Hippie Days

Stratford, CT - Tim Coakley - Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 : goo

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My wife who is Parisian and I used to bomb down I-95 in my '67 bug to vist oz. that's the way NY seemed to me then. We'd visit restaurants, the village...just stroll around, I in my blazer and skinny tie, she with her long hair and mini-skirts. It was special for us. To bad we had to return to the 'burbs and kids and such.
But I also came to NY by myself to visit friends who lived in the east village. They were true hippies but had moved on to maoist revolutionary madness. Shabby apartments with newspapers lining the the floors so their dog 'poco' could shit the place over. Shotguns hidden in closets and rampant paranoia. Too many strange trips I guess. Bill and Linda were committed to offing the pig. they'd gone from spraying peace and love in day-glow colors on Thruway signs in Ct. to two crazies inhabiting a haunted world of drugs and violet fantasy. Whenever I visited wer smoked dope and I was lectured about being "so bourgeois" I was glad to be. But what I remember most was the streets of New York pilled with frozen garbage bags, the sidewalks caked with all sorts of refuse, especially hardened gum and dog turds. Bars on windows to repell the bugeoning junky population and the smell of despair, the rotting memory of the summer of love. So different from when I came to the City with my wife and kids.
I remeber the Fillmore East and the vibe was junkie puke and the music grim and miserable. I think I saw Zappa and the mothers and the show left me depressed, not laughing the way the Verve Records rendered me.
Strange how drugs and my drugged out friends effected me. the drive home always seemed a race through the outskirts of purgatory. Buildings were being abandoned. hulks of cars lay stripped on the roadside.
I guess it's better now but I don't go to NY anymore. I'm disabled and I-95 has become it's own purgatory. And I remeber being able to see the smoke from the towers over the horizon of Long island sound from the end of my street.
I'm probably wacky but I believe in the curse of Osama. Somehow a blow was struck at the marvelous innocence and promise New York represented. A form of heaven that I remember and love. And when I think of the times I came at night by myself, it was a prefiguration of what can be done to the soul of a city by a dark and evil act. I grew up remembering Pearl Harbor and I find myself raging at those who would threaten a place that is extraordinarily special. The great promise of the United States of America and the very best it has to offer. But I keep rembering the dark and dismal times of drugs and crime, the cold night and the seeming death of hope.

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Beadle and Tatum: your friends can change you.

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