…Just like Woodstock there was the requisite pond. There were already fans playing in the water, peeing in the water, shitting in the water. I decided to avoid the water. There were also tents, conveniently called pavilions scattered willy nilly about the grounds. Hippy entrepreneurs sticking it to the man by charging exorbitant prices for the basic necessities of living in a farmers field with twenty thousand of your closest friends. There were craft pavilions; classes on how to make tie dye pavilions; bong pavilions; know your grass pavilions and not the garden variety type either; the ever popular oxymoronic sounding pavilion on how to take acid safely. It was at one of these pavilions that I ran into Sandy, who was already stoned out of her mind. I think she recognized me as she came over to me and stood in front of me looking studiously at me and at me face. Studying every facet of my facial expressions, I could only imagine the contorted psychedelic images rummaging and racing through the dark and warped cornices of her mind as she inspected the blackheads on my cheeks. She smiled, then grinned, then grimaced, all of the time about five inches separating me from her bulging eyeballs with their dilated pupils.
“Hmmmm” was all she could muster in profound conversation.
I asked her if she brought her bodyguard with her, y’know, the guy with the sawed off shotgun.
“Hmmmm,” was all she could say. Still looking at my facial expressions. Head bobbing from side to side.
“Hmmmm” She lifted her fore finger, pointing it at my face, making imaginary circles in the space in front of my face from my forehead down to my chin.
“Hmmmm” then she giggled, started to laugh then in flash, stopped, grinned and ran off with one of her cohorts.
I turned to Timmy and said “Let’s get the hell out of here. There’s going to be trouble”
We left immediately. The hippy lifestyle just wasn’t for us.
That weekend was something of a turning point for Timmy and I. I don’t know why but just as our business was about to take hold Timmy turned weird on me. He began to stay up very late at night, which was a toxin to our particular line of work. It became increasingly difficult to wake him up in the morning. Night after night he would be up, later then later, sometimes staying up all night long. I’d ask him where or what he could be doing at that time of night but all he could say to me was, “you know how it is.” I didn’t.
He would sleep in till noon, then two, then three in the afternoon. I couldn’t wake him up. And I was shit out of luck as he had the car and that car was central to our business. I tried and tried to get him out of this funk but to no avail. Finally, after about a month of this, I had had enough. I told him that if he didn’t turn this shit of his around that I would have to go back home. He just shrugged his shoulders, turned over and went back to sleep.
Saying goodbye to Mrs Redfern, Robert and Mr Johnston, I was gone the next day, taking the train home to my shit city of a city.
Timmy stayed on the wet coast for the next forty five years. He is currently retired, unmarried and still stays out all night long. Or so I am led to believe. I have barely spoken to him since. To this day I don’t really know what happened to cause him to act like this. Perhaps it was those tie dye shirts and skirts, or those hippy hippy shakes.
Sandy eventually returned home. Today she is somewhat of a recluse, suffering from various mental disorders. She never married. Perhaps it was the drugs or the drug counterculture that set her off. So sad!
Madness man!