29 Golden living dreams of visions

It's hard for me to give you an exact timeline. There was a lot of stuff crammed into a little bit of time, a lot of it was at the same time and it was a really long time ago. I started going into the city towards the end of 1968. Yes, I was young. I had my Charlotte's job towards the beginning to mid 1969. I was pretty young for that too. I was with the hippie god from the middle of 1969 to the end of that year. Throughout I made it into NY mostly on Saturdays. Not every single weekend, but almost. I always made it back before dark. I wasn't stupid. Like I said, with people but more often than not by myself. And that continued into the 70's.

So I started going to Central Park. God, I walked all over the place. That is a really big park. Then there's all kinds of real New York stuff around there too. I remember walking down 5th Ave and on occasion the tourists would take pictures of the crazy New York hippies. The park had everything. So many different little parks. Walkways, bridges, a zoo and horseback riding. Even did the horseback riding back then with other people, but could only afford riding around the stable in circles. It was really not very nice to the horses.

The place to watch the hippie action was Sheep's Meadow. Lots of people hanging out, laying down and acting weird. It may be hard to believe but there were so many friendly people willing to talk. Pretty much people singing, standing around looking cool, shouting stuff and everything else you've seen on Dragnet. I was right in there with them. Fit right into that crowd, inside and out. They had be-in's, but I never went to an organized one. Not sure how different they were from a normal day except that there were a lot more people and probably Allen Ginsberg.

What was some of the stuff said? I don't remember. Sometimes deep discussions about our souls. Sometimes just things that made no sense. If I remember anything, I'll let you know, but I was told some of the things I said were strange and weird. There will be a short story about the museum, but that will be later. It's quite the 70's story. 😀

The movie "Hair"

I was familiar with the Metropolitan Museum of Art from school trips.The steps were hangouts for people too. At the time there was no admission price. When I went by myself, I always ended up there. They also had a cafeteria that was awesome. The food was cheap and good. It's the only time I remember eating when I went into the city. They had waiters with towels hanging over their arms and that killed me. People didn't go to fancy restaurants, at least in suburbia, as much as they do now. I had never seen that before. I ordered the Mongolian Soup when they had it. I don't know what was in it.

Some kind of artist strike

I would walk through and plop myself down in front of something I liked. Some people would sit on a bench and sketch. I stared at the art and the people. Matisse was one of my favorites. But there was one artist that I loved. John Singer Sargent. That may seem weird to you because he mostly painted portraits of wealthy people. Well, I realized they led weird lives too. But there was something incredible with his brush strokes and the way light hit them. It's been a really long time since I've seen anything of his, but I remember my pupils would get big when I saw his paintings. I wouldn't even post a two dimensional image of one of his paintings. There's no justice in a camera shot or a scan to what they are.

Ok, so it was the beginning of 1970 and I went to the city with the hippie god's sister and another Catholic School girl. We went to the lower East Side. Walking through a park. Could have been Union Square or some other park. Don't remember. But that's where we met some long haired dude handing out flyers about this thing called Earth Day.