Freedom. Tyranny. Reality.

We trade away our freedom daily in a multitude of ways. We elect petty tyrants to oversee our actions, sacrificing liberty.

Employers, governments, families, oil companies, banks; the list is endless. We bargain for our bread, our time, our comfort, with each of these tyrannies and love it. We hate it. The truth is, nobody has any power over us we haven't sold them.

Its unavoidable if we are going to function in this psychological construct that constitutes our society, our reality.

Freedom from these tyrants, this construct, is scary shit. Even realizing that what we call reality is just a social contract can be terrifying. This is why people have bad trips on psychedelics.

An odd thing about tyrants, the big and scary ones like world leaders and such, are much less powerful than the everyday nagging pain in the ass type. Anybody who has been in a bad relationship should recognize this.
The good news is, we are the ones calling the shots. Nobody gets a slice of our freedom unless we allow it. WE make the bargains that enslave us. Individually.

Don't want that nagging spouse? Leave. Don't like getting screwed by the banks? Don't deal with them. Don't like the alternative? Then you're scared of what freedom really is and have chosen your brand of servitude to match your aspirations.

I have a good deal of experience in this field.

Everything is ok. You have nothing to be afraid of but your self. Nobody has any power over you that you have not granted them. We need to remember this. I need to remember this.

It may be necessary to our survival.

In the Early Days

      Lucky Tailor and I couldn't find any grass, if you can believe that, but the reefer scene wasn't always what it is today. Things are better now, but we still have a ways to go. Thirty years ago we suffered dry spells in the Midwest, usually in late summer and worsening before election cycles. It wasn't classic rock then. It was just rock.

      I can remember back in the Park Layne days, going to the park in August and giving the High Sign and somebody telling me it's dry. That sinking feeling. Days of searching, looking for the friend of a friend. Sitting by the phone, sitting down the road while a friend went to check the prospects at some third-or-fourth-party's house. Pay phones and parking lots and suburban streets. Trying to look like I wasn't waiting on a drug deal.

      I remember one particular summer in Muncie, 1989, and the trials we endured looking for a bit of smoke. We went from Crawfordsville to Dayton and the story was the same. Waiting and driving and waiting some more and it never panned out. A sure thing was never a sure thing and eventually somebody would try and sell us lettuce opium. Sometimes we bought it.

      The fucked up thing is, this was how pot was a gateway drug. You know how they tell you Marijuana is bad because it leads to harder things? Well this is how.

      When it dried up, you'd ask everybody you knew where to get some pot. Eventually somebody would say “Everybody's dry now, but I know where to get some coke”. I lost friends to this every year. They'd think “Well hell, they lied to me about pot. Told me it would addict me and make me an ax wielding maniac or at the very least grow titties like a girl. Maybe they lied to me about the blow too”. Next thing you know they're selling blowjobs on Penn Street in Springfield or popping their collars and listening to Billy Ocean.     Like I said, I lost friends to this every year.

      This is why I started selling pot. It was never about the money. Selling pot for the money is like running a pizzeria for the money. The risk is greater than the reward if you do it right and don't take advantage of people. You do it for the love of it.

      In the dry spell of '89, the Connersville boys called and said they had a sure thing. A friend of a friend who lived on Jackson Street had the hookup. I picked them up and they took me to a guy's house who had us drive him to Whitely. He took our money and walked in the front door of a house and fifteen minutes later I saw him go out the back wearing a different jacket and hat.

      I was all for storming the joint, but the Connersville boys talked me down. We waited fifteen more minutes and then I went and knocked. The residents claimed a total stranger entered their house, exchanged jackets, and escaped out the back way. I knew he couldn't have made it back to Jackson Street yet by foot. I assumed he would stop for crack somewhere 

      I had the Connersville boys drive me back to his house where I kicked in his door and stole his color TV and a box of fried chicken from his freezer. I got my fifty bucks back on the TV. We ate the chicken.

      The next day they called and had another sure thing in Connersville. They had a friend holding a half ounce for me. They dragged me 46.1 miles to their “sure thing” where I waited at a railroad bridge, hunting geodes. They arrived and gave me three thin joints and thirty five bucks back. Lucky and I smoked one with them, on the 46.1 mile ride back, and dropped them back in the village where they came from.

       It was Wednesday night, so we smoked a second and went to the “Skin to Win” wet tee shirt contest at The Golden Fox. It was a good way for Ball State girls to make rent.

       I tucked the last doobie behind my ear and we returned to my place on Wheeling to smoke it. When we got there, my girlfriend who didn't live there, had locked us out. She would do that. She said she was never trying to keep me out of my own house. She just wanted to feel safe and wanted to know when I got home 

      I had ways around that.

      I had a window I liked to keep unlocked for such situations. Failing that, there was a door behind the refrigerator I could jimmy and push through. This particular night the window worked well enough. I climbed in, and opened the door for Mr. Tailor.

      Once we were safely inside and Amy not woken, I reached behind my ear for the last hardworn joint and it wasn't there. We panicked. We searched the car and the gravel and bushes outside the window and nothing. There was a rack of albums below the window I had climbed in. LP's. Vinyl records for you youngsters. Zepplin and Halen and Rush. Kansas Leftoverture and Frampton Comes Alive and Journey Escape. 

      We dumped them all out looking to see if the spliff might have fallen inside when I climbed in.

We searched the gravel and bushes again, flicking our bics until they melted down and we eventually gave up. Lucky made me promise to call him if I found it, and he was headed out the driveway in the Tercel when I ran my hands through my hair...

                                              ...and found the joint behind my OTHER ear.

(We were joyful. We might have hugged).

Let this be a lesson. ALWAYS check behind the OTHER EAR.

Police complicity in the deaths of thousands

The crack epidemic was engineered to take down the poor black man. The Meth epidemic is engineered to weed out the ignorant white people. For every one pot meth lab busted, fifteen bigger dealers go free...and they (as snitches) provide the fodder to make the system look like its doing it's job. Nobody's trying to take any of the dangerous drugs off the street. It is all just a numbers game to generate revenue and control the populace. Heroin, Meth, they do not care who lives and dies! Save your town! Stop the cycle. No more get out of jail free for snitches. Stop police sanctified sales of hard drugs!

They put everything they seize back on the street! That's why I am free. Those awesome blue squares of LSD with gold stars...The cops sold them as part of their "investigations". Proof enough. If they cared and wanted the drugs off the streets, IF THEY GAVE A SHIT! they wouldn't put them back out there after they were confiscated. They do this with DANGEROUS DRUGS TOO! Heroin they confiscate? Back on the street. Meth they confiscate? Back on the street. And you call them heroes.

"We don't want to bust people for crack and hard drugs, because they're junkies. They don't own anything. People with marijuana, people with LSD, they have bank accounts. They own property. That's who we want, people with something to lose". - Muncie Police (1992)
It is these policies that advanced things to where they are today

"Talk to the arresting officers, they have authority to make decisions in this instance" -Rick Reed, former prosecutor

"I am probably the most intelligent man in Delaware County and I am telling you, if you try to run, you will never make it. You need to talk to Rick Reed. I made you an appointment. He's waiting". - Geoffrey Rivers, Public Pretender.

"They are going to hang you, boy. Don't you know Americans hate drugs"? -jailhouse guard

"Where have you been getting your information? America LOVES drugs!"-TSB

  It's not about me now. I had my time. People are dying. Towns are dying. Our children are dying, and this is why. Fuck you war on drugs and fuck you war on drug mongers. I have a lot of fun with my story, but this part of it really pisses me off.

Waiting for Beaver Fever

Just after I Turned onto the Rim Road and General Crook trail, we stopped for another water break. That's where we found the sign. "It is illegal to grow Marijuana in YOUR National Forest". Paranoid now, I dumped my sack of seeds around the sign. That sign no longer exists. I guess it gave people ideas.
The trail wound around the rim, rising and falling, weaving through the pines. Occasionally, an ATV would blow past, leaving us in a cloud of dust. We walked to the side of the trail, which was made of limestone and cinder. Maya's pads were suffering from the sharp stone and the day was hot, so we stayed off the path and in the shade and soft grass.

Just as I was wondering if my calculations were off and we had passed the first of the mapped water holes, we dropped below a small hill and in the distance saw the small green sign identifying Johnson Spring. My heart raced with anticipation. Would it be flowing? Would it be safe? With the fire ban in place and no filter, I had no means of purification.

My research told me to avoid stagnant or brackish water. Also to watch for white encrustation around the edges that might indicate the presence of poisons or alkali. It took a few minutes of searching through the tall weeds to find the source of the spring.

The water from Johnson Spring seeped out of the ground and formed a tiny pool just shy of a cubic foot in size. A narrow stream bed, dry and overgrown, extended both north and south from the shallow depression. There were a few plants growing in and around the water. The spring looked clean and cool and flowed slowly from the bottom, avoiding stagnation. It had no discernible odor.

Next I looked for the presence of hemlocks, belladonna, or other noxious plants that can leach toxins. I wasn't able to identify the few plants that grew there, but none were recognizably poisonous.

Like with water, there are warning signs that unidentified plants may be hazardous. I saw no furry plants, resinous plants, or plants with red or white berries or flowers. Again, no guarantee.

Maya's canine constitution could handle any likely micro organisms. I let her drink her fill.

The most prevalent danger from untreated water is Giardiasis, a protozoan infestation that wreaks havoc on the small intestine. The Giardia are carried in the intestines of humans, cattle, other small mammals, and is spread to water through fecal contamination. The affliction these little bastards cause is known by the colorful name Beaver Fever. Most animals who carry the protozoa are asymptomatic, as are some people. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide suffer the symptoms of

Giardiasis.

Symptoms can appear any time between one and fifteen days after ingestion, and begin suddenly. There are gut wrenching cramps, explosive diarrhea, and projectile vomiting. These occur along with loss of appetite, general weakness, and odorous belching. Symptoms can last anywhere from a few days to six weeks and when its all over, it can cause varying degrees of permanent lactose intolerance.

Everything I knew about water, I learned in books before I hit the trail. The one thing all of them had in common was the assertion that untreated groundwater cannot be assumed safe without extensive study and high powered microscopy. Even boiled or filtered water can contain unseen dangers like salinity, alkalinity, heavy metals, chemicals, and pesticides,

I cringe to see people drink untreated water of any kind, and would have preferred another option. The only tracks I saw near the spring were from birds. I saw no sign of cattle, and the dry stream, even at full flow, would too small to support beavers. With the added assurance that it was spring water and only just broke the surface, I drank.

The rural folk I grew up around taught me that the bowels are the barometer of health. I subscribe to this adage and generally pay attention, more so in survival situations. For the next two weeks, however, I would be worriedly monitoring all of my bodily functions. Each fart or rumbling of belly could be cause for concern. I was properly hydrated and feeling fit, but had condemned myself to weeks of apprehension and fear. Time would tell.

We spent the hottest part of the afternoon resting in the shade and hydrating. Maya had some kibble and I mixed the last of my bread crumbs with the last of the gravy mix and had a meager lunch. The only comestibles left for me was a can of Tomato soup.

I had to make the decision whether to continue on or spend the night near the spring and start the next day refreshed and with full bottles. My maps indicated there was another spring three miles distant. There were a few hours of daylight left so after stashing half the gear, we took our chances and moved on. If Kehl spring wasn't flowing, we might have to return anyway.

D.C. Dead show part III (The Long Strange Trip)

The parking lot of a Grateful Dead show is like a carnival, and as such, it has the elements of any carnival. It's a place that either overtly or covertly caters to all manners of lusts and vices. Sometimes this dynamic is innocent: the Rube has his fun, the purveyor adds a coin to his pile. The Rube isn't the only face in the crowd however, and the Carnie isn't the only person looking to take advantage. There are carnivores at a carnival, and sometimes there is more at stake than coin. 

“I have come for the Carnival,

The freedom and the peace.

Who could be among us?

Do you know their ways?

I made the acquaintance

of a sister fair and fine.

She said 'My friend, don't eat their bread

or drink from opened wine”.

-TSB (from “An Outing at the Fair”)

I walked the traffic jam coming into the lot, looking for a ticket and digging on the humanity. A school bus with a VW bus welded on the top approached. It was festooned with a dozen young topless women. I heard the phrase “Temple Whores”, murmured from the crowd around me. I'm unfamiliar with that term as it was used. I once had a hooker proposition me while dancing on the lawn at a show in Indy. After a couple of hours with no luck on the search, I headed to the stadium, hoping to find my miracle there.

I saw a crowd gathering at one corner of the lot and went to see what the draw was. There was a guy selling balloons: Hippie Crack, Nitrous Oxide. The line was long and the girl in front put down a hundred dollar bill and ordered twenty which she passed down the line. I had just inhaled mine when a cop pushed his way through the crowd.

He ordered the vender to open the valve and empty his tank. While the tank was wooshing all that nitrous into the air, the cop was writing out a ticket. A hippie stole up and bent to the tank, inhaling the gas as it discharged. The cop turned and, seeing this, clouted the hippie guy on the ear. Just then one of those big Huey choppers rose over the lot at an altitude of about fifty feet. As it flew over, I saw a man with a bog old VHS camera and another with an automatic rifle standing in the big, open, doorway. The choppers ran up and down the lot all night like it was Apocalypse Now. I scattered.

A woman approached me and asked if I had seen anybody vending prepackaged food. She was afraid of the grilled cheese and burritos, and lectured me on the dangers of getting slipped something. When she asked if I had a relationship with Jesus, I slipped away from her and through the tunnel under the highway.

Usually, on the lot, there are people selling doses and buds. Not at this show. Three different people in the tunnel approached me selling crack. What kind of dead show was this? Vietnam war choppers, crack dealers, congressmen, I was out of my element.

I found myself on the lawn outside the stadium and continued my quest. I had no luck and eventually gave up and headed back to the tunnel, hoping maybe somebody back at the van had found an extra ticket. At the entrance to the tunnel, I met the Man in Black. He was a black man with a black ball cap, black jeans, and black tee shirt. There was no logo on any of his clothing, including the cap. He asked if I was looking for a ticket and I lit up. Turns out he didn't have one either, but promised if I met him at that light pole over there at 4pm, he could get me in for twenty dollars. Keeping this in mind, I returned to the van.

Dave said he had scored a ticket for me, but traded it for some mushrooms. Bill had a similar story. The hitch hikers had switched the cast again and were working the crowd about twenty yards from the van. I told Dave how I hadn't seen anybody selling anything but Cocaine, and what a weird scene it was. Nobody was smiling. Nobody was looking anybody in the eye. I wondered aloud if I just wasn't looking in the right place. I set out again, looking for family, who were more and more conspicuous in their absence. It was almost four so I walked under the highway to meet the Man in Black.

I found 4 people, but no Man in Black at the assigned location. There were three clean cut looking guys and a girl. Wary, I stood a little ways off, but the young lady spotted me and asked if I was waiting to meet the guy who was going to let us in. I joined their group and a little while later our dark friend strolled up.

He looked furtively around and then requested our money. We each gave him twenty dollars and he stuffed all of the bills into his pocket but one. He then instructed us on how to fold a second twenty, and how to hold it. He informed us he was going to lead us to a gate where a friend of his was taking tickets. We were to approach him and pass the twenties in the manner we were shown. I didn't like it, but I was already in for twenty bucks. Nobody else liked it either and I was voted to enter first. We got to the correct line and the Man in Black disappeared into the crowd.

I considered some lyrics from “Friend of the Devil”. “Took my twenty dollar bill and vanished in the air”.

I approached the turnstile with the quartet behind me and made the appropriate supplications, half expecting to have been ripped off. The large man received my second twenty without looking at me and allowed me through the turnstile. I was in.

I made a beeline for the restroom with the male part of our contingent. We decided to hang there for a while and let the stadium fill up a little before blending with the crowd. Of course, there was a cop in the john, so I did my best to pee and split. Curiously, the others stayed behind.

I left the hallway for the arena and bounded down the steps two at a time, headed for the stage. My floor length dashiki was billowing behind me; my long hair blowing in the breeze. I hadn't gotten far when a security guard behind me requested my ticket. I pretended I didn't hear him. “Hey Hardhead!” he shouted, “Stop right there”. I began sidling down a row of seats in an attempt to elude him. A second guard came down the next aisle and they nabbed me. Guard #1 asked for my ticket again and I told him I must have dropped it in all my excitement. He didn't buy it. The hauled me back up the steps with their fingertips dug hard into my armpits. My feet barely touched the ground. They took me to a cinder block room and locked me in.

Alone, I pondered whether or not to eat the dope. I had three hits of acid and about as many grams of skunk. I didn't know if there were cameras, so I remained calm and left the drugs in my pockets. I figured they were just going to make me sweat a while, maybe the duration of the show, then turn me loose with a citation. They only left me there for a few minutes before they returned and grilled me as to who let me in without a ticket. After several threats, they gave up, photographed me, wrote down whatever silly alias I had given, and escorted me out of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. I was banned for one year.

The tunnel to the lot now held a crap game, as well as the surge of the crowd coming for the show, two crack dealers, and a cop at each end (facing out). I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. I was disappointed to miss the show, but even more disappointed in myself for #1: my breach of ethics while sneaking in, and #2: getting caught leaping down the steps like an idiot.

At least I still had the drugs.

There were a few hours to kill, so I decided to find somebody to smoke this grass with. I wasn't sure if I was going to even eat the acid. It was pretty good stuff though, and I really wanted to. I had fasted in preparation and waited thirty days in order to have the best trip I could. I walked all the way back to the bus and couldn't find anybody who would look me in the eye, or even return a smile. Oh, how different than the Midwest shows!

I passed a girl along the way who was promising to “Bare anything for a crystal”, or maybe she was saying “Bear anything for a crystal”. In this group there was no telling. Was she hoping to trade a crystal for a grilled cheese, or maybe continue to swap up and score her drug of choice? Was she an exhibitionist? Was she a masochist? Maybe a little of both? To this day I often ponder her syntax. Back at the van, I sat on the ground and watched the carnival walk past on the way to the show. I had never spent an entire show in the lot. Perhaps the Universe was guiding me toward a valuable experience. As I sat there considering the events of the day and debating whether or not to eat the acid, the “Bare Anything” girl sat against a truck across from me. Her legs were splayed and I could see right up her panty-less skirt.

I wondered if I owed her a crystal.

In the end, I decided I would leave it to fate and walk along the Potomac to the other end of the lot, If I couldn't see a friendly face or find the people with the love in their eyes, I wouldn't eat the LSD. If I did find my people, I would dose up and smoke them out.

The Potomac was fetid, the populace: unfriendly. I reached the far (and I do mean far) end of the lot and stood there forlornly looking at the rusty fence. I was discouraged. I had some of the best paper I had seen, blue with gold stars, plus a chunk of mop up. Fate had spoken. I turned, preparing to trudge back to the bus and hotbox the skunk in my pocket.

I heard my name and looked to find that friendly face I was looking for. It was Jody, and I didn't even know she was in D.C. We smiled and hugged and she told me she had to hurry off to the show. After she left I put three squares of paper on my tongue and began my journey.

A while later, Little Red Riding Hood came skipping toward me. “Cold Rain and Snow” was coming from the Stadium. Her eyes never left mine as she skipped right up to me. She was wearing a frilly dress, red cape with hood, and had a picnic basket draped over one arm. She was blond and healthy and wholesome looking. She said she had to look in my eyes, and then she asked if I would like a “Very kind veggie burrito”. I said yes, I sure would, and inquired of the price. “No charge for the Mad Hatter” she said with a giggle, handed me her wares, and skipped along. I thought maybe my day was getting better.

The burrito, delicious and fresh as it was, made me thirsty. Way the hell out this end of the lot, there weren’t a lot of vendors. I went looking for a cold drink, and found a guy selling lemonade out of the back of an old truck. His sign read “Lemonade $6”. He was dispensing it in ten ounce cups. I was livid. I had guilt from not telling Dave what I thought of his WAY overpriced Sunny D, and wasn't going to let this guy go without an earful.

I told him just what I thought of people coming to the show and taking advantage of the poor, thirsty hippies by charging exorbitant prices. I told him he should be ashamed of himself and that he was behaving just like the capitalist “Babylonians” we eschewed. He told me if I thought his portions were unfair, to give him six bucks and drink all I want.

God help me, I did. I had about six glasses. It was days before I realized what I had done.

It wasn't long after that when I met the Grilled Cheese Guy. I thought the Grilled Cheese Guy was where it all went wrong. I wasn't thinking about the two hits of gold stars on blue paper, or the mop up, or the burrito, or the six glasses of lemonade. Nope, it was Grilled Cheese Guy. He reached into my head with his greasy grilled cheese finger and did something to me. It sounds funny now, but it wasn't at the time.

I started hearing his pitch from about twenty cars back. “Grilled cheese! Getcher Grilled Cheese! KIND Grilled cheese!” The later had a leering quality to the word “Kind” as if it were somehow satirical and I tried not to look when I passed him. The next time he hollered “Grilled” I had drawn up even and was looking right ahead of me at a drummer some distance off. With the word “CHEESE!” he leaned in front of me and tapped me solidly between the eyes with his finger. I didn't notice which one; finger that is.

Freaked me right out. That grilled cheese guy reached right into my psyche and was poking around in there for god knows what reason. I felt mystically violated. I wasn't going to hang around and try to toss fireballs with some evil wizard. I headed toward the masses around the drummer.

He was shirtless with dreadlocks, and I was halfway from the grilled cheese attack when I noticed I was dancing to the rhythm and the drummer was staring intently at me, drawing into him. I wondered if he was in collusion with the Grilled Cheese Guy. Lucky for me I was carrying a three inch ovate brass bell that was hand made by Buddhist Monks (at least that's what Jody's friend told me when he traded it to me for some gold stars back in Muncie).

I dug out that bell and found a whole different beat and broke free of the hold that drummer had on me and his grilled cheese friend too. I turned right at the next corner and danced away. I thought I heard whispers of “Mad Hatter, look!”. Two girls: plain, with straight brown hair, sat in the middle of the path. They were moving as if dancing, but weren't in step with “Franklin's Tower”, which was pouring out of the Stadium and further freaking me out. “In Franklin's Tower there hangs a bell. Might have one good ring baby, who can tell?”

One turned to the other when I drew closer, and whispered to her “Don't get in his shadow!” I did my best to remain calm and continue to the relative safety of the bus. “Franklin's Tower” turned to “Estimated Prophet” and I chilled a little. Then I saw those same girls again, coming toward me, and didn't know how they could be there. When I walked past, the one looked at the other and whispered “Don't look in his eyes!”

I was almost in a complete panic. I stopped and cast about looking for Grilled Cheesemen and evil wizards or at the very least, Dave's bus. The Vietnam choppers continued to threaten the skies. A friendly voice called out, “Hey bro! Come over here for a while, the helicopters can't see you under here.” I looked. There were two split window buses parked next to each other with a tarp stretched between. They had built a bunker, front and back, with bedrolls and gear and duffle and such. It was incredibly comfortable. Over at the stadium, we could hear “Dark Star.” A bowl went around.

By time it came to me, it was empty. I reached for my stash to refill it and the girl who had invited me in said not to worry. I handed it to her and she told me to watch carefully. She stuck the tip of the little finger from her right hand into her mouth and sucked on it a minute. Then she inserted it into the pipe and twisted it. With each twist her finger rose a bit more in the bowl. When she was done and handed it back to me, it was nearly full.

It went around again and a new girl joined us, sitting to my right. The bowl was empty by time it got to her. I told her not to worry and reached for the wooden pipe. I told her to watch carefully as I sucked on my right pinkie and then twisted it in the bowl. I imagined our hostess's eyes sparkled a little. I felt a small kernel rising in the pipe, I twisted. The pipe refilled itself again and before I, or the new girl could express our amazement, our hostess stood and commanded us all to hush. A neighboring jam box was playing a different version of Dark Star and they were synching up here and there. She told me I was safe to go back out now. I noticed Dave's bus a few rows over and excused myself. I was refreshed. I thought the worst of the evening had passed, but those brown haired girls would have none of that.

There they were, standing across from the bus. They were right where I had last seen the Bare/Bear Anything girl. The one looked at the other and whispered into her ear “They're taking his soul!” There's only so much a fellow can take. I dove right into the surprisingly unlocked van and hid under some blankets. The band was covering “It's All Over Now Baby Blue” Maybe the Grilled Cheese Guy did get me? I tried to meditate, but the only mantra I could hold was one of repeated panic. After an eternity, I heard a voice.

The voice said hey man, its okay. You know what to do. “Do I think about all the love in my life?” I asked. The voice chuckled. “You'll be alright.”

I smoked a joint. I was alright. No Grilled Cheese Guy was going to take my soul. I shouldn't listen to strange brown haired girls. After a while I got out of the bus. The show was over, the fireworks had started. I walked away from the lights a bit, but kept the van in sight. The first firework turned to smoke. The smoke turned into Tom Sawyer. I walked farther from the lights. The second firework turned into the woodcut of the skeleton with roses. Then it turned into just a skeleton. Then it brutally sodomized Tom Sawyer. I ran for the van.

It was locked. I stood at the van and tried not to look at the smoke. I also tried not to look at the truck across the way, lest there be two very mean brown haired girls or at the very least, one brown haired vagina looking back at me. I focused on a spot halfway from the bus to the path and up stepped The Man in Black. He was looking the other way, watching concert goers as the came out and walked along the path to their cars. I tried to convince myself that it wasn't him. It was.

The Man in Black reached into his left pants pocket and bowed deeply toward the truck across the way. Suddenly, he pivoted on his heels, and came up facing me with a huge stack of hundred dollar bills fanned out like a hand of euchre. There must have been thousands of dollars there. He looked up and smiled and pivoted back toward the path with his hands in his pockets. I was stricken. Then he glanced at a spot on his left and looked over his shoulder at me. Then to his left/ Then back at the path. He was inviting me. I dove back in the bus, which was unlocked.

No matter how hard I listened, I couldn't find that reassuring voice again. I lay on the floor and smoked another joint. After a bit I crept up and looked out the window. The Man in Black was gone. I crawled back out of the van.

Dave and Bill showed up, and eventually the hitch hikers. Neither wore the cast, they were carrying it. We all got in the back and smoked another one. Dave and Bill informed me that they were too high on mushrooms to drive. I told them about my night. They said if I didn't drive then we were staying right there. That sounded okay to me until the third time the cop came by and told us if we didn't leave we'd be towed and/or arrested. God help me, I drove out of that lot, and down the road to Dave's aunt's place in Virginia.

Every exit ramp had five or six cop cars waiting, with lights flashing, to bust the Deadheads. The helicopters were swooping and the buildings were glaring at me malevolently. I'll never go back to that damned town. The hitch hikers dropped a hundred and a half on Dave for gas and got out at the exit for Dave's aunt. I think Autumn was wearing the cast this time. Somehow we made it back to Dave's Aunt's. I don't know if Dave's aunt even really exists. I didn't see her. Bill and I had to sleep in the back yard and weren't allowed to use the toilet.

Dave and Bill ate mushrooms and so they slept like babies. I had done god knows how much acid (I still hadn't put two and two together about the burrito and the lemonade). I was up for the duration in a backyard where I wasn't particularly welcome in Virginia, damn close to the most evil city on the east coast and the grilled cheese sorcerer bastards it harbors. I decided to go for a coke. My soul seemed safe for the moment.

“Winding his way among goblins.

The dancing man ringing his bell.

Did it indeed occur as he's seen?

As he sees? Or somewhere in between?

In and out of the temple

betrayed by his leaps toward the floor.

Pipes were all dry, no love in their eyes

Heard a voice, swallowed stars, still denied.

Hunger drove him to that smiling maid.

Then he argued with a merchant on the price of lemonade.

The man shouted “Fine my friend! Take you two times three!”

How sore I erred.

In truth I fared

The price of gluttony.

Foolish and dumb,

The fruit had come

From a magic lemon tree.”

-TSB (from “An Outing at the Fair”)

D.C. Dead Show Part II of III

It was barely dawn when we rolled into the parking lot at RFK Stadium in our nation's capital. I was anxious to escape the VW after being crammed in the back of the bus with Bill with his voluminous bedsheets and Cody and Autumn, the hitch hikers (Cody had the broken leg, or was it Autumn?). I fairly dove for the door and scrambled to get at least forty feet from everybody before I noticed the sunshine, turned my face to the sky, and smiled. It was finally safe to breath through my nose again.

I can't stress enough how everybody but myself was profit oriented on this trip. I had learned to never do business on the lot, neither buying nor selling nor trafficking in contraband in any way. A Dead show is the perfect storm of law enforcement. In addition to uniformed fuzz, state and local have undercover rats there as well as a few different federal acronyms. It was dangerous enough just being there. 

Once sprung from the bus, I wandered the paths between parked vehicles, meandering my way to the exit ramp leading to the lot and spent quite a bit of time there looking for a ticket to the sold out show. Where the ramp met the expressway, I met a topless girl in full lotus with a picture book of Grateful Dead. She invited me to sit with her and look at her picture book. While I did, she told me her story.

She told me she was the secret love child of Phil Lesh, bass player for the band, and that they were secretly Jewish. She said these things were secrets because there were branches of the government (also secret) who were run by the mafia and wanted to kill them. I wished her luck and went on my way, sadder for having met such a confused soul. Maybe somebody back at the van had scored an extra ticket for me.

I

t was a mile or more along the long lot at RFK to the bus. To the north, we were bordered by the highway. To the south, we were bordered by the Potomac; a fetid swamp of a river, covered with algae and litter that didn't even sink in the thick, polluted water. I was offended that the river in our nation's capitol should find itself in such disrepair. I heard that some people let their dogs drink from it and they became very sick.

When I got back to the bus, the only people I knew there were the hitch hikers, and I could swear the other one wore the cast when we first picked them up/ It turns out it was a fake cast. And they took turns wearing it and panhandling the crowd. I decided I might have a better chance at a ticket closer to the stadium. I'd seen Bill Graham handing out miracles from the sunroof of a limo at a previous show at Deer Creek, and that was right at the gate.

There was no sign of Bill Graham, of course, but I trudged on, with my finger in the air, looking for that miracle. I found myself quite literally tempted by the darkside. A black man in black jeans, a plain black tee, and a black ball cap told me he could get me a ticket if I were to meet him at a certain spot at an appointed hour, maybe three hours hence. I agreed to meet him if I had no luck and returned again to the bus to kill time.

I was not so surprised this time, when I found the hitch hikers had switched the cripple role again. Dave was there, and had purchased several eighths of different kind buds from which he was pulling a bud from each. He said he planned on steaming the weed when he got home to make up the weight, and would wind up with an eighth or better for himself. I grew more and more disgusted with the scene as the hours progressed. Dave left to make his money and the hitch hikers moved on to make theirs. I sat beside the bus and watched the carnival that marched by.

Across from where we parked was another bus, white, also parked parallel to the drive. A girl was there, looking a bit chewed and out of shape, and she called to those who walked past, “Bare anything for a crystal”(as in expose), or maybe it was “Bear anything for a crystal” (as in tolerate). I wonder to this day, as she seemed likely to be marketing herself for either pursuit. I never found out which, although I paid attention (lest she find a customer and the situation clarify itself). I will say that when she sat next to the bus, you could see right up her skirt and I wondered if maybe I owed her a crystal, but did not ask, for I carried no crystal this day.

The sun was beginning to get low, and I spiraled out from our little spot to make my appointment with the dark man and my way into the show. By now, there were Huey helicopters flying low over the crowds in the lot. Out one door was a soldier with an automatic rifle, out the other was an equally imposing soldier with a video camera. It was a bit intimidating, and reminded me of vietnam movies.

There was a place in the lot roped off for congressmen, and two limos and several caddies were parked there with their government tags. How hypocritical that our elected leaders should be there, yet everywhere I looked were either overly-armed patrols of active busts going down.  Cops were even busting people with nitrous tanks, and forcing them to open the valves and empty the tanks. While one cop was writing a guy a ticket and his tank was emptying into the air, a hippie kid walked up and bent his face to the blast and was huffing the gas as it blasted out. The cop hit him with his nightstick and called him stupid and I strolled for better ground. I was off to the third telephone pole from the main gate to get my black market ticket.

Overall, the scene was ugly. It wasn't like any show I had ever been to. Everybody had an agenda to take advantage of somebody else. Later, it occurred to me that a lot of family who kept the vibe up were in Vermont preparing for the gathering of the tribes, and maybe their absence allowed for such an element. I would join them in a few weeks, and actually meet that topless daughter of Phil's Jewish love, but that's a WHOLE other story.

The D.C. Dead Show (part I, before it all got strange)

Springtime in Indiana can, in some years, be more cruel than the bitterest of winters. The snow doesn't simply melt, with the heating of the hemisphere, but is washed straightaway by the rains. Looking out the window, you can watch the white recede and the grass grow green again. Soon, there is the light green of new growth. Still the rains fall, leaving the new verdant lawns soggy and inaccessible. Being stuck indoors during a blizzard or overly long freeze is tenable, even expected. Being shut up indoors for weeks while the world is once more springing to life is intolerable. I am remembering one such spring and the lengths my protracted exile from nature had driven me.

One day, as I was debating the construction of an ark, a wee bit of blue appeared to the south and west of Muncie. The rain had gone to a drizzle. It occurred to me that I hadn't been in the woods for quite a while. Trees and plants and moving water have always been energizing to me, relieving the encumbrances of daily life.

I grabbed a sack of smoke and pointed the Buick at that patch of blue.

East Central Indiana is unlike the wooded hills where I grew up. Both are corn country; acres of fields dotted with wooded areas. Muncie has less wooded areas than southern Ohio, and I had no luck finding one that looked accessible. They were all small, one acre plots, well back from the road and across muddy fields in view of the farms that possessed them. It was while I was searching that the downpour returned.

Lighting up another joint, I meandered the farm roads and sodden highways back to town. A short ways from the little city, I found a row of greenhouses, set among an orchard. I don't remember the name of the nursery, but decided to avail myself of the greening vibe and pulled into their parking lot.

I entered the first of four long glass buildings and, finding it occupied by a cashier and several middle aged women, moved along a connecting arch to the next. I did so until I found myself in the farthest, and likely least populated. I sparked another doob and wandered the aisles, absorbing the surrounding life with each of my senses. At the rear of the building stood a group of young trees, and I sat down among them, inhaling their fragrance with that of the sativa burning at my fingertips.

The sudden voice that broke my reverie startled me. “That looks like a great idea, I do that as often as I can”. It turns out, that was no sprinkler system I heard behind the trees, but a hippie with a hose. He introduced himself as David while he availed himself of the proffered joint. I told him of my quest for a woods and how it led me to the nursery. He invited me to follow him home on his break to sample some indica and I complied, following him to Tenth street.

We chatted at length, and he showed me his “paintings”. Less art than craft, they were the product of oil colors floating on water that he dipped paper into. They were pleasing to look at, yet still, there was no artistry involved. In the end, he sold me an ounce of the sticky stuff we'd been smoking. His wife was livid that he would bring a stranger to his home and conduct business. I had short hair at the time, and was sporting wire rimmed glasses, a collared shirt, and a watch; not exactly the uniform of my people.

I was about to leave, when he invited me to join him and some friends and travel to a Grateful Dead show in D.C. In a couple of months. At first I declined, but when I searched my mind for an excuse, I found I had none. I had no girlfriend or job so, “Hell yeah” I said. “Sign me up”.

On the appointed day, Dave picked me up in his bright orange high top VW bus with the giant daisy on the front. It was only then that I found that his “friends” were one single individual named Bill. I knew Bill. I used to sell LSD to Bill. Bill was an odd cat.

Bill was a big fella who dressed exclusively in pastel bedsheets. He wore lipstick, eyeliner, and nail polish, all in black. He had some kind of vampire thing going on. Had they used the word back then he would have been Goth, all but for the weird ass pale blue bedsheet.

I used to meet him at his mother's house. She would announce that his drug dealer was there, and he would appear and take me to his basement and we would do business. His mother holds a position in city government and, to this day, calls any former associates of her son “drug dealers” and holds them responsible for his heroin addiction years later.

He only went in for two or three hundred dollars at a time. He constantly demanded a better price. I told him if he spent more, or paid up front when I placed my orders, he could halve his expenses, but he wouldn't go for it. Eventually I noticed the bills he would pay with all had a red magic marker dot in the lower right hand corner of the reverse side. I discussed this with the people I dealt with on the supply side, paranoid that I was receiving marked money and giving fair warning to those it trickled up to. I was advised to discuss it with him, rather than cutting him off. I followed instructions, failing to grasp the greed that motivated the individual on the supply side.

Bill denied marking the money, or noticing it had been marked. He assured me that the bills in question came from an assortment of people and the marks must be coincidental. I couldn't buy his excuses, but continued doing business while I tried to figure things out.

Actually, it wasn't me who noticed the marked bills, but a weed supplier on 8^th street who pointed it out. He turned out to be an undercover agent for the DTF, but that's another story.

Before I met Dave, the situation with Bill solved itself. The Dead were coming through town in May and Bill was going to follow the pipe dream of twenty five dollar sheets on the dead lot. He focused all his finances in this direction and ceased dealing with me. He later told me he found the fabled twenty five dollar sheets, but they turned out to be plain blotter paper. No LSD was on them.

In the van, on the way to the show, Bill told me he intended to find the people who sold the bogus doses and force them to take them back. He didn't. He ended up ripping people off and selling those sheets as individual hits to unsuspecting Deadheads. I remember him justifying this, but don't remember the details of how. I can't think of much that is more reprehensible in the LSD trade. I let my friends know, that they shouldn't deal with Bill.

That was how the D.C. Trip started out. Dave, had a case of Sunny D, his “art” and some other crap that he planned on selling at quite a markup on the lot to fund his third of the expenses. He later told me he had his wife's permission to attend based on the projected profit he would return with. I had saddled myself with just the kind of capitalist hippies I abhored.

I had cash in my pocket and two hits of that fantastic blue paper with gold stars, and a mop up. Mop ups are sheets of very heavy (almost cardboard) that they throw in the pan to soak up whatever is left of the LSD when they lay sheets. For every ten sheets I ordered, I got a sheet of mop up. Mop ups are awesome. Let's say maybe 800 micrograms or more instead of the already 350 mics my people regularly laid.

We stopped in Virginia to pick up hitch hikers. One had his leg in a cast. Dave said it was in hopes they would kick down some gas. After ten hours or so in the van with Bill and Dave, it was apparent that they were in it for the possible profit, not the show.