Hunter Thompson, Merry Pranksters, and Hendrix

Hunter Thompson, Merry Pranksters, and Hendrix

  I searched the community wall of the free kitchen on the West Bank. One post read:
Woodstock or Bust, room for one in my car, address below. Revolutionary welcomed. I followed
the address deep into the bowels of the inner city to an area called Nicollet Island. The island, at
the time, was essentially an abandoned strip of land that served as the foundation for a large
bridge that spanned the Mississippi River. Most of the houses there were boarded up with Do
Not Trespass signs nailed over the doors. Long overdue for development, the derelict hood and
dilapidated buildings felt haunted.
  The house matching the address was tilting sideways from rot. I gave the gray, paint-flaked
door two hard knocks. A tall, young man soon appeared. He was wearing an army helmet with a
peace sign painted on it, no shirt, and a black leather vest. He looked at me over his pink eye
bags, studying me suspiciously as he pulled at his stringy, shoulder-length hair. “You don’t look
like a narc.” he said. I shook my head no.

    “Is this the place where I can find a ride to Woodstock? I asked.
     “Come on in. The ceremony is about to begin,” he replied.

  I followed him into a combat zone. I was struck by the mixed stench of cigarettes, beer,
garbage, and ammonia. In the center of the living room area a steady stream of water from a
broken toilet poured from the ceiling and onto the floor. The kitchen sink overflowed with dirty
dishes. The walls were full of fist holes. Blankets covered the windows and bed sheets were
stretched over four chairs to replicate a MASH tent. I walked across the room over discarded
fast-food wrappers. Six shoulder-length-haired men wearing head bands and military fatigues sat
on the floor in a powwow circle. A badly scratched record of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was
playing in the background.

  “Who’s the new recruit?” questioned another young man wearing a red bandana.
  “Who gives a shit? We’re all brothers in the revolution,” another person shouted from inside
the tent.
  The guy who let me in acknowledged, “any brother of the revolution is automatically in,
right?”
  Six hands rose with peace signs.

  They gave me the impression that I was being sworn into an important mission. The group sat
around a legless table inside the make-believe MASH tent, passing a joint. On the table’s center
was a multicolored, Day-Glo-painted trashcan. I sat down and said, “I heard one of you guys
were planning to drive to Woodstock? I am looking to hitch a ride.”

  “That would be me,” answered the guy who let me in. “Let me introduce my friends.” He
extended his hand to offer a handshake, but when I tried to shake his hand he jerked it back.
“Your mother,” he chuckled as he poked his large thumb into my chest.

1

“They call me Spaghetti Man. And on my right,” he continued, “. . . Crazy Dave.” He went
around the table with the introductions, “Rodent, Silly Billy, P.T. Barnum, and Sergeant Screw.”
The troupe flashed a peace sign when called out. Spaghetti Man pulled a flask out of his vest
pocket, took a hit, and passed it to me. “Aye, those bastions!” he gave a jeering belch. “Nurse! A
drink from Bacchus’s private stock for my new friend.”

  After my eyes had adjusted to the dimly lit room, I saw that Spaghetti Man’s face was the
shadowy white color of washed marble. Up close, he had a just-woke-up glaze over his flaky,
crimson eyes — the same eyes I’d seen on the face of road kill. Spaghetti Man was so named, I
later learned, because when he was high on barbiturates he fell down or crashed into things. He
always got back up to reenact the fall. Thus, he resembled a wet human noodle.

  “Aye, it’s a fine day in the lair of the minotaur,” Rodent added. His head wouldn’t stop
shaking. Rodent had bright white, straight hair, and a sharp nose that protruded from a chunky
face. Because he was prone to being unscrupulous with money, the gang called him by that
which he resembled — a rat. Rodent grew up without a father. His mother and sister, who was
impregnated by her stepfather, were both midgets and collected state aid. The Feds had Rodent’s
draft number, and were questioning his mother regarding his whereabouts.

  Crazy Dave patted him on the back, took the flask and gulped it down. “When did you get out
of the hospital?” Crazy Dave earned his nickname by hiring the gang to drive him insane while
under the influence of LSD so when interviewed by the draft board they would clearly see that
he was, in fact, crazy and issue him a medical discharge.
  “Three days ago.” Spaghetti Man raised his head like a heavy shield, picked up a cane and
began jabbing at the air. “I beat the FBI by jumping from a second-story window. They’ll never
get me into their corrupt war.”
  “How do you feel? Does it hurt?” Crazy Dave examined his legs.
   “I can’t bend my legs. I’m supposed to go back and have the plates removed,” Spaghetti Man
groaned.
  I felt sad when I saw his damaged legs. In trying to beat the draft, this heavy, muscular man
would never be able to run again.
  “May I propose a toast?” Crazy Dave raised the flask. “Hail the revolution!” At an imaginary
line between Earth and heaven he made a high sign.
  The group responded unanimously.

  The conversation changed to a raid report.
  “I scored,” Spaghetti Man said as he produced a tattered envelope. He dropped it into the
center of the table as his contribution. He read it out loud. “Department of Hennepin County
Welfare, $150 rent voucher!” He congratulated Rodent. “Your idea worked.”
  “Right on. That’s good for three months.” Crazy Dave then held the check up to my face.
  “All right, did anyone else score today? Remember the plan? If we’re going to meet Abbie
Hoffman at Woodstock we need more money.” He cleared a swath of the beer-stained table with
his hand. “All right, who got what? Lay it here.”

2

The group supported themselves by petty thievery, with a half-crocked idea that they were
modern-day Robin Hoods or social justice activists. The stealing could be anything from bakery
throw away, running out on a restaurant bill, working a welfare scam, or selling phony pot. The
group was as mixed up about their political beliefs as my dad — only in reverse. They had
deluded themselves into thinking that the ends justified the means. They waged their own
personal battles against a system that could draft them into an illegal war. They were too radical
for me, but we all opposed the Vietnam War, an ideal that I stood by. I also liked their Zeus
energy and humor. Besides, I had nowhere else to go, and those guys had a record player.

  “I gripped six phonograph records and sold them back to the store as used,” Silly Billy proudly
announced. Silly Billy was opposite the man’s nickname because he was hardly silly. More
accurate, he was a fearless lunatic. With his wild mashed-up eyes and half-smile, he had a cold,
killer stare of a Clint Eastwood character. like cold stare of a killer. He could walk straight into a
record shop and rip them off because the clerks were too afraid to try stopping him.

  Sergeant Screw contributed, “I scored bread from a bakery.” He laid out two loaves. Screw
was the largest and oldest one of the gang. He wore a bushy brown caterpillar mustache that had
made a nest over his top lip. I wasn’t sure whose fists created the rat holes in the wall, but
Screw’s hands were big enough to take down the whole house. He had the demeanor of a gentle
giant, however. I couldn’t believe that he had been a real sergeant for a search-and-destroy unit
of the U.S. Army. It was his job to take a team into the jungle and kill whatever they found, be it
women and children. The story of how he killed a young farm peasant in the name of duty was
repeated so many times I knew every square inch of the rice field where it happened.

   P.T. Barnum shouted, “Viva the fucking revolution!” He was absent in making his contribution
but wasn’t criticized for it. P.T. was the youngest of the gang. He looked like a circus clown with
his bright red face on fire with acne. His hair was an electric Brillo Pad of coiled madness. He
wore handmade bell-bottom pants in a paisley print. P.T.’s brothers and sisters enrolled at the Air
Force Academy to escape the life of want his suicidal father left them. But he would hear none of
it. The most read of the gang, he slept with a book in his hands, and talked endlessly about
buying a travel bus.

    The group shouted like pirates, “To the revolution!”

 I didn’t know what these guys were high on, but if they shouted revolution one more time I
was going to turn into Paul Revere and warn the town that the British were coming. I was given a
musketeer-styled hat that had a long pink feather stabbed through the brim. My spot at the table
was on Spaghetti Man’s right side.

  “Can I borrow your belt?” Spaghetti Man asked Sergeant Screw.
  Without questioning the purpose, he removed his belt and handed it over. On the table lay
several spoons. He bent the spoon’s handle back so it would balance on the table and hold liquid.
Then he filled the spoon with water. Adding a packet of white sparkly powder, he mixed it into
the spoon and said excitedly, “Come on, baby, light my fire.”

3

He told me that he was hitting MDA, which was a concoction of psychedelic and tranquilizer.
There was plenty for me, too, if I wanted. “It’s the high of choice because it offers the best mind
game without the paranoia,” Spaghetti Man said as he produced a syringe.
  With the syringe, he carefully whipped the powder into a milky-white soup. He pulled the
plunger and the plastic cylinder filled with a liquid that looked like sour cream. He held up the
syringe and flicked it, like a nurse, to make sure there was no air in the chamber.
  “Give me your arm, Crazy Dave.” He strapped the belt around his right arm and pulled it tight.
Roller-coaster eyed, he injected him with the syringe. He drove the syringe halfway between his
hand and elbow into a large blue vein.
  “Sweet Jane,” Crazy Dave spit out as he watched a line of blood trickle down his arm.
  Two more times he jacked the plunger into Crazy Dave’s arm. And then, refilling the syringe,
Spaghetti Man stabbed it into his own glowing vein. The group watched with thrill-filled eyes as
they waited their turn. One by one they shot up with the same syringe. I had never seen anyone
shoot up before. I was both terrified and fascinated at the same time. The idea entered my mind
to stick my arm out and be as daring, but, I chickened out at first. I couldn’t do it. However, peer
group pressure would eventually prove to be bigger than me.
  Finally, Rodent, the last to use the syringe, dropped it and said with a dizzy voice, “we need an
airport for all these goddamn flies.”
  There was one fly, I think, or just an imagined buzzing insect.
  Spaghetti Man called out, in orgasmic, short-of-breath stutters, “I know what to do with those
fucking flies.” He pulled Crazy Dave into his lap and rubbed the top of his head. “Right down
the middle,” Spaghetti Man then pointed to a brown paper bag. “Hand me my barber kit.” A roll
of toilet paper, razor, and shaving cream fell out of the bag.
  Crazy Dave sat there like a wooden dummy, too stoned to resist. With trembling fingers,
Spaghetti Man parted his hair down the middle. Pointing the shaving cream can over his head he
let a white foam snake loose. “A whipped cream Mohawk,” he exclaimed. “Now for the
finishing touch,” he drew the razor down the center of his scalp. Bemused, everyone watched as
he rinsed the razor in beer. He pointed at a new one-inch-wide flesh canal down the middle of
Crazy Dave’s head. “Now we have a landing strip for the flies!” The remark solicited a round of
belly laughs.
  Next, Spaghetti Man placed on the table a row of what appeared to be tubes of lipstick.
  “No ceremony is complete without war paint,” he slurred. He drew a red line underscored by
blue across his cheekbone. Everyone followed by making similar markings on their foreheads
and chins. The war paint was placed in my hand and all eagerly waited for me to decorate myself
for a raid.
  “Give me your pinky finger and swear,” Spaghetti Man said to me. “Let’s swear from this
point forward that we never keep the truth from one another. Okay?”
  I agreed with an interlocked pinky finger.
  “To be a member of the resistance you must have an alias name. Underground we all go by
nicknames. “Therefore, I think we should call you Arlo because you look like the folk singer
with your guitar and you seem to be a witty guy,” Spaghetti Man decided. “All those in favor,
give me the high sign!”

    “Maybe you can get us into Woodstock for free,” P.T. laughed.

4

My new identity as an American refugee was mostly that of a spiritual scavenger spent on
urban search-and-find missions. My hustle options were few. I could go with Silly Billy and gays
in the park blow me for $20, sell fake pot to the suburban kids on the West Bank, stick food
down my pants at the grocery store, sell my blood at the blood bank, panhandle with my guitar,
or dine and dash.
  On most weekend nights the main drag on the West Bank was taking a beer bath. Hundreds of
university students packed the cafés and bars with loud conversation and cigarette smoke.
Between a café and a bookstore I headed down an alley. It ended at the first bakery. Inside a
large, green dumpster, I found several bags of donuts and bread that were sealed in clear plastic.
One bite almost broke my teeth, so I spit it out. Before I could place my hands on a loaf of soft
bread at the next bakery, I discovered that maggots had beaten me to the plate.

  Defeated at dumpster diving, I decided to put my pillow case on the sidewalk outside a coffee
shop and started to play my guitar. To my surprise a nickel, quarter, and even a dollar or two
landed at my feet. After I counted up $3 dollars the manager of the coffee shop approached me
and asked me if I wanted to play inside on his stage. I peered through the glass and saw a tiny
stage and a room full of people at tables. A herd of butterflies shot through me as I looked at that
stage. The urge to pee hit me. My hands became sweaty. My mouth became dry. I had never
performed in public before. My only audience had been in front of a mirror or Darcy. In short, I
was scared shitless to get up there in front of everyone.

  “How about it then?” He wiped his hands on a bar towel. “I’ll introduce you and ask for
donations. What is your name?”

   I stopped for a reality check. Was this really happening to me? I read the marquee above me,
The Extempore, appearing live, Friday & Saturday, Koerner, Ray, and Glover. In the window
there was an old, autographed photo of Bob Dylan. I really didn’t know that many songs. I could
fill about 45 minutes with old Woody Guthrie, a couple of Arlo Guthrie songs, various versions
of Dylan, and rock songs like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. I followed him inside and stood
shaking next to the stage. My sister’s $25 practice guitar was hardly a professional instrument
and the strings were well overdue for a change. All the insecurity I could manufacture flashed
across my mind.

  The manager of the venue got on the mic. “Let’s give this new talent from . . .” he paused and
cupped the mic. “Where are you from and your name?” he whispered.
  I answered, “Arlo, from Nicollet Island.”
  “All right let’s give him a hand,” the manager said.
  The audience responded with a dubious one-handed clap and returned to their conversations. I
started out by warming up on an instrumental I wrote. My hands were trembling terribly, missing
a few notes, but no one noticed. I had never talked into a microphone before and when I heard
my voice boom over the speakers I blushed and coughed. I wiped the sweat off my face.

    “This next song is one of my favorites,” I announced. “I hope you like it.”

5

I strummed into the first chords and began singing. Halfway through the song the audience
stopped talking. I played “All Along the Watchtower,” by Bob Dylan, as best as I knew how. I
pounded on my guitar strings, stretched my voice, all the while scared that an ash tray would
bomb my head. I finished the song and I was shocked to hear everyone clapping. I went into the
next song and during my set I forgot about my life. It no longer mattered where I was going or
who I was. I was in the moment like no other. That moment where you put what you’re made of
naked before the public. Behind a microphone there’s no place to hide. Those precious 45
minutes felt more like an eternal 45 seconds.
  “Thank you for letting me perform for you,” I said and took a little bow. The audience
responded by clicking their coffee cups with a spoon.
  The manager brought me back to his office. “Please sit down,” he said. The office walls were
adorned with posters and signed publicity photos of musicians. “I think you’re pretty good.
Would you like to perform on my open-mic Mondays?”
  The only answer I could think of was, “Yes, I would be grateful to participate.”
  “Good,” he answered and handed me $30 that he had collected from donations. “I will add
your name to the playbill. Invite your friends.”

  What I took away from that experience was a new sense of purpose and identity. I no longer
hated myself. Even though, I was a cockroach, at least my message in the bottle was being heard.
Someday, I would return to the stage, but first I wanted to work on my show and get a
professional guitar. Failing to secure a real guitar, I was too embarrassed to return.

  After a couple of months of living with Robin Hood’s merry junkies the fighting started to
break out and the nightly party ended in blood and bruises. Arguments ensued about their plans. I
overhead talk about joining the Weathermen out of Madison, taking out the Minneapolis Fed
building, or aligning themselves with the White Panthers to bomb the draft board. I didn’t want
to participate in any plan they hatched. Woodstock was no longer part of their discussion,
anyway. So, I packed my things and wished them well with the Revolution.

  The Revolution, however, wasn’t so easy to walk away from. The day I had planned to hit the
road, the house was attacked by a different kind of war party.
  Seven, large Native Americans busted through our door like charging buffalos and pinned each
one of us down.
  “Where you keep weapons paleface?” the Indian with the braided ponytail down to ass
demanded.
  “We got nothing,” Spaghetti Man choked on the buck knife at his throat.
  “You got pot? I can smell it. Don’t lie or you die,” another one from the group, shirtless,
decorated in beads and feathers shouted.
  P.T. was knocked to the ground. Rodent was pulled by the hair. Crazy Dave felt a blade across
his face instead of the top of his head.
  “Paleface want to steal our land?” One member of the war party nearly broke off Rodent’s
arm.
  Silly Billy’s nostrils flared as a knee thrust into his back.
  Two of the party began to kick furniture around, looking for anything of value — guns, stereo,
money, or drugs.

6

Amid the chaos, two more Native Americans entered the house. They were dressed in casual
business clothes, and wore their hair neatly tied into double, braided ponytails. They looked
around and frowned at the men holding us down.
   “Dennis, we thought paleface were Fed agents,” the largest Indian said, still holding his knife
firmly to Spaghetti Man’s Adam’s apple.
   “Let them go. They’re warriors like us. They fight the Feds for freedom,” the other Indian
called Russell said.
   The war party backed off.
   The Indian called Dennis shot us a power fist, the sign for Red Power, and they all left.

 Several years later, I was watching TV news. The national press was covering the siege of
Wounded Knee, already into its second week. I recognized photos of the two men who freed us:
Dennis Banks and Russell Means.

  As if to warn cars of road repairs, I stuck out my orange Day-Glo sneakers and got an
occasional driver to slow down. Until, that is, each passerby saw my curly, shoulder-length hair,
twisted as the weeds, whipping the back of my sunburned neck. Then they flipped me the bird.
  I’d been stuck at a pullout on I-80, somewhere in western Ohio, for two days. The pit stop had
one tiny brick-red building with one toilet. No toilet paper, no benches, no shade from the brutal
sun. The plains broke up before me into gullied, washed-out hills. Nothing moved along this
road; just the cry from a crow and my sweaty body against the cracked tan land. One suitcase
contained my clothes. In my right hand went the guitar. The little I carried got heavier with every
mile.
  “What I need is a gimmick to get someone to stop,” I pondered.
  I folded my arms and took off my shirt. I opened my suitcase and grabbed a jar of jam and a
spoon. I dipped into the sweet, gooey strawberries and ran my tongue over the spoon. It was a
taste of inspiration. I decided to remove my white socks and tie them around my neck to
resemble a collar.
  “Don’t you get it?” I said to a gopher running across the road. “I’m a priest.”

   For the next few hours, I made the sign of the cross with my thumb as I blessed each passing
car. Out of boredom, I ate a handful of remaining mushrooms that I had hid in my suitcase. Then,
I started to play my harmonica.
   After a bar of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” I was overcome by a sudden urge to puke.
   The jam was starting to make me sick. Dizzy, I dropped my suitcase and balanced the jar of
jam in my left hand. The spoon made a loud clank as it hit the bottom of the jar.
   Dehydration was setting in and I was desperately thirsty. I noticed a faucet on the building. I
staggered over, made my lips like a garden hose, turned on the faucet and sucked. The water was
alkaline, like soapy water. I gulped it down anyway. I wondered what heat stroke felt like. I felt
green.

  I hallucinated what I thought was the blasting horn of a semi-truck. Its air brakes hissed like a
thousand pissed-off snakes. I counted the wheels as it slowed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, all the
way up to 18. It lurched to a stop and I ran to the driver’s window. After a few words with the
driver, I climbed into what I imagined as the cab. The imaginary truck driver’s legs barely
reached the pedals. The color of his white hat matched the truck’s buffed white enamel paint.

7

Judging by the redness of his window-rested sunburned arm, he must have been driving for
hours. One cigarette burned at the end of a long, golden cigarette holder. He had one hand on the
steering wheel, the other around a beer. I blinked again and I was sitting in an old Cadillac, not a
semi. The driver wore a pair of large, mirrored, highway-patrol sunglasses. The back seat was
filled with empty beer cans and booze bottles.
   “Tired of walking yet?” He spoke in a gravelly, mixed-with-cigarette-smoke, burnt-coffee, and
bacon voice.
   “Just a little,” I whimpered.
    “The name is Hunter,” he nodded in a friendly way. “I’m driving from Aspen to New York. I
    got a meeting with Rolling Stone Magazine. I could have flown but I like to drive.”

  I watched, buzzed, from the passenger seat as he worked the stick shift until the imaginary
truck’s smokestack snorted out a large, black cloud of smoke. In a sudden lurch, we jerked
forward. After the Caddy reached the cruising speed of 55 miles per hour a loud s-h-h-h-h-h
sound filled the cab.
  “I think your tires are bald,” I described. “It sounds like the wind licking a mast of worn sail
canvas.”
  Hunter laughed, “Worn sail canvas; that’s funny, little big man.” He picked up a can of beer
from beneath his seat and guzzled half the can. “What’s your story? Are you a runaway?”
  “I want to learn more about the guitar and I want to see if I can find it at Woodstock,” I said. I
unfolded the poster and showed it to him.
  He looked at it and laughed again. “That show is overrated. Most of the big acts aren’t even on
the bill. Where’s Dylan? The Moody Blues? Joni Mitchell? And for Christ sakes there are only
two black people performing! The hippie movement is dead.” He burped and tossed the empty
beer can out to the road. “I think the hippies suck anyway. Help yourself to a beer.” He pointed
under the seat.
   Several miles later, I asked, “Have you ever considered a name for your rig?” He said, “No.”
Hunter cracked another beer and looked at my hair and guitar case. “What’s your name, little big
man?”
  “Arlo,” I said. “They call me Arlo.”
  “As in Arlo Guthrie? Is that your real name?” he asked doing a double take.
  “No, that is my nickname. Do you know the artist’s music?”
   “I saw him years ago at a bar in upstate New York. Can you play any of his songs?” he asked
with gained interest in my life. He pulled a bag out of his pocket. It was full of colored pills. “On
the house,” he said, popping a green pill.
   “I know one or two,” I rubbed my guitar. Hunter turned on the car’s air conditioner and the
cool air helped me to re-energize my strength. He then turned on the radio and we heard the song
“Like a Rolling Stone” by Dylan. Hunter cranked up the volume and sang along at the top of his
lungs. When the song ended, we listened to a weather report about severe storms moving into the
area.
   “Are you a musician, then?” he asked.
   “I am trying to be. I have a lot to learn,” I answered.
   “Have you ever thought about being a writer?” he raised his right eyebrow and puffed on his
cigarette.
   “I write letters to Lawrence Ferlinghetti,” I answered.

8

“I’m telling you, little big man, you are one funny guy. If you were older I would nominate
you to be my deputy.”

  The hours passed, beer by beer, telephone pole by telephone pole, fences, livestock, hay stacks,
and endless prairie. Then, in the middle of nowhere, the Cadillac blasted its horn. Thin brakes
screeched, and we rolled to a stop.
   “This is where I turn straight east,” Hunter pointed his finger over his shoulder. “Further on
south there’s a café a few miles down the road. Be careful little big man. There are some real
wackos out here.”
   “Thank you for the ride, Mr. Hunter,” I said, gathering my bags.
   “Do you like to read?” He stopped me.
  “Yes, I read everything I can,” I replied.
  Hunter opened his glove compartment and pulled out a book. “Here, read this. I finally got
paid for it. I hope you like it.” He shook my hand for good luck.
  The Cadillac with the strange driver disappeared in a flume of exhaust smoke. I looked at the
cover of the book. Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle
Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson. I put the book in my suitcase.

  Later that day, in front of a diner, I fell from the back of a farmer’s hay wagon. I was panting
near a ditch as I searched for water. The air was clear and dry. My mouth was cracked and my
face was badly sunburned. Beyond the ditch-weeds were burned grass and clumps of earth and
sand so bright it was hard to look at. The heat, silence, barren hills, and blank sky gave me a
feeling of great, intense Zen.
  I felt faint.
   “Not too fast,” the farmer said, holding a canteen of water to my lips. “Can you stand?”
  His face blocked the sun and I sipped the water slowly inside of his shadow. He nodded. “Lean
on me.” He helped me to reach the road diner.

  Inside I felt as if a flashlight had been removed from my eyes. It took a few moments before
the black box began to fill with shapes. The long boxcar-shaped room was really a bar that
offered chalkboard eatables: chips, one-kinda-beer, and stomach relaxers near the cash register. I
thanked the farmer for helping me. I dragged my cargo across the floor, drawing the attention of
several pork-belly men. They swiveled on their barstools and stared at me, beer mugs parked
below scoopy jaws. I pushed my suitcase beneath a table directly below an air conditioner. I
collapsed into the cool booth, closed my eyes, and floated.

  The bartender came to my table. “Can I get you something?”
   “Where am I, anyway?” I asked.
   “Dead ahead two miles –– Buffalo Grass, last counted, population 55,” he answered.
  I ordered a Coke.
  I looked around, thinking I stood a better chance of getting a ride on Mars. The beer-sign clock
behind the cash register read almost 6:30 p.m. I had no idea how far I had to go or where I might
spend the night. I guzzled the Coke and sighed.

  Once I had regained my strength, I returned to the road. Before I made it to the end of the
parking lot, I started to sweat. The heat pushed against my body, making each step heavy, as if I

9

was walking through a tide pool. My underwear felt heavy and damp; it stuck to my legs like a
soggy swimsuit. I climbed a long, long hill into another kind of country. The fences had old
boots on the posts. No brush, no trees, just a vast blue-green ocean of grass and corn, maybe
seven feet tall. After an hour of walking, I reached a bullet-holed sign: Buffalo Grass. I could not
drag my suitcase another inch.

   The two streets of the town were broad — broader than they needed to be — and a pallor of
dust hung in the air. Tumbleweeds rolled in empty lots between the buildings. The sheet-metal
grocery store and single-pump gas station had squeaky, rusted signs, and weather-torn billboards.
I looked down the empty country road past dark mounds of farming refuse, back at the remnants
of a grain elevator, and farther on out ahead.
   A derelict tractor sat in front of me. The wheels were missing, the motor picked clean by
metal-eating buzzards. Between its broken headlights was a symbol of a golden bull with man-
like legs. I got down on my knees, sat on the tractor’s skeleton, and fumbled with a series of
levers. A humid, static-charged wind toyed with my hair. The daylight was starting to be
sponged up by the clouds. When a lightning bolt struck the ground, the air popped like a broken
bulb. A horse whinnied; then bolted across a field toward a barn. Birds, the last to act, jumped
from telephone wires and disappeared in the tall corn.

  The clouds boiled in a black smoke.
  “Just a little rain,” I prayed.

  I saw a car coming. The shipwreck trick — hurry! I made a barricade out of the suitcase. When
the car got close enough I jumped up and down behind the suitcase. A pink colored car with
whitewall tires slowed until its o-shaped headlights stopped at my suitcase. I approached the
passenger’s side and waved at the black glass. The window came down, and the smell of beer
came out.
   “Hi, where are you going?” A young, pretty, blonde girl said, flirty-like. Then the girl quickly
rolled up the window and returned to the car’s dark interior. I stood there expecting a door to
open. A wiper flipped intermittently, taking a moth with its swipe. The engine idled. Nothing
happened.
  I grabbed my suitcase, knocked at the car window. “Can I get in the back?” I pushed on the
door handle.
  The back window came down again. “Do you believe in God?” a voice heavily soaked with
liquor asked.
  I tried to peer inside.
  “I asked you a question, boy.” The dome light ignited. A middle-aged man with a large square
chin, wearing a brown cowboy hat, stuck his head out. “Do you believe in God?” In the back
seat, two other men could barely keep their cowboy hats from falling off. Apparently, I was
extremely funny.
   “Yes, sir, I believe in God.” I answered “yes,” thinking it was the correct answer.
  One of the other men from the back seat leaned forward, straightening his silver necktie while
rubbing a face heavy in stubble. “Look at that long hair. My, aren’t we pretty. I think what we
have here, Roy,” he said to the man who spoke first, “is a faggot.” The man named Roy
displayed a row of snuff-stained teeth and sprayed a brown stream of spit across my sneakers. “Is
that right?” He looked at me. “You like to suck cock, boy?”

10

The question made the girl giggle.
  “What’s wrong with that?” I retorted innocently.

  Roy’s eyes widened with all the enthusiasm of a good lynching. The other men stopped
laughing. “I have a friend I’d like you to meet. His name is knuckles!” The car erupted in more
laughter.
   “I’ll bet five bucks,” said the whisker-faced man as he switched places at the window with
Roy. He made extra fine use of his left eye. He slammed the lid open and shut as if I was a dumb
animal under his hypnosis.
  “Five bucks and raise you ten.” One of the other men finally spoke as he sized me up. “Look
here.” The man at the rear window took off his cowboy hat to display a bald head. “This is what
a white man should look like!” All the men suddenly put their heads together in a huddle. “The
trail runs dead,” he said returning to the window. “If you’re still here when we turn around,
we’re going take the sheep shears across your head.” A beer can flew out the car window and hit
me in the chest. Then he hung his bare ass out the window and mooned me. “Bye!” The blonde
waved like a parade queen. The old car shook like a sputtering chainsaw. Then, it took off.

  I watched the taillights on the horizon. “They’re not really coming back, right?” I said to a
field of corn. “Cut my hair? They’re trying to frighten me.” I tried to reassure myself.
  I touched my hair, and imagined myself with a head like a bowling ball. The muscles in my
jaw pulled at something hard. I made the decision to throw my suitcase and the guitar in the ditch
and hide in the cornfield. I stopped at three sets of wires above the ground. “E-e-e-i-i-i!” I
touched them first and fell back on my ass — an electric fence! The only way into the field was
by climbing under the hot wires. I got on my back, inhaled, and wiggled slowly as if I was
crawling under a limbo pole. The corn was at least eight feet high. As a place marker, I dug my
right foot into the dirt. It all looked the same. I yanked a fist full of grass out of the ground. It
would mark the spot to find my belongings. I stumbled through the field along a fence that
followed the ditch.

  The road opened between bursts of lightning.
  I saw the four men fan out across the field like hunters do to flush pheasant from the brush.
The sight drove my face into ground.
  I began to pray more. “They can’t get across. They’re too big to crawl under. I have a chance
— I have a chance.”
  My prayer ended abruptly when scattergun lightning illuminated the field. Each lightning bolt
was like a searchlight. I crawled deeper into the field to hide. I imagined my voice reached out in
out-of-breath gasps to the other side of the field. It was faint, but recognizable, and it was me.
They had caught me.
   “Give yourself up, coward. On the count of three,” shouted the men.
  Suddenly a pair of boots was kicking at the corn near my head. I almost kissed the leather. The
man kicked angrily at the corn all around me. I made love to the sweet dirt, again. And again he
kicked at the corn. Reality jerked in stop-go lightning-made strobe action. The yelling
intensified, and I imagined the worse. Moments later, four car doors slammed. A car engine
started. And then they were gone.
  The storm ended and the last remaining sliver of daylight lit the puddles on the road. There was
no Universal Man to look into a pothole filled with oil-colored water and sunlight. The answer

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lay somewhere in the sea of corn. The corn just bowed against the wind in silence. I found my
suitcase and guitar where I left them and resumed the journey.

  The next day, I — and all of my hair — got a ride on an old Day-Glo painted school bus with a
large megaphone on top of the roof and a small American flag stuck in the grill. The bus stopped
next to me and a voice amplified from the megaphone said, “Ahoy there space cowboy. This is
the USS Further from San Francisco. Wherein lies your port?”
  I unfolded my Woodstock poster, held it up near the double-folded doors and shouted,
“Woodstock.” The bus doors opened with a thunk, and the driver, wearing flowers in his hair,
said, “Come on board.”
  Inside the bus, the ceiling and walls were elaborately painted in psychedelic art. The bus seats
had been removed and a group of hippies sprawled upon the many cushions. There were many
musical instruments on board too — banjos, guitars, dulcimers, bongos, and kazoos. Even
though the windows were down, a heavy scent of patchouli oil filled the air. I waved at everyone
and sat down.

  “Hi! My name is Rocket’s Red Glare,” said the young woman I sat by. Would you like
something to eat and drink?”
  “Yes, that would be cool,” I nodded.
  Rocket had baby-blue cat eyes, and wore a headband around her long, dark hair. She had a
flower painted on her right cheek and a green balloon painted in her cleavage. A simple white
tank top exposed her braless chest. She handed me a bowl of rice, bread, and water.
  “Where are you from?” she asked.
  “My nickname is Arlo and I’m from Minnesota. I’ve been stuck out here for a couple of days. I
would kill for a bath right about now.”
  “Yeah, we all would. If we find a remote river or lake we’ll pull over,” she comforted.
  “How long have you been traveling?” I asked.
  “Part of the group has been on the road since 1964,” she said with a wink. “Neal Cassidy was
the driver back then when Ken published his first book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That
was before my time. I jumped on board at the Haight. Next stop Woodstock.”
  I counted about a dozen people on the bus just staring at the ceiling or stretched out with their
eyes closed.
  “Would you care to join us?” she asked, handing me a plate with several blue squares on it.
“It’s from Owsley’s personal stash.” She lovingly caressed my face and looked into my eyes.
“Are you ready for the test?”
  I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by a “test” but, if it had anything to do with LSD, I
remembered P.T. said it was basically a prank.

   The blue square offered a gateway dream to another dimension of my being; a sort of parallel
world as much a part of our reality as the Earth to which we're temporarily bound; a domain of
spirit where the cumbersome physical body cannot function, and where encounters with rabbit
holes and doppelgaenger and other such entities of the imagination are commonplace. It is in that
place where time and distance melts away, the consciousness of all beings, living or dead, seem
to connect; and where I am in a state of awareness in which we can make sense of the otherwise
inexplicable. It is in this realm where the soul maps are hidden away, waiting for a timely
moment to reveal their secrets and unveil the path to transformation.

12

Only LSD was powerful enough to propel me beyond the ego’s gravitational pull and into the
inky black nothingness of the dream mind. Like a rocket ship, after the first booster had
exhausted its fuel, I entered Stage 1, the drift. Stage 2, the dark illusion. Stage 3, white out; when
the conscious and unconscious minds merged.
  P.T. and I had dropped bucket loads of the colorfully named stuff: purple haze, micro dot,
window pane, orange sunshine, 3-way wedge. Sometimes he scored the real thing, the cube —
pure LSD 25. We tripped so many times, in fact, that I grew weary of the predictable "flight
plan.” How many times could I witness my soul leaving my body until I admitted, okay, I get it?
I had answered my own question.
  “I’ll save it for later.” I smiled back at Rocket’s Red Glare, and stuck the cube in my pocket.

  “Attention Pranksters, this is Captain Babbs speaking,” the driver said over the megaphone.
“We just crossed the state line into Pennsylvania, home of the Liberty Bell. At present speed and
altitude we should be landing in Bethel, New York within the next 24 hours.”
  “I dig your vibes, my handsome little guitar man,” Rocket’s Red Glare said in a sexy way.
  Before I knew what was happening, her mouth was on mine, sending her hot tongue through
my turtle shell. I gathered that she was tripping and concluded that this was free love. Rocket’s
Red Glare reminded me a lot of Darcy, who I thought of often. I hadn’t called her in months and
I wondered how she was doing.
  “What is this around your neck,” she held the stone. “It’s beautiful. Where did you get it?”
  “My girlfriend gave me this necklace as a good luck charm. I have a question for you. How old
are you?”
  “I am 14,” Rocket’s Red Glare answered with confidence that she was wiser than her age
might suggest.
  “Are you a runaway?” I probed.
  “I’m not running from anything but they are chasing me,” she admitted. “I’m on wanted
posters.”
  “What is this bus all about?” I asked.
  “Think of a school bus that picks you up and takes you on a trip to learn something and it
brings you back,” she said with a shrug. “It’s all written in this book.” She handed me a copy of
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. It was the same book that P.T., back at the
circus, was reading. It was the road bible for his dream to travel in search of the American soul. I
nodded affirmatively, hiding my shock that I stumbled upon the most famous bus in the world.
  “Do you mind if I crash out?” I bit my lip.
  She gathered a few pillows around me and I put my head back on them. It felt good to stretch
out on something besides hard ground. Rocket’s Red Glare curled up and laid her head on my
chest. I stroked her beautiful hair like I would do with Darcy.

  The bus interior grew dark with the setting sun, and the night air came in and cooled us off. If
this group partied into the night, I think they were already too stoned to pursue it.
  I laid my head back and looked up at a painting of the Jefferson Airplane headed for the third
eye of Vishnu at the speed of light. I felt more relaxed now. I had a ride. I had food. I had an
enchanting young woman next to me. I was on the bus, the same bus Ken Kesey rode, The
Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and many other counter-culture heroes. What
else was there? I had it all. I listened to the hum of the road through the chassis of the bus. The

13

old springs came alive over every bump, the metal shuddered, breathed, the walls vibrated with
the cross-country trips that occurred inside the ribcage of this rainbow-on-wheels experiment.

  I didn’t know when Babbs slept but he seemed transfixed on that white line that sliced through
the ghost-like apparitions on the highway. I closed my eyes and imagined myself dancing with
my guitar on the stage at Woodstock.

  When we pulled up outside of Bethel, there was no place to park. Babbs let everyone else out
and we walked in. I found myself following a line of people that went on for miles. I thought the
scene resembled the Israelites fleeing Egypt. (Arlo Guthrie elaborated on a similar vision during
his performance).

  People carried tents, backpacks, coolers, blankets, children, and pets. They pulled wagons and
anything else that could be handy for camping or creating a new civilization. No one was selling
tickets. The entrance gates had been torn down. It was a free for all.
  Woodstock became an overnight experiment in communal living that had risen in organic
chaos from the edges of a music stage. The great cosmic switch that controlled time was in the
off position. I slept the first night in a stranger’s car. By the second day, there was no place to go
to the bathroom. Anyone with food gave it away. Hundreds of thousands were too stoned to
argue or complain. It was a human ant hill, filled with sweaty, naked, freak out, love-filled,
groovy-vibe, dancing people — bored or wrecked, but always dancing. The real MASH tent was
inundated with drug-related cases, women having babies, broken ankles, dehydration, and all the
pandemonium associated with a disaster.
  Helicopter crews tried to keep up with the supplies. It was up to each individual to help share
what they could for the survival of the clan. If it wasn’t for the rain that washed away the stink
and provided a little drinking water, the place would have been a full-fledged wipe out. Some
even welcomed the mud. Large groups turned the mud into a playground, wore mud hats, and
walked about nude like ancient tree worshippers.
  I kept making my way through the sea of mud and people to get closer to my ultimate
destination: the stage. Back behind the stage I saw a gypsy camp made out of basically anything
that provided a makeshift tepee. It was on that side of camp chaos, that I stumbled upon the Hog
Farm Family and their leader — Wavy Gravy.
  “Man, there’s always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area,” Wavy repeated in a hoarse voice.
He had been shouting on the stage microphone earlier how he and the other families had created
enough free kitchens to feed 400,000 people for breakfast, so don’t worry.
  I liked Wavy in his funny large hat and missing teeth. He had a lot of enthusiasm for what was
happening. He didn’t have a negative atom in his body. He believed that the world could be
changed, and if you stood next to him you would believe it, too.
  In the background was the constant roar and wildness of the music. Depending on where you
stood, the stage looked like a tiny pebble surrounded by a sea of ants. If you crawled in up close
you might be crushed by the crowd. Day and night the music played nonstop, like a soundtrack
to the improvised nature of the setting.
  Various groups had set up their free kitchens and campfires. At the Prankster campfire, I found
Rocket’s Red Glare dancing by herself in a granny dress.
  “Hello, Rocket’s Red Glare, how’s the party?” I asked.

14

She was blowing bubbles and sent about a dozen floating orbs at my head. “Gr-o-o-o-o-o-v-y,”
she said with a giggle.
  “I can see you’re having fun,” I smiled.
  “That’s my tepee over there,” she pointed to a clump of trees. “Want to be my love beast?”
  “Very tempting offer, but I found myself a place beneath the stage.”
  “What do you think of the festival?” she asked.
  “I think if I tried to describe it for the next 25 years, I wouldn’t do it justice,” I answered. “Too
bad it has to end. Then again, it couldn’t really go on?”
  “It’s a new dawn,” she glowed.
  “Yes, It’s the dawn of something,” I nodded.
  Rockets danced around, bathing me in bubbles. “You know where I live, little guitar man.”

  From the Pranksters camp I sat and watched the steady stream of music hipsters stop by to
show support with an acoustic guitar. I first saw the effervescent John Sebastian and a buddy
who played a set of songs about his travels across America in an RV. Later, to my surprise, the
shaggy-bearded Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead, and Marty Balin, founder and lead guitarist
of the Jefferson Airplane, appeared together. They did a short, blues-based jam. The husky-
voiced Melanie followed later, and sang a few classic folk songs. A stoned Tim Hardin plucked
his way through a few songs before he dropped his guitar.

  I was most intrigued by their finger-picking style. I wanted to learn how to do it. To that end, I
approached one of the Hog Family players and asked him how to do that trick with the right
hand.
  “How do you pick with the thumb, index, and ring finger, like I see everyone doing?” I asked
Jack Flash.
  “That is called Travis picking or the claw,” he explained. “It was named after Merle Travis,
thus the name. There are many variations of the technique.” He used my guitar and slowly
demonstrated the style. “Keep practicing. You’ll get it eventually.”
   I immediately spent the rest of the night memorizing the pattern. I gave him my cube of LSD.
“Thanks for the lesson, Jack.”

  I had hung back long enough and was ready to make my big move. Turns out, it wasn't
difficult to slip past the overwhelmed backstage crew with my dream pass and walk across the
wooden footbridge to build a fort beneath the stage. As long as I sat quietly out of the way, no
one cared that a mud-clad, 15-year-old was trying to build his vision of working in the music
business.
  Before my wide eyes one legend after another performed: Pete Townshend, Joan Baez,
Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and even Arlo Guthrie. Most were complaining about their start times,
conditions, rain, monitor levels, money, hassles, and the drugs. I didn’t care. All I cared about
was the guitars.

   With each artist came a rack of the most amazing guitars, electric and acoustic, I had ever seen.
I recognized the standard Fenders and Gibson guitars, but the stars had custom-built guitars —
exotic, handmade gems with pearl inlays, unique pick-ups, and golden tuning keys. I sat there
mesmerized and watched them tune and warm up.

15

Townsend gave his guitar a few windmills on his cherry red Gibson SG, and Arlo Guthrie
carefully picked, listening for any anomalies in his fret board. If one guitar wasn’t perfect their
private guitar tech would appear with another. I studied their faces carefully before they went on
before 400,000 people. I noted if they were calm or nervous, anxious or jumpy. Cool or dry
mouth. Stoned or were they straight.
  The one performer I still hoped to see was Jimi Hendrix. He was scheduled to appear at
midnight on the closing night, but insisted on being the last to play. That ended up being 9 a.m.
the next morning. After staying awake all night, I finally saw him enter the area in his red
headband and white, buckskin-fringed shirt. His famous white Fender Stratocaster guitar hung
over his shoulder.
  Some among the crew believed that he was a god that talked through a guitar.
  From my vantage point, at the security fence barrier, I could see Hendrix close up, towering
above the crowd, glowing in stardust. Hendrix was the most mystical of all the performers. He
wasn’t just a musician, he was a shaman that brought his visions to the tribe through his lightning
rod. When he stepped out there and plugged in, the air was pushed back three feet by the sheer
thunder that emanated from his six-foot-high wall of amplifiers. Like cosmic bookends to the
1960s, Hendrix sacrificed his guitar to usher in through fire a new consciousness at the Monterey
Pop Festival, and was now closing the cultural journey at Woodstock by turning his guitar into a
wizard’s wand. Rockets exploded in multiple colored reds, whites, and blues, sonic
representation of Francis Scott Key's, “Star Spangled Banner.” He called his guitar a kinky
machine that kissed the skies — and that was not an exaggeration. The molded piece of white-
painted wood and wire screamed like a woman in childbirth. It was a doorway between worlds.
For the next two hours, I stared dumbfounded at what I had never heard a guitar do. The guitar
played me. The moment chiseled upon my skull; I would pick up a guitar and nothing was the
same.

  In front of the stage a sound-mixing console rose out of the mud. To protect it from rain the
equipment was covered by a makeshift tarp. Beneath the tarp, a person with thick sideburns and
glasses, wearing an Australian-type, Outback hat was desperately trying to control the direction
of the music. I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking into my future. The man at the
controls was the South African music promoter I’d be working with 25 years later.
  Woodstock had shown me more than any other event of the time the possibilities of bringing
people together through music. Perhaps it was the most overrated cultural event of the
20th Century, but the idea of raising social awareness and creating interpersonal harmony through
music stuck with me and became a lifelong ambition.
  Three days later, the abandoned fields of Max Yasgur’s farm lay buried beneath mountains of
trash. One cultural experiment had risen and crashed. I made my way back to the interstate and
let out the wild thumb. Thumb against the blade of a pocketknife. Thumb as shiny fingernail of
reflected camel eye. Thumb as safety-pin-sized, out-of-tune fiddle, plucking a cricket’s song.

 Arlo Hennings © 2015

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