1969 and Then Some

by Robert Wintner

  Jimmy’s parents had gone out with all the 50’s parents and bought split-level, ranch style homes and put plastic covers on the sofas and chairs. Mother wore her hair high. Father drank highballs. The country club proved their success, and all of life in America had big fins and plentiful chrome, because those things were evidence of the future upon us, which was superior and real by consensus and apparent reality, along with the prescription drugs Mom and Dad popped like M & fucking M’s, man.

  Jimmy’s filial love was as radical in those days as a few ear staples, some eyebrow spikes, a nose ring, a tongue bearing and some lip brackets came to be decades later.

  Oddly enough, I met Jimmy under far less friendly circumstances—not met, really, but saw him. Like so many state university detainees of the times, old acquaintances from high school reappeared as different people in a different world.

  Jimmy wrestled in high school for Ladue, our archrival. He was small even then, wiry and punked out decades ahead of the punk fad. Two severe cowlicks clipped short rendered a spike-headed kid with an aggressive smirk who remained undefeated at ninety-five pounds near the end of the season. Surly and arrogant, he was easy to dislike, stepping out of his team circle, walking halfway to ours and staring, till he picked out Nick Geiss, his ninety-five pound opponent. Then he laughed, pointed and sneered with ridicule, in fact aping Mick Jagger even then, a few years before Mick did it.

  Nick Geiss was my good friend, also undefeated, so this match would preview the district finals, with the winner going on to the state tournament. Jimmy was a villain. He pinned my good friend and made it look as laughably easy as he’d predicted. Then he did a little strut with the smirk and pinched face that would stay with him on to the state university, where he wouldn’t wrestle but would become an icon in other circles. The same misunderstood sneer would be there when they found him.

  Yeah? So?

  But I get ahead; characters and events and interplay, often influencing what came next.

  Reconnection with friends from childhood well into the revolution often disregarded former identity. It had to by necessity. What came before was a goof of no goof, a joke in which we had been the butt, till we cast that burden aside.

  I don’t think Jimmy went through a formal thought process of dismissing our pasts on opposing wrestling teams. I think he came on like an old friend recognizing a current teammate. He carried on over several drugs coming onto the scene, some new, some untried, some thrillingly anticipatory, while others presented refinements over what had been known. Drugs were the adventure of the times in general and of his times in particular. He didn’t remember me from Adam or the peanut gallery when he pinned my friend, as the cheerleaders for his school chanted: Jimmy Levin! Get the pin!

  I never asked why he was such an asshole back then but merely mentioned that I’d wrestled for my high school and saw him wrestle Nick Geiss. He didn’t reference his win or the pin or his progress to the state finals but lit up with a smile. “Oh, man! Nick Geiss! How’s he doing, man?” Jimmy’s humility was impressive—and that was a cornerstone of the higher times: ditching the ideas our society thrived on, competition being the biggest culprit. If you didn’t know how good Nick Geiss was and how easily Jimmy pinned him, you could just as easily miss Jimmy’s discounting-of-self in passing. His cumulative presence, however, was formidable. Jimmy didn’t just take drugs; Jimmy learned what the drugs could teach him. For a long time the good things were learned, with a few bad things in time that came with the territory, if you stayed with it. Jimmy would eventually learn about overdose, maybe.

  Sure, it was part of the times to set aside conventional concepts like winner and loser. But few people mastered it like Jimmy. He was a spirit to reckon and a natural born leader in our new world at war—scratch that—our new world of goofing like no tomorrow. What could possibly be a better antidote to war and the military mindset than a big fat goof? With a big heart and a few fatal addictions, he also delivered humility and friendship. In all the drug-addled haze, Jimmy Levin knew what to value. Like a rock star in our bumpkin neck of the woods, he would greet anyone shuffling in from nowhere with a laugh and a welcome to join the fun.

  The high school matrix wove tighter that strange season of our disconnection when Stevie Getman missed his own college graduation by a few key credits, and college was not for him a goof. Stevie had family money to take care of, so his degree in accounting would factor significantly in family and country club perceptions. Stevie had gone to my high school and did not wrestle, but Jimmy Levin was an old familiar, because Harold and Jeanette Levin were ta ta friends with Sylvia and the Wolfman—that would be Mr. and Mrs. Wolf, Stevie’s mother and her new husband. All four parents had occasion to observe and discuss the children at the club, including Heavy Greg Buckstein, whose parents not only waved ta ta from their golf cart; they actually worked very hard at reducing their handicap—even as the club tournament approached!

  What a goof: golf, Republicans, country clubs and parents, with their cocktails, Cadillacs and pills.

  This is not to suggest a Jewish revolution as subset to the greater revolution but that Jews factored prominently on the front lines of both sides.

  As if by coincidence Stevie Getman got a new apartment for three months of summer school to get his last three accounting credits at the University of Colorado. With summer upon us, blood stirred. I advised Geoffrey Wendell that I would forego his attic for a pilgrimage of sorts, next stop San Francisco, to pay homage and check it out. The Selective Service office had not changed its quota projection through April, which seemed propitious, since springtime generally increases all activity, including war and killing, but the jungle war held steady.

  Greg and Jimmy were on the road together, possibly to review potential in Boulder, where drugs of extreme recreational value were said to be available. Soon in Boulder we began our summer of disorientation by celebrating no future to speak of and a past that didn’t count or matter. Everything relative to time and space was on its head. Or rather in its head, man. I hitchhiked, because you could make better time without a car and hardly ever waited more than two or three minutes for a ride, because the sisters and brothers were on the roads that summer. Make that five minutes or ten, because I had my bicycle, because a guy needs transportation. The Peugeot UO8 retailed for about eighty bucks and re-introduced a generation to the joy of bicycling. Mine got stolen in Boulder three days in—which is still a laugh; not the theft—that was a bummer—but the sheer freedom of hitchhiking with a bicycle. “Yeah. That’s cool, man. We’ll strap it to the roof.” One ride after another tied it to the roof or stuck it in back of the microbus. Then we got stoned, heading west. We all got stoned on meeting and stoned on parting ways. We got stoned like first Americans, sealing a deal, affirming our subscription, buffing the view to better roll down the road.

  That was the year Heavy Greg got nicknamed after Magnavox came out with a new TV, the Quasar, aggressively merchandized for easy access to its vital components. The Quasar was the TV with its Works in a Drawer. Heavy Greg became known as Captain Quasar, because he had his works in his drawers. He and Jimmy were hitting junk with greater frequency that summer in Boulder’s first infusion of heroin and the associated crime wave. Junk was not cool, mainly because it segregated the brothers and sisters from the junkies, in most cases. Greg and Jimmy were exceptions, remaining cool, because they had the good sense not to mention junk in any company but that of other junkies, though they didn’t consider themselves junkies. Junkies needed the cure at very demanding intervals, and both Greg and Jimmy had gone three days without to prove their point and could do so again. Any time, man. Besides that, both had money and credit cards from their parents, so they didn’t need to be out on the street stealing stuff.

  Their parents wanted them to stay out of trouble after all. Heavy Greg and Jimmy were as well discreet enough to hit up in the bathroom, because heroin was still very, very heavy, man, a certain taboo even among your major hel
l-raisers, and good breeding and upbringing didn’t count for nothing—not yet anyway.

  Still, everything was a goof, and Stevie Getman and I giggled like hyenas when I reminded him of the shit-fit Sylvia and the Wolf man would have if they knew who was running smack in Stevie’s bathroom. Sylvia and the Wolf man were dead fucking ringers for the portrait of Ike and Mamie Eisenhower and held the pose far longer than Ike and Mamie ever did.

  Some clinical grade mescaline and a Leon Russell concert seemed like synchronous events right on the heels of so many synchronous events. We’d all arrived within two days. My bicycle got stolen. I got way bummed—I had a few thousand miles and many happy memories on that bicycle, and eighty bucks wasn’t chump change. But then Leon Russell rolled away the stone on his way into town, and some high octane mescaline came down the pike as if by chance to make me feel better, to help things let go of their material claim on each other, to loosen up the firmament and let the universe proceed with expansion, beginning with our minds.

  So we took some and went. Leon Russell looked like the old man on the mountain in a top hat even then and was a rhythm ’n’ blues god, and Mary McCreary, his eventual wife, had a body that formed up right there on stage, direct from everyboy’s dream. She sang and danced in the front line, her Amazon-African physique a certain jaw dropper for the boys gaping up from the front row at her perfect melons bouncing to the pulse of life while Leon fired off a shoot out on the plantation. All the joy and light, the insight of Truth and Being filled us with a warmth and camaraderie like never before till the show was over, and we were spent but still tripping, or rather all tripped out with nowhere to go. Most people experience at some time a silence of audible dimension, yet sitting in that room after the show was a level up, so to speak, buzzing along to nowhere as the room went empty.

  Into that lull Heavy Greg asked the thin air among us, with his distinct downward inclination, “God, man. I wonder what it’s like to be dead. Man. It must be the trippiest fuckin’ trip in the world, man. It must be like . . . like. . . .”

  Dead? What the fuck was he talking dead for? Well, maybe dead was cool. Nobody said anything, because we were tripping and not nearly as seasoned as Greg or Jimmy, so we couldn’t talk—or at least not with any confidence, and besides, we had to scan the files for dead and trippy, since anything could be cool. We liked the Grateful Dead, with the skulls and everything. They were cool, and tripping was definitely not your usual life form, and tripping was cool, but dead was not like tripping. No way. So we sat and stared, fairly stymied, until Jimmy summarized the situation:

  “It’s not like anything, man. You’re fuckin’ dead.” The guy was full of surprises.

  You’re the Reason I’ll be Traveling On

  —Don’t think twice. It’s all right.

  BOB DYLAN PRESENTED a few new angles on a tough situation. By letting things go we could have faith in the road as a place to be, a place where life unfolded in continuing adventure, where brotherhood came our way along with a few sisters. Ah, youth; if not for the presumption of the thing, more kids might embrace it.

  Well, times seemed tough. After riding my bicycle three days in the Boulder Mountains I had no bicycle. Leon Russell through the mescaline lens was an impossible act to follow. Stevie broke the news to Jimmy and Heavy Greg that he had to study to graduate, because. Hey, that’s cool, man. They left.

  Bummer.

  Jimmy passed me a card on the way out, not a business card but a credit card with the name Leo Denton. Cards were such a goof. Business, credit—the fuck? Jimmy got this card from a guy in Boulder as collateral on a balance. Jimmy knew that balances were bullshit and always tilt, unbalanced, and he was done with the guy. Maybe he sensed something without letting on, just as he knew of his wrestling skills without letting on. Shrewd yet humble, he smirked, pressing the card into my palm. “I got a card, man. I’m giving it to you. Be cool.”

  That was cool. What do you do with a credit card? They were a goof and then some, like another trick to get you into debt you’d never be able to pay. Then again, they were magical. Credit card companies sent live cards unsolicited to random consumers in the 60s. Many recipients welcomed a new way of life, strapping on the harness in the new American plan, providing instant mobility at only a point and a half—rotating. Many people thought they’d arrived at last, at the financial mobility they’d always expected to have. The credit card promised fantasy fulfillment on the more, more, more. What could be so bad? 18% annual didn’t really count, because you’d pay your bill monthly. Why wouldn’t you?

  Credit card transactions at that time occurred on plastic boxes with rollers requiring some muscle and no electronic capture. A few people with hot cards cost the card companies millions, but the companies soaked up that loss as a nominal cost of doing business.

  I had Gary Cooper’s number from when he bought my motorcycle in Munich the summer before. He still owed me a few bucks, which was cool, and I called him on Stevie’s phone to see if I might crash on his couch there in Venice a few days. That call was a major event in those days known as long distance. Back then dinner and long distance both ran a couple bucks, but Stevie wanted to study. That was cool, especially since the Wolf Man likely picked up Stevie’s phone tab.

  “Sure, come on,” Gary said.

  It was on again, hitting the road to Mecca with an LA detour on the way. San Francisco glowed in the distance. If Gary Cooper paid his debt, I’d be flush and on my way to Freedom Central.

  Stevie drove me through town to avoid what he called the urban hassle, out to the main artery heading south. Pulling over at the on-ramp he said don’t worry, he could head down to the next exit and get off, because I’d fare best at the on-ramp, where cars slowed down. I felt generous, letting Stevie explain the ways of the road. He didn’t get out so much, and there he was studying accounting in a prime fillet summer. Fuck.

  We shook hands. Flipside, motherfucker. And the freedom freeway opened again on anything possible. A grown man on an interstate on-ramp with a rucksack and a cardboard sign that said LA might doubt his meaning in life today—he might question his place in society, his contribution and his value to anything and his long odds on getting a ride. Back then, waiting on a ramp was like a line in the water—perfectly baited over a deep hole with surface ripples indicating lunkers down there; who knew what might come along? I could feel things working out and getting higher, not just on reefer but on the evolving beauty of road society. That wasn’t the same as a natural high, because a natural high required no reefer. I couldn’t quite get that one. Besides, if we could get high with no reefer, then a little reefer on top of that would be really nice.

  But chronic reefer wasn’t a problem then, what today would be called an issue. 60s dope had less THC, so you could smoke more and adapt more easily. Life felt higher in general, away from campus delusion and intellectual confinement. Smoking dope had been a means of dulling the edge during the student deferment. After graduation, before the physical and adrift in the DMZ, dope smoking felt like a natural supplement to life on the road. Just as a water colorist uses a tinted wash as a pleasing backdrop, so the dope put tinted pleasantry on the world in movement.

  Every brother was a trip in those days, when brothers came in all colors, and every trip unfolded with ups, downs and revelation as the puzzle parts of peace and unity tried to fit together. Every sister enjoyed equal status in what we shared, which was everything. If the chemistry was on, a brother and a sister had sexual relations, which wasn’t incestuous or any kind of nasty. It was natural and set us apart from a nation of suburban inmates. We felt free. They seemed envious.

  Take Susan Bromberg, a lanky girl from Boston nearly a head taller than me. Experimenting with the road as a place of being, serving her internship to the age upon us, Susan crawled into the back seat of the soulful Volvo that had picked me up from the on-ramp. We’d driven a few exits down to an off-campus apartment complex where we pulled in for Susan, who hugged her friends
and put her pro-model backpack with lumbar support into the trunk.

  The two guys with the Volvo had posted a ride on a bulletin board at the University. Susan had called and arranged for the ride. It was organized and civil with expectations clearly stated. When the Volvo boys pulled over for me, one asked if I could help pay for gas. I pulled Jimmy’s credit card halfway out of my vest pocket. He opened the back door.

  So the four of us were on our way to LA till one of the guys turned around to ask Susan and me how we felt about veering off to check out Taos. Taos had become a gathering point, a haven for the happening and what might be happening next. Susan actually put a knuckle on her chin before nodding ponderously. Sure, she could be cool with Taos. She’d heard it was a groove, possibly a gas. She’d heard of the hot springs at Taos. They were supposed to be really something. That pegged her as suburban with parental influence, out for an adventure with the other kids, sampling the Revolution before settling down to a real life of stability, security and convenience. She’d just graduated Boston College, and boy, did she ever feel relieved, finally done with studying and stuff. She would begin pursuit of a master’s degree in psychology only two months down the line, so Taos seemed like a spontaneously perfect spice for her adventure soufflé. Her brief bio ended on a groan that she didn’t even want to think about more school, not until she had to anyway.