MEMORY LANE

I am often amazed by what I remember from the 60s. The booze and drugs corrupted some neural pathways and there is a fair bit of protective amnesia. If anybody asks me what it was like back then, the drugs, free love, so forth ... see, they want vicarious kicks, like I'm supposed to tell them lurid tales about taking LSD (never did that one btw) and running around naked seeing God in the bottom of a hash pipe or something. Oh, and the screwing. Standing up in a canoe or on City Hall steps, whatever. That kinda shit never happened. I was dpjk back then before I knew what that was. I suppose I could tell 'em some of the bad stuff but I don't think that's what they are after. I get this dreamy look on my face, (hamming it up a bit) and I say "yeah ... man ... I was ... like ... a wolf amongst the sheep. Dig?" But the bad stuff is still there.


When I see some of these young people run­ning their game I want to say “Kid, I served in the military, blowing things up and killing people; I ran with bik­ers, shot junk, robbed banks; my hands have taken lives and saved lives; I worked with the Billy Gra­ham Cru­sade; I’m thirty years clean and sober; I’m half dead with the cancer; I got a mil­lion miles of high­way under my ass, slept with dogs, danced with angels; I got screw­drivers older than you … what are ya gonna show me, uh?”

 

The smell of patchouli oil is a trigger. The music is what snaps me back more than anything else.







I reckon you'd have to go to a museum, hear some a these tunes. Haw, I got 'em in my head ... somewheres, honest. Deep storage.