Tag: drugs

I Can’t Wake Up…3

…Speaking of the hippy lifestyle, Woodstock had just occurred this very summer. August 15-18, 1969. It was all the buzz among the hippy counterculture, but even more so with music fans like Timmy and I. Not to be outdone by the East Coast, some copycat festivals began to spring up here on the wet coast, everywhere it seemed, every weekend, on some non descript farm in the farmland east of here.  It had to be on a farm you see. Such originality! Most were abject failures, but it provided hippy food for thought and something to talk about.  It must have been tiring for the hippies to talk about the alphabet all day long.  As it turned out that there was a music festival planned for a farmstead not too far from this coastal city.  I believe they were calling it “Strawberry Fields,” or something equally profound like that.  Timmy and I decided to check it out.

We drove out to the prospectus. And just like Woodstock it was automotive gridlock. We decide to park our car a few miles away and walk in. Turned out to be a good plan as many of the autos became bogged down in the mud and sludge. Yes it was raining, just like Woodstock.  There was a great deal of cussing, yelling, pushing and shoving going on among the various drivers and bikers, especially the bikers. It was automotive pandemonium, definitely a frightful, fitful, love-in man as the fists came out from every which way from Sunday. And this was only Saturday.

We skirted around the problems, found the main gate, paid our fee and walked in. And what a sight to behold. Utter chaos. The end of the world as we knew it. This must be what Armageddon is going to look like. A sparse, barren, rain soaked, mud caked, garbage strewn landscape. Passchendaele couldn’t have been worse. Probably around 10 thousand hippies all gathered together in one place. All smokin, all tokin, all jokin, all smilin with their coke-ins and love-ins.  Stoned out of their ever lovin minds. And the music hadn’t even started yet….

I Can’t Wake Up…2

…The jobs just seemed to come our way: by chance, by rote, or by sheer luck, perhaps madness, although Timmy could really put on the charm. One homeowner, happy with the job we did for him, owned a strip mall in the local area. Would we be willing to take that on? You bet. And on and on she went. Just like that. All the customers that we landed wanted us to come back regularly, say every four to six months. Before long and by word of mouth we had quite the catalogue of clients, our own body of work.

We were working, making money, growing. We would leave our digs every morning around 7am, drive down 4th Avenue by the local am radio station and the Last Chance Saloon, a favourite hangout for the local hippy clientele. I always wondered how they stayed in business for most hippies I came across were always broke, panhandling, begging for loose change. One of my future naval colleagues, he himself a hippy at the time, used to sell pencils in the downtown core of this same west coast city. He was pure Officer material for sure.

Yet here they were hanging out at their Last Chance Saloon, appropriately chilling out in their drug induced Purple Haze of life. The real stoners would crash on the front lawn and terraces of the radio station, which was adjacent to the Saloon, which fronted 4th Avenue. We would pass them every morning on our way to the north shore, stoned, crashed, bellies up toward the heavens, like sea lions on the rocks except there was no squawking, no squealing, no cawing from this crowd as they appeared to be comatose. On our way back to our flat from a hard days work these same stoners, these same dudes, these same mans, were still laid out across the green expanse of the radio station. “Hey man, what a life man. Want a toke?” Good gawd. And if they were really bored or stoned they could go up one block, turn left, walk about a half mile and crash at the local Kool-Aid. Man, what life has to offer to a stoner: from Kool-Aid to the Last Chance Saloon. “What a trip man, dude, toker…yeah smokin dude!” And if they were really, really lucky they could catch up on the morning’s children’s show at the Kool Aid, and tune into the show sponsored by the letter “M:” “yeah man, cool man, hey man, what’s happenin man, chilling dude. No man, the letter “D” doesn’t come on til tomorrow man. Far out!…

The Two Stooges…5

…A few hours later, after a good breakfast and a cleanup, we drove around looking at our new surrounding, although it was hard to see anything in the pouring rain. We decided that we would apply for welfare just to get our feet on the ground. We located the municipal government building, parked the car, and went over to the facility. There was a long line-up from the office’s front door, then down the street, around the corner, and down a block or two. There were old men, old women; young men, young women; many Native Americans, young and old; hippies, young and old; well just a cross section of life itself in this part of the world. Welfare was a disconcerting all inclusive service that was indiscriminate and unsympathetic in its application. It had no pretensions whatsoever with respect to class distinction.  No, welfare treated everyone exactly the same.

And just then a young man came running down from the offices and the front of the line as excitable as one could be. Looking at no one in particular he shouted out for all of us to hear:

“Hey Billy, Hey Billy” he yelled. “I got fifty bucks!”

“Great,” Billy said, “Let’s spend it” some unknown entity answered, eagerly.

We were all excited, for him and for us.

Off he went with his best friend to have a wonderful and insightful day of booze and drugs. Within a day or two Billy and his mate will have run out of the financial juice and be forced to scrounge for scraps and drugs and live on and off the street in the city’s East End, or at least until the welfare’s maven’s call to muster yet again on this avenue of distilled dreams. It was a never ending pendulum rout from want to waste: a cycle of hope of anticipated elixir followed by deep despair. “There but for the grace of God go I” I thought yet here we all were waiting in line together, like seals yelping on a harbour pier, with anxious determination that our applications for approval or continued support from the man will be granted. Unbeknownst to Timmy and I we just happened to pick the worst day of the week to apply for assistance – Welfare Wednesday. Unlike Timmy and I most of these people were already approved. They were waiting for their cheques.

After a considerable wait we finally made it to the front of the line. There, face to face with the government official, we were drilled with expurgatory type questions that seemed to spell impatience or indifference on the part of the agent. There was no compassion or expectation for and on us by him. After what seemed to be an onslaught of useless questions we were directed to an office to wait for the next cull of disingenuous applicants.

We were finally interviewed, but one at a time, separated as if we were common criminals. I, we, explained our situation, basically, homeless with minimal funds. We needed help but only temporarily you see. We wanted to work. Whatever it was, the agent seemed to like us for we were immediately provided with a cheque each for fifty bucks plus a lead on basic accommodation. If we decided to stay at one of the identified flats on the city’s approved list of flop houses the city would pay for the first months rent. We accepted, thanked the man and were on our way. We almost felt like yelling to the world when we left that building: “Hey world, we got our fifty bucks. Now let’s spend it” Yes, all was good with the world.

That was the one and only time in my life that I applied for Welfare. That 50 bucks got us our start in life on the wet coast. I have never begrudged anyone who has gone on welfare for one never knows the individual circumstances or the personal stories that steers one into social desperation and dependency.

The Two Stooges…4

…When I returned home from my first west coast sojourn I was quite vocal about my experiences regaling all who would listen about the majestic awesomeness of the mountains and the Pacific Ocean. I never did tell them about the greyness and soul wrenching loneliness that came over my entire psyche out there like some wet mouldy blanket. It wouldn’t have played very well in a macho sense to say I was really homesick. Yet, by the time spring came along Timmy and I thought about ditching everything we had and heading west to seek our fame and fortune. It never seemed to dawn on me or us that geography was not a determinant for personal success and glory. Going west was just an excuse for us to delay the inevitability of personal responsibility and commitments – growing up. At that age and during those heady days of drug induced comas and out worldly consciousness it seemed like a good plan.

It was a Sunday afternoon. Timmy was over at my place when we decided to go, on the spot. Timmy had a 1965 Galaxy 500 at his disposal, a very large family car with a very big trunk. Enough to hold 4 or 5 spare balding tires, which we felt we would need given that all of the tires on that car were bald. We had sufficient funds for gas, food and smokes. No need for accommodation as our plan was to drive continuously until we reached the coastal city. Hare brained scheme I know but that is how immature dudes like us thought in those days.

I immediately went in to tell my parents that I was off again to the coast, only this time with Timmy. They were non-plussed about this as I think that by now they had just about given up on me and my irresponsible ways.

“What about your job” they asked

“I quit”

So off we went. Of course to hide our fears and anxiety we joked about the whole thing thinking and jesting that the area where we lived was just too boring and flat. We had to find the mountains. So we did.

We made it out there early Wednesday morning, after about 56 hours of driving, taking turns at the wheel while the other slept in the back seat. Lucky for us there were no mishaps. Even our tires held up. The plan now was to find some 24 hour diner and wait it out until the city came to life later in the day.

It was raining… of course it was….

The Two Stooges…3

…Of course it didn’t come to that. Being juvenile in mind and in body both of us were placed on probation for six months with a stern warning. It worked as it was extremely embarrassing for us, especially me, given that the Morrison name was fairly recognizable in the hallowed halls of justice in this shit hole of a city. My Grandfather Morrison was a cop, his son-in-law was a cop and every cop of Scottish, Irish descent in this Orange shit city knew about this case. The Gaelic, Celtic grapevine was faster than today’s Internet. Like Minority Report, they all knew about me and this particular indiscretion before I did or before it even happened. I was doomed for in those days having any sort of record, misdemeanour or felony, was a fate worse than death as manual labour was about all one could hope to acquire in the employment world if one had a record such as this. As it turned out the son-in-law cop was very high up there on the cop scale so unbeknownst to me my name was expunged of any record. Whew! That would come in handy later.

Timmy always had a lot of money. Wads of it. His mother had him and his other siblings modelling for the various catalogues and magazines that were popular with the locals. He was paid very well for these showings. In fact his mother preferred these modelling outings to his schoolwork. He missed a lot of school and barely got by in Elementary School but in High School he had to repeat Grade 9 and 10 a plethora of times. Nevertheless, his financial largesse to us was his way into friendship, or so it seemed to him, as he played on this financial pecuniary card to fraternize with his so called favourite buds or eviscerate the feelings of those of us that he thought unworthy of his attention. In this way I felt sorry for him.

My mother was empathetic when it came to Timmy. He would show up at our door in the winter with the top part of his shoes missing, toes open to the elements, or wearing a thin summer jacket when temperatures were well below zero. It was obvious that he was neglected but at the time this never occurred to me. He was fun to be with, crazy in his outlook on just about everything and most of all he had money to burn! And, he loved the Stooges.

Timmy, Jimmymum, O’Grunts and I became inseparable in those drug induced summers of love days of the 60s. While everyone else it seemed had lost their collective minds to sex drugs and rock-n-roll we just carried on, squarely, boringly normal. We did form a band at one time with visions of rock n roll glory, had a few gigs, then disbanded as Jimmymum’s car was his real guitar, O’Grunts became somewhat of a druggie; a hipster in his Nehru jackets and exceptionally wide bell bottomed slacks. Bruce, our lead guitarist, left for India to discover himself. I told him that all he had to do was look in the mirror. Timmy and I just hung out…