As important as taking acid was for me at a point in my development as a full blown freak, there were many things involved in tribe building. I want to talk about several of them in the next several entries.
To list them:
1) Music: Rich Prophets
2) Politics: Vietnam and the Politicos
3) Appearance; Almost cut my hair
4) Communes and Community: Wooden Ships
5) Sexuality: All you need is love
5a) On the Road Again
6) Woodstock: This is the end, my only friend, the end
7) Drug Abuse: Lock your doors to your brother
8) Progression
9) In Retrospect
House Keeping: Sandy Clarke has changed her e-mail address, probably because I e-mailed her entries of this blog which discussed her. I know there are people (Dan Reddy is another one) who deny the past that is Vagabondays, but I don't really understand how you can deny days that helped form all of us. I'm thankful for what I saw, what I did and the friends I made ALTHOUGH I was even happier when I got out of the drug cycle. I drink occassionally now (and smoke cigars when I do), but I haven't taken psychedelics or smoked "weed" (I do like the word "dope" better) since Jan. 11, 1971. I don't see myself changing that resolve any time soon. I am wary of tranquilizers and pain pills, but have to take lifelong medication for a psychiatric condition that is pretty well under control. I take as little as I can, but always within certain therapeutic levels.
Women are pragmatic and take care of their young. The defining time in most of their lives is when they give birth, and most women are the emotional center of their homes (a man may be a partner is running that home). The women of those days - including my wife Ann - seem to have no desire to look back carefully, with love and concern for those we were separated from along the way. If we wanted to, or did, live with people then, is there no interest in remebering where we were together, understanding that we all made it through that fire, one way or the other. It's abour people's stories and photos from the day.
Can we act on the idea of remembering and sharing?
E-mail me at ausforever@msn.com or do a comment. I'm thankful that one person has shared. Do you have memories and emotions to share? What was the most remarkable thing that happened during this time.
The blog address is, again: http://vagabondays.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Comments about Tripping from other Tribes
whenever i dropped acid or mescaline or whatever - your distinction between the pure stuff like blotter or windowpane and the "cut" product most of us took most of the time is an important one - within the first thirty minutes of coming on, i'd remember in vivid detail all my previous trips. (odd, that i wouldn't retain it that well after coming down. sure, i could recall events and incidents and such, but the visceral knowledge of the feelings experienced tended to disappear.) and in those first thirty minutes, i would also remember why i had decided i wouldn't do it any more. too late. yet i think if the opportunity presented itself tomorrow to trip again, i might take it just to recapture those intense memories. but i would do it alone, in an empty house with the phone turned off.some eight years ago i mentioned to my son that i'd never done ecstasy - it not having been around in my day - and that i was sort of curious about it. so one afternoon he gives me some. and i pop it right there, on the spot. i think he was kind of shocked. then i went about my day, paid some bills, did some chores, ran some errands. this surprised him even more. but it was fairly mild, what he'd given me, though pleasant enough. a little like mda, if you remember that.i never did have a bad trip in college, but i was usually careful not to take so much as to render me completely helpless or vulnerable. i did experience bad episodes within trips, but managed to get out of them. friends were tremendously important, not as guides but as tripping companions. the worst time i ever had lasted about an hour because i was separated from the friend i'd started the trip with. i didn't know what to do with myself, kept going from room to room only to realize once i got there that it wasn't where i wanted to be. it got worse and worse. finally i retreated to my room. i put on a record to comfort myself, but the music i normally loved was mocking me. outside the window the naked tree branches - it was a warmish afternoon in late february - those branches shimmered and buzzed at me with psychotic malevolence. i put my head down on the seat of a wooden chair. it was an old and worn, and the scratches in it did the same thing as the trees outside. finally, i went to a friend in the room next door. he was doing homework. i sat down and told him i thought i was losing my mind. he stared at me, nodded and said quietly, "yeah." i told him again, no, i'm losing my mind. inside i was screaming, seriously, man, you don't understand. this is horrible. you've got to help me. he stared, took a slow drag on his lucky and said again, "yeah." it was like he hadn't heard me. yet i couldn't keep repeating myself. i went back to my room. so this is what it's like, i thought, to be crazy. how could i explain it to anybody, my parents, my family, friends? there would be no connection any more between myself and anything, ever. not from where i presently was. my life was over. nothing to look forward to but unendurable and unending psychic pain. more than pain. horror. disconnectedness.there was a knock at my door. the guy from next door came in and said that david (the friend i'd dropped with and gotten separated from because he saw his girlfriend across the quad and went running off after her), david was in some trouble in his room downstairs. it was unclear to me what he was trying to tell me, but something bad was happening to david. i went downstairs to his room. it wasn't a single like mine, but a large room david shared with two others. it had its own bathroom. (this wasn't a dorm, per se, but an old house the university owned on the edge of the campus.) the two roommates, who weren't high at the time, were there looking very alarmed. david was in the bathroom sobbing, they told me. i could hear him in there and immediately started feeling a little better myself. there's nothing like having to deal with someone worse off than you to kind of put you right. a reassurance that you aren't the sickest man in the boat. you've been spared that at least. then david came out of the bathroom, hearing that i was there. his eyes were swollen and red. he managed to get out, "i'm just so happy..." before bursting anew into tears and retreating back to the bathroom. the roommates looked at me. they were verging on panic. "it's okay," i told them. "david's okay." and he was, too. i knew to take him at his word. he'd just spent time with his girlfriend liz whom he loved deeply (intensified by the acid), and he was literally crying from happiness. couldn't stop. well, eventually david did pull himself together. we smoked some dope, went zooming even higher and spent the rest of the evening and night together wandering around the campus, dropping in on friends, listening to music and smoking more dope and staring at candles. the usual stuff.i don't know why we never dropped in the morning so that perhaps we could go to sleep at a somewhat reasonable hour and not have to face the dawn after an all-nighter, utterly drained. it might not have mattered, but it didn't make the coming down any easier, and that's why i decided after every trip not to do it again. not because it had been bad, but because it had been good. it had been "beautiful" as hendrix promised, a deep spiritual oneness with your tripping partners, a connectedness that was impossible to maintain in real life and, therefore, always left me dispirited and depressed afterward. coming down. that, and the understanding that i'd done something very risky. i'd learned how a trip could go very bad, yet this time i had managed, once again, to escape that outcome. it was no-win, really. when it was good, the aftermath was hard. if it were bad, you were really fucked.four or five weeks after that trip with david, i stayed home after spring break to undergo surgery. i got a call from david's roommates that he'd taken a bunch of sleeping pills. liz had broken up with him. now he'd been unconscious for close to 36 hours. they didn't know what to do. i couldn't advise them. they did nothing. eventually david woke up and went on with his life.
LSD Innocence Part 2
Bruce Munson was going to handle our trip. Bruce was an icon in the freak community at Tufts. Whether he was the first person on campus to trip on LSD (as was claimed) or not, he certainly was a driving force in making the activity safe for others taking psychedelics. He had established a relationship with the University, and whenever someone was in trouble taking drugs, Bruce had a network of experienced drug takers who intervened to help those freaking out to find a safe landing. Bruce was training to be a Unitarian minister, which meant that he was completely open and supportive of all drug use (that’s what Unitarian means, right?), and that he had a servant’s heart. There were people out there, especially as the use of psychedelics grew, who wanted no more than to freak you out when you were tripping. You knew that Bruce and his people wanted the opposite. Doing a trip with Bruce Munson was guaranteed to be a Ted’s Most Excellent Adventure experience.
We were moving through the Delt house again, bouncing down the stairs towards the front door. Gail had suggested that we wait out front for Bruce. Good idea, for the Delts who were still awake weren’t bidding us a fond farewell.
We stood under the lamp post out front, watching sparks shooting out of the light. Experiencing the quiet in a way you only experienced on psychedelics – a solitary quiet, where brain noise was silenced, and all you could sense was stillness. It was the beginning of what would become, for many of us, a zen sense of God. Not personal, but there nevertheless. There was order in the quiet and a sense that everything did make sense. I guess the drug impacted your hearing, because there was a lot of listening in the quiet. But if you were having a hard time, and were a little freaked out, the quiet and solitude were terrifying, because being alone was a reminder that at death you would be entirely alone, and that could happen at any moment. And then you were out of control. Bob was starting to get into that pattern of thinking, so I was really happy when, after 5 minutes in the quiet, Bruce roared up in his 1952 Ford pick-up truck.
Gail had done a great thing – she had given Bruce some ponchos and coats for us to wear. We were all one step from anorexia, so how high the clothes rose above your stomach or wrist was the only determination about how the clothes fit, but as cold as we were, anything was great. Bob, Dan and I got in the back of the truck; Sandy rode shotgun. Bruce took off into parts unknown, and we hunkered down in the back, hoping not to be thrust out onto the pavement.
None of us ever had a trip master after that night and, looking back, the entire experience of wanting someone to show us the rope appears almost childish. What you really needed to know we learned as the night went on. In the back of Bruce’s truck, the three of us laughed together at the absurdity of our situation, getting uncontrollable and leaving ourselves and coming together as one unit. I always felt most vulnerable on a good trip when those I was with split apart. I never liked getting separated from those I had got off with, and a couple hours in, I would be really upset if I lost either Dan, Bob or Sandy.
Bruce stopped in some square, told us to get out, gave us money and steered us towards a run down theater that had a midnight showing of “Yellow Submarine.”
“I’ll be here when it’s over,” Bruce shouted as he hauled off. This job of his wasn’t all that difficult: put them in the truck; freeze their arses off; drop them in the middle of nowhere to see a cartoon movie; smoke some dope with Carol Rounds; come back and take them home.
I didn’t see God that night, but I did get into Pepper Land and the great superiority of love when facing awful people (strange, British sounding, cartoon creatures, actually). I swam in the images in the theater, and it was hard to follow the movie’s very simple plot because of the distraction of the colors exploding from the screen. The four of us clung together throughout. We were very close anyway, and this clinging was a reflection of the remarkable ability LSD sometimes had to create a tremendous bond between people. We were intertwined as we left the show – singing “All together now” as the Beatles requested. In front of the theater, a hundred students who looked just like us were milling in the street. They had long hair, decorated jeans, emerging facial hair (men), boots, ponchos, weird hats, color everywhere – too much fucking paisley. There was a great spirit in the crowd, a familiarity as you stood and walked by each other, smiling, laughing. These were our brothers and sisters. These people were getting hassled by their parents like I was; they were worrying about Vietnam and getting caught holding drugs. They were enjoying a new freedom sexually, and they all were starting to sense that we were part of some huge deal, and not only because we stood outside the movie loving each other, in the all encompassing love LSD usually brought you to. Dope was part of it too. Everyone was smoking weed in the square; joints were rolling through the crowds, starting at various points. It was a loaves and fishes moment – everyone got stoned.
When you were on the other side of peaking on acid, coming down was a generous time, when relief, insight and thanksgiving created the most forgiving, gracious and optimistic heart. Having not loved much before that night, I realized that I had the potential to love. I did love Bob, Dan and Sandy. As universal as I was feeling, I guess I knew I loved Dan and Sandy more than Bob. That was the true part of coming down people wished wasn’t true. Coming down meant memories of extraordinary things, but also an inkling that it wasn’t all true, that some of it was a drug.
People wanted the euphoria and universal love to be true. People tripped again.
Bruce knew we were in the “oh” zone when he arrived ten minutes after we left the theatre. We didn’t even talk to him, all four of us got into the back of the truck, and he frisked us back to Tufts. We were past peak, but we were really tripping. We were oohing and aahing at the street lights and stars. We went by a lake that reflected the moon into our faces and we are orgasmic about it. The four of us were standing, holding on for dear life to the roof, sides and each other. We sang most of the way back, loud and badly, and not caring. Beatles songs mostly.
We were within view of the campus when there was the wail of sirens behind us and Bruce slowed down and pulled over. It was the Medford Police. We were all standing as he walked to the driver’s window. The Medford police wore baby blue coats in 1969, and they looked like the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine. Bruce got out of his truck, opened his wallet, which had a fake police badge strapped to the inside flap. Although we perceived that doom was at the door, we couldn’t get over the color of the jacket, and someone said, under their breath but distinctly audible to all of us, “it’s the Blue Meanies.” Then another said it, then Sandy, then me, and then the laughing started, with full out “it’s the Blue Meanies” actuating more giggling and body bending frivolity.
The policeman took a hard, judgmental look at us but did nothing. He didn’t search Bruce, the truck or us. He must have thought that we were Tufts’ problem: let the school sort this out. The campus cops have time to deal with this nonsense, I don’t. Gotta go to Nick’s Pizza to get my bribe money from the local Mafia. We roared off, and five minutes later we got out of the truck, told Bruce how groovy and far out he was, and stumbled up the stairs to Dan’s room, collapsing onto the mattresses that covered his floor, and commenced to smoke a humongous quantity of Mexican field marijuana. It took a humongous amount to get you high.
That would be a good trip, but as we rallied with the introduction of another drug, we got motivated to connect with other people in this LSD colored universe. We all listened to WBCN, Boston’s underground rock station, and we called them to talk with their graveyard DJ, who was very hip and accessible. We got a dialog going, and he played a couple songs “for his friends at Tufts.” It was getting close to dawn, and I asked him if he would play 2001: The Space Odyssey’s opening tune (it’s some famous classical number), but he replied that he had a mix going which built up to “Good Morning, Good Morning,” a worthy Beatles’ song from Sgt. Pepper. We couldn’t see that song greeting the new day the morning after we had taken LSD for the first time. We played on our desperate need for fulfillment during the waning moments of our trip, and he told us that he would play the song if we could get him the exact time of sunrise that morning. There was no Google then, and it took a long time to find the right time, and we got it to the radio jock with about 10 minutes to spare.
“I’m not sure I can get it on guys, but I’ll try.”
We waited quietly by the radio, watching the time and listening for the song.
At dawn, he put it on, 2001: The Space Odyssey. And he told every freak listening in ever dorm and apartment in Boston.
“This is for my friends Nick, Bob, Dan and Sandy, who are tripping over at Tufts.”
There was nothing left to do but smoke some more dope and fall asleep. We had been on a great adventure and all of WBCN’s 6 am, Saturday morning listeners knew it. That was great joy as we dozed off.
I realized that for the first time in my life, I was living in the moment, whatever that means.
We were moving through the Delt house again, bouncing down the stairs towards the front door. Gail had suggested that we wait out front for Bruce. Good idea, for the Delts who were still awake weren’t bidding us a fond farewell.
We stood under the lamp post out front, watching sparks shooting out of the light. Experiencing the quiet in a way you only experienced on psychedelics – a solitary quiet, where brain noise was silenced, and all you could sense was stillness. It was the beginning of what would become, for many of us, a zen sense of God. Not personal, but there nevertheless. There was order in the quiet and a sense that everything did make sense. I guess the drug impacted your hearing, because there was a lot of listening in the quiet. But if you were having a hard time, and were a little freaked out, the quiet and solitude were terrifying, because being alone was a reminder that at death you would be entirely alone, and that could happen at any moment. And then you were out of control. Bob was starting to get into that pattern of thinking, so I was really happy when, after 5 minutes in the quiet, Bruce roared up in his 1952 Ford pick-up truck.
Gail had done a great thing – she had given Bruce some ponchos and coats for us to wear. We were all one step from anorexia, so how high the clothes rose above your stomach or wrist was the only determination about how the clothes fit, but as cold as we were, anything was great. Bob, Dan and I got in the back of the truck; Sandy rode shotgun. Bruce took off into parts unknown, and we hunkered down in the back, hoping not to be thrust out onto the pavement.
None of us ever had a trip master after that night and, looking back, the entire experience of wanting someone to show us the rope appears almost childish. What you really needed to know we learned as the night went on. In the back of Bruce’s truck, the three of us laughed together at the absurdity of our situation, getting uncontrollable and leaving ourselves and coming together as one unit. I always felt most vulnerable on a good trip when those I was with split apart. I never liked getting separated from those I had got off with, and a couple hours in, I would be really upset if I lost either Dan, Bob or Sandy.
Bruce stopped in some square, told us to get out, gave us money and steered us towards a run down theater that had a midnight showing of “Yellow Submarine.”
“I’ll be here when it’s over,” Bruce shouted as he hauled off. This job of his wasn’t all that difficult: put them in the truck; freeze their arses off; drop them in the middle of nowhere to see a cartoon movie; smoke some dope with Carol Rounds; come back and take them home.
I didn’t see God that night, but I did get into Pepper Land and the great superiority of love when facing awful people (strange, British sounding, cartoon creatures, actually). I swam in the images in the theater, and it was hard to follow the movie’s very simple plot because of the distraction of the colors exploding from the screen. The four of us clung together throughout. We were very close anyway, and this clinging was a reflection of the remarkable ability LSD sometimes had to create a tremendous bond between people. We were intertwined as we left the show – singing “All together now” as the Beatles requested. In front of the theater, a hundred students who looked just like us were milling in the street. They had long hair, decorated jeans, emerging facial hair (men), boots, ponchos, weird hats, color everywhere – too much fucking paisley. There was a great spirit in the crowd, a familiarity as you stood and walked by each other, smiling, laughing. These were our brothers and sisters. These people were getting hassled by their parents like I was; they were worrying about Vietnam and getting caught holding drugs. They were enjoying a new freedom sexually, and they all were starting to sense that we were part of some huge deal, and not only because we stood outside the movie loving each other, in the all encompassing love LSD usually brought you to. Dope was part of it too. Everyone was smoking weed in the square; joints were rolling through the crowds, starting at various points. It was a loaves and fishes moment – everyone got stoned.
When you were on the other side of peaking on acid, coming down was a generous time, when relief, insight and thanksgiving created the most forgiving, gracious and optimistic heart. Having not loved much before that night, I realized that I had the potential to love. I did love Bob, Dan and Sandy. As universal as I was feeling, I guess I knew I loved Dan and Sandy more than Bob. That was the true part of coming down people wished wasn’t true. Coming down meant memories of extraordinary things, but also an inkling that it wasn’t all true, that some of it was a drug.
People wanted the euphoria and universal love to be true. People tripped again.
Bruce knew we were in the “oh” zone when he arrived ten minutes after we left the theatre. We didn’t even talk to him, all four of us got into the back of the truck, and he frisked us back to Tufts. We were past peak, but we were really tripping. We were oohing and aahing at the street lights and stars. We went by a lake that reflected the moon into our faces and we are orgasmic about it. The four of us were standing, holding on for dear life to the roof, sides and each other. We sang most of the way back, loud and badly, and not caring. Beatles songs mostly.
We were within view of the campus when there was the wail of sirens behind us and Bruce slowed down and pulled over. It was the Medford Police. We were all standing as he walked to the driver’s window. The Medford police wore baby blue coats in 1969, and they looked like the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine. Bruce got out of his truck, opened his wallet, which had a fake police badge strapped to the inside flap. Although we perceived that doom was at the door, we couldn’t get over the color of the jacket, and someone said, under their breath but distinctly audible to all of us, “it’s the Blue Meanies.” Then another said it, then Sandy, then me, and then the laughing started, with full out “it’s the Blue Meanies” actuating more giggling and body bending frivolity.
The policeman took a hard, judgmental look at us but did nothing. He didn’t search Bruce, the truck or us. He must have thought that we were Tufts’ problem: let the school sort this out. The campus cops have time to deal with this nonsense, I don’t. Gotta go to Nick’s Pizza to get my bribe money from the local Mafia. We roared off, and five minutes later we got out of the truck, told Bruce how groovy and far out he was, and stumbled up the stairs to Dan’s room, collapsing onto the mattresses that covered his floor, and commenced to smoke a humongous quantity of Mexican field marijuana. It took a humongous amount to get you high.
That would be a good trip, but as we rallied with the introduction of another drug, we got motivated to connect with other people in this LSD colored universe. We all listened to WBCN, Boston’s underground rock station, and we called them to talk with their graveyard DJ, who was very hip and accessible. We got a dialog going, and he played a couple songs “for his friends at Tufts.” It was getting close to dawn, and I asked him if he would play 2001: The Space Odyssey’s opening tune (it’s some famous classical number), but he replied that he had a mix going which built up to “Good Morning, Good Morning,” a worthy Beatles’ song from Sgt. Pepper. We couldn’t see that song greeting the new day the morning after we had taken LSD for the first time. We played on our desperate need for fulfillment during the waning moments of our trip, and he told us that he would play the song if we could get him the exact time of sunrise that morning. There was no Google then, and it took a long time to find the right time, and we got it to the radio jock with about 10 minutes to spare.
“I’m not sure I can get it on guys, but I’ll try.”
We waited quietly by the radio, watching the time and listening for the song.
At dawn, he put it on, 2001: The Space Odyssey. And he told every freak listening in ever dorm and apartment in Boston.
“This is for my friends Nick, Bob, Dan and Sandy, who are tripping over at Tufts.”
There was nothing left to do but smoke some more dope and fall asleep. We had been on a great adventure and all of WBCN’s 6 am, Saturday morning listeners knew it. That was great joy as we dozed off.
I realized that for the first time in my life, I was living in the moment, whatever that means.
Remembering LSD in innocence part 1
I took LSD for the first time on Jan 10, 1969, 18 months after most of the West Coast got off at the Monterrey Music Festival (which transitioned into Haight Ashbury’s Summer of Love in 1967) and 6 months after I first smoked dope. Dropping acid was not a hard decision: I had never heard of a “bad” trip; my friends who had taken the drug were encouraging me to get higher; and I had a sense of belonging in this. I didn’t want to be a part time drug taker – I wanted to be electric. I wanted to be what Jimi Hendrix called “beautiful.” His “are you experienced?” line was not asking if you sucked on a hookah, but was about psychedelics, in fact the longer I had followed the progression of the counter culture, the more I realized that true, blood initiation lay through what Aldous Huxley called “the doors of perception.” You tripped – turned on, tuned in, dropped out, Tim Leary kept instructing us – or you dabbled, behind closed doors every other weekend, with a hot date you hoped to “ball,” without any expectation that something important and meaningful could be found in drugs.
We were curious; we wanted our lives to be different; we were bored with heavy drinking and rooms layered with marijuana smoke. And we wanted to share this experience with the nascent community of freaks coming together at Tufts. Were we stupid and naïve? Of course, but for many of us - jaded by alcoholic homes, parental pressure to be the best and brightest, and a fatalistic vision of a life numbing future - this was the way out/in. It might have been stupid, but it was also blissfully inevitable. By the time we woke up, months or years later, challenges were much greater and the consequences of blasting our minds apart were more obvious.
But this was January 1969, and acid didn’t hurt your head, destroy your prospects or lead to more serious drugs. It was Alice in Wonderland, and our friend and trip master Chuck Monroe had volunteered to be our guide. Dan Reddy, Bob McCann, Sandy Clarke and I dropped half a tab each of a bright orange pill we had bought from the dorm’s resident drug dealer for $1 and waited in Dan’s room for it to happen. It was 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and we didn’t have to wait long to get off. There is little fakery taking LSD. You may not be as drunk as you pretend to be or as stoned as you think people expect you to be, but LSD usually hits like a freight train and blows you out of your chair.
In the young days, when the drug was given to everyone at Monterrey, and Hendrix broke every musician’s heart when he played at that festival (hopelessly stoned on 2 hits of Stanley (Bear) Owsley’s most recent batch of LSD), pure lysergic acid was put on stamps and blotter paper. The vehicle that took the drug into your system was neutral. What you got was pure acid, which is more of a mind drug than anything else. LSD suppresses the transmissions of signals from one synapse to another synapse in your brain which slows down your mental processes – visual and auditory hallucinations are sometimes side effects. You could see walls breathing and ceilings swarming and, of course, tracers moving behind things in motion. Trips were long (up to 12 hours) and life changing. There was wide eyed wonder when you took early acid.
But shit. It was 18 months later, and we were three thousand miles away from the West Coast. I never saw blotter or stamp acid during the time I was tripping. Considering the small amount of LSD it takes to get beautiful, the pills we saw were obviously cut with something. It could be some innocuous baking soda, or it could be, and normally was, speed. The acid might be poor, and in a low dose, but the experience would be enhanced by another drug, with other side effects. Which meant that when we four got off, we had shimmering LSD brain activity and a fucking lot of energy. Wide grins, but bigger pupils, blown apart by speed. We hadn’t planned what to do on our trip, but it was quickly apparent, by the rapid pacing in, then outside, the room, and our furious chain smoking, that we needed a focus. Tripping without a focus can be some really bad tripping.
By 10:45, we really needed direction. “Let’s go get Chuck, man,” - spoken through clenched jaws – was our conclusion. Chuck was a sophomore at Tufts, living with a senior, Bruce Munson, on the top floor of the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity off Professor’s Row, a few steps, a quarter mile, five miles away - the distance dependent on how stoned you were. We walked the five miles fast, shivering because we were wasted and were in sweaters on a 10 degree night. Couldn’t find our coats – didn’t care to look for them at the time. I never understood Chuck and Bruce living at Delta Tau Delta. These two were high profile freaks, some of the founders of our tribe at Tufts. And the Delts were very straight and very preppy, things Chuck and Bruce may have been once but certainly weren’t now. We knew the Delts in their drawing room in this meticulously kept house were less than delighted when four whispering freaks slipped into the house unannounced and stumbled upstairs, intentions unannounced. But they knew who was responsible: “Fucking Monroe and Munson. How do we get them out of the house? This is just too much.” Perhaps our paranoia heard the words, but I have no doubt someone down there was speaking them.
Up to the top. Tapping on the door; “Chuck . . . Chuck,” we almost whispered at the closed door. Don’t want to bother the guy this late – it was now somehow 11:30 at night. “Who is it?” a voice croaked from behind the door. Who do you think it is man? It’s those guys from Miller Hall who are looking to “have a magical mystery tour.” Help us, we are royally wasted and don’t know where to go from here.
But we said: “Hey, it’s Dan, Bob, Nick and Sandy and we’re tripping.” It was like we had let out some marvelous secret. We are tripping. We have done it; we have taken the chance, cut our ties, set sail to Haight-Ashbury. We were in the promised land. Please Mr. Chuck, show us around nirvana.
“Hang tough,” he coughed and then opened the door.
Chuck looked like shit. I mean, he looked bad, but we took that far along – he looked like he was dying, in fact we’d better get out of here because he might keel over on us. How would we explain that to our parents. “Sick Delta Tau Delta dies surrounded by suspicious looking ‘freaks’ stoned on LSD. Foul play suspected. “ We could not talk our way out of anything at this point. We couldn’t begin to answer anyone’s questions coherently, certainly not the police’s.
“Now what is your name, Mr. Park”
“What was the question again?”
“Ah, Chuck, is there something wrong with you?”, we asked. Chuck couldn’t make a sound. He was red and sweaty. He was dressed in drenched underwear and used the door to prop himself up. Most of what we saw was his head, which was leaning out the cracked door. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and hacked another room shaking cough. A voice behind Chuck responded.
It was the stunning Gail Gasperini, one of the world’s great beauties, silhouetted in front of a dim light next to their bed. She had an oversized T-shirt on, probably Chuck’s, and I strained to see her form under it. I was getting a little randy. Sex on LSD?; I’d never hear of it.
Gail had coupled with Chuck soon after they arrive at Tufts, which was a mystery to every guy I knew. It was really something that proved the existence of a merciful god, for although Chuck was a nice guy, a great leader, a concerned friend and trip master, he was not the kind of handsome you’d expect on Gail’s arm. Gail behind Chuck in his bedroom dressed in his T shirt gave hope to homely men everywhere. Her even speaking to us directly was a blessing.
“Guys, he has walking pneumonia. He’s got a fever and needs sleep. There’s no way he’s going anywhere tonight. I’ll try to get Bruce to drive you around.”
We were curious; we wanted our lives to be different; we were bored with heavy drinking and rooms layered with marijuana smoke. And we wanted to share this experience with the nascent community of freaks coming together at Tufts. Were we stupid and naïve? Of course, but for many of us - jaded by alcoholic homes, parental pressure to be the best and brightest, and a fatalistic vision of a life numbing future - this was the way out/in. It might have been stupid, but it was also blissfully inevitable. By the time we woke up, months or years later, challenges were much greater and the consequences of blasting our minds apart were more obvious.
But this was January 1969, and acid didn’t hurt your head, destroy your prospects or lead to more serious drugs. It was Alice in Wonderland, and our friend and trip master Chuck Monroe had volunteered to be our guide. Dan Reddy, Bob McCann, Sandy Clarke and I dropped half a tab each of a bright orange pill we had bought from the dorm’s resident drug dealer for $1 and waited in Dan’s room for it to happen. It was 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and we didn’t have to wait long to get off. There is little fakery taking LSD. You may not be as drunk as you pretend to be or as stoned as you think people expect you to be, but LSD usually hits like a freight train and blows you out of your chair.
In the young days, when the drug was given to everyone at Monterrey, and Hendrix broke every musician’s heart when he played at that festival (hopelessly stoned on 2 hits of Stanley (Bear) Owsley’s most recent batch of LSD), pure lysergic acid was put on stamps and blotter paper. The vehicle that took the drug into your system was neutral. What you got was pure acid, which is more of a mind drug than anything else. LSD suppresses the transmissions of signals from one synapse to another synapse in your brain which slows down your mental processes – visual and auditory hallucinations are sometimes side effects. You could see walls breathing and ceilings swarming and, of course, tracers moving behind things in motion. Trips were long (up to 12 hours) and life changing. There was wide eyed wonder when you took early acid.
But shit. It was 18 months later, and we were three thousand miles away from the West Coast. I never saw blotter or stamp acid during the time I was tripping. Considering the small amount of LSD it takes to get beautiful, the pills we saw were obviously cut with something. It could be some innocuous baking soda, or it could be, and normally was, speed. The acid might be poor, and in a low dose, but the experience would be enhanced by another drug, with other side effects. Which meant that when we four got off, we had shimmering LSD brain activity and a fucking lot of energy. Wide grins, but bigger pupils, blown apart by speed. We hadn’t planned what to do on our trip, but it was quickly apparent, by the rapid pacing in, then outside, the room, and our furious chain smoking, that we needed a focus. Tripping without a focus can be some really bad tripping.
By 10:45, we really needed direction. “Let’s go get Chuck, man,” - spoken through clenched jaws – was our conclusion. Chuck was a sophomore at Tufts, living with a senior, Bruce Munson, on the top floor of the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity off Professor’s Row, a few steps, a quarter mile, five miles away - the distance dependent on how stoned you were. We walked the five miles fast, shivering because we were wasted and were in sweaters on a 10 degree night. Couldn’t find our coats – didn’t care to look for them at the time. I never understood Chuck and Bruce living at Delta Tau Delta. These two were high profile freaks, some of the founders of our tribe at Tufts. And the Delts were very straight and very preppy, things Chuck and Bruce may have been once but certainly weren’t now. We knew the Delts in their drawing room in this meticulously kept house were less than delighted when four whispering freaks slipped into the house unannounced and stumbled upstairs, intentions unannounced. But they knew who was responsible: “Fucking Monroe and Munson. How do we get them out of the house? This is just too much.” Perhaps our paranoia heard the words, but I have no doubt someone down there was speaking them.
Up to the top. Tapping on the door; “Chuck . . . Chuck,” we almost whispered at the closed door. Don’t want to bother the guy this late – it was now somehow 11:30 at night. “Who is it?” a voice croaked from behind the door. Who do you think it is man? It’s those guys from Miller Hall who are looking to “have a magical mystery tour.” Help us, we are royally wasted and don’t know where to go from here.
But we said: “Hey, it’s Dan, Bob, Nick and Sandy and we’re tripping.” It was like we had let out some marvelous secret. We are tripping. We have done it; we have taken the chance, cut our ties, set sail to Haight-Ashbury. We were in the promised land. Please Mr. Chuck, show us around nirvana.
“Hang tough,” he coughed and then opened the door.
Chuck looked like shit. I mean, he looked bad, but we took that far along – he looked like he was dying, in fact we’d better get out of here because he might keel over on us. How would we explain that to our parents. “Sick Delta Tau Delta dies surrounded by suspicious looking ‘freaks’ stoned on LSD. Foul play suspected. “ We could not talk our way out of anything at this point. We couldn’t begin to answer anyone’s questions coherently, certainly not the police’s.
“Now what is your name, Mr. Park”
“What was the question again?”
“Ah, Chuck, is there something wrong with you?”, we asked. Chuck couldn’t make a sound. He was red and sweaty. He was dressed in drenched underwear and used the door to prop himself up. Most of what we saw was his head, which was leaning out the cracked door. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and hacked another room shaking cough. A voice behind Chuck responded.
It was the stunning Gail Gasperini, one of the world’s great beauties, silhouetted in front of a dim light next to their bed. She had an oversized T-shirt on, probably Chuck’s, and I strained to see her form under it. I was getting a little randy. Sex on LSD?; I’d never hear of it.
Gail had coupled with Chuck soon after they arrive at Tufts, which was a mystery to every guy I knew. It was really something that proved the existence of a merciful god, for although Chuck was a nice guy, a great leader, a concerned friend and trip master, he was not the kind of handsome you’d expect on Gail’s arm. Gail behind Chuck in his bedroom dressed in his T shirt gave hope to homely men everywhere. Her even speaking to us directly was a blessing.
“Guys, he has walking pneumonia. He’s got a fever and needs sleep. There’s no way he’s going anywhere tonight. I’ll try to get Bruce to drive you around.”
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tufts
Tufts had a spectacular campus: the cluster of original buildings were more than a hundred years old in 1967. They rested on a huge mound formed by the movement of glaciers in the area 10,000 years before (we called Tufts "the dump on the hump" when exceeding pissed off at the school or just to be cynical - a constant endeavor). Anyway, our tour continues: immense deciduous trees grew around and between the original buildings, and in the fall this part of campus had the amazing red, orange and yellow foliage accurately associated with New England before the snow arrives. Ivy? That insidious, but beautiful vine was everywhere. It was quite the background in the autumn, and a number of films, TV shows and commercials used Tufts as the focal point of their productions during the time I was a student there. I'm embarrassed to say, no one invited me to be an extra.
Tufts had bought lots of land in the area straddling Medford and Somerville in the 1850s, and had always had the luxury of expanding how and when it chose to. Because of this, there was some consistency in the structures on campus. The University President's House was a huge Colonial home located on the slope mid way down the Hill, not two hundred yard from his office in the Administration building. Fraternity Row was 100 yards further on. By anyone's standards, these large wooden houses, adorned with the Greek letters members pledged to, were impressive. More so were the houses on the next street - Professor's Row. If you want to keep good profs, offer them nice digs, and these mini-mansions were good enough to keep tenured heads and assistant heads of Departments satisfied and settled.
As the land flattened out and you moved off the official campus, the University owned probably 75 or more small houses. Some were used as special interest student dwellings; some were rental homes for married students; some were rented to the neighborhood at a reduced rate. Beyond that was a diminishing strip of land allocated for future development. Tufts' Graduate Schools - Medical, Dental and Veterinary - were located in Downtown Boston.
Residential Halls were found back up the hill. Jackson College - the Women's College, under the umbrella of Tufts University (the school was completely co-ed in all other ways) - was at a lower point on the hill than Tufts College (reflective of the time Jackson was established and the status of women at that point). Jackson had a poorly formed, functionless quad. Perhaps in days gone by, completely, utterly clothed women played miniature croquet there, but other than that, it was ten jumps across on a day you didn't eat your Wheaties. Jackson had newer dorms than Tufts College - nice, bright, modern structures. Consistent architecturally. Absolutely inconsistent, and not seen, from central campus.
The quad I lived next to was big and inviting. Two of the dorms around it, fortunately also invisible to those on main campus, were Soviet-style, efficiency first boxes, with bleak, cinder block walls and linoleum floors. Who wants to vomit on linoleum? And we did a lot of drunk vomiting my first year in a dorm. If you lived in Miller or Houston Hall, you gazed down the Quad at the school's dowager, Carmichael - regal, ancient, inefficient, drafty, noisy, with wood floors and small, leaky johns - it's where everyone wanted to live. It had a spire, which you could reach if you knew hidden passage ways and an obscured ceiling panel, and if you could lift yourself up to the widow's walk at its peak, which provided a grand view of the neighborhood, and of Boston on a clear day.
It was a great place from which to watch activities on the quad, which was constantly filled with students, who constant movement scraped deep walkways in the grass, which was not as well attended to as grass patches are today. There were no Hispanic day laborers then - no hard working illegals - hired at the lowest possible price to keep the University pristine. There were Frisbees and heated discussions; drinking and, later, dope smoking; tanning and posing; milling about and determined striding. Twice a year there were epic football games on the Quad - the Ice Bowl, before Christmas, and the Mud Bowl, usually in early April. They were brutal and intense. You were more likely to get hurt in the Ice Bowl than a Varsity Football player was in the course of a season.
I played in both bowls my Freshman Year, but was a way too cool drug freak to play in them after that.
It's hard to imagine that is more than 40 years ago, and that Tufts is likely a different place now (let's hope Miller and Houston are gone). My last days on campus were not my best. Reality finally caught me, but I wasn't ready to make reality my companion, so it was exit - stage left. I always thought I'd be back to Tufts and Boston "when I got my shit together." Time passed slowly after I left. I saw the campus past midnight in 1972, but have not been been in Massachusetts since then.
I miss it enough to go back. I know you can't go home again, but I'm constantly trying, so why not there? Neil Young wrote "all my changes were there (Canada)." All my changes were at Tufts. That's worth a second look.
Tufts had bought lots of land in the area straddling Medford and Somerville in the 1850s, and had always had the luxury of expanding how and when it chose to. Because of this, there was some consistency in the structures on campus. The University President's House was a huge Colonial home located on the slope mid way down the Hill, not two hundred yard from his office in the Administration building. Fraternity Row was 100 yards further on. By anyone's standards, these large wooden houses, adorned with the Greek letters members pledged to, were impressive. More so were the houses on the next street - Professor's Row. If you want to keep good profs, offer them nice digs, and these mini-mansions were good enough to keep tenured heads and assistant heads of Departments satisfied and settled.
As the land flattened out and you moved off the official campus, the University owned probably 75 or more small houses. Some were used as special interest student dwellings; some were rental homes for married students; some were rented to the neighborhood at a reduced rate. Beyond that was a diminishing strip of land allocated for future development. Tufts' Graduate Schools - Medical, Dental and Veterinary - were located in Downtown Boston.
Residential Halls were found back up the hill. Jackson College - the Women's College, under the umbrella of Tufts University (the school was completely co-ed in all other ways) - was at a lower point on the hill than Tufts College (reflective of the time Jackson was established and the status of women at that point). Jackson had a poorly formed, functionless quad. Perhaps in days gone by, completely, utterly clothed women played miniature croquet there, but other than that, it was ten jumps across on a day you didn't eat your Wheaties. Jackson had newer dorms than Tufts College - nice, bright, modern structures. Consistent architecturally. Absolutely inconsistent, and not seen, from central campus.
The quad I lived next to was big and inviting. Two of the dorms around it, fortunately also invisible to those on main campus, were Soviet-style, efficiency first boxes, with bleak, cinder block walls and linoleum floors. Who wants to vomit on linoleum? And we did a lot of drunk vomiting my first year in a dorm. If you lived in Miller or Houston Hall, you gazed down the Quad at the school's dowager, Carmichael - regal, ancient, inefficient, drafty, noisy, with wood floors and small, leaky johns - it's where everyone wanted to live. It had a spire, which you could reach if you knew hidden passage ways and an obscured ceiling panel, and if you could lift yourself up to the widow's walk at its peak, which provided a grand view of the neighborhood, and of Boston on a clear day.
It was a great place from which to watch activities on the quad, which was constantly filled with students, who constant movement scraped deep walkways in the grass, which was not as well attended to as grass patches are today. There were no Hispanic day laborers then - no hard working illegals - hired at the lowest possible price to keep the University pristine. There were Frisbees and heated discussions; drinking and, later, dope smoking; tanning and posing; milling about and determined striding. Twice a year there were epic football games on the Quad - the Ice Bowl, before Christmas, and the Mud Bowl, usually in early April. They were brutal and intense. You were more likely to get hurt in the Ice Bowl than a Varsity Football player was in the course of a season.
I played in both bowls my Freshman Year, but was a way too cool drug freak to play in them after that.
It's hard to imagine that is more than 40 years ago, and that Tufts is likely a different place now (let's hope Miller and Houston are gone). My last days on campus were not my best. Reality finally caught me, but I wasn't ready to make reality my companion, so it was exit - stage left. I always thought I'd be back to Tufts and Boston "when I got my shit together." Time passed slowly after I left. I saw the campus past midnight in 1972, but have not been been in Massachusetts since then.
I miss it enough to go back. I know you can't go home again, but I'm constantly trying, so why not there? Neil Young wrote "all my changes were there (Canada)." All my changes were at Tufts. That's worth a second look.
Friday, November 21, 2008
More Boston
Boston is a sports town, and I arrived at an auspicious time for sports. The Red Sox won the American League Pennant in 1967 - only to lose to St. Louis in the World Series (we called it the "Curse of the Bambino"). The Celtics had been great for a dozen years. The Bruins were on the rise behind Bobby Orr. The Patriots were marginal, but Joe Bellino, who had spent four years in the service after graduating from the Naval Academy, had brought charisma to the team, saving it for the success of the team today.
As good as the Celtics and Bruins were and as excellent as the Patriots would become, Boston was all about the Sox - the Red Sox. If ever there was a baseball town and a ball park that reflected the intimacy of a City, it was Boston and Fenway Park. I could actually go to freaking Fenway Park and watch the Sox. Un-fucking believable.
Boston was the Kennedys - in tragedy and embarrassment; racial animosity in Dorchester and Roxbury; sitting by the murky Charles River watching the coeds stroll by, on the way to class at Radcliffe. Some were lovely, but none were fooled by my amateurish bullshit. I had to go to BU to find such gullibility.
If you wanted tough, Boston had the Combat Zone. Right off the Commons, dangerously close to an ordered downtown. It was a scary place - Times Square North. Two buddies and I cruised it on foot in early 1968, trying to pick up a prostitute for a fraternity scavenger hunt. "Pick her up and get her to ride the subway back to Tufts" were the instructions of our pledge master at Zeta Psi. And we were to get her to agree to do this without showing her any money (they had stripped us of money and identification as we left the House).
We walked down the most corrupt looking area of the Zone, trying to find a prostitute. We stopped and asked what we thought were prime candidates:
"Are you a prostitute?"
They walked up to us, shaking their heads and laughing at our stupidity. "Too dumb to be cops," they chuckled as they ambled on. These ladies had skirts up to their crotch, tops down to their nipples, ratty black pattern stockings and elevator shoes. What did they expect for us to think? We had a Crocodile Dundee moment as they passed us: "If you dress like that down here, people will think that you're hookers." They went from us to the arms of pimple faced 18 year olds, fresh out of Basic, flush with newly acquired cash and determined to break their virginity before shipping out to Vietnam.
After 15 minutes of hustling, we finally got an especially played out, very stoned whore to listen.
"Don't laugh," we said in our best Bostonese, "it will be a bitchin paty."
"You'll have a pissa time."
"We'll give you a wickid lot of money when we get there."
She declined our invitation. We caught hell when we got back to the frat house:
"You guys are wickid wothless. They would have had a pissa time at this bitchin paty."
I loved Boston when I was a gleam in my father's eye; when he played where I later played, on the sidewalk in front of my grandfather's house on 347 Marlbourough St; when we both left when we were 8 years old - he to Prep School, me to exile in Washington, DC. I loved Boston as a teenager, lying in my bed in Bethesda, Maryland, listening to an obscure rock band sing their one hit wonder:
"I love that dirty water . . . oh, oh Boston, you're my home."
Heard at Fenway Park now after every Sox home victory. It all went full circle for me in 1967.
Gotta love that dirty water. Boston you're my home. Again.
As good as the Celtics and Bruins were and as excellent as the Patriots would become, Boston was all about the Sox - the Red Sox. If ever there was a baseball town and a ball park that reflected the intimacy of a City, it was Boston and Fenway Park. I could actually go to freaking Fenway Park and watch the Sox. Un-fucking believable.
Boston was the Kennedys - in tragedy and embarrassment; racial animosity in Dorchester and Roxbury; sitting by the murky Charles River watching the coeds stroll by, on the way to class at Radcliffe. Some were lovely, but none were fooled by my amateurish bullshit. I had to go to BU to find such gullibility.
If you wanted tough, Boston had the Combat Zone. Right off the Commons, dangerously close to an ordered downtown. It was a scary place - Times Square North. Two buddies and I cruised it on foot in early 1968, trying to pick up a prostitute for a fraternity scavenger hunt. "Pick her up and get her to ride the subway back to Tufts" were the instructions of our pledge master at Zeta Psi. And we were to get her to agree to do this without showing her any money (they had stripped us of money and identification as we left the House).
We walked down the most corrupt looking area of the Zone, trying to find a prostitute. We stopped and asked what we thought were prime candidates:
"Are you a prostitute?"
They walked up to us, shaking their heads and laughing at our stupidity. "Too dumb to be cops," they chuckled as they ambled on. These ladies had skirts up to their crotch, tops down to their nipples, ratty black pattern stockings and elevator shoes. What did they expect for us to think? We had a Crocodile Dundee moment as they passed us: "If you dress like that down here, people will think that you're hookers." They went from us to the arms of pimple faced 18 year olds, fresh out of Basic, flush with newly acquired cash and determined to break their virginity before shipping out to Vietnam.
After 15 minutes of hustling, we finally got an especially played out, very stoned whore to listen.
"Don't laugh," we said in our best Bostonese, "it will be a bitchin paty."
"You'll have a pissa time."
"We'll give you a wickid lot of money when we get there."
She declined our invitation. We caught hell when we got back to the frat house:
"You guys are wickid wothless. They would have had a pissa time at this bitchin paty."
I loved Boston when I was a gleam in my father's eye; when he played where I later played, on the sidewalk in front of my grandfather's house on 347 Marlbourough St; when we both left when we were 8 years old - he to Prep School, me to exile in Washington, DC. I loved Boston as a teenager, lying in my bed in Bethesda, Maryland, listening to an obscure rock band sing their one hit wonder:
"I love that dirty water . . . oh, oh Boston, you're my home."
Heard at Fenway Park now after every Sox home victory. It all went full circle for me in 1967.
Gotta love that dirty water. Boston you're my home. Again.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Losing the R
I should have known at the point I met Bobby on the Fourth Floor of Houston Hall in September 1967 that Boston would be a unique cultural experience.
"Nick Pak? I'm Bobby Deutch. pissa to meet you."
I'd arrived in the Massachusetts zone.
I know it's different today: Some is generational - Caroline talks different than Teddy; Some is homogenization - lots of out-of-state and foreign students stayed in the Boston area after the high-tech boom. But forty years ago almost 50% of Tufts students came from Massachusetts; Harvard was being fed by a number of exclusive New England Prep schools - Andover, Middlesex and Exeter, to mention three -and there was a distinct ethnic flavor in Boston, best caught in the accent and phrases of its citizens. It was as heavy as "Da bums" in Brooklyn and "y'all" in Alabama, and, to those of us from outside "the Commonwealth," just as amusing.
No one was immune. It was the MTA conductor and Bobby Kennedy; Mayor White and Tony C.; the President of of Tufts and the janitor who cleaned up the mess in our halls. I must admit, I'd always thought the stories about "Park yer caa in Havid Yad" were apocryphal, but I came to see that a Boston teenager could leave the city for forty years, live in the jungles of the Amazon, speaking only a unique native dialect, and the morning he was scheduled to address graduate students in Linguistic Anthropology at Radcliffe, ask the concierge at his hotel in Harvard square: "Will there be a caa to take me to the yaad?"
When I got into drugs, we turned the reality of Massachusetts' speech into a more elaborate fantasy. We would wonder: when they were six years old, did Boston area youngsters take a special one year class to learn "Bostonese?" If they failed, did they end up sounding like people from Hartford or Providence?
Certainly failing the class resulted in expulsion from the Commonwealth. Maybe "noth, to New Hampshaa." We could imagine parents weeping hysterically as accent challenged children were forced into the awaiting paddy wagons. The vehicles were marked - "Nashua New Hampshire Resettlement Program." Resettlement Day had to be a sobering reality for all seven year olds. This was when you came of age', like a first communion or Bar Mitzvah. The event was memorialized by a tattoo scrolled on the heels of the Chosen Ones: "KOTA." Keeper Of The Accent. Always, indelibly there, a reminder of the heritage and the sacred responsibility.
KOTA classes meant weekly until the children were 16. They would practice inflection, dropping "R's", and mindlessly repeat signature words: pissa, bitchin, wickid; bitchin wickid, pissa; bitchin pissa, wickid; wic id pissa, bitchin, and so on.
Again class, again.
KOTA was an inside joke. The whole fantasy came to several of us when we were really stoned, and it just took a barely audible "kota" to get us hysterically laughing while feeding the munchies at Nick's Pizza surrounded by locals. They were good enough people - "Good Will Hunting" was fairly accurate in its depiction of the non-Collegiate youth of Somerville - and we didn't hassle them, or vice/versa. We laughed at a fantasy, not at people. Most of the time we knew the difference.
"Nick Pak? I'm Bobby Deutch. pissa to meet you."
I'd arrived in the Massachusetts zone.
I know it's different today: Some is generational - Caroline talks different than Teddy; Some is homogenization - lots of out-of-state and foreign students stayed in the Boston area after the high-tech boom. But forty years ago almost 50% of Tufts students came from Massachusetts; Harvard was being fed by a number of exclusive New England Prep schools - Andover, Middlesex and Exeter, to mention three -and there was a distinct ethnic flavor in Boston, best caught in the accent and phrases of its citizens. It was as heavy as "Da bums" in Brooklyn and "y'all" in Alabama, and, to those of us from outside "the Commonwealth," just as amusing.
No one was immune. It was the MTA conductor and Bobby Kennedy; Mayor White and Tony C.; the President of of Tufts and the janitor who cleaned up the mess in our halls. I must admit, I'd always thought the stories about "Park yer caa in Havid Yad" were apocryphal, but I came to see that a Boston teenager could leave the city for forty years, live in the jungles of the Amazon, speaking only a unique native dialect, and the morning he was scheduled to address graduate students in Linguistic Anthropology at Radcliffe, ask the concierge at his hotel in Harvard square: "Will there be a caa to take me to the yaad?"
When I got into drugs, we turned the reality of Massachusetts' speech into a more elaborate fantasy. We would wonder: when they were six years old, did Boston area youngsters take a special one year class to learn "Bostonese?" If they failed, did they end up sounding like people from Hartford or Providence?
Certainly failing the class resulted in expulsion from the Commonwealth. Maybe "noth, to New Hampshaa." We could imagine parents weeping hysterically as accent challenged children were forced into the awaiting paddy wagons. The vehicles were marked - "Nashua New Hampshire Resettlement Program." Resettlement Day had to be a sobering reality for all seven year olds. This was when you came of age', like a first communion or Bar Mitzvah. The event was memorialized by a tattoo scrolled on the heels of the Chosen Ones: "KOTA." Keeper Of The Accent. Always, indelibly there, a reminder of the heritage and the sacred responsibility.
KOTA classes meant weekly until the children were 16. They would practice inflection, dropping "R's", and mindlessly repeat signature words: pissa, bitchin, wickid; bitchin wickid, pissa; bitchin pissa, wickid; wic id pissa, bitchin, and so on.
Again class, again.
KOTA was an inside joke. The whole fantasy came to several of us when we were really stoned, and it just took a barely audible "kota" to get us hysterically laughing while feeding the munchies at Nick's Pizza surrounded by locals. They were good enough people - "Good Will Hunting" was fairly accurate in its depiction of the non-Collegiate youth of Somerville - and we didn't hassle them, or vice/versa. We laughed at a fantasy, not at people. Most of the time we knew the difference.
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