Journal #9

One More Microbus...
'T'was the Night Before WOODSTOCK!

"Why D-D-Don't We Do IT in the Ro-o-woad?"

Note: The title is as suggestive as the language in this story gets...and that's been played on the radio umpteen thousand times since the Beatles released the record...What this story really marvels in is TIMING...I can hear the lead vocal of a pop hit from my youth as I type, "TIMING...tick-a, ticka...TIMING" As I've written elsewhere in these pages, I hitch-hiked from Boulder, Colorado, to NYC, after the grapevine about a BIG rock festival spread that far in late July, 1969. All of New York was a-stir with the news - it was true! I found a small crew of "freaks" hanging out with a college co-ed "larking it" for the summer in the city. She said if someone would hitch with her to Buffalo, NY, she had a car at her family home there. I was still in the highway mode from my trip east, so I said let's go! We did, right away...I gave her respect, and she said she'd introduce me as a friend to her parents, who were mellow...The family was most hospitable, I spent the night in their guest room, and we drove back...it all went very smoothly, over a round-trip distance of 900+ miles. We picked up her friends, the hippy freaks, and headed up the NY Thruway on Thursday evening August 14...No sooner had we made it onto NY hiway 17, we heard a message on some big AM radio channel that we were stuck in a 30 mile long parking lot - the traffic began to back up at the Thruway exit, and the State Troopers closed the exit...what was it like? In a word - FESTIVE!. Once the traffic, which was by then four lanes headed west, stopped, I noticed that there was a VW Microbus in front of us...it was about a car length ahead of our vehicle. Collectively, many cars around us tuned to the same station, and turned the volume up...not much time after that, a young couple got out of the VW...they reached the back of the bus at the same time, like "Elgin jeweled" clockwork. Both of them had sleeping bags they removed from the back...then they proceeded to unroll them, unzip the bags, and zip them together...placing the big bag on the pavement...they sat down removed shoes and socks, climbed in, and in tandem motion, began to disrobe, one item at a time...finally there were two neat piles outside the bag, with the couple completely inside...modesty, right? Then they proceeded to give themselves a perfect reason to remember a famous Beatles hit song... For a while, all was still in the sleeping bag...nobody in our car was pruriently watching, we simply couldn't help but notice...I, myself, don't remember any jock-a-delic high school football team locker-room comments either...besides we were busy passing the Peace PIPE...what was in it? Well, since that evening, I've lived to hear The GING-Stir, Newt Gingrich, (former Speaker of the US House of Representatives) say this when he was asked if he ever partook of the same substance, "Yes, of course I inhaled..." (while I'm on the topic, I wonder if he ever went sailing with William Buckley, out past the seven mile limit - you know, in international waters, where a certain prohibition is not enforceable) At a given point in time, two hands began reaching out of the sleeping bag for items of clothing...then the couple - fully dressed - got out of the bag, put on their shoes and socks, unzipped the big double size bag, rolled each one up separately, and put them in their bag covers, placed them in the back of the VW, closed the back hatch, and walked around the bus, opened the doors in tandem, and got in their vehicle. Right after they closed their doors, the traffic in front of them began to move again...Amazing, huh? I still wonder if they were the only ones in that whole mess to manage such a feat of synchronicity...and what would be truly the nature of the WWW is receiving email from them, if they are alive and well, or even one of their kids, or friends, after all this time...stranger things have happened...More Bus tales? How about Ole Doubledyclutch? Here's the introduction to one of the strangest songs I've ever written, one of those songs where, the First Person Singular is "Another" (to wit - a character in a play within a song...), as Jean-Paul Sartre put it. OK, now...you've just gotten on the DAWG out there in Montana. There's one seat left, next to a wizened old gentleman, who's asleep against the window. You put your guitar up in the rack, and sit your weary self down. Just then, the fellow sleeping wakes up and turns toward you. You can smell the last cigar on his breath..."dead ringer" for George Burns in his nineties! He opens his mouth and begins to softly croon this song, after he says, "I was looking at myself in the mirror one morning, and I thought I saw the Beast...Then I got the idea for this song and sang it to myself...couldn't help but smile, then. It's not too heavy, simply a wrinkle in rhythmn and rhyme. Hope you like it, John..." (and you don't even look the slightest bit like John Denver...) See if you can guess which verse is the hardest to sing without laughing. No kidding. Really! All Aboard, what's goin' aboard!! Stranger On A BUS... The END of My Hitchhiking Days...