosen ones. We were given the gift of life and we would experience all it had to offer. Each experience was a new beginning, and in that splendor we experienced life for the first time. The first experience is always the best, it’s never forgotten and cherished forever.

That’s the way we were, back in that summer of 1967. What a fortunate young man I was to have lived in that time. As I reminisce with my friends, we all admit it was a wonderful time to come of age. I suppose that everyone thinks that, and I imagine that it could be true. That’s fine, and I wouldn’t want to convince anyone otherwise. I often consider that maybe it is all in my own head and that there was nothing special about it all. It is a totally reasonable possibility that it was just another year among a thousand others. However, there is always something special in the midst of change, and that was what was happening at that moment. I often think about the day, how it goes on for hours and then there is the twilight, the transition from day to night, and then the darkness of night falls. That brief period between night and day is a special time. It usually goes by unnoticed as most are busy with evening tasks. The night retreats within the background of daily activities, house lights come on to erase the darkness as we pursue nuances in the daily art of living. But back then it wasn’t so. Before the TV’s and the telephones we would watch the daylight slowly disappear often amidst the backdrop of a spectacular lightshow upon the clouds as the sun dispersed its mighty glory, waning into a distant western horizon.

As I work with the youth today, I notice the similarities and the differences. They are not like we were, nor should they be. They are going through their special times defined by the gizmos of their era. They are branching out, coming of age, making fools of themselves much like we did. The problems and the angst of the American teenager are relived anew each year by another crop of offspring being led into the turmoil of adolescence. The story gets retold time and time again, but to the players it never gets old as the same roles get recast in the spring of every year. The youth of today are much busier than we were, with more things to do, more places to go, more ways to communicate. They are much more aware of some things but less aware of others.

For most of humanity’s brief existence, the time span for adolescence was very short. The young matured at a slower rate. School wasn’t for everybody and most went to work. The nation hadn’t evolved yet to where it could afford to have its youth spend countless hours in idle revelry. Higher education was even rarer, saved for a chosen elite with the either money or the gumption to achieve. My generation was probably the first to think that we were important as a group. That somehow we were endowed with special know-it-all powers that permitted us to transform society. We were a blessed generation. We could solve all the ills of mankind simply by our presence. We were baptized in American largesse. We bathed in the carefree luxury of not having to worry about where we would sleep our where our next meal came from. We had grown accustomed to the pampered life we were leading, unaware of any other way.

We were free to worry about the really important things in life that no one had time to worry about before- and we loved it. We could care about the rights of others, fret about the air, the water, whine about the extinction of species, of unjust wars and corporations. We were free to care about all these things, but foremost we cared about ourselves. The most important thing was our little group, a self-evolving clique if you will, where no one was officially excluded but to get in you had to have that certain aura, a certain vibe so to speak. If you didn’t vibrate with us, then you would be naturally tossed out. As with all miniature societies, whatever happened within the group was most important, to us anyway. What was spoken, the little comments, the little jokes and barbs that only we could understand, and punch lines that only we could “get”. Totally irrelevant and insignificant within the greater context of the world, but that’s what made it valuable to us its own intrinsic way.

The Vestiges of Our Reality

So at that time we were the coolest, we were the smartest, we were the all-knowing Buddhas of the Aquarian age. And we were born within the little crack, the little portal that was the window between the two ages, between the day and the night. Of course we weren’t aware of it, we could only sense there was something special going on. At the time I thought it would last forever. How little did I know that it was only a temporary opening, and the portal would close, and the world would return to its humdrum existence, ebbing and flowing with the tide of human sentiment. For the crack in the horizon was only open for a moment, a brief nanosecond within the historic epochs of the earth’s lineage, but long enough to give us a summer, a summer of awakening.

Looking back I can now see that the transition occurred during a small void in a vortex. America, and hence the world, were shifting gears from the Analog to the Digital Age. This shift would change the world of commerce as information could be accessed and transmitted cheaply and freely. The world began to speed up, slowly at first but accelerating rapidly into the information megaliths that predominate now. Throughout history it seems that the penchant of mankind is to enslave others in one way or another. There seems a latent desire to build political empires through the labor of others. Whether forced or unforced, the promise of the good life through higher taxation and generous government benefits is too good to pass up. We toiled under the guise of working for a living wage in collusion with latter day capitalists who furnish us with products that free us from the drudgery of daily tasks. The adjoining free time allows us to while away the hours in comparative luxury indulging our senses in the whims of our pleasure. But sometimes the world changes so fast that the political and commercial pundits can’t catch up, and this little warp provides a temporary glimpse of freedom before the supreme powers have a chance to usurp and exploit it. And that’s where we were during those few months.

We were caught up in the great switch from the analog to the digital. Clocks no longer had dials with hands that went around in circles, replaced by number displays that counted up and down. We started to pay for our merchandise with plastic cards instead of the paper money and coins that we were used to. The electric bill came on a card with holes punched in it, alluding to a strange alphabet known as ASCII code. It was all very new and very modern, and we accepted it without judgment, because we had nothing to base our judgment on. The youth reacted quickly and formed a little subculture that only they knew the mores. The powers at be were stymied for a while, trying to figure out how to make money from it, how to control it for political purposes, and to overall profit from the immense power this revolution would unleash.

So for a short while we ran wild, relishing the freedom that belonged to us, abusing it to the highest limit before the politicians passed laws prohibiting it, before the marketeers found a way to water it down and sell it to the masses. And this is where this story begins. We were on our own now, we were out of school for the summer of 1967, the end of my tenth grade year. I was always the youngest of all my friends. I was supposed to be smart, according to the tests anyway, so I started school at an early age. However, I didn’t feel that smart in relation to those around me. At one time I was the smartest kid in the class, but now, since starting high school I had begun to slip, falling behind the others in size and brains.

We were all well-educated back then. To this day I can still recite passages from many of the classics, give you important dates and timelines in history, or help tutor a child in algebra and geometry. I even remember reading parts of the Iliad in Latin, which I surprisingly enjoyed. As a nation we were number one in math and science, and foreigners clamored to get into our schools. Funny how I thought it would always be that way, but that’s the way things are when you’re a kid, life goes on forever.

Ruler of the Airwaves

We were out for the summer. My math teacher informed me that I scored the highest on the state geometry test, for our little school anyway, so it wasn’t any big deal, but for me it was a personal victory. He later told me that it was the hardest exam the state had ever given, and they had to lower the passing grade by ten points, unheard of at that time. But that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee as the saying goes, so I quickly forgot about it. I didn’t tell anybody anyway, it wasn’t cool to be smart, not that I was going to be cool anyway.

I met up with my friend Randy as we walked home. We were both a little worn out after taking our last exam, it was real ball-breaker, and we were both glad to be out of there.

“Wasn’t that a mother?” he decried as I ran up to meet him.

“Yeah that sure was. I was only about half way done with the essay when Redman (our slang name for Mr. Dunn) said that we only had five minutes left. I’m sure I’m going to get dinged on that. I wrote a crappy essay, I just couldn’t concentrate on it,” I whined.

“Yeah, “Randy agreed. “Who cares about Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society Speech anyway?” He sarcastically emphasized the Baines in president Johnson’s name.

“Really, he’s probably just going to send us over to Viet Nam so we can get our butts shut off anyway,” I flippantly retorted. What did I know about a shooting war other than what I saw on the news or glanced at in the papers? I was still hyperventilating a bit from the history exam and spouting off to relieve the pressure. There’s nothing like that last day of school, it’s over and you’re excited and you haven’t learned to relax and enjoy it yet. “Got any plans for the summer? I asked.

“No, not really. I guess I’ll just help out around my father’s shop. It gives me spending money. I’ll probably visit my grandmother for a couple of weeks. Are you going to go on a vacation, get a job or something?”

“I don’t know, I’ll probably help out on my uncle’s farm. He always needs help bailing hay and putting it in the barn. It’s just a pain to get out there. My mom and dad are talking about taking my little brother to one of those amusement park places. I don’t think I’ll go though, I’m not into that kid’s stuff anymore. They said I could stay at my aunt’s house out at the farm if I didn’t want to go, they don’t want me to stay in the house by myself.”

“I don’t blame them. You’d probably be having all these wild hippie parties while they were gone,” Randy said with a mocking smile. I wasn’t known for being a party animal.

I’d heard the word “hippie” but I wasn’t sure what it exactly meant. “What is a hippie anyway?” I asked. I was always pretty naïve about what was going on in the world, especially current events. I didn’t really understand what was going on in the world anyway. There was all this news about things happening all over and it didn’t seem to amount to much but everyone was all concerned about it. I liked history better. You cut out all the trivia and only study the good parts.

“You know,” Randy explained. “It’s those people out in California that take a lot of drugs. Then they listen to crazy music and dance around without any clothes on.” I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or not.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing any of that,” I conjectured. Hmm, I’ll have to investigate this hippie stuff I thought.

We were coming up to the corner and about to go our separate ways. “Hey, if you want, I’ll invite you to come down to my grandfather’s cottage sometime. They have a little cottage on the lake. You can come down for a day if you can get a ride. They have a little boat and we could do some fishing or go swimming.”

“Wow, that would be great,” I eagerly replied. Plus, Randy had the prettiest little sister, who I’d had a crush on for some time. She was a couple of grades behind us, but that was OK with me because I was young for my grade.

“OK, I’ll give you a call or you can let my dad know if it’s alright,” Randy said as he turned the corner. His dad knew my dad. They were friends through the Rotary Club or something like that.

Boy, that was really nice of Randy, I thought. Maybe I’ll take him up on it. But now was not a time to worry. I had the best of times ahead of me, for a few weeks anyway.

I continued on and walked up the steps to my house. It was a typical house just built after World War II on the edge of the city. All our houses were pretty much the same. They weren’t as big as the one’s in the city but they weren’t as close together either, we had more yard space, especially in the back. My grandpa’s house in the city was much larger, it had three stories I think, but it was really crammed in between the other homes. He didn’t have much grass, his whole backyard was taken up with a garden that he was always working on. He grew all sorts of stuff, I wasn’t sure what some of it was, but he really had a knack for growing things, in the backyard anyway. I walked up the side steps and went into my kitchen. Nobody used our front door unless it was a stranger or somebody selling something. My mom was there.

“Well, how does it feel to done with school?” she asked. She knew it had to be great, but she wanted me to acknowledge that. My mom was a pretty good mom, it’s one of those things you don’t realize at the time. She was pretty typical of most mothers of that era. She put her family first, made sure they had enough to eat, had clean clothes, washed behind their ears and brushed their teeth, stuff like that. When I look back on it, it is amazing how most families were similar. I could have walked into any house on the block and it would have been about the same thing. But times were starting to change. A lot of moms were heading back the workplace. The kids didn’t seem to need them that much anymore. There were plenty of appliances to help out with around the house, and besides, why couldn’t a man do some of that stuff? There were all these fast food restaurants popping up where a kid could go with his buddies and get something to eat. It was salty and greasy and thereby a lot tastier than mom could make at times. Plus, we kids were making our own money now, not much, but enough to give us a little independence, enough where we could go out and hang with the gang.

“Hi mom,” I said, “It’s great.” The poor mothers of teenage boys, they’ll never find out anything. I think my mom always wanted a girl, where she could talk about girl stuff. They could share all the current gossip at school, who liked who and all that stuff. But she was doomed to live with boys, whose conversations consisted of grunts, groans, and monosyllable two word sentences.

“How was your Geometry test,” she asked. “You said that you were worried about that one?” She really did care. For the past fifteen years, my brother and I had been her whole life and now we were branching out. She knew she was losing us, in the little boy sense, but it was all she had known for the last fifteen years, so it was going to take some time for adjustments.

“Oh, I did OK, it turned out they had to lower the passing grade.” I was rummaging through the cupboard for a snack.

“I can fix you a sandwich, if you want. There’s bologna in the refrigerator.” Good old mom. “What are your plans for today?”

“I don’t know. I’ll probably go over to Jimmy’s later.” It was still early, my last exam was the first thing that morning, and since we were done they let us go home early. My brother had to stay until 3:00 since he was still in Junior High.

We chatted a bit. I ate about the 500th bologna sandwich of the year and was about to head up to my room, when my mom surreptitiously added in, “Oh by the way, Mr. Delany called. He said he would pay you $250 to paint his house. He wants you to call him back.”

“OK mom, I’ll do it later.” I’d like to know how many times I uttered that phrase to my mother over the years, but I really didn’t feel like talking about somebody about painting their house. I know my mom was trying to help, and she knew I was really bad about calling people. Anyway, she’ll probably remind me about twenty more times before the end of the week.

I plopped down into my room. I guess you could say it was a typical boy’s room. I had a lot of electronic equipment lying around. It was a hobby of my mine you could say. Most of the stuff my dad gave me. I know it’s strange, but when I actually thought about it, I didn’t really know what my dad did for a living. I knew that he worked for a guy that sold electrical equipment, and I knew that he hated it. But apparently he was good at it because we seemed to have enough money for everything. I mean it wasn’t like we were rich or anything, but we didn’t seem to want for much either. Well, every so often he would bring something home that nobody wanted (I guess, that’s a mystery also), like a tape recorder or an amplifier. The latest thing he had given me was an FM radio tuner.

Most of the equipment I experimented with used vacuum tubes. I don’t think that you can find anything with a vacuum tube in it now, except the picture tube from and old TV set maybe. At the time these vacuum tubes were being slowly replaced by solid state technology, integrated circuits known as IC chips made of silicon. Some of the equipment I had didn’t work, so I would take it all apart and save the pieces under the pretense that I would fix it. I dutifully categorized each part and pigeon holed them into select boxes of speakers, tubes, transistors, switches, wires, etc. Many of the parts I didn’t have a clue to what they did or what they were used for, but I saved it anyway. I had confidence that I would figure it all out someday.

I decided to see if I could get this FM receiver to work. It was an old do-it-yourself Heathkit so I wasn’t sure if it would work or not. I connected it to an amplifier and huge speaker. It took a while to warm up but to my surprise it actually worked! I messed around and picked up a few unique stations. Most people don’t know about this and probably a lot more don’t even care, but at the time AM radio was king. Most commercial radios only carried an AM dial. AM is strong and powerful but wasn’t very good for broadcasting music because it is highly susceptible to weather and other atmospheric disturbances that can create a lot of static and poor sound quality. The FM signal is more conducive to a clear signal because it has a much shorter wavelength and can avoid many of the pitfalls of an AM broadcast.

The problem with FM at the time was that it drifted off the channel. FM stands for frequency modulation. The sound wave is carried on an FM radio wave (hence the “carrier wave”). The frequency of the carrier wave is modulated (changed that it is) to carry the sound signal. Since the frequency constantly varied, it would drift off the channel and you had to get up and retune or reset the dial on your radio every few minutes. Since that was very inconvenient, FM was just a small sub-sect of the broadcast world. That all changed with the advent of the IC chip. Inexpensive, tiny voltage controlled oscillators using feedback could continuously correct the drifting problem. Within a few short years, FM replaced AM as the dominate music medium. But what about in the meantime?

I rotated the dial to see what I could pick up. This definitely wasn’t the typical AM broadcast with a three minute song and five minutes of commercials interrupted by a flamboyant DJ pitching call in contests. First, I heard a very serious man from the John Birch Society, whoever the heck they were. Evidently they were some antigovernment group because they were against putting fluoride in the drinking water. It was supposed to prevent tooth decay, but according to them it was a big plot to subdue our minds and turn us into state controlled automatons for what reason I know not what. After a few minutes of that I found a station that sounded like a bunch of nuns performing the Rosary for Peace. They went on and on and on. I guess the FCC didn’t charge much for station licenses because nobody listened to them anyway. Probably just about anybody could get on the air if they had a few bucks and a descent transmitter. That was sure going to change though. Anyone who bought those licenses for song was due to make a fortune in couple of years.

I continued to twirl the tuning knob. I found a man with a deep, resonant voice who was reciting poetry. I listened for a while. It was actually quite good, very inspirational. Eventually I found a station playing music. And that’s when things started to change that summer. They played a new song by the Beatles. I remembered the Beatles were really big a couple of years ago, but they’d kind of lost their luster, at least I thought so. It wasn’t like I was a big music aficionado, but I thought that the initial Beatlemania had went away. However this was unlike the earlier songs I remembered, it was called a “Day in the Life.” I really liked it. A surprising thing occurred at the end of the song. They just hit one chord and let it resound for about a minute at the end. It was almost a minute of dead time, but I liked it, it let you think about the song, meditate on it for a while.

I listened for a while longer. They didn’t simply play an occasional pop song and then yak like I was used to, but they played the entire side of the whole album, or at least a few tracks. I listened for a while and I heard an entirely different style of music. The songs weren’t chopped up into little bits, they didn’t seem to care how long it took to play it. I don’t know why that was such a novel concept. I mean, I don’t think there was a rule saying how long your song had to be. But I was pretty sure that in order to be on the Top 40 Countdown it had to be around three minutes. Maybe that was the attention span of the average listener, but I think I heard it was all to do with advertising. Well these guys at WSAY really didn’t follow that format. They didn’t really have any commercials, except for a couple of ads, one for this used record store and another one for the AC Carting Company. I didn’t know what a carting company was, but if I had any carting to do, I was going to call them. Well I made some mental notes about some of the bands I heard, and then I ended up turning it off, because, as I said, I had to fiddle with the knob about every five minutes or so. It was starting to be a pain to keep jumping up all the time, especially when you were just getting to a good part. Just about then my mom yelled up, “Robert, Jimmy’s on the phone.” Oh good I thought, he’ll think of something to do.

The Eternal Search of the American Teenager for Something To Do

I made my way over to Jimmy’s house. It was about a 15 minute walk. Jimmy’s house wasn’t like all the others. It was on the main drag called Gregory Street that was officially the dividing point of our town or district I guess you could say. The kids that lived on the other side of the street went to a different grade school than we did but we all went to the same high school. It really was the other side of the tracks. The houses were smaller, the yards were dingier, and the girls weren’t as pretty. Our parents used to say that the people over there (Gregory Street) worked for the people over here (Conover). I just assumed if you lived in Gregory Street (Its official name was East Conover, but nobody called it that.) you just didn’t get the luck of the draw. It wasn’t until later that I was to learn of the differentiation between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. I had a couple of friends who live in Gregory Street and we got along fine. If they were envious or jealous they never showed it. I will say one thing about the boys on Gregory Street, they did have nicer cars. Most of us nabobs over in Conover who had driver’s licenses usually ended up driving our dad’s used station wagon around on the weekends. The Gregory Street boys had all these souped-up Chevy’s and Pontiacs, you could always tell when they drove through town. They pretty much ran a straight pipe exhaust system, a Thrush muffler I believe it was called, and red lined the transmission way up before they shifted so it sounded like a German Panzer attack was coming. Jimmy’s house abutted onto Gregory street and it wasn’t like other houses because for one, it was much older, and two, it used to be a store. It had these big glass windows in front and it was fun to hang out there because you could watch all the people and traffic on the street.

I knocked on the door and walked in, we were pretty casual back then. Most of our fathers new each other’s fathers so it wasn’t like we were going to get away with anything. If we did something bad it always got back to our parents pretty fast. Jimmy’s older brother was in the kitchen. Jimmy was the youngest of four brothers, so he could get away with a lot of stuff. I think his older brothers wore down his parents to the point where they didn’t really care what Jimmy did just as long as he didn’t get into too much trouble. I think that’s why I liked hanging out with him, he seemed to have more freedom. I, being the oldest, was always more mollycoddled and protected.

“Hey Bob,” Craig said (Jimmy’s older brother). He appeared to be filling out some form.

“Hey, is Jimmy around?” I asked. I figured he would be because I just talked to him a little while ago.

“He’ll be back in a minute. He had to go help our mom pick up some laundry,” he remarked without looking up from his paper work. I didn’t really know Craig very well, he was way ahead of me in school. I had only seen him a few times.

“Mind if I hang out in the front room until they get back?” I meekly asked. He was kind of intimidating. I think at one time he was the star quarterback on our school football team. I was so spastic that I could hardly walk and chew gum at the same time.

“Yeah, but could you hand me those papers on the counter. I’ve got to get these forms into the post office today.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. What are they for if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m working for these people in Washington DC, and we are setting up a program to counsel people about the draft. There’s a lot to it and I have to go back to Washington tomorrow, so I’ve got to make sure these forms are filled out.” He made it sound like it was quite complicated with a lot of government red tape, so I didn’t want to bother him. I remember Jimmy telling me about how Craig was supposed to be drafted, but didn’t want to go. He was trying to do some other type of service, I think the National Guard. I guess most people just went when called, but if you didn’t want to go you could find ways around it. I wasn’t sure what I would do.

I handed him the form. It made me wonder, why, when people think of government, do they associate it with paperwork? And it’s not just regular old paperwork, but these monstrous triple page forms that you always have to send off to some distant agency and in six to eight weeks you get an answer.

I went down to the front room and sat down for a few minutes. I was looking at a stack of records when Jimmy came in. I was holding this album by a guy called Nick Abdo, who I had never heard of.

“Hey Bob” How do you like my dad’s new record? It’s by Nick Abdo and his “Abdomen.”

“Oh really?” I looked on the album cover and I couldn’t see anything about “abdomen”. All I could see was something about a jazz quartet and “modern syncopation”, whatever that was.

“I can’t believe you fell for that one. He’s been using that pun on everybody for the last two days,” I could hear his mom say in the background.

“Oh, yeah. Abdo … ‘men' – ‘abdomen’. I get it. That’s a good one.” I could see Jimmy chuckling to himself, proud of his great wit. “Well what do you want to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It seems like we should do something, though, to celebrate the end of school.”

“Yeah I know, let’s walk down to the park, maybe some of the other kids are there.”

“OK.” “We’re heading down to the park mom, we’ll be back,” Jimmy yelled as we headed out.

“Alright and don’t be late for supper,” his mother called back.

We sauntered out onto the sidewalk and headed to MacArthur Park, named after General Douglas MacArthur, American war hero and controversial megalomaniac so I was told. I was getting to the age where I was starting to realize that one man’s hero was another man’s goat. I started to realize it when President Kennedy was shot. I remember the day when our Art teacher came into our room and told us about it, we just took it matter of fact, nobody was very emotionally involved. As a matter of fact, my friend Leroy got us in trouble, and we got sent to the principal’s office. It was Thanksgiving time and we were making turkeys out of old egg cartons. If you cut out the dimple parts and glued them together it would resemble the body of a turkey, at least according to our Art teacher. You could then decorate it and take it home, I don’t know for sure, we never got a chance to finish.

What happened was, , instead of making a turkey out of the egg carton pieces, Leroy taped two pieces together and made a bra out of it, kind of like those coconut bras that the native girls have on in those South Sea island shows. (Which probably no one ever actually wore, but they had to keep it clean for TV and the movies.) And you know how boys are kind of silly at that age, so he put his egg carton bra on under his shirt and started dancing around. When our Art teacher saw us she was obviously not amused. She lectured us on how immature we were, and then sent us to the principal’s office but it turned out not to be that bad. The grownups were getting more and more news about the assassination and everyone more or less forgot about us. But I could see that it was a big hubbub. The school secretary was weeping and the principal came in and said that she could go home if she wanted. He then turned to us with a quizzical look and asked us what we were doing there.

I was trying to figure out how we were going to tell him about this fake bra that we made when Leroy piped up: “We were laughing about the way I cut my paper in Art class. We got loud and we shouldn’t have.”

Great Job! I thought to myself. What a master stroke. The principal basically told us to stop screwing around and sent us to another class room for the rest of the period. It turned out they were playing a review game and the teacher let us play too. We ended up staying with her for the rest of the afternoon, and we got into trouble for that too, because I guess we were supposed to know enough to go back to our class after the bell, but we didn’t. About that time the principal came over the P.A. system and announced that President Kennedy was dead, so nobody was really too concerned with our misbehavior. It must have seemed quite insignificant in comparison. School was about over and some of the girls started wailing and moaning while us boys were just trying to figure out if we should be upset or not. I mean, at the time I didn’t have any emotional attachment to the president, and I think some of the girls were just showing off about how grown up they were by acting how deeply they were affected by the tragedy.

Well anyway, I deduced that it was a terrible thing. When somebody asked me about it, I was supposed to say something like, “what a terrible and horrible loss for the country it is.” So I was in this mind set as I left school to walk home. On the way home there were a couple of adults walking in front of me and I could hear them talking about it.

“Hey, did you hear about Kennedy?” one guy asked.

“Yeah, good,” the other guy said. “I never like those Kennedy’s anyway. Running around with all their bootleg money, thinking they’re better than everybody else….”

So there you have it. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be upset or glad. At the time I didn’t know it was OK just to have your own thoughts on things, even if that meant you didn’t have any at all.

So that’s the way it was with MacArthur. I remember our History teacher telling us about his big showdown with President Truman and MacArthur during the Korean War. Truman had to recall the General from his position, and it was a very unpopular decision at the time, but now the current opinion is that it was a very courageous thing to do. I was talking about this to Jimmy, and I said, “You know, they probably would never name this park after General MacArthur today, would they?

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. One day you’re a big war hero and the next day you’re a bum. Remember what Mr. Goodman (our history teacher) told us, ‘The winners get to write the history’.”

“Right, right. I wonder how much of that stuff we learn is all a bunch of crap?” I conjectured.

“Probably all of it!” Jimmy chortled. We laughed. “We’re going to school to learn a bunch of crap!” He reaffirmed me.

“I think you’re full of crap,” I snapped back. At that moment Jimmy took the opportunity to expel some overdue flatus, accentuating the fact that he was in fact, filled to capacity with crap.

Of course, we both thought his irreverent outburst was about the funniest thing ever, and guffawed only in the way that adolescent boys can appreciate. Fortunately or unfortunately, no female of the species can ever understand this form of disagreeable humor, and they’re probably much better off for it.

We finally came upon MacArthur Park. It was in full bloom. I looked at the trees and I was suddenly amazed at how many different shades of green there were. I never noticed it before. I had heretofore just thought of a tree as being “green”. “Look at all the trees,” I remarked. “Did you ever notice that each tree seems to have its own color.”

“Oh, yeah. I see what you’re talking about. I don’t think I ever noticed it before.”

“Why do you think we couldn’t see it before, but now we can?” I pondered.

“I guess we’re getting older and now we can appreciate such things,” Jimmy surmised.

What a world. One moment we’re talking about crap and the next we are aesthetic pundits contemplating the wonders of the universe. How wonderful it was to be alive, I thought. We ran into some of our other friends who were throwing a football around. There were enough of us to pick teams and play a scrimmage game of two handed touch. I played but nobody ever threw me the ball again after I dropped the first two passes, but I had fun anyway. After a while the game broke up and we went back to Jimmy’s house. We hung out in the front room and read for a while. Jimmy was a voracious reader of science fiction books. I never knew anyone that could read so much. I was more eclectic in my selections, plus I was a slow reader, so I didn’t want to waste a lot of time reading a book that wasn’t very good.

When it was time I went home for dinner. That night I toyed around with my FM radio perusing the dial for something new. So that was it for my first day of summer vacation.

Nubile Maidens of the Digital Age

It was a nice summer day, as most summer days are. I was supposed to be doing my summer jobs, but of course I hadn’t done anything. I was more interested in my own little world of ease and luxury, eating and sleeping at will.

“Mr. Donnelly called again,” my mom informed me over lunch. “He says he needs to know if you are going to paint his house or not. He could give you a ride out there in the evenings if you needed it.”

Evidently Mr. Donnelly had been doing very well in his business. He owned a car dealership and was thinking of opening a new one featuring some of those new Japanese cars. In the typical wisdom of the age, no one thought that any of “those cheap Jap pieces of junk” would ever sell in the US. Anyway, I guess he was moving out into one of those snooty new neighborhoods out in the sticks. He had been undertaking a lot of the building and designing of his “dream house” as part of a self-directed project. It was quite the talk of the town with many new modern conveniences. Apparently it was about done and he was putting on the finishing touches. His daughter Julie was a year ahead of me in my school, quite popular and probably the quintessential emblem of the girl next door.

Mom decided to put the pressure on, “He needs to know otherwise Richard Switzer wants to do it”

Ah, the competition. I knew Richard well even though he lived over on Gregory Street. He was very industrious. He worked at the local Gulf station and had his own car and for that reason my dad liked him a lot. He wanted me to have more “level headed” friends like Richard. He didn’t care for Jimmy very much. It didn’t surprise me that Richard would be vying for the job. Plus, everyone knew he was in love with Julie Donnelly, along with half the other guys in school. I would be too but I knew that I didn’t have a chance so why bother. . I also was stalling because I wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of riding back and forth in the evenings with Mr. Donnelly. I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Donnelly is a fine man, and I know he’s trying to be friendly, but I just didn’t feel comfortable around him.

Like, he was an adult and had to worry about his business and all the other things that adults had to worry about. On the other hand, I was a moody teenager, brooding about my personal whims and dealing with normal teenage angst. Obviously we wouldn’t have much in common to talk about at all. I mean, what could I say? “Hey, Mr. Donnelly, all us sex craved boys are just crazy about your totally foxy daughter.” Yeah, that’d go over well.

Then I had an idea. “Hey, mom. Why don’t I ask Richard if we can split the job? That way I can get a ride out there without bothering the Donnelly's.”

I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t care for the idea. “I just thought it would be a good way for you to make some money,” she said with hurt feelings. I know. She is looking at things from her stand point, what would be best for me. And I was looking at it from my selfish point of view, of how to have the most fun with the least amount of work. “But if you feel that it would be better if you and Richard worked together, then I guess that would be alright too.”

“Yes!” I thought to myself. Now I just had to see if Richard would buy off on it. I was pretty sure he would, seeing that I could use Julie as leverage. Richard, being a Gregory Street kid, wouldn’t have much of a chance of seeing her otherwise that summer, except if she happened to pull in for gas with one of her dad’s cars. It’s a good thing my dad was at work, he probably would have kicked my butt if he saw me scheming out of this.

Later I went down to the Gulf station and looked for Richard. The man who owned the Gulf station had three sons, all of which I knew from school and the Boy Scouts. Looking back, I guess we were a pretty close knit community, but we didn’t think it was unusual at the time, it was just the way things were. I saw Mike, one of the sons of the owner. “Hey Mike, how’s it going? Is Richard around?”

“Yeah. He’s the greaser putting a muffler on that blue Galaxy over there.”

”Ah thanks,” I said. “What’ve you been doing this summer, anything?”

“Nah, I’ve just been hanging around the station. How about you, been up to anything?”

“Nah me either. Julie Donnelly’s dad wants me to help paint his new house. Julie’s mom and my mom are friends so they cooked up this job for me to keep me out of trouble. I was going to see if Richard wanted to come too.”

“Oh yeah. He was telling me something about it. Must be nice to have all that money.”

“I guess so, OK, see ya man.” I walked through the garage bay to where Richard was working. “Hey Richard, what’s happening man?”

“Oh Bobby, what are you doing here?” he asked, obviously surprised I was there.

“When you get a minute I wanted to talk to you about painting Donnelly’s house,” I asked in my most negotiable manner.

“Oh, yeah, he came in the other day. I asked him if he had any work at his dealership, you know, prepping cars or something. He said he didn’t at the moment but he needed someone to help him with his house. He said that he asked you but he hadn’t heard anything,” Richard commented as he was fitting a U-bolt.

“I know, I know. I’ve been dragging my feet on it. I’ve been so lazy and painting is just so boring. I was wondering if you wanted to split it with me. We could ride out together in your car, it could be fun. I could help out with gas too. And who knows- Joooolie might be out there ...” I dangled the carrot out in front of him and extended the “u” in Julie for emphasis.

“Hey that’s not a bad idea.” Richard thought for a moment. “I’ve got his number at the dealer ship. I’ll give him a call.” See, I told you that he was very industrious, a real go getter. “I’m taking a break Mike, can I use the phone?”

“Just don’t make any long distance calls or the old man will think I did it,” Mike halfheartedly warned.

Richard made the call and sewed everything up. “What’d he say?” I asked.

He said he didn’t really care, just as long as it got done. He said we could start tonight, he has the paint and everything is ready. Do you want to go tonight,” Richard asked.

“Sure, why not?” I really didn’t want too, but I honestly didn’t have anything else planned.

That night at dinner mom filled dad in on the painting situation. At first I thought I was going to get a lecture on how my mother had went out of her way to find this job and that I didn’t appreciate it and how I needed to start taking more initiative about earning a living, but then he found out I was going with Richard and he changed his tune and said, “It sounds alright.” I think he was hoping some of Richard’s work ethic would rub off on me.

So that evening we would start an adventure of star crossed forbidden love, well not really, but it sounds a lot more exciting that way. Richard picked me up in his little Chevy II Nova and we proceeded out past the suburbs. “Gee, I wonder if Julie is going to have to move out here,” I pondered out loud. Richard didn’t say anything at first, I could tell he had already thought of it.

“I hope not. This place is really in the boonies.”

“I know, I’m afraid we might get lost.” My mom had given me the directions, but she was really bad at stuff like that. Always getting her lefts and rights mixed up. I looked at the map again. “It says to go down ‘Old Cheese Factory Road’ and turn left at the first cow,” I joked. Richard thought that was pretty funny too. Actually, it was turn left on Kline Road. We found that and drove up to the top of a hill, and that’s where we found it. There was an almost built mansion, it wasn’t a mansion really, but it was pretty big. The house was sitting on top of the hill, recessed somewhat back from the road. There was a beautiful view. I could see why the Donnelly’s wanted to live there. The house was just slightly on top of the highest hill in the area, and there were quite a few other hills too. You could look down into the glades below and then pan over onto an adjacent hill where a herd of dairy cattle were grazing.

When I looked the other way I could see some of the taller buildings of the city poking up past the wooded skyline. The only blemish on the horizon was a huge AM radio tower that was erected on the tall hill behind us. I think it also broadcast a TV signal, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Wow, this is beautiful up here,” I exclaimed. I was still in awe, taking in the sights.

“Yeah, and the view’s not the only beautiful thing up here,” Richard said quietly under his breath.

And there she was, adorned in all her heavenly splendor. I never realized how much more girl there was to her. She was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans, which were slowly becoming the style, and they were cut off pretty short if you know what I mean. I must profess, I knew she was pretty but I had never seen her outside of the school setting before. In school we had a dress code. The girls had to wear dresses or skirts of a certain length. Boys had to wear a tucked in collar shirt. Jeans for boys or girls were strictly forbidden. This was a public school, so you can see how much times had changed. She also sported this little white T-shirt that seemed to make her breasts stand out more too, but I may have been imagining it.

She walked over to the car to greet us. She had her long sultry brown hair parted down the middle with a little headband to hold it in place. It made her look like an Indian, or at least the stereotype of one. As she got closer she smiled, her pert little nose turned up under her sharp, alert blue eyes. I never really noticed anyone’s eye color before, but I did that night. I don’t know why, but I was a little shocked that she seemed delighted to see us. I mean for me, I knew who she was, but it wasn’t like I said more than two words to her my whole life. She was in the class ahead of me, and I worked with her in the school play last year, but I didn’t think that counted as part of your social life. Maybe Richard knew her better than I thought.

Julie stuck her head through the driver’s side car window (rolled down obviously) a tad. “Hi guys,” she welcomed us. My dad said you were coming. He won’t be here tonight (Good, I thought) but my mother will show you what to do. (Oh, not so good I thought.)

I looked over at Richard. His face was just a few inches away from Julie’s face, and he was in La-La Land. “Oh great, we were hoping to get started right way,” I falsely claimed. We got out of the car and walked the rest of the way up to the house. Richard was still apoplectic so I tried to make conversation. “It’s really beautiful up here,” I awkwardly commented.

“Yes, we really like it here. But it can get lonely for me. I’m used to all the action back in Conover,” she said.

“Are you planning on moving out here too,” I asked. What a stupid question I thought. Of course she’s going to move out here, what’s she going to do, live in the “Double D” motel on Gregory Street? I guess I was a little woozy in her presence too.

“Well, yes, I’ll be moving out with my family, but my father said I could ride in with him next year so I could finish my Senior year at Conover.”

“Oh good, because I would really miss you if you weren’t there next year.” I didn’t know what type of blather was coming out of my mouth. What was I going to miss, not ogling at her in the hallways during passing time?

“Thanks,” she said. I don’t think that she was truly thankful, it just seemed a safe thing to say. I was actually glad to see her mom and ease the conversation. Richard had not even looked at either of us during the grueling 45 second walk up the driveway. We walked inside the kitchen area. I really liked that unfinished house smell, the fresh plaster, the sawdust, and the creaky sounds as you walked on bare floors.

“Hi fellas,” Mrs. Donnelly said with a smile. I could see where her daughter got her smile from. She was painting the trim around a window. “I’m so glad you could come. I know Bobby and you must be Richard.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Richard finally responded, more with a croak than a voice. As I said, my mom and she were friends and I would see her over at the house occasionally.

Well, not much else happened from then on for the rest of the evening. Mrs. Donnelly showed us where the paint was kept, how to clean up our brushes, what to do if we needed more paint, stuff like that. We were in charge of painting the outside. She also said that we should keep track our hours. Her husband would pay us $2.00 an hour! Holy Smokes, the most I had ever made was a buck and a quarter baling hay with my uncle. Richard said that he only got $1.45 at the gas station, but that it was about to go up to $1.65 with a minimum wage increase.

We painted for a little while until it started to get dark. It looked like Mrs. Donnelly was getting ready to go so we decided to quit for the evening. She thanked us again and said that we could come up and work any time, just make sure we had the job done by the end of August so they could move in before Labor Day. Richard assured her that it would be no problem. We said goodbye and cleaned up. “Hey Richard,” I chided. “I saw you looking over at Julie every time she bent over.”

“Oh man,” Richard swooned. His faced started to turn red with embarrassment. He just shook his head, still a little speechless.

“You know, there seems to be a whole different circle of people out there that I never knew of before. They seem to be richer, better looking, better mannered. ‘Classy’ I guess is what I’m trying to say.” I paused for a moment. “And you know what?” I looked at Richard, “We’re not part of it.” Richard shook his head again as if he knew what I was talking about. I pontificate some more. “I figure I’ll do OK in life, nothing fancy but I’ll be comfortable, and I know you’ll do all right, because you work hard, but we’ll never be part of that special upper crust. I don’t mean the filthy rich types, but the good people. The honest and moral people who do the right things and make the world go round.”

We got in Richard’s Chevy and drove back toward the city. I noticed the sun lit up the sky with a beautiful red-orange sunset. It seemed like I was noticing a lot of things for the first time this summer.

Go To Psychedelic Daffodil Home Page