Those of us born in
the mid fifties have seen a transition of society that few have witnessed. I’m
not referring to technology or war. We were raised with “spare the rod, spoil
the child” and the idea that each generation would do better than the last. Our
parents had grown up during the Great Depression. Their ideals and ideas were
marinated in the cauldron of poverty and want so they were adamant that we seek
material gain as a primary endeavor. Eisenhower was president. Home ownership
was the American dream. Conservative
political and social ideals were the norm. You not only did not rock the boat
but you sought to fit in at all costs. Feelings were “best kept to oneself.”
As the page turned
to the sixties and we entered grade school we watched John Kennedy debate
Richard Nixon and knew something was stirring. We were watching the faces of
change but did not know how vast a change lay ahead.
For many of us life
was rooted in soil like that of the television series “Happy Days” from the
seventies and eighties. We went home for the summer after the tenth grade in
continental slacks, starched oxford button down shirts, Florsheim tassle
loafers and Ivy League haircuts. We came back the following September in pocket
t-shirts, bell-bottom pants, blue jean jackets and hair covering our ears.
Living in
Charlotte, N.C. was like being in a delay time warp. In the summer of 69 we
began to hear through the “grapevine” about this thing called “Woodstock” up
north. During the fall we all went to see it at the drive in movie theatre out
on Wilkinson Blvd. By then we had the act down pat. Chevy vans with mattresses
and shag carpet were turned sideways to the screen as most of us stood and
wandered about the pungent fog of a crisp fall weekend night.
Mixed among the
Chevy vans were plenty of 50’s and 60’s era muscle cars. There was no lack of
letter jackets and brush cuts still. You see, we were southern by birth and
heritage but Woodstock by default because we were young and this was the music
that spoke to us all.
For the next few
years we experimented with life with all the gusto of youth. Easy Rider cruised
through our psyches and we read Kerouac and regaled at the antics of Timothy
Leary and his ilk.
And then there was
the music. Achievement fell by the wayside as we patterned ourselves after the
bad boys of rock and roll. Hendricks, Morrison, Jagger, Duane and Greg Allman
…. The list marched on. Names like Edgar Winter, Cream, Blue Oyster Cult, Blind
Faith exploded in our minds as we bean bagged our way through black lights and
purple haze.
“Tin soldiers and
Nixon’s comin’. We’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drummin’, four
dead in Ohio” We heard the lyric and we were shocked at the travesty of
injustice and violence yet something had slipped our grasp.
The choppers wopped
their way through our suppers as we rushed to escape our wardens. We saw the
body bags carried from the cargo jets but they were zipped up you see.
Carlos Casteneda
wrote of visions and we copied the act while leaving the concept of
spirituality in the dust of the southwest desert.
We mimicked the
tortured poets of the rock world in all their actions, dress and mannerisms
until we became a southern version of them.
Lynard Skinnard
played the Cellar and we partied the night away in the muck and mud of a beer-sodded
floor that looked and smelled like dirt. The darkness forgave all. We became
darkness and we wallowed in the detritus of a dream that had been born in the
music of peace and love.
The “Deadheads”
wore tie-dye but we wore sequins and tight pants with shag haircuts as we plied
the bars and saloons of Independence Blvd. Chaka Khan gyrated along with us as
we shot pool and gathered in the name of hedonism to eat the flesh and bone of
our ideals.
We called ourselves
“Freaks” as in “let your freak flag fly” until we were like old men sitting on
bar stools telling rerun stories because we were too burned out to care
anymore.
The “devil had gone
down to Charlotte” and we had sold our soul because we did not know who to be.
We had lost our way and were destined to roam an aimless road to nowhere having
forgotten how to care. We lived for no one but ourselves.
As time rolled on
the price of our negligence began to become visible. Few married. Even fewer
bought homes or finished college. As we sat on the bar stools our eyes hollowed
and our cheeks sunk. Our tight pants began to be loose and we could not afford
new ones that fit.
John Prine sang of
a “hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” and we looked into the
blackened pool of our existence where we could see the reflection of anguish
that understood the lyric.
There was no way
home from here. It was a dead end and we did not believe we had the energy to
make our way back to the fork in the road that we had not even seen when we passed.
There had been no conscious choice … only laughter. And then there was silence.
I know you’re out
there. If you’re reading this I need you to know that the fork is a long way
back but you can make it. There really is a “city on the hill.” It is not made
of gold but of spirit.
I see you there in
your Super Bee flying down the highway toward the beach. I remember how happy
we were to greet each other at the bar when the entire world was new and the
girls smelled like strawberries.
I remember the
shackles of your ten-year-old black Dodge rattling across the too high speed
bumps at school.
I smell the musty
beds of the seedy hotel at Myrtle Beach and feel the gritty sand beneath my
cheek as the slobber runs onto the pillow.
Yet these memories are not the end of the story. There was a narrow way that led to life. I stand there now at the headwaters waiting for others to come. Lord willing I will be here to help them when they arrive. I will be here so that they will know. We were "lost but now are found." Each day the world is made new. Each day another fork in the road. The difference is ... now we can see it.
Yet these memories are not the end of the story. There was a narrow way that led to life. I stand there now at the headwaters waiting for others to come. Lord willing I will be here to help them when they arrive. I will be here so that they will know. We were "lost but now are found." Each day the world is made new. Each day another fork in the road. The difference is ... now we can see it.
