My Modest Drug Years

I was never a true hippie, though for several years in the late 60s (that would be the 1960s; the “60s” now can also refer to my current age) I was something of a faux participant in the movement. I played in a couple of rock and roll bands and several folk groups. I dressed in costumes of varying hilarity that mimicked the album covers – leather, tie-dye, paisley, sandals or boots, army surplus (for irony, not to mention cost). I worked briefly at a college/hippie bar and wrote for the mimeographed Wichita Free Press. I drove all night to hear Jimi Hendrix play at Red Rocks in Denver. I participated in several anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam War (though mostly for the social benefits they offered). I spent the summer of 1969 in something of a commune in Berkeley, though it was in a million dollar mansion in the hills, with a cleaning woman and a gardener (but that’s another story). I was tear-gassed at a People’s Park demonstration that summer. And that summer was also the first – and only – time that I took LSD.

I took (we used to say “experimented with”) a variety of drugs for roughly a ten-year period from the mid-60s through the mid-70s, or high school through college: marijuana (of course), Hashish (once maybe laced with cocaine), speed, peyote, psilocybin, amyl nitrate, and LSD. But except for the pot, I only “experimented” one or two or a few times with each of the drugs. One of the reasons for this is that I never saw much reason for doing it. Sure, it fucked your mind up, sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in frightening ways. The first time I took LSD in Berkeley was a pleasant experience of mindless incoherence. But the second time was a night of seeing demons in a candle, thoughts of flying off a balcony, and shivering in a fetal position in bed while imagining this must be death. But other than that, most of my drug experimentation led only to my belief that our perception of reality, and perhaps life itself, is little more than chemical reactions in the brain (a common insight brought about by even moderate drug use).

My ambivalence toward drugs is supported by the fact that during this decade of occasional usage I never once paid for any of the substances I partook of. All of the drugs that I ingested were given to me by roommates, girlfriends, friends of the band, or hapless party-goers at some college/hippie soiree. But I never wanted drugs. If they were there, and offered, I’d most likely try them out, unless I’d tried them before and had a bad experience, or a “so what?” experience. I guess I was something of a pragmatic druggy. Why pay for something that I didn’t want or need – and that I could usually get for free? And as I think about it, I’ve carried that attitude, perhaps learned during my modest drug years, throughout my life since. So I guess drug use can, after all, provide a positive life lesson.

Gas Stations, 1965

As gas prices rise to the inevitable $4.00+/gallon this summer, I dwell nostalgically on the year 1965, the first year that I had a driver’s license, a car (a 1959 Ford Fairlane, my parents’, though I’d claimed it by being the first-born male, and by upgrading the paint job from baby blue to a much cooler navy blue), and a part-time job that gave me at least enough money to keep a puddle of gas in the tank. But keeping a puddle – or even a few gallons – of gas in the tank back then wasn’t the financial burden it is these days. Readers under the age of 50 might think that the following description is codger hyperbole, such as walking five miles to and from school each day, in the snow, uphill both ways (which I do recall doing), or being made to finish my brussel sprouts before allowed to leave the dinner table (sometimes not until The Tonight Show was about to start (Johnny Carson had just take over from Jack Paar)). No, what follows is the absolute truth, not just as I remember it, but as it actually was.

All gas stations were full-service. There was no self-service. When you pulled your car up to a pump, an attendant (or two or three, all wearing uniforms) would approach your car, as you remained sitting in it, ask you how much gas you wanted ($1.00 worth was common), pump the gas into the tank, clean the windshield, check the oil, and if you wanted, check the pressure in the tires. Just about all of the stations employed or were owned by at least one mechanic and had a couple of lifts for doing oil changes and repairs of all types.

The price of gas varied greatly, day to day and from station to station. In the mid- to late-60s, it was usually around 25¢-30¢/gallon. But there were also these archaic things called “gas wars,” periods of days or weeks where stations across the street from one another or down the block would lower their prices in order to lure customers and increase volume. There were occasionally signs for gas at 16¢-19¢/gallon.

And if price didn’t draw drivers in, there were any number of promotions – glassware, silverware, dishes (curiously, nothing to do with cars) – where each week you could get another item in the set by buying so much gas. If you were persistent at frequenting a particular station, you might be able to acquire a complete table setting.

There were vending machines for soda and candy, and if you were beyond an urban area, perhaps minnows and worms for use in fishing in the nearby river or lake. But there was nothing close to today’s convenience-stores-that-also-require-you-to-pump-your-own-gas-clean-your-own-windshield-check-your-own-oil-and-tire-pressure “service stations” that make most of their money from junk food, soda, and beer. And still, sometimes, the farther you go out, minnows and worms.

Albino Watermelon

Probably the best car I’ve ever owned was the first I ever owned, the “Albino Watermelon,” a 1959 Saab 92, white exterior with a red interior (hence the nickname), that I bought for all of $300 at Foreign Motors in Wichita in 1967. It looked something like this (that’s not me):

It was basically a lawnmower with a car body (sort of) instead of mower blades, powered by a two-cycle engine, capable of reaching speeds up to 50 mph downhill and with a running start 40 mph uphill. Fueling stops were always entertaining. Back then, attendants still pumped gas, cleaned windshields, checked tire pressure and the oil. (There were also “gas wars” when the price of gas might get down to as low as 19¢ a gallon and you could get drinking glasses or dinnerware as premiums.) Often when I would pull up to a gas pump, the attendant would come out to find me pouring a bottle of 2-cycle oil into the gas tank (left-rear fender) and he would freak out and it would take me several minutes to assure him that I knew what I was doing, that the oil needed to be mixed with the gas, just like in a lawnmower. A few refused to pump the gas for fear of liability.

The other humorous, and sometimes dangerous, feature of the car was the design of the doors, which opened not from the rear out (as now with all cars) but from the front out, so that if you were going 30 mph or more (though you couldn’t go too much more) and opened the driver’s or passenger’s door, it might swing out from the force of the airstream, ripping an arm off in the process. Humorous for all.

My understanding (true or not I don’t know) was that my car was one of only three Saabs in the US at that time, as they were not being imported yet and had only gotten here from owners who bought them in Sweden, bringing them here by ship. Maybe so. But my car was certainly the only Saab in Wichita in 1967. But I was only 18 and stupid and traded the Saab for an Austin-Healey Sprite, just because it was cooler, a sports car, and could go 80 mph. But in only a few months I had had two accidents with the Sprite before finally blowing a piston. From then on I always pined for my 1959 Saab 92. And the Albino Watermelon still pops up from time to time in my dreams.