It
was a great summer. Immediately after
graduation, Gary and I hitched across Pennsylvania’s northern tier on Route 6
to NYC and went straight to Greenwich Village, a mecca where we drank beer in
the Gerdy’s Folk City pub where Bob Dylan was discovered (remember “Positively
Fourth Street”?). We stood at the holy
folk-music corner of Bleeker and McDougal streets. Gary went back home, so I went alone up to
Boston, and most importantly out to Lexington and Concord. I hitched up New Hampshire through the
mountains to the Canadian border and then down through the Maine coast. Ramblin’ Boy.
Later
I hitched with John to Newport, RI, and with others elsewhere, but most often
alone. I saw America and experienced
stuff like the hostility, bigotry and hate of a cultural civil war, but also
stuff like compassion, decency and good will.
Just
before the drive-in movie theaters closed for the 1968 season in the autumn, we
had an epic party in the back row of a NY state drive-in for the original
showing of “Night of the Living Dead”, the classic black and white zombie
flick.
That
summer I had gotten out of several tight spots with cops because among my ID
cards I had a card from my Marine Corps recruiter. The cops always asked, “What’s this?” I told them about my delayed entry
enlistment, and it immediately changed their attitude toward this long-haired
bearded freak. The USMC had good
currency among law enforcement.
A
week into November 1968, the recruiter pulled into my family’s driveway and
picked me up for the trip to the Buffalo, NY airport. With me were guys from Sheffield and Lance
Corners. We flew, via several
connections, to Charleston, SC, arriving after midnight. A Marine NCO picked us up and herded us on a
bus to Parris Island. We arrived at USMC
Boot Camp around 02:00 and life would never be the same ever again. My life would be a surreal chaotic Hell for
all of the foreseeable future.
-Zenwind.
.
