Baseball, Blues & Bills

 Fearless

The summer of '72 was a watershed moment for me. I, among millions of other baby boomers, would be heading to the polls for the first time for a Presidential election. People who claim to have info on such things said that, as a group, we could actually elect the next president, IF we got our collective act together. Like countless others, I was a long-haired wasteoid with about as much interest in politics as I was interested in calculus.  They were both loosely concerned with ways of crunching numbers, and they both lay inside the realm of total button-down types, whom I didn't understand at all. My father was a Nixon man, had always been. He believed wholeheartedly in the "Dominoe Theory", And why not? The collection of hacks who were pushing this shit down their throats scared the bejabbers out of them. They were of the generation who fought Fascism and won. But they also knew something far more insidious was on the horizon, Communism. So it's natural that they wanted to hold close to their bosom all they had fought for, suburbia, baseball, shopping malls, middle-class splendor, and Fizzies instant bubbling soft drink. 

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but don't these "Tabs" kinda look like they might have a drop of something on them. That, if ingested, and with the right brainwashing might lead you in a horrific way of voting for the Nixon/Agnew ticket. The Army had been experimenting with this for years. Isn't it just quite possible that they were targeting me and thousands like me? My father worked on Madison Ave. in an advertising firm. Remember the series "Ad Men" well, that slimy shit was pretty much true. Anyway, one of his clients were the treacherous bastards who manufacture Fizzies and I remember a kitchen drawer jam-packed with these mind-altering tablets. He encouraged my friends to try 'em. WTF! was my old man really trying to spike my generation into voting Republican? It was a place I would revisit many times while on wild drunken binges and sacred Peyote sabbaticals.

Summer of '72. Going to summer school as I didn't graduate due to flunking Political Science, which was a BS course as I was supposed to be taking US History II. They brought some hot-shot college professor in and he did the big switcheroo and delved into politics and the primaries that were underway. Naturally, I didn't give a hangman's damn about politics and promptly cut most of the classes, so I wound up in a nearby college taking the summer school US History II course. I was certainly more than qualified for the course and wound up giving lectures on mid-nineteenth-century stuff. The professor finally asked what the hell was I doing in this makeup class, so I told him.

So I spent my summer in school a couple of days a week. The rest of the time I was apprenticing in a film development company in mid-town Manhatten which specialized in putting together the final touches on the commercials for the fat cats on Madison Ave. I can thank dear old Dad for this job. Honestly, it was an ok job, the folks were nice and a couple of gorgeous young women worked there, not to mention all the tail-walking down the street during lunch hour. It was during one of these lunch hours that I met Kathleen. She was on 5th Ave passing out flyers and stuff for George McGovern.  With my libido in full gear, I approached her, struck up a conversation, and before you could say "Bob's yer Uncle" I was a member of the team and spent my lunch hours hanging out with Kathleen. I had just turned 18 and I believe she was 21. Actually fooled her into thinking I was some sort of hot shot playing in a band and all. Total crap. But I had a couple of dates with hr during the course of the summer and got a real treat when she allowed my perverted ass to enter her apartment. She lived in Fort Lee, NJ, and the mess she and I made of her pad when we "got it on", well, it looked like a couple of feral cats had escaped being tied up in a gunny sack and had run amok. 

Courtesy of my personal collection

There was another gal I met on the commuter bus I took every day to the city. She lived in Hackensack, was 23, beautiful,  and just over a tough breakup from her then-fiance. Wouldn't you just bet that ol' Trouser packing Pud, the cute long-haired freak took advantage of that situation?  Thinking back, I cannot realize how the hell I pulled this shit off, I had zero experience with doing this kind of demented and lascivious tap dance around women. I can only chalk it up to the alignment of the stars, planets, and whatever else you want to throw in there. Indeed, I was a reckless, devil may care miscreant humping anything including cored apples and fresh liver. This reckless abandon would serve me well later on in this decade. I was attending my own brand of summer school and I was the teacher, student, and curriculum master all rolled up into a neat little unstoppable package, roaring down the highway with a joint, a can of cheap beer, and an 8 Track blasting Ten Years After in my father's early 60s Volkwagon 3-speed Bug.  This was the real American dream and the window for grabbing it with all your might was getting ready to close.

How come my parents let this crap slide on by? Well, for one thing, my Mother and Sister were at the shore house for the summer and my father worked all day, played golf, and spent a 3 day weekend, every week, "down the shore".

This summer seemed to last forever, so much more was in store.

Sunday nights were reserved for friends coming over and hanging out. I loved my early 70s/ late 60s music. Cool nights in the backyard with fellow denizens of the deep and their girls, all friends. I had met a girl a couple of blocks over, her name was Betsy, long dark hair in pigtails and a smile that could melt the coldest heart. This one particular Sunday I was standing in my driveway conversing with some friends, music blaring.

Up the driveway walked Betsy. Regardless of all the luck, I had had that summer, she lit me up like a champion pinball player hitting special after special. I don't believe we ever made love, she was so much better than that. She was for hanging out with, talking with, holding hands, and kissing. Some of my closest friends hung with me that night. One, in particular, my closest friend, Ralph, had a shell of a VW Bus that he was installing a new engine in and redoing the insides to make it a sweet magic carpet ride on the road. He had plans to finish it up by mid-August and then head to the environs of Montreal where a camping ground existed by a flowing river. Supposedly the hash and wine flowed from on high like a gift from the Gods.

The summer was winding down. Summer school was over and my apprenticeship had ended So I bid farewell to Kathleen and my bus buddy, Linda. If you want to know the truth, I think they welcomed the short interlude but were just as pleased to be shed of me. I would see more of Linda, Kathleen is just a fond whisper of long ago. I don't seem to forget women I have cared for in the past. I recently got back in touch with a gal I had met in Kansas and she was floored by the fact that I even remembered her, much less took the time to track her down. I had to remind her that my heart is permanently tattooed on my sleeve. It's just another facet of my mania. I'm an absolute psychotic when it comes to women, all it takes is one little thing to knock me out. I told a story somewhere on this blog about how I was being treated by a female physician, not much older than me, and just as sweet and caring as all get out. Anyway, when she would enter the examing room, instead of closing the door with her hand, she would lift her leg and close the door with her booted foot. Sounds like no big deal, right? That sent me into delirium! I thought it was so fucking cute I had to take a firm grip on myself to keep from grabbing her and kissing her. I could see the headline "Middle-aged maniac runs amok in Medical Office. Tazed to bring him down, more at 6." I swear I'm fucking nuts. I've been addicted to a few bad things in my life, smokes, and barbituates, but the worst is women. I know it's immature and I should keep it in its proper place, especially due to the fact that I now look like the incarnation of Aqualung.

See? I can't even write a story without going off on some drug-addled tangent about women and door closings and all the other shit clouding my mind. 

Summer was winding down and thus far it had been as memorable as any I had ever experienced. I now spent most of my time at Ralph's house down in Scotch Plains. Ralph was a master woodworker, having learned from his grandfather who was amazingly skilled. Along with Ralph was his buddy, Fred. Fred was a few years older than us but knew how to put cars together. So the two of them labored over the microbus for a week, full time. I was like the quintessential bag boy getting coffee and food at various times and keeping the joints going. We smoked a powerful amount of grass, one of Fred's other talents, a master procurer of weed. It was also at this time that I became a true, dyed-in-the-wool California cowboy. Ralph and Fred both were both Hank Williams freaks like no other and they also played a steady diet of the Grateful Dead's "Working Man Dead". Those, mixed with Dead offshoot "New Riders of the Purple Sage" was like a gigantic whiff of amyl nitrate, roaring up my back and instantly transforming me into an early version of the molted slimy individual I am now.

The day dawned hot and sticky. Fred, in his Cadillac, Ralph, a friend, and I piled into the microbus and headed to Canada. This was long before you needed a passport to go into Canada. However, the agents guarding the back to the USA side were notoriously rough on longhairs in their zeal to find illicit drugs. Knowing full well of this, Ralph had built a secret compartment in the van to hold our pound of weed, it seemed impregnable. We boiled on over the border and straight into the hinterland. There was no turning back now. The van was a dense cloud of  Mexican weed, I rolled down the window, and Fred, tailing us, blasted his horn and motioned to pull over. "You fucking moron, what's wrong with you!" Fred had jumped out of the caddy and came running at us. We stood with a look of bewilderment. "You're getting half the Province of Quebec wrecked! They'll lock us up for God knows how long!" We stood still not uttering a sound, though I thought I heard a bit of weeping coming from our third guy, Pete. I'd have to keep my eye on him, if things got bad he might cave, I had to be ready for that eventuality.  

The next couple of weeks were a blazing blur of miles on the road, bummer hash deals gone bad, gangs of French-speaking Quebec City toughs trying to rip us off and dump our bodies on the side of the road. I remember bits and pieces. For instance, hanging around the old Expo World's Fair Park, drinking high-power Canadian lager. That coupled with the black tar hash we did score turned us into a pack of howling desperate ugly Americans who were shunned at every turn of the corner. I had peeled off from the group and entered what I thought was an eatery. In actuality it was a barber shop, I thought the barber pole looked like a candy cane. I stumbled in, hair to my shoulders wearing a cowboy hat. Two men were clipping hair, All four stopped and stared at me. Did I drag something in behind me? They began to babble at me incoherently and I turned and ran for my life, I forgot to open the door and slammed into it, fell back, and desperately tried to regain composure. I saw myself doing hard time up on the Great Slave Lake building dams and cataloging walruses. I scrambled to my feet, smiled, mumbled something about the evils of socialism, and high-tailed it out of there. "Where were you, we thought you'd been dragged away to jail or something?" Pete inquired. "We've got to get the hell out of here", I whispered, "There's a couple of Sweeny Todd bastards hot on my trail, if they get us, we're toast."

After that, all I remember is that we were speeding down a four-lane highway singing loudly to Hank Williams songs on the 8-track. In the back of the bus was a framed photo of Hank himself. He was smiling as if he approved of our reckless behavior. The next few days were filled with camping fun in various locales with various Canadian characters. All were treated to real American madness as the smoke and beer flowed freely. Many a night I crawled back to my tent twisted and totally spent. We limped back to the border and made it across with little incident. The officers gave us a bored look and waved us through.

Yea, it had been a mighty enjoyable summer, from beginning to end. Even McGovern got the Democratic nod at their convention. This was in spite of that old hack, Humphrey trying to throw a wrench into the proceedings by g attempting to go back on the "winner take all delegates in California" deal. His troubles came to naught and he was stomped out of existence by the McGovern juggernaut. However, there was a foul stench in the corner of the auditorium. A vision of things to come, the spawn of Satan, George Wallace was busy making deals with Prince of Darkness. A deal was struck and the fruits would be seen on into the future. Wallace had awakened a truly sick and demented "Populist Movement" in America. These were the working men of the country who didn't like the government and surely didn't trust them worth a tinkers damn. Within this disgruntled mass were shreds of conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, Hell's Angel's dropouts, and maybe even a couple of old ballplayers from the "Dead Ball Era".  We would all get a taste of this rancid cookie soon enough.