20 Oh, take your time, don't live too fast Part 1

This is going to be a story about a personal challenge that I made good on. Now, I may repeat myself on some happenings in these stories. I'm not going to go back and check what I already wrote. 

After I left Charlotte's, I was hell bent on joining in on some of the fun stuff that was going on around me. I already had hit on some of the drugs. Mostly just smoky stuff. Pot and hash. Ok, good. I thought to myself. Jesus, the 60's are almost over. I've had some dumb kid boyish friends but I want some real man-woman love. Gotta happen in 1969. 

When I went over to any of my girl friend's houses, we did a lot of the regular things. Smoke a little pot, but it would depend who it was. Listen to music. Walk around. We did talk about things we wanted to do. Maybe I was a little off because I always wanted more weird things to happen. But it also seems a lot of my friends had older brothers. People had more kids then and especially since a lot of my friends were derelicts from Catholic School. Most families had four kids but some families had 11 or 13 kids. Really devout. I had to listen to crap like Joni Mitchell or Simon and Garfunkel in the girls' rooms, but I heard this heavy sound coming from the boys rooms. I turned on the radio at home. It wasn't the first time I heard Blue Cheer or Iron Butterfly. In fact, the lifeguards at Oceanside Pool let me in their special room because I had good 45's. That was mostly in 1967 and 1968. 

I couldn't sit there and listen to Joni Mitchell for hours and stare at the album covers. If the mom was home, she was usually ironing or something. It ran the gamut with Catholic moms. Some, for God's sake, went to church everyday. Those were the kind that had 11 kids and were completely downtrodden. They had to go to the supermarket constantly because of the amount of the food they needed for all the kids. There were some moms though, that kind of looked like mob moms and weren't always home. It happened on occasion I ended up listening to music with the brothers, not only because of the music, but because the boys liked to plan pranks and talk about how dumb some stuff was. Funny banter. The whole boy girl thing was so much different back then. Boys played outside and were a little wild. They did more funny things. Girls were supposed to learn to cook and be obedient. This was 1969, I'm not exaggerating. You see movies about hippies, but the future was drearily planned out for everyone. This was "pre Stepford Wives" movie. No matter their sex. It's not the same now. Some things are good. Some things are bad. So I ended up talking to a lot of boys. Really, my main focus was talking or pranks.

So one of my friends, who I ended up doing Earth Day stuff in 1970 with, had an older brother I didn't see much. Maybe on the weekends. How do I introduce him? All I can say is hippie god. He kind of looked like Clint Eastwood but with long hair. He wore a fringe jacket all the time and he was built like Clint Eastwood too. The kind of muscle you get from work and from fighting. New York hippies were different from California hippies, in my opinion. This girl, JM, had two older brothers and all the kids were sent to work the cranberry bogs in Massachusetts during the summer. They were pretty tough. The father was a Merchant Marine and he was a scary dude. Very weathered look. Tattoos weren't commonplace, just pretty much sailors. Those green drawings on his arms were fascinating to me. So wow. He'd come home from his time out there on the ocean and be looking for a fight. Both boys had regular fist fights with him. A lot of dads back then did that to teach their sons how to be men. I saw a lot of fist fights growing up. I can tell you that when friends tangle you know it's going to be brutal. A lot of pent up things going on.

I used to do a lot of things by myself. I like to observe and enjoy things. I learned that it can be a pain to be in a group of people because they usually "wanted to go." It was easy enough for me to jump on the bus and take it to Long Beach. If I did have someone with me that was cool, we'd hitchhike. I hitchhiked all the time. The only time I did it by myself though was when I was living up Ute Pass in Colorado in the 80's. I went to Long Beach to hang out on the boardwalk. All the old attractions and rides. Everything dilapidated. There were always people there. Sometimes I would sit and talk to some of the old people that walked the Boardwalk. I loved to hear stories of their life. Lots of hippies too. One girl would pay me to go on that ride "Loop O Plane." A capsule thing that went upside down. She'd get really drunk and give me a dollar every time I went on it with her. She puked once, but thank god it was when we got off.

It was like out of "Spill the Wine," but that song hadn't even come out yet. "Out of the middle came a lady. She whispered in my ear, something crazy." But a guy. If you can imagine a hippie god in a fringe jacket, with the ocean breezes blowing through his hair." 🤣 Just like a rock and roll video. (Which also hasn't had its time yet.)

Not a hippie, but a god in a fringe jacket

He sat himself down. We already knew each other but vaguely. So I guess you could say the die was cast.

Ok. It wasn't this bad, but maybe like this a little bit.

 

 

39 Turn 'round quick and start to run Part 1

How did I get so far from what the nuns taught me? I mean really far. I told you a bit about the church I went to. Pretty intense. The symbolism and iconography was probably as deep as anything you'd see in the US. There were wooden tunnels between different chapels. Little rooms of prayer with rosaries and crutches. Every chapel and nook was built like a grotto. Stone walls. There were even large outdoor cages with exotic birds. Sometimes the peacocks roamed the grounds. We had an underground chapel that burned in 1960. I snuck in there and saw the wreck of the remains. Fallen timbers. Broken imported statues of saints. We had missionary day every Wednesday at school. Out studies were short and had films of those in need around the world. But really what everyone holds in their memory were the films of dreaded diseases (elephantiasis) and parasites. On occasion a missionary priest visited to give us a little talk about how we were compelled to be of service at all times. Give of ourselves.

The priests were a distant breed to me. They lived in the rectory. They got a new car every year and we heard tales of too much wine. Actually, they had a feast of St. Anthony. You've seen it on the Sopranos. There would be a procession where the statue of St. Anthony would be carried. Yeah. There was the money all over the statue. I guess it was supposed to bring good fortune. I always thought "Wow. We're supposed to live conscientious lives, frugal. Give money to the poor." It didn't make sense to me. The priests got their car. Oh well. A carnival. But my mom didn't stand for it. On more than one occasion she called out the hypocrisy and gave the priests a direct tongue lashing. I heard it was yelling.

The nuns were a different story. They really did take vows of poverty. Not one car at the convent in those days. Here's where I tell you how deeply thoughtful I was, in the sense I was always wondering about why we exist. God. Life. The why of everything. In religion class, we would go over parables and stories out of the New Testament. Never the Old Testament. These were progressive Dominican nuns. Not into the fire and brimstone stuff. Not always, but I did ask questions they couldn't answer and I'd get a thump on the head with a heavy book. I remember one of the boys would sass back "Hey, stop hitting her on the head." The boys used to get some severe slapping across the face. There were some real rebels. I remember the principal, Sister "Rose Marie" would attend to the most brutal beatings. The accused was called bold and brazen. I would get nervous and sick from it. I even had medicine to help with queasiness, but I refused to take it. Sister "Rose Marie" would call me into her office. "Please take your medicine." Real nice. I defiantly refused and said "I just want to go home. I don't want to eat lunch."

But the nuns loved me. I would trudge through the snow to bring them bread. They invited me to lunch at the convent a number of times. I saw them in their own chapel. Praying. I'm pretty sure they were hoping I would go into the convent. (evil laugh) Well... there was one lunch in particular that I remember. A couple of the novices were at the table. I don't know how it got onto the subject, but they were beyond giggling talking about boyfriends they once had. Their faces were all shades of crimson, but the talk was of the most innocent variety. I sat there and thought how sad this was. I already was questioning so much, I had no intention of becoming a nun. Especially after this. I was already a gad about town. A real jokester. A disciplined, quiet female class clown. That did it.

Ok. I had to get that Catholic stuff out of the way. It's not an excuse, but just showing how I could make a transition into exploration that went deeper. I was already out of Catholic School for a couple of years or so and getting into hedonistic delights by the time Black Sabbath hit the airwaves. I don't know where I first heard it. Their influence hit me with deep, dark sonar waves.

Just a little while before that I found a book at Levin's Pharmacy. Same place I stole "Steal This Book." They put anything out on the rack. If those hippie kids wanna buy it, they would sell it.

 Wow. Us ex-Catholic School kids had something to get interested in.