Watkin’s Glen Summer Jam
It was a bright Saturday morning July 28,1973 when my friend Doug and I put on our backpacks and accompanied by his girlfriend Sue, walked across the white bridge in Barrington to route 114, commonly known as The Wampanoag Trail. We were about to embark on one of the biggest adventures I had ever experienced in all of my 17 years to that point, or since that time. We were going to what was advertised as “Summer Jam” expected to at least meet or exceed the attendance record set by four hundred thousand people at Woodstock, 4 years earlier. Unlike Woodstock, this festival had but three bands on the bill, three of the greatest powerhouse bands of the 70’s - The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band and The Band. Any self-respecting hippie had several albums by at least one of these bands.
Our good friends Harry, Noonan and Fressel had gotten tickets on a bus that left out of Providence the night before. I think they paid forty bucks for the round trip bus ride and a concert ticket was included. They ended up having a huge smoke-fest on the bus. The driver pulled over several times threatening to “clear this bus out!” if the dope smoking didn’t stop. Noonan assured him it would as someone in one of the other seats blew a shotgun hit at his face from behind. This freaked the driver out and he stormed off towards the front so he wouldn’t come under influence of the poisonous drug called marijuana.
They got there and immediately took hits of four-way windowpane acid. This was LSD that had been formed into a clear sheet slightly thicker than a piece of tape. This was cut and sold in minute little pieces approximately ¼ of an inch square. It was actually sold wrapped up n a piece of cellophane tape so it wouldn’t get lost. It was too small to handle. The user usually just ate the thing tape and all. The theory was that each piece could be split 4 ways, into 4 individual doses, hence the name. We never did find out what one dose actually did.
The three of them got so fucked up, they were tripping their asses off. They enjoyed the warm-up show - actually a full concert the night before the actual show. They got so fried that Fressel suddenly told Harris he had “blown a fuse” and couldn’t think straight anymore. He cooled down a bit by smoking several joints and then he got over his blown fuse or brain fart or whatever the hell it was. This actually proved to be a remedy in several instances of drug experimentation. If ya got too fucked up, a joint or a bowl would set ya straight again.
So they partied until near dawn and came back home the next day, the day of the concert. They never actually saw the concert. What they did see was a legendary rock show. There are recordings of the Grateful Dead’s warm-up, a twenty-two-minute jam, the kind the Dead are famous for, as well as the Allman Brothers playing their legendary classic “Whipping Post.”
When Doug and I were braving the rain the next day, they were cruising down the highway in a nice dry comfortable bus. They had no regrets. They saw a shorter version of the show with a quarter of the crowd that would be there the next day, although Doug and I had more of an adventure, I think.
The previous day Doug and I had driven up to Providence, to the Outlet Department Store building and gotten ten-dollar concert tickets at TicketMaster in the basement of the now defunct department store. That done, we had decided to meet Frank Murray, son of a local FBI agent, who sold us two enormous bags of weed for the customary price of twenty bucks apiece. We had packed our backpacks with supplies we thought would come in handy – freeze-dried food such as hamburger patties, beef stroganoff, and freeze-dried astronaut ice cream. I also had one of those mess kits with a small frying pan, a dish a cup and knife, fork and spoon. As an afterthought, I had grabbed a twenty-five-foot square sheet of heavy polyethylene to serve as a ground cover or shelter in case it rained. We had seen the movie Woodstock and we didn’t want to end up sleeping in the mud. We tied our sleeping bags to the bottom of the packs and that was it. We were all set – weed, freeze-dried food, no water; we were ready. Sure we were.
And so we crossed the bridge over the Barrington River. Sue walked with us up to where the breakdown lane began and she kissed and hugged Doug goodbye. “Aw, Bonniol doesn’t have anyone to kiss him goodbye,” she said and gave me a kiss and a hug as well. And now here we were, heading down the highway to the adventure of a lifetime.
I had made a sign that said quite simply, WATKIN’S GLEN, NY and I held this as we both held out our thumbs. I had told my parents I was going camping with Doug, Nutch and Nutch’s father at a YMCA camp in upstate New York for the weekend. This was actually had some vague basis in truth as Nutch’s father Ray Baker, worked for the East Side (Providence) YMCA. It was his job to help local Y’s raise money to build new buildings, and he was currently doing that in Providence in a low-income neighborhood. So in actuality, we COULD have been going camping with them. We weren’t, but it WAS a distinct possibility at some time. This was one alibi that would come back to bite me in the ass a few days later.
We got a ride almost instantly from a guy that drove us up to route 95 South in Warwick, Rhode Island. He was a veteran of Woodstock and told us of how he had tripped out for three days on magic mushrooms. We could tell he would have loved to take his tie and suit jacket off and go with us but he didn’t. From here we walked a bit until we got another ride into New London, Connecticut. From there we walked a bit until we hit pay dirt. A longhaired blonde guy pulled over in a Ford Fairlane convertible, and invited us to hop in. We threw our backpacks in the back seat. Doug got in the front, and I climbed in the back. He introduced himself as Mickey and said he was headed to the concert as well. We were set with transportation to the show, and it was only 8 in the morning. This was all the encouragement I needed and thanks to my nimble fingers, joints were soon rolled and smoked. This was a process that proceeded for most of the morning until first Mickey and then Doug said they would have to pass. I finished the last and threw the roach out of the car.
Doug and I sat back and enjoyed the ride as Mickey explained that he had been to Woodstock in ’69 and that he had stopped for directions at a place called the Depot, an old train station turned bar. This would be our first destination. It’s funny when I think of the fact that Doug and I really had no idea where we were going – just Watkin’s Glen, New York. We had no map, no idea where the place was located. It could have been Niagara Falls for all we knew. People who try stunts like that today have a better than average chance of ending up cut into tiny pieces and buried in some god-forsaken woods somewhere.
We drove for about two or three hours and when we got on the New York State Thruway, we started getting into a lot of traffic. It was really congested and everywhere we looked we saw hippie chillun like us. It looked like we were in a hippie parade. Smoke was coming from a lot of cars and it wasn’t exhaust smoke. Doug handed me his bag of pot saying, “Barn, roll a couple of fat ones.”
I was only too happy to oblige, and before long we were headed back to NURDVILLE, USA, Stonetown, by way of oblivion. We were getting closer judging by the traffic. Every so often the traffic would speed up a bit and it was one of these times that traffic stopped – and we didn’t. With a loud crash, we slammed into the car in front of us, a ’65 Chevy Impala. This was back when car bumpers were actually made out of metal and not some cheap-assed vinyl-covered tin. The cars were relatively unharmed. I think we busted the guy’s tail lights, and since the drivers and occupants of both cars were stoned on illegal substances the drivers decided the damage was minimal and there was nothing to worry about. Doug hurt his back a bit but nothing serious. A few joints later he forgot all about that.
After creeping and crawling past a few more exits Mickey proclaimed that this was it and we exited the freeway at a higher rate of speed than we had been traveling. We stopped for gas and a piss stop and Mickey asked the station attendant if he knew where the Depot was. The guy gave him directions, but we got lost and had to ask again further down the road. Here we were, asking directions to a place where we were headed to ask directions. Fucked up huh?
We finally found the place around 12 or so and went in to ask and get a beer. I hated beer and couldn’t even stomach the taste, so While Doug and Mickey were relishing the taste of some frosty cool beers, I was gagging trying to drink this. I just ordered it more out of peer pressure. They were getting’ beers and I just felt I had to drink the vicious alcohol to fit in. In fact, Harris and I had a slogan so to speak. If someone would offer either one of us a beer at a party, we’d say, “No thanks – strictly drugs.” This wasn’t really the truth, but it flipped people out a bit to hear it.
At last, they finished their beer and I left mine on the bar. Doug grabbed it and downed the rest of the glass in one gulp. I couldn’t wait to get the taste of it out of my mouth. Yet one more reason to spark a home rolled cigar as soon as we got to the car.
It turns out there was a way to get there by a series of back roads that would avoid the congestion on the highway. This was a good thing as the four major highways were later closed to traffic. The site of the concert was the American Grand Prix racecourse and featured a large campground. The campground was where the show was.
We got there in under an hour and we were jammed in traffic leading up a hill to the site. We could hear the music now. The Band was playing “Up on Cripple Creek”. By the time the concert was over, 15 or so hours later, I had heard each band so many times, I lost track of who the hell I was listening to.
Doug and I were getting “antsy” waiting, virtually stopped. People on foot were passing us. And so, as quickly as we had met him, we decided to say goodbye to Mickey and head off on foot. The road was covered over by tall trees so at least we were in the shade most of the time.
After about forty-five minutes of walking uphill, we rounded a corner and saw a flattened fence that had eliminated any need for tickets. The well worn, muddy path led to a huge open meadow, at the bottom of which, was the stage, set back against some giant pine trees. And in between the stage and where we stood, was filled with a sea of people. Everywhere you looked there were people – back between the trees and even up in the trees at the back of the meadow behind us. And the crowd was almost like an organism of sorts. This wall of humanity just parted this way and that, to allow others to just flow through, like trickles of rainwater into a stream. We became part of the crowd and just moved within it wherever we went. We finally settled in an area that was up the hill slightly. We were maybe three hundred yards or so from the stage so we could see the groups well. We couldn’t see the faces, we could see the people, enough to recognize the band members. And the sound was INCREDIBLE. It just filled the air and wasn’t blasting. It was crisp. It was loud but not distorted like some concerts they had seen at the Providence Civic Center or the Palace Theater. Other people were so far away they couldn’t even see the stage at all, and the music was barely audible. Final estimates of the crowd were at least 600,000 and up to 750,000 people.
As soon as we found our spot we shed our backpacks, sparked up a joint, and dropped two hits each of THC. THC is the active ingredient in pot in a nifty pill form. It was almost like smoking a whole bag of grass at all once, without the coughing, and burnt fingers. One thing Watkin’s Glen was that day, was an open-air drug store. There were people hawking acid with megaphones, and one could also get Hashish, mescaline, all of the various different kinds of LSD, speed, coke, downers, whatever your preference was. And the pot was everywhere. One thing Doug and I soon discovered, was that when you lit a joint, took a couple of hits off it and passed it on, that was the last you’d see of it. But when you passed your funny little cigarette off into the crowd to your left, 4 or 5 more would come right back at you from the right-hand side. You’d have one in your mouth and one in each hand and someone holding out another for you to share. By the time the THC kicked in after an hour or so, we were both blasted out of our minds. We were nurdin’ heavily and we eventually both lay down on our backs. It was there on our backs that we saw a most wondrous sight.
A small plane flew over the concert grounds, and one by one, four people exited the plane. In a few seconds their parachutes opened and a few seconds after that, some kind of smoke flares ignited on the legs of the skydivers. This was really cool looking, but we could see that one guy seemed to be in trouble. Rather than harmless smoke, we watched in horror as flames engulfed his legs and then in an instant, his entire body was engulfed in flames. He was spinning in circles and falling, and he drifted off into the pine trees behind the stage. Six hundred thousand stoners watched in horror. We read later that he was found hanging from one of the tall pine trees, horribly burned, with a broken neck.
We stayed on our backs all day long, the hot sun beating down on us, smoking whatever came along. Every so often something soft, juicy, and wonderful would touch my parched lips and after biting down I would enjoy the ecstasy of an orange slice. There were two girls from California directly behind us, also on the ground. I think their names were Daisy and Dorothy, and Doug told me later that the girl who was feeding me fruit was lying there totally naked, a very different kind of fruit mere inches away from my face. Doug told me all I would have had to do was roll over and I would’ve been going down on her. Even though my entire teenage life up to that point had been spent dreaming of just such a prize, I was way too fucked up to even care about this if I had discovered it. I was just happy for the fruit. It was all I ate all day. There were stockpiles of cases of bottled water here and there but getting any was a problem, as the piles of boxes were being used as viewing platforms.
Toward six or seven at night, dark ominous clouds began to roll in. I was reminded of the fierce lightning storm in the Woodstock movie. As it turned out we didn’t have long to wait or worry before the skies opened up in a torrential downpour. Lightning began sparking everywhere. I grabbed my backpack and retrieved the large sheet of plastic. We opened this up and held it over our heads, spreading the sheet out to our neighbors, and like that “tent 13” was born. We were an instant community of stoned brothers and sisters and what better way to celebrate this great salvation from the rain than an instant party. So many joints were sparked up that smoke was streaming out of the edges of the “tent.” Those of us who were under the plastic really didn’t need to smoke to get a hit, we just had to breathe. In addition to the pot, a few pipes full of hash were passed and a skin full of electric wine made the rounds. This was wine laced with a good amount of LSD so only one good drink was all it took. Doug and I both made sure we took good hearty swigs of this. Due to this we enjoyed the lightning immensely. Although we were covered and stayed dry in the deluge, the ground turned to soupy mud, and people were slipping and sliding all over the place. People everywhere took their clothes off and played in the mud or enjoyed the cleanliness the rain provided.
The rainstorm lasted about an hour or so, and when it was finally over, I did my best to gather the plastic up and jam it back in my backpack so we could use it as a ground cloth later when we finally did go to sleep. Around ten that night, during the Allman Brothers’ set, the promoters started setting off fireworks. This was spectacular. Fireworks and acid go together like French fries and ketchup. There was a slight problem though, the people doing the rockets had positioned themselves back under the trees to the left of the stage, no doubt to stay out of the rain as much as possible, and to keep the pyrotechnics dry. The first rocket went off without a hitch and was enjoyed by the stoned nation. The second rocket went about a hundred feet up, hit a tree limb, and then bounced back down into the crowd about fifteen feet away from where we were. Then it exploded into dozens of individual rockets, that shot off every which way and blew up either right in the crowd or directly above it, shooting yet more rockets into the crowd. This was one of those huge gold starburst fireworks everyone has seen at Fourth of July celebrations. This was almost like a scene out of Apocalypse Now. Stuff was blowing up all around us!! Doug and I were laughing our asses off as we ran far enough away so as to be out of range. Like I said: there as Acid in that wine; lots and lots of acid! Incredibly the idiots kept firing the things off and two more rockets landed in the crowd. Watching this, you had an idea of what our brothers must have faced on the battlefields of Vietnam.
The Dead came on after the Brothers and they jammed and jammed for hours. All three of these bands, especially the Dead and the Brothers, were known for playing long many-hour sets, and after a period of time Doug and I finally decided that we were burnt out from so much music and possibly a little from the drugs as well. A little after 1 am we gathered our stuff and headed toward the back of the campground to find a place to crash out.
On the way back we made a beeline to a large U-Haul truck that was parked in the middle of the field. Three guys, whom we met later, had filled this truck with watermelons and sold them all for ten dollars a piece. While that may not sound that outrageous today, keep in mind that an entire ounce of pot cost twenty bucks back then, and a gallon of gas was thirty-three cents. We laughed at them when they told us the price and walked back to hopefully find a spot to enjoy our freeze-dried goodies.
We spied a rather large fire burning at the back of the field, so we made tracks in that general direction. Upon our arrival in that locale, we discovered that the fire was actually a row of ten wooden outhouses that the crowd had pushed over and set afire. As gross as this might sound, it was actually a nice fire, and the warmth and brightness was welcome. We found a spot off to the rear of the fire, upwind of the smoke. We spread our plastic out on the ground and spread our sleeping bags out. It was nowhere near as crowded here as down near the stage, so we were able to open our delicious freeze-dried Salisbury steak, and beef stroganoff. We threw the hard masses in the pan and went off in search of water. There was actually a well near by, as several wells had been driven before the concert. We added some water to the pan and found someone who had a fire that was not the remains of a shit house. We heated our stuff up until all the water was absorbed and the food was hot. We thanked the dudes and went back to our sleeping bags to eat. We took one or two bites of our food before throwing it in the burning outhouses. We both agreed that’s where the stuff belonged. That was the most disgusting thing we had ever tried to eat. With that gone, all we had left was freeze dried ice cream. How bad could that be, we reasoned, and we were right. As long as you were a fan of strawberry flavored Styrofoam, this was good eating. We managed to eat this but there was not a whole lot of it to eat. We decided that we were not all that hungry any way and gave up any further thoughts of food. When we saw this whacked out woman cooking hot dogs on the flaming outhouses, and washing them down with swigs of Jack Daniels, we were certain we were not hungry.
We decided to try to get some sleep, and this was damn near impossible. The music was still playing, the crowd around us was still pretty loud, and the soup of chemicals swimming in our bloodstreams made sleep tough to come by. We decided we hadn’t smoked enough that day and so two of us each rolled a joint and we smoked them ourselves. This seemed to do the trick, and we managed to fall asleep around 2:30 am.
We awoke the next morning around eight or nine o’clock, at least I think that’s what time it was, for time seemed to have lost all meaning through this whole adventure. There was no need to worry. All we needed to do was to quote The Three Stooges, “wake up and go to sleep.” We awoke to bright sunshine, smoldering shithouse remains and a scene straight out of Woodstock. If you’ve ever seen the movie or photos of the day after, you’ve seen the field covered with literally tons of trash. This is what we saw, only twice as much. You really couldn’t see grass, just remains of one gigantic party. There was trash everywhere, cans bottles, smashed coolers, blankets sleeping bags, both occupied and unoccupied, and thousands of sleeping bodies. Early risers walked back and forth, combing the ground looking for modern lost treasure, money, drugs, booze, maybe even a bite of food. Directly in front of us sat the woman whom we’d seen cooking shithouse hot-dogs the night before. She was sitting on her blanket, legs splayed out to each side, enjoying a breakfast of Jack Daniels. Doug and I looked at this, and then shook our heads at each other. Even we had some morals, some limits. We sat there for a half hour or so getting our minds back together and rummaging through our backpacks for some normal food. We found an orange and some Fritos and had a delightful breakfast, just enough to take the edge off.
We rolled our sleeping bags up and tied them back on our packs, and after putting them back on we started stumbling across the field, looking for lost items as we did. We noticed the watermelon truck was still parked in the middle of the field, people sleeping all over the roof and the hood, anywhere there was room. We joked to ourselves that we wouldn’t want to sleep up there and get up in the middle of the night to take a piss. That first step could be a killer.
We finally made it out to the road and there was a van from radio station WBRU. Back then they were owned and operated by Brown University, hence the call letters. They were one of the first FM stations I had ever heard as FM was still in its infancy back then. BRU was known for playing album sides, cool stuff like The Who’s Tommy, The Allman Brothers Live at Filmore East, Blues like Muddy Waters. It was a great station. We stopped by and said hi and asked if they had room for two people to hitch a ride to Providence. They couldn’t, they told us, as they had no room. That was cool with us, and we went on our way. It was one of the best rides we ever missed. I’m so glad they were inconsiderate douchebags, or Doug and I would have never had an even crazier adventure – the trip home.
We walked on, and as we did, I spied a light tan cowboy hat discarded or lost in a field at the edge of the road. I ran over and picked it up. It was in excellent condition. There was an off-white ribbon tied around it at the base of the brim and pin in its side proclaimed “Frontiers – Advancement through Service - Established 1936.” I ran back to Doug who agreed it was a cool hat. “That’d make a cool present for Sue,” He said.
As much as I liked Sue, there was no way I could part with it. To me, this hat represented something. This was number one, a souvenir of one of the most amazing road trips ever. It represented independence, as I had gone ahead and hitchhiked up here without my parents’ permission and attended a concert almost twice the size of Woodstock. And more than that, it represented a state of mind. For from that day forward, it was my “nurdin’ hat.” I wore that hat to every outdoor concert, festival or party I went to, every camping trip. It even went to the Mardi Gras three times and went to prison with me two years after I found it. It became a part of my persona.
I put it on my head. It seemed as if it was made for me. “Sorry man, I gotta keep it. This is my party hat.”
Doug really didn’t mind, and we kept walking, putting our thumbs out whenever we heard approaching cars. Again, hitchhikers’ luck was with us. After no more than maybe five miles, we saw the watermelon truck coming our way. They pulled right over and asked where we were heading.
“Providence!” Doug told them.
“Awright, hop in the back,” one of the three guys in the front seat told us.
We ran to the back of the truck and climbed up on the bumper and joined about thirty other people already in there. Somebody hollered to the driver that we were all right and the truck rumbled back out onto the highway. We settled back against the side of the truck, glad to be off our feet, and thankful that we would be able to ride with them almost all the way home. They were heading to Boston, and they would drop us in Providence.
As was the custom in those days, whenever new people joined a crowd, it was a reason to burn some weed to help relax and get to know the new arrivals. Doug and I both rolled some as well as some the others in the truck. Soon we were having a merry old time. Doug looked at me and laughed.
“What?” I asked him.
“Barn, you should see your face,” he said, “You’ve got a sun burn on half. The other half is white!" I found out later that I had a perfect line down the middle of my face. One half was bright sunburned red; the other was normal. It stung, but it was still funny thinking that I got that way because I spent the afternoon on my back, with my face nestled to one side, between the thighs of some hippie chick from California.
We were all sitting around the back of the truck as it raced down the highway towards Boston. Some of the braver souls sat in the opening at the back of the truck. One other guy sat with his legs out the side door of the truck. Suddenly the air caught the door and slammed it shut on the guy’s legs. He screamed out in agony and people nearby yanked him out of the doorway. He was moaning and begging for something for the pain - painkillers, downers, even aspirin, Just give him something. Somebody came up with something. I think they gave him a bunch of downers to knock him out for a while so he’d feel less pain. He must have hurt his legs seriously the way the door slammed on him. He definitely must have felt that for a few days.
We noticed an old couple following us, seemingly amused by the view of the truckload of hippies in front of them. We decided as a unit that we would have some fun. Someone Volunteered a T-shirt and another wrote down our message: “WE NEED FOOD!” We held this up to the couple and they smiled at what it said. We crossed out the word food and changed the slogan to WE NEED BEER!” The guy laughed at this, no doubt remembering some jaunt across country in his model T Ford. Again, we took the shirt down and changed it to “WE NEED GIRLS!” At this, the guy was laughing, and the lady was also. Each time we pulled the shirt down, you could see they were actually getting eager to see what we would write next. Someone wrote, “WE NEED DRUGS!” We held it up, and you could see how alarmed they got over this. The woman, this petite motherly looking farmwoman even chucked us the finger as the man stepped on the gas and they sped away.
We cruised along for a good amount of time, all of us getting hungrier by the minute. Finally, the truck pulled up to a roadside convenience store. We all jumped out of the truck and things got a little haywire after that. At first there was just the crowd of us milling about, stretching our legs, high fiving each other. The entire parking lot seemed to be filled with concert refugees, all harmlessly blowing off a bit of steam. Harmless, that is, until a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, which also served as a rest area. They could only drive so far before their way was blocked by the crowd. There was no reason for us to do so, but instead of getting out of the way, the crowd surrounded the truck. We were all laughing, cheering, and singing; We were no big problem. The man and woman inside, a couple in their fifties, seemed almost amazed or awestruck by our numbers. No doubt they had seen TV news coverage of the show but were just not prepared in anyway to meet the news in the parking lot of a rest stop.
Then almost as if it were a living being, the crowd changed. Actually, it was almost as if the crowd was an idling race car engine that had suddenly put the pedal to the metal. We all began shouting, our exuberance at first, but then almost like a herd of bulls the testosterone or pheromones began to flow. Doug and I began yelling “NURD!, NURD!, NURD!” This is just what we yelled when we got excited. Within seconds, the entire crowd was yelling “NURD!, NURD!, NURD!” You could see the people had changed from alarmed to genuinely scared. That was when the crowd began en masse, pushing on each side of the truck, rocking it and its terrified occupants from side to side. The more a crowd goes wild as we were, it becomes almost self-replicating, creating increasingly stronger waves of rowdiness, almost like some wave of adrenaline swept through it, before it just goes out of control and a riot results. We were teetering dangerously on the verge of being totally out of control. We were violently shaking the pickup back and forth. Doug and I were right up front, and we suddenly realized what we were doing to this poor couple, and we all just stopped, again, almost as if some wave of tranquillity swept over us. The crowd dispersed away from the truck and swarmed up the store. The owner and his wife were out front cooking cheeseburgers, which they were selling for five bucks apiece. Doug and I were just sort of swept into the store, and some of the guys from the truck were actually just grabbing all sorts of food, several loaves of bread, about 5 pounds of bologna and cheese, and a few cases of beer. This, they all ran back to the truck with and after we all got in, the truck left. I don’t know if the people knew or not, as most of the stuff was walked by, completely hidden by the crowd.
We cruised down Route 6 and silently ate bologna, cheese and mustard sandwiches washed down with beer. I did exactly that, just drank enough to wash it down, then wiped off and passed it to Doug who devoured it. One of the guys who had grabbed the beer, asked, “What’s the matter? You don’t like beer?”
“Nah,” I said, “Strictly drugs”
Not too long after that, Doug came over to me and said below his breath, “Barn, I just found a bag of weed on the floor.”
“Hey! I lost my weed!” a voice sounded from over in the corner, “Anybody find a bag of weed?”
Doug remained silent and the guy got over it and Doug kept giving me these little glances and laughing. We couldn’t wait to get off the truck in order to smoke it all up. We were cruising along when suddenly we heard wheels locking up, our wheels, and then a jarring crash. We stumbled out to see what happened, and there had been a multi-car pile-up and our truck had been the last vehicle. We decided to help the guy and make sure there were no injuries. Then we smelled gasoline. We looked down and discovered the guy had punctured his gas tank and gas was leaking pretty steadily. We heard the sound of an approaching diesel and we looked up to discover a gasoline tanker truck heading right at us. The driver of our truck screamed at us all to get back in, and we screwed out of there like a bat out of hell. He was afraid the tanker truck would hit us, and, because of the leaking gas, we would all explode.
We drove for a few more hours, driving down a route 6 that was bumpy and in dis-repair because is had less traffic and no tolls. It seemed as if we were on the road all day, as they apparently plotted a route that took us by certain cities so as to drop off various people. By the time we neared Providence, I had to piss so bad I thought I would burst. There was no stopping to pee though, so that last few miles we felt every bump and pothole down deep in our bladders.
At long last the truck pulled over and slowed to a stop. “PROVIDENCE!” the driver yelled out. We practically leaped from the truck and after quickly thanking the guys for the ride we ran down the slight embankment at the edge of the highway and peed like racehorses. I looked at my watch and reported that it was 1:30 AM. Now at the time of this adventure, Route 6 barely touched the edge of providence. It was part of what was called the “Crazy Mixed-up Mile,” whereby in order to get from Route 6 through Providence, you had to travel a bit on Route 195 then Route 44 and then down to route 95, which lead through the city. We walked along and found ourselves on Atwells Avenue, part of the neighborhood known as “Federal Hill” or alternately “The Hill.” This was the home of the New England Mafia, run by Raymond L. S. Patriarca. This was a neighborhood where gangland slayings frequently took place and mob hits would take place in the middle of crowded restaurants, whose patrons invariably suffered some sort of temporary blindness or memory loss. It was also a safe neighborhood as no crime took place without the express permission of “Ray Pat.” Anyone who pulled a heist without the old man’s permission would end up in the Providence River or the Bay somewhere with a pair of cement shoes.
We walked down the Hill and then through the city so as to avoid the highway. To walk there, was to invite the cops to stop us and search us. This took another hour and a half until we were able to hike up an onramp to route 195 East, the main road to Barrington and points east like Cape Cod. After another two hours or so we walked back down the Wampanoag Trail, where we had begun this crazy whacked out trip. At 4:30 in the morning, Doug and I parted ways at his house. I had to walk through the woods for another half mile or so to get to my house. I got there at 5 AM and started to sneak in the house. Anyone entering the back door of my house had to walk right by my parent’s room and my mother was up in a flash.
“What are doing at this hour of the night?” she demanded.
“Oh, I just got dropped off,” I said realizing how stupidly lame that sounded.
“I didn’t hear any car,” she said.
“I didn’t get dropped off here, I got dropped off at Nutch’s house. I had to walk home through the woods.” I was on a roll now.
“At four o’clock in the morning?” she yelled, not believing a word.
“Ma, I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I said, starting upstairs, “I gotta get some sleep.”
The minute I got up to my room I sparked one up and listened to my two most recent album purchases, Black Sabbath and Rare Hendrix with my headphones at full volume. I fell asleep like this.
I slept most of the next day, but I finally had to face up to the interrogation at dinner that night.
“So, how was you trip?” she asked me.
“Good,” I said, “We camped out on a lake, we had a log cabin to sleep in. We even saw a bear!” Then I went on to describe in detail, how we were walking down to the lake and we heard something in the bushes. We came around a bend and there was a bear standing there. Mom just stayed silent, allowing me to bury myself in piles of falsehood.
“You went to that concert, didn’t you?” she spat out.
“No, we went camping with the Bakers in upstate New York,” I insisted.
“I talked to Doug’s mother. She said you and Doug went to the concert. You’ve been on the news all weekend. It’s been in the newspaper. They said it was bigger than Woodstock,” my mother dropped the hammer down on me. I was busted. I kept my mouth shut. I had the right to remain silent.
In the end though, what could they do. I had already gone and now I was home. All they really could do was be glad I was home safely. And be aware; Be aware of any upcoming plans we might come up with for further decadent adventures, and figure out a way to have us keep in touch so they would not worry too much.
