Origins Enter The Roundtable, a daily talk radio program on Albany National Public Radio affiliate WAMC. Host Susan Arbetter (no longer with the station) was speaking with an area columnist or district bureau correspondent about events and happenings in the Upstate region. Mention of something called the Liminal Worlds Conference caught my attention.
A man named Daniel Pinchbeck was being featured as a keynote speaker at the Colony Café in Woodstock. Pinchbeck, said the correspondent was a psychonaut, an inner space explorer who travels to exotic rain forests or urban penthouses to participate in shamanic rituals, characterized by the employment of psychedelic substances, organic or synthetic.
The possibility that such a place exists in the U.S. that can take consciousness evolution seriously intrigued me. Here was a subset of the general population that validated psychedelics as a legitimate tool of exploration. Just as amazing was that a conference related to psychedelic consciousness could be given promotion time on a fairly mainstream radio program Maybe this was the Lost Continent of Atlantis I have been searching for my entire life!
Woodstock is obviously stigmatized in legend by its vestigial connection to the previous generation's famous concert of August 15-17, 1969 (note: many know, but it bears repeating that the Woodstock concert was held in nearby, not the Town of Woodstock). This new form of consciousness exploration was an evolutionary advancement over the primitive exploration of forty years before.
I couldn't attend that weekend, but I called the Colony to find out where they was located. My obligation to the West County News, a weekly community newspaper out of Shelburne Falls usually precluded personal weekend forays.
Nevertheless, the notion to visit Woodstock was seeded, and like a slow germinating cactus took root in some deep cortical layer.
Two years later, in September, 2008 I overcame some inertia and found myself in Woodstock. This was made possible by a nearly astrological alignment of incidents. The first was that the West County News closed for good after 30 years of continuous operation. One late August day, here I was, without assignment or deadline. On that very same day, after submitting my final story I bought an airplane ticket to Miami. As it happened, on that very same day I punched my brother, who called the police, who arrested me and my plans for Miami went down the toilet. I know it's usually considered bad form to introduce a tantalizing bit of gossip into a story without expanding on it, but the best I can give my esteemed reader at present is, "he asked for it." I mean literally, he taunted me into hitting him, and I obliged.
With an October court date hanging over my head, and my plane ticket forfeit I didn't want to languish at home in Massachusetts, but neither did I want to travel very far. It should be noted that my car died one year ago, and I never had the funds or the income to replace it.
I would either have to buy a ride to Woodstock (not all that far away from my little corner of Massachusetts; could easily be a day trip for a person with a car) or find a ride. What I did have was a brand new backpack, bought on Ebay, and an urge to find out if it really worked. My new self-appointed assignment would be to discover things to write about in Woodstock, surround myself with like-minded literary types, and devote myself to writing.
Rennsalear My brother-in-law had a contract job in Rennsalear, New York, which is on the east side of the Hudson River, directly opposite Albany. That would be a good launching point, I thought, for my pilgrimage to Woodstock.
My brand new 7-liter backpack was the biggest I could find. I packed it with all the things I thought I would need for the trip, which was mostly clothes, a half-dozen blank journal books, toiletries and electronics. The electronics were everything a journalist would need to stay connected to the world: cell phone, PDA with email, internet and a word processor, and a digital recording device. Unfortunately, that last item, along with a pen and reading glasses were in my shirt pocket, which I left at my sister's house. Oh well, I was no worse than our hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins who left the Shire with a questionable band of dwarves, but forgot to bring his towel (or am I confusing Bilbo with Arthur Dent, who left Earth in the questionable company of Ford Prefect just before a Vogon Constructor Fleet demolished it to make way for an intergalactic highway?).
Here was a place where they could discuss psychedelic consciousness in serious terms, validating the experience rather than taking the attitude that it was something that needed to be fixed, or that the psychedelic visionary was in need of rehab. I believed I could thrive in such an environment.
Manuel Charlie drove me to Rennsalear. Clouds roiled overhead and drops splattered on his windshield, so he talked me into holing up for the night at a Best Value Inn, at the crest of a hill where the monolithic state towers of the Albany skyline suddenly became visible within a short walk. I bought some chicken that night and microwaved it. I also bought a new pair of reading glasses at a dollar store.
My psyche jitterbugged all night, preventing me from getting any serious sleep. Consciousness mud wrestled with my personal unconscious such that the symbolic imagery was a gooey, amorphous mess. I finally embraced the arms of Morpheus (who too much resembled Laurence Fishburn for my liking) near dawn. All kinds of loud toilet flushing and shower and fan sounds emanating from my own room and nearby. Good thing I brought earplugs!
At 8:00 am the next morning I checked out and headed west. I had only walked a half-mile when a small silver Toyota intercepted my path, pulling into the driveway in front of me. A man speaking in a distinctive Spanish dialect asked if he could give me a ride to "Ravena" (in quotes because I didn't know what he was talking about at the time).
So thick was his accent that I told him I couldn't understand what he was saying.
"A voice told me I should stop and do something for this person," said the man.
I was hitchhiking, and here was an offer, so into his car I went.
He told me he worked in the State Offices, which are an upscale part of Albany. Specifically, he worked in the State Assembly Office, as a graphic designer.
"I'm a convicted felon," he said, "I shouldn't even have got this job."
The man explained that he had spent time in prison for dealing cocaine.
"I wanted to learn the business, and became good at it. I had everything, cars and money, and did well for seven years, until the law caught up with me."
He wasn't at work on that Monday morning because his wife was in physical therapy for a stroke she had suffered in February. While we were skirting around Albany his boss called on his cell phone, and by his contribution to the conversation I could tell he was telling the truth. I also caught his name somewhere along the way, Manuel.
While in prison Manuel had found religion, which changed the direction of his life.
"I got on my knees and said, ‘God, if you are there, I am ready to come to you if you will come to me.' I was really ready to make a change in my life."
Manuel was such a gentle, diminutive man. Not brutish or macho, but very civilized. He would be the kind of person I would probably have made friends with, were he to have been part of my circle of acquaintances. It was admittedly hard to imagine Manuel as a criminal. I guess I don't really make those kinds of judgment calls, so often arbitrarily thrust upon us by officials and prosecutors whose very subsistence is the dehumanizing, the divide and conquer of society.
He took me to his house, and introduced me to his home schooled children, two wonderfully polite boys named Enoch and David. Manuel took me into his basement and fumbled through a handful of road maps, but they were all ways to get to New York City, and not very useful for finding Woodstock. The kids' home schoolteacher graciously hopped on Google and printed out a map for me to take on my journey.
Manuel drove quite a distance to Ravena. Stopping at a Dunkin Donuts, he bought me a coffee and a donut. As I shook hands farewell, I felt him slip dollar bills into my hand.
"Naw, I can't accept this," I said.
"Please, I insist," Manuel said. "I have had many problems in life, but money was never one of them. You can buy yourself a soda later."
So, I pocketed the money and started walking south on Route 9-W.
The dirty car I don't know how far I walked, a couple miles, perhaps. The next town was New Baltimore. The backpack was much heavier than I imagined I could comfortably carry. I had to stop and take it off every couple hundred yards, rest, then start all over again. I might have walked for two miles, maybe three. I had a hard time judging distance on the open road. Much easier to do in a downtown or village.
I stopped on a bridge over an estuary (always marked by a sign with a picture of a sturgeon), and shortly after an older man in a dirty blue car stopped and gave me a lift to Coxsackie. His name was Bob, he was 64, but looked much older, like death warmed over.
He was on his way to get a physical checkup. He smoked, I told him I didn't mind.
"I shouldn't be smoking, but when you get to be this age…" he trailed off. Smoking probably had something to do with this heart condition he was having, he said.
He was a county worker, but lost his job and had no health insurance. His mother was 83 years old, and she needed a pacemaker. But because of her age and health the state wanted to take away her driver's license.
"If you're gonna take my license away, you might as well not give me that pacemaker," the guy paraphrased his mother. His father was dead, told him he would visit his son for his birthday, but he never made it.
"This is where I leave you," he said, as he dropped me off on a busy part of the road near a strip mall.
"God bless you," I told him in parting. I would come to be comfortable with that phrase in the next 10 days.
The Vet I walked for some miles more, and came to another scenic estuary, where a great blue heron was posing over its reflection in the sluggish water. I was doing something with my backpack t prop it up on the road, so that my white paper "WOODSTOCK" sign would be clearly visible to passersby, and when I looked up again the heron was gone.
An old man in a small black car picked me up. James was his name; he was 74. He wore a Navy hat that said "KOREA". James's wife, like Manuel's was suffering from a stroke. James's tribulations clearly affected his perennial philosophy.
He was hip to the idea of traveling to Woodstock, and said back in the day a lot more people hitchhiked.
He first moved to the Catskill area in 1954, shortly after Korea. When I told him I was bound for Miami James said I would be disappointed.
"Too hot in the summer, and it rains all the time," he said. What about the Keys, I asked. Oh, the Keys are nice. Me and my wife had a home in the Keys, but my daughter died of leukemia (age 34) and too many bad memories, so we moved back here." James also lost a son 20 years ago to a drowning accidental. His wife had a stroke three years ago. I thought about Manuel. Then I thought about the travails that decide men's fortunes, and sway their faith one way or another. What drives a person's spiritual inclination, besides his upbringing?
"The means doesn't always justify the end," James grieved. I thought for a moment about what he might mean by that.
"By that, do you mean bad things can happen to good people who don't deserve them?" I asked, carefully framing the question, using my hands as I do so often.
"Yes. Yes, I do mean that," he answered resolutely. "What you put into this life, you don't get back."
James wasn't completely morbid, and he showed some flush of humor and sympathy to my own dream of seeing Woodstock. He would rise politely to innocuous questions about which side of the Hudson we were on, how far did I have to travel to the next landmark on my map, and should I go straight or turn here. But for all his evenness, James's was a Jobian burden of sadness my time with him would not permit me to justly fathom.
James turned left toward the village, but I continued along 9-W. There was a pastel blue motel across the wide highway, which I had to run across bearing my backpack. Two or three families sat outside. Were they vacationing? They looked like people who might have been living in this motel. Two Indian gentlemen sat outside the office. One was an old man, who didn't seem to speak English. They laughed when I rummaged for my map, but produced a Dunkin Donuts bag instead. I asked the other for directions, which he made clear.
The men were very congenial, and for some odd reason the families sitting out front all smiled and waved to me.
Catskill My backpack was especially heavy walking through the commercial district of Catskill. I doffed it, and set it on the grassy strip between the sidewalk and curb so that my "Woodstock" sign was visible to oncoming traffic, of which there was an abundance. There was a McDonald's immediately to my right, against a strip mall background.
"You'll just as soon meet the Almighty," said a punker-man walking the other way on a sidewalk with his punker-female companion. "I always pick people up, but do I get rides?" he stated rhetorically and shrugged.
I might say something about the way I was attired, which was conventionally nice. My white sneakers were brand new, and so was my bright orange backpack. I had on a good pair of blue jeans, thermal shirt and a brand new windbreaker.
Not more than a few minutes later traffic backed up to a red light. A man who didn't tell me his name, but who I'll call "Ray" stopped his pickup truck in front of me and said, "Why don't you take a break?" I threw my backpack in the bed of his truck and climbed into the passenger side. Ray wasn't as colorful as my previous benefactors, and I wouldn't call him a ball of fire. He was "normal," in the sense of typical. Short hair, weighty, nondescript pickup, and no music playing. He drove me to within nine miles of Woodstock.
Hitching a ride with Ray was sometimes of a bonus. He knew the area well, having lived here for a long time, and talked freely about various points of interest along the way, like how the "blue stone," a kind of shale was quarried from the Catskill hills ahead of us (we were now on Rte 32-S) and brought to the outlying area. Ray was 59, and still rocked out to the likes of Aerosmith, Metalica and Crosby, Stills and Nash. I inferred this from his talk, because he didn't play any music on his truck radio.
Just before dropping me off at the corner of 32 & 212 Ray turned his truck around and drove up a dirt road, with a swamp on either side, but leading to a series of fields. These were the concert grounds of the 25th Anniversary Woodstock concert, which has since reverted to hay field.
Woodstock A man named Cliff gave me a ride directly into the center of Woodstock. Cliff had a mean cross-shaped scar on his left arm. He had been in a gory accident involving a dump truck for the company he worked for and received a letter from the State Department of Labor denying him disability benefits.
"No evidence of disability," read the letter. My untrained eye noted the distinct skinniness of his lower arm, where it met the scar, as if his arm had been amputated and re-sown.
"Show someone at the office your arm, they'll change their mind," I told Cliff.
As we entered Woodstock Cliff told me there was a movement to legalize THC oil as a topical cure for cancer.
"Why not?" I said offhandedly, in what seemed to be a no-brainer. "A person is dying of cancer, and law makers are going to deny a possible cure?" I asked rhetorically.
Cliff drove east on Tinker Street, then turned around and dropped me off at the Town Green.
Upon exiting Cliff's car I saw a woman singing on the Green, "Big Brother, I'm watching you; Big Brother, I've got my eye on you." A man wearing a hat was video recording her; another man dressed completely in black was playing a guitar. Being the nosy journalist, I interviewed her. Her name was Abigail Storm, and she's trying to get THC oil legalized as a topical treatment for cancer. She was responsible for scoring me a spot on a Woodstock Community Television program that Wednesday night at 9:00 pm!
I called the studio, talked to a woman named Jewel (Abigail Storm's daughter) and I'm on their slate. Between now and then I'll be considering my audience and subject matter.
Not everything is incense and peppermint here in Woodstock. Are there hippies? Yes, and all variety of eccentric looking folk. I approached one buckskinned, bronze-tanned man with long blond hair if I could impose upon him to take his photo.
"Look, can you do me a favor? Go talk to someone else, anyone else," he answered me in measured dollops of rejection.
He was my first cue that I needed to back off, and learn to read faces better. His was the look of dejection, an enormous weight of the moment, as one who has lost everything recently, and might be pondering the ultimate question.
I looked up the Woodstock Children's Center on Rock City Road, which is a kind of community action center and tried to connect with a hospice, but no go. A guy named John tried to make a deal with me, I could stay at his place for four days for $70. I was about ready to shake on it, and he even took me to his apartment, but the whole thing seemed secretive and subversive. He slept on the floor, cigarette butts all over the place, music full volume, and I would have to leave during the day, and only go in to crash late at night. My gut was murmuring something about "a fool and his money," so I backed out. I sensed extreme need and the term "fix" crossed my mind.
John made repeated overtures about following me to the ATM, and I could give him his $70 there. Although I don't believe he would have ransacked me, his need to collect first was too rude, reminding me too much of a drug deal I had not agreed to, and at worst I simply lost confidence as he repeated his proposal to follow me to an ATM.
Laurie at the Family Center tipped me that the Woodstock Lodge might have vacancy. Just a mile outside of downtown. The guy wanted $100 a night, but I told him my limit was $150 for the week. We settled on $200 for five full days and nights. I would leave Saturday morning. It was rustic, private and peaceful, and within easy walking distance to downtown.
Downtown Woodstock is a trip. A blend of authentic counter-culture and smugly haute "period" shops with lots of art and culture. I talked to a lot of people before finding a café hospitable to WiFi users. Very beautiful here, leaves turning...and wild bears. The town seems amply equipped with a progressive bear etiquette.
Tourist Shop Man I visited a Woodstock memorabilia store, where life-like Blues Brothers figures are seated on the porch, and Janis Joplin and Jimmie Hendrix life-size cardboard cutout figures stood on a lawn congested with tapestries, towels and rainbow pinwheels. Inside, the store was a labyrinth of t-shirts, peace symbol necklaces and other junk. It doubles as a head shop, with dozens of glass pipes stacked haphazardly atop each other, the $25 pile; the $50 pile, etc.
The guy at the front desk is incorrigible, I might even say, a real bastard.
He was alright at first, saying only, "There's more store in the back."
I asked him how long he has been in business.
"I went to the concert when I was 17, forty years ago," he said, "and we've been here ever since." That was the last civil thing I heard him say.
The ephemera outside, like photographs and letters and news and magazine clippings were interesting. The junk inside was mostly mass produced tourist garbage.
I noted that a facsimile of an original Woodstock concert poster never actually referred to the concert as "Woodstock." I asked the guy if Woodstock was given that name after the fact.
"There's a poster outside, you can read all about it on that," he dismissed me with gruff.
So, I went outside, read the "history" and copied the salient points, just to be able to reference the facts later. Here's some of it:
"Called Woodstock because it was originally scheduled to take place in Woodstock, New York. Since the own lacked an appropriate venue for such a large event, another site was found in Wellkill, NY..."
While writing this, a store visitor exited and said, "I wonder what's the matter with him? Maybe he just had a bad day."
"Yeah, I'm getting a lot of this in this town. Some people open up, some just tell me to go away," I said.
"Yeah, but you'd think, I mean with this kind of store and everything," she said.
"I know," I agreed. It sounded like he was a real bastard to her and her friend, also.
After all, this guy was running a tourist trap. It's not reasonable to expect congeniality? I don't know, what's the rule on being pleasant to customers?
The guy came outside and sat down next to me, not saying anything as I stood writing this down. I don't know what was on his mind, if he wanted to apologize for being rude, if he thought I was going to swipe something, or maybe he just wanted sun. I didn't look at him.
I went back in and said, "Hey, I wasn't trying to start anything, but as a writer, writing about my Woodstock experience, I need to ask questions sometimes."
" I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. If you want some kind of trouble, I don't know, you came to the wrong place, go out there and ask someone else."
Beyond rude, this jerk was downright hostile.
He was exactly the second aging hippy to tell me to go talk to someone else, yet he was in the "hippy" business!
"I'm not trying to start trouble, I'm just trying to get to know the town," I said. I really should not have pressed the matter.
"Look, I'm not going to write your book for you, I've got my own book to write," and so he went on in this vein. He was a real disappointment.
What happened in the forty years since these people came to this town? Everything seems to have gone wrong for them. This guy's cells have completely changed over since he was 17; he is definitely no the same person as back then.
He should consider himself lucky, if he is the owner (and I was told elsewhere he is), because that would save him from having to write a resume with "I'm a people person" in his cover letter.
In retrospect, it's apparent the town has not stood still in 40 years. Like other rural communities outsiders from metropolitan regions have moved in, bringing their money and their raised standards for civilization, and paved the roads with their expectations, which only they could pay for. "Mr. Mean" was simply the road kill, a slow moving possum of history trying to cross a pedestrian unfriendly present.
What is my opinion of Woodstock, thus far? I think there is some hope for Woodstock, as a region of spiritual focus. But, what the Flower Children brought back then has to be rectified. Something went wrong for many of the original inhabitants. I'm inclined to think that a culture where drugs, even pot are weaved into the fabric has resulted in a lack of fulfillment, despair, and meanness. Maybe it's not their fault, but the greater society at large, with insidious commercialism that alienates the human factor.
About the concert, itself. This was a confluence of national spirit, a crisis of the collective unconscious that boiled over on one August weekend, 15, 16 and 17, 1969. It happened and was done with very quickly. Anything left in Woodstock is merely the calcified fossil of that spirit. There are many with every good intention of perpetuating that spirit of love and humanity, but possession by that spirit has abandon too many others, like Buckskinned Fellow, and Tourist Shop man.
Fiona Fiona and David lived above their store the White Gryphon, an eclectic boutique with plenty to see outside as well as in. Fiona straightened me out on Mr. Grumps-Tourist Shop Man-across the street.
They have a sign saying, "A web camera has been pointing this way since August. Why? Why?" A sign on the store across the street said, "Web camera coming soon".
Fiona was viby, like a witch trying to spread a positive aura. I felt normal after speaking with her, especially when I brought up the subject of Mr. Grumps.
"It's not you," she assured me. "He's that way with everyone."
Fiona told me about the time she heard Mr. Grumps give a customer a public belittling, and his wife was not any better, she said.
I told Fiona I was here on a pilgrimage to write and surround myself with writers and artists, but eventually I was going to move to Miami. Fiona, like others before her tried to dissuade me from Florida.
"Woodstock needs more cool people like you," she told me. "Why don't you move to Woodstock?"
David, her partner kept a bus in the parking lot. It was covered with music memorabilia, which he allowed me to photograph. They keep two cockatiels (I think that's what they are, or maybe white parrots?). Later, I would visit the White Gryphon with new friend Philip, and David would allow me to photograph him with the birds on his shoulder and head.
Deborah I stepped into Mirabai, a new age bookstore that reminded me of Seven Rays Bookstore in Syracuse. In some ways the manager, Deborah, reminded me of my long ago girlfriend Juno. What caught my attention was a display full of titles, both book and CD with "2012" on them. That, of course, refers to the conclusion of the Mayan Calendar, which writer Daniel Pinchbeck popularized in his book "2012: Return to Quetzalcóatl." That book was sold out, but his previous book, "breaking Open The Head" was available.
Deborah told me that Pinchbeck had been right here on his visit, in the seminar room.
"Feather ruffling," said Deborah. "I told my boss he ruffled a lot of feathers that evening."
I asked for the name of the café the Liminal Conference took place in, and she suggested I try the Colony Café. One person who indirectly works at the Colony wrote to tell me to contact another person, who never got back to me. Deborah's boss, the Mirabai owner also never returned my email. She told me Mirabai has an "above the books" room that is sometimes available for weekend overnights.
So, I had waked in the footsteps of Daniel Pinchbeck. Big deal, I was undergoing profound transformation, a metamorphosis, and I would become my own phenomenon. Pinchbeck's own contribution to Woodstock now incidental--an artifact--a puzzle piece of equal charge against the other pieces I would meet. He isn't even authentic Woodstock, the way Abigail Storm or Philip Gurrieri have proven to be.
Yet, I can see myself in his place here. A maverick outsider, who sees in Woodstock the potential to "think different."
Two transients I went out on Tuesday night to see Woodstock at night. There really isn't a lot to see at night, the village is mostly closed after 6:00pm, except for a café or two.
I wore my LED headlamp, not so much to see as to be seen by the fast moving traffic. Woodstock is decidedly not a pedestrian friendly town, and there were short runs where no sidewalk was available and I would be walking in the breakdown lane, so the light gave me an extra level of protection.
A shaggy-haired young man by the name of Davisawn stopped me and remarked on the headlamp. This was good, because for once someone beside myself was initiating the conversation. He asked me how much one of these cost. I asked him where he lived.
"The woods," he said. "The only other thing you can do is find some cool people to live with and share a thousand dollar a month house."
Davisawn hit me up for a dollar, but I told him I was using my last dollar bill to buy a bottle of water at Cumberland Farms, which was the truth. We slapped hands and parted.
There was another young man who I kept running into, a tall blond youth who never told me his name. I met him in front of stores and once at the library. We talked whenever we met, though I didn't join his inner circle, which wasn't something I was trying to break into. I once heard him yelling in a rather machismo way at another young man in the Green, and from the window at Joshua's one afternoon I saw him crossing the street, his aright arm draped around a nervous looking young man. Who knows what that was about, but I could intersect with him periodically to find out how he was making out.
In the library he told me someone swiped his backpack, the green one I saw him with on the previous day.
"I've been doing this for 14 years," he said. "I came from Atlantic City. Too much crime there. I know who took my backpack; both of them…But one guy is pretty big, and there is only me, what can I do?" He was philosophical about losing all his worldly possessions.
"It's happened before, I'll recover," he shrugged, sitting at the library computer.
I got the impression he was trying to make a splash in town with other transients his age. If only he could impress some people with means, I thought. How did the musicians of the 60s do it? They hung out with other transients, but at what point did at least some of them get noticed and lifted up out of the brutal quagmire?
Tell-A-Vision I dressed in a long-sleeved maroon paisley shirt and a purple hat I bought at a Sterling, New York Renaissance Fair some years ago when I lived in Syracuse and left for downtown Woodstock on Wednesday evening, September 24.
My, this town goes to sleep early. Joshua's Café was closed. Wednesday night was the only night of the week it isn't open late. A Mexican restaurant next door was in the process of closing. I asked for a coffee, but all they would sell me was ice cream, so I bought a vanilla cone. A small cone, plain vanilla, for $4. I almost choked.
Outside was a street man named Rocky (he had been featured in the Woodstock Times column "About Woodstock" during a summer edition, when the Clintons came to visit). I saw him trying to thumb a ride earlier.
"Do you want an ice cream? Cost me four dollars!" I was obviously fixated on the four dollars they screwed me out of.
"Nah. Do you have a cigarette?" I had gotten so used to being hit up for money in this town that I thought Rocky said, "quarter," and so I produced a quarter.
He waved my quarter away. "You don't have a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke," I answered. He told me he would get a ride, he was drunk, and when he fumbled through his carrying bag, his bottle of vodka was at the top, plain as day.
I decided to walk to the television studio, far down Rock City Road, even though it was on the early side. I would act like a tourist, at 8:00 at night with everything closed.
I hung out on the front steps of the community center (where the studio was somewhere in the back) from about 8:15 to shortly before 9:00, when people started showing up in cars. Before that two teenagers were in a nearby parking lot getting high. Everyone left me alone.
I walked to the back of the building, where some people had gathered, obviously the right crew. There was Jewel, Star, Philip, and two other men. Two more women showed up. Another guy came and left, said he couldn't be on tonight.
I was first up on the show, after Star's monologue. My angle was "writer makes pilgrimage to Woodstock."
The show went great. I talked a great deal, but in retrospect I could have been more bi-directional with Star. That is, She got to talk some, and I listened, but I could have engaged her more with certain things she said. For instance, at one point she pointed to my purple hat, when I was talking about my experience at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention, and she used the word "magidical." I could have asked Star what she meant by that.
Another example was when Star talked about status and her visit to Europe. I could have asked some questions. I only noticed these flaws after watching myself on the archived web cast.
The two women who followed my spot, Melissa and Joanne really captured my interest with their subject, which Star called "Art Attack" in Woodstock. Unfortunately, that was to have taken place this very weekend, October 4-5, and I simply did not have the resources to remain in Woodstock for that. Before going to Woodstock, I knew nothing about the art show or the Woodstock Film Festival, which also began this weekend. My timing could have been better, and it seems unlikely I will get a second chance. Even if I leave for Woodstock the week after next, all of this will have been over, and I would arrive just in time for the closing season, which doesn't sound like much fun.
My horoscope says something about living for the intense experience, and my waning influence. I believe it. The horoscope also said something about remembering a time when "someone called me a loser." I'm still struggling over its interpretation.
On the show Tell-A-Vision I talked about how I really believe in the Jungian principal of synchronicity, that the collective unconscious impinges on reality, producing a-causal events that don't result from weather patterns or rules of physics. I went on to say that I could connect the dots of experience through the social connections I make.
Philip One of these was Philip Gurrieri. I hit it off with Philip almost immediately, as he was giving me his razzmatazz outside of the studio:
"TransVolution Times Gazette Administering justice down here in the name of god in heaven who alone offers mercy when your body dies and only when your body dies" (sarcasm, I think).
"We are here at the Fork in the Road, God put your heart on the left side of our body: we must PASSOVER the right in order to reach the heart on the left side of our body."
Philip challenged me to touch him, if I wanted five dollars. I had only just met him, and said that if I touched him he wouldn't owe me five dollars. In fact, to his way of thinking, touching his shoulder was not the same as touching him.
When I checked out of the Woodstock Lodge on Saturday morning, I called Philip to take him up on his overture to let me stay with him for a couple days. I packed my backpack, made a sign out of a pizza box with the word KINGSTON, and after a morning session at the Woodstock Public Library I hitchhiked to Kingston.
I wasn't standing on Highway 375 for more than a few minutes when a car picked me up, and the driver gave me a lift into downtown Kingston, at the entrance to Dietz Stadium.
Philip was at a birthday party, but did call to give me some advice on places to see as I walked around the city. I visited the Kingston Library, where I downloaded the archived episode of the Tell-A-Vision show onto my portable thumb drive. I also went uptown, to the Stockade District, which is the upscale, touristy part of town on a hill.
Eventually Philip retrieved me from the Kingston Plaza, your basic strip mall type architecture.
Kingston is fairly big and diverse. As well as the Stockade, which was supposedly granted to the colonists by the Indians a long time ago, there is a waterfront district along the Hudson River.
Philip told me his house was in disarray. I was prepared, and ok with shabby, but I was floored to see his split level ranch is perched on the crest of a hill, with possibly the best view in the city, with an east view overlooking the Hudson River. His house is filled with art objects, and many iron sculptures of his own making that I found fascinating. Circles and unicycles are recurring motifs, and they are poised with gaiety and movement and all about life under the sun. His own studio, which seemed for the most part deactivated, is called Amaranth Studios.
The numerous exotic musical instruments are very much alive in his house. Bamboo flutes and thumb pianos, like the kind that come out of Africa lie haphazardly about. I practiced the thumb piano during much of my five-day stay, and got to be somewhat proficient with it.
Another unusual instrument he played were the Tibetan singing bowls, those resonant brass bowls designed to induce a meditative state. They really work! Philip is an accomplished bowl player, and they nicely compliment his unique beat-style politico-poetic lyrics.
But, wherever Philip goes he carries a Strumstick. This is a guitar or mandolin-like instrument, with three strings, and is very skinny, not much wider than a broomstick, really.
Philip Gurrieri is evidence that 60s culture still exists in Woodstock. However common that might be outside Tinker Street, his rarity was put into sharp relief against the more typical blend of society when we went out together on Thursday evening.
Frankly, I learned a new disappointment about Woodstock, besides that it is a town which goes to sleep far too early.
I had called him in the afternoon to work out the details of my appearance on his show. As it turned out, the public access show Philip hosted was in the town of Kingston, 15 miles away from my lodging. Without even knowing exactly where Kingston was, and no guarantee of a ride I declined. I told him we would get together another time.
He said he would call me after his show, a promise he made good on. Not wanting to engage in lengthy discussion on his cell phone, he volunteered to drive to the Woodstock Lodge and talk to me here, at the cantina called the Havana Club Bar and Grill.
Far too noisy inside with blaring country music ("I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole," went a country version of a Grateful Dead song on a jukebox), we hopped in his car and drove to Joshua's. But, the waitress said they were closing at ten. The clock on the wall said 9:30, but it was wrong. We had sat down only two minutes and were told Joshua's was closing now.
Philip asked the manager, Peter, if there were any other late establishments around, to which he directed us to a pizza shop, which he said stayed open 'til midnight. That turned out to be as wrong as the clock at Joshua's. We did help ourselves to a table, noticing two couples in the dining area finishing their meals.
Philip took out his Strumstick. Don't laugh, the Strumstick is an elegant little instrument, not much wider than a broomstick that looks like a guitar with most of its body pared away. It's no bigger than a folded umbrella.
He serenaded myself and the guests with Indian-sounding melody and a hypnotic dirge. "Is that oriental?" inquired a curious woman in the pizza parlor where we sat for about five minutes, until again, turned out because of closing time.
"Look, we're being serenaded," said the middle-aged woman to the man she was sitting with.
"It's much like a dulcimer," explained Philip. "My mom had gotten it for me a couple of years ago."
"As Mom said, there's only one time you go to sleep. You go to slumber, you go to dream, you go to rejuvenate, you re-energize. You go to sleep, you travel forth, you awaken in your mother to be."
"And when you speak of man...who made it possible...Mom, Mom...So if we got our shapes from She, how did the early ones get here...It took two mommies, you see, she's unique of all the species on this pile of earth you'll see..." and so Philip continued, even after we were evacuated from the now closed-for good premises, out onto the street.
We were bounced out of two or three establishments until we settled on a little quality time at the posh Bearsville Café.
I noted how uptight and conventional so many of its patrons were, and asked Philip whatever happened to the counterculture of Woodstock's origins?
"Woodstock Nation is still here," he said. It was in some of the galleries, the artist's studios, some of the stores, the drum circle, and the prayer vigils. It was alive, lurking below the surface.
The curious woman seemed fixated, as I was, like Mowgli the jungle boy to Ka the python.
Next, we tried the Bear Café in nearby Bearsville. This was an upscale establishment, not anything like what I had expected. After all, this was supported to be the home of Bob Dylan and Levon Helm. Those folk legends hung out here? The mighty may have risen, but my ideal of Woodstock Nation took a big hit.
Although yet again rebuffed with "we're closed," we were at least allowed to sit, talk and hold a decent conversation.
With Philip as a guide, we managed to locate some of it. He is very politically active on the local city and county level. He manages to attend municipal meetings, and also hosts a Kingston public cable access talk show. He invited me on the previous week, but I had to decline when I learned it was in Kingston and I had no car to get there.
On my first night in Kingston we went to a Staples and an Office Max, where Philip was having some posters blown up and laminated. In the center was a collage featuring George H.W. Bush, and the face of George W. Bush superimposed over a World War I infantryman, with rifle and bayonet and American flag. The effect made the younger Bush look something like Elmer Fudd.
Petroleum Cartel Flag Waving Gladiators for the New World Order
The text above the picture reads:
"CHOOSE Life…Living will come @ the Right Hand of God in Heaven after your body dies! choose Life …be a faithful Christian Freedom Fighter ConQuering in the name of Christ the Lord! Prey for Piece – for only then can the religionist Christian corporate wholy ghost rule society DOWN HERE ~ One Nation under G*d in Heaven!"
The text below the picture reads:
"Jesus died so that Christ the Lord would be Proudly born on ~ January 1, *BC~ADeath Of Virgin Birth by Caesarian Section! Here @ the Fork in the Road Have Kingston declared USA First Pesticide Free Zone City as in Jer*USAlem Must history repeat itself?"
This is all reproduced sans the interesting fonts and underlines, but you get the idea.
I think it was Monday morning when I went out with Philip, and he Velcro-ed the poster to a tile on an anti-abortion poster at the Knights of Columbus building on Broadway, in Kingston. I photographed the event. Philip joked that I should bring my jacket, in case I couldn't make bail. He was convinced he would be arrested later, that the police would knock on his door because his signature style was well-known in Kingston.
Drum circle It was on the previous Sunday that Philip took me to the Time Keeper's Drum Circle, back in Woodstock. Usually these are held on the Green, but due to rainy weather it took place this Sunday under cover behind a house on Tinker Street. About 15 people assembled, and brought their own hand drums or, like myself, picked any number of percussion instruments out of a bin. Being a long-time percussionist (if a little out of practice) I caught my groove in no time with some sticks, and then a conga.
A man who showed up brought an enormous giant puffball at the peak of ripeness. Recognizing it, and surely he also knew what it was, I suggested he slice it into thin steak-like strips and fry it. He did just that, and spent most of that evening frying puffball, which those who lingered after 6:00 sampled. It was utterly delicious.
Inside the house where the guy was frying, I met a man named Day. Philip introduced him to me. Everyone seemed to know Philip, except at the uptight places like the Bearsville Café or the pizza place.
I noticed Day was writing on loose sheets of paper.
"So, you're a writer too?"
"Yes," said Day. "But not by profession. If I had to write for money, I would be broke," he said. I remembered reading about how Kerouac would be the guy at parties writing, while the others were tripping and socializing. I wanted to reproduce some of that in my own adventures.
I didn't take notes or photographs at the drum circle. I wanted to participate in something without actually being the journalist for once. The drum circle is poetic and religious. I felt that to photograph or be seen with a notepad in hand would too much disrupt the vibe of unity, so I instead committed the experience to memory.
One guy with a djiembe was hammering out a great Latin riff, and I heard him say "Shango," and I repeated "Shango," which as far as I knew was the name of a Santana album. He picked up on that and he talked to me about Shango and Orisha, concepts that derive out of Latin American Santeria. I would really liked to have talked much more on the subject, but various little distractions changed the course of the conversation, but this was one of those rare opportunities to talk about a subject that interested me more than politics: spirituality.
The Mothership Monday evening was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, and again I found myself in Woodstock, at a place called the Mothership. It is an interfaith prayer group. We would like to have participated in the poetry reading at the Colony, but they were shut down in preparation for the upcoming Film Festival.
In the backyard at Mothership I met three young musicians practicing for a gig there, Stanton, James (looks like Ché Guevara) and later, Ben.
"Are you related to Thoreau?" Stan asked. Stan played the acoustic guitar, while James strummed mutely on an electric.
I'm not sure what prompted his question, but possibly my mentioning I had hitchhiked, and I was in the midst of collecting pieces of wood for the fire, and was studiously examining one small piece for its potential as charcoal.
"Only in spirit," I answered Stan. "Thoreau was my favorite Transcendentalist, next to Emerson, and certainly the more natural of the two," I said.
"I suppose you're right," said Stan. "Meet my friend James, but don't let his Ché look scare you off," said Stan.
"I see the resemblance," I said humored, "It looks good on him."
Ben arrived. He was from Colrain, a town in western Massachusetts I was quite familiar with, as a writer for the West County News, and I have not only covered many Colrain events, but I worked there for a year at a roof truss factory. Ben and I caught up on people and places before they left me to tend the campfire. He knew many of the places and people I was familiar with, like Mike McCusker, founder of the famous McCusker's Market.
"Mike sold McCusker's to the Green Fields Market Co-op," I said.
Ben said something about his brother or sister being a co-founder of Green Field's Market.
"Then you must know Juanita Nelson, and the Traprock Peace Center?" I asked. Ben knew about Juanita and Traprock. In front of these strangers, Ben helped to validate me a little bit, like a man who could produce a passport and visa.
Rabbi Ysroel, who introduced himself to me as Joel, was talking with a woman named Susan who wore a purple hat, and Stella, and another man dressed in black. Although my own father was Jewish, I really didn't learn much about the Jewish faith from him for various reasons that would distract from this account.
I asked Rabbi Ysroel about Rosh Hashanah.
"It represents the head of the year. Just like the body has different parts, but is led by the head, so in our tradition the year also has different parts, and the next 48 hours determine the way the next year will proceed," he told us, sitting on the Mothership porch.
The prayer ceremony inside was highly charged, "trembling with the divine spirit," as Rabbi Ysroel put it.
Susan asked the rabbi if he could speak to the subject of "choose life." Now, I don't know where she was planning to go with this, but I immediately suspected there was an implied connection to abortion and Philip being here. The rabbi diplomatically veered the discussion away, and back to the high holidays.
A curtain separated the women from the men. Men sat to the left; women, to the right.
Since much of the prayer was in Hebrew, I really am not able to say what the words were, but we read from a book called the Machzor, and special mention was made of the Baal Shem Tov. Rabbi even touched on Kabbalah. A very mysterious, misunderstood religion, this Judaism. Full of the mystery of God, indeed.
Afterward we assembled in Rabbi Ysroel's home, on Rock City Road, right next door to the Colony Café. Rabbi cooked a feast of trout and chicken, but the dipping of apple into honey was the highlight. I volunteered to slice the apples, and I had to ritually wash my hand three times in water from a silver pitcher.
Each of us introduced ourselves by name, and made a proclamation to God for the coming year. Mine was that people should not fear unknown people, and help them out; that this mentality of "a terrorist under every bed" should cease.
I ate from the head of the fish, which the rabbi said was considered good luck in his tradition. In fact, since others mostly declined, before the fish was removed from the table I took one half of its head for myself. The right half.
With Philip at the table the prayers and discussion could only be controversial. Whenever during the reading God was referred to as "Him," Philip would vehemently shake his head "no."
"Her! Her!" he insisted. The others let it pass.
He got into something confrontational with one of the guests, who said she didn't believe people were fundamentally good, but were, in fact fundamentally bad, and needed to learn how to be good. I must say I felt an inner cringe hearing her say this, because it was one of my tenets of hitchhikers survival that people must be fundamentally good. My very life depended on that fundamental goodness.
It could be this was one of the "religionist" Christians Philip warned against, that see the world and life as something to be used and discarded, and absent of the divine spark.
During some of my private discussions with Philip we talked about war and rape of natural resources, like oil.
"Remember James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan?" I asked in his car. Watt purportedly said something to the effect that natural resources should be used, in accord with Manifest Destiny, the very same principal that drove the Spanish Conquest over the indigenous people of the Americas. As the Rapture theory is said to go, since all the Christians are going to Heaven anyway, and since the End Times are supposedly near, then the earth doesn't really have an intrinsic value worth preserving for future generations. Unfortunately, that point of view is not shared by the rest of us, who would like to see something left over for the future of humankind.
The "religionist" Christian was a later changeling of the Christian faith, a substitution for the real thing that gave us the autocracies to come, the Federal Reserve, the War on Terror, the Iraq War, George Bush and Dick Cheney. And now, Sarah Palin.
"I'm the Commander," President Bush is quoted as saying in an interview with Bob Woodward. "See, I don't need to explain-I do not need to explain why I say these things."
The religious Christian, on the other hand, is of a non-hubristic disposition. "Are you a religious, agnostic or an atheist person who takes the time to see n many perspectives, open to listening to other views interrupting only for clarification of a statement and then entering into dialogue after listening constructively of the others (sp) perspective?" writes Philip in his gazette.
This bit of wisdom, however, seemed in conflict with Philip's own interruptions during the prayer service, each time God was referred to with using the pronoun "He."
I tried to engage Philip later in relation to this, suggesting that maybe his objection to the use of God as He is due to his own misunderstanding, and maybe he isn't qualified to change the entire Jewish religion if he doesn't have the full story.
"Isn't it possible that ‘we' are the ‘She,' being here on earth, the other part of the equation that we are not reading about in the Machzor, and we, instead of praising ourselves, are praising the ‘He' of heaven?" I tried to make sense of the little I knew about the Kabbalah, that the Jews do, in fact, account for a female counterpart of YHVH as the Shekinah, the Divine Presence, the Bride of God.
Philip would have none of it, and theorized that women were all inclusive, and a man could not contain the female part, but only the female could contain both man and woman, therefore God must be a woman.
If truth be told, I think Philip is, in Jungian terms, a victim of a malformed projection of the anima, the female archetype, and has a bit of a complex with regard to mothers and women. In more constructive social terms, I suppose one might call him a radical feminist, like John Lennon.
Philip wasn't radical one hundred percent of the time. He guided me bicycling through Kingston one day, and I then set out on my own, traveling from the lower extreme of the waterfront district to the upper extreme of the Stockade District.
On another night we went out to a jazz joint, where a woman named Barbara seemed to be trying to pick me up. I told her what I was doing, how I had hitchhiked my way to Woodstock, then Kingston, and hooked up with Philip.
"Woodstock is full of erotic people," Barbara said. I think she meant to say "erratic."
I wanted to tell her, "I think you've got erotic on your mind, and you're cute but I can't take you home because I don't have one." In what seemed like an awkward parting, Barbara left.
For all its diversity, I don't think I could be comfortable living in Kingston. Too much of it resembles the decrepitude of other northern cities, like Syracuse, where I lived for seven years. There is an oldness about it, a dying oldness, where the luster of opulent times has been ground down by crime and slums and poor and minority machismo, mean looks, scratching, clawing dog pile survival.
I pondered Kingston's upscale Stockade District, and wondered why it must be that the Latinos and the Blacks choose to lapse into victim hood, and what should prevent the underprivileged from collectively chipping in to build an edifice that upholds the sacred beauty of their respective cultures? This was exactly what the Nuestra Raices farms and the Puerto Rican Festival in the Massachusetts city of Holyoke did, with successful grandeur. One visiting Nuestra Raices or the Puerto Rican Festival might wish he had been born into such a proud, positive group. And, leaving them, one surely feels he has left a part of himself with the Puerto Ricans. Kingston had a lot of the look and feel of Holyoke, but absent was a sense of self-determination, outside of the privileged class.
I photographed the Hudson River, watched ships forging toward New York City. There is a public beach, but it doesn't look like the kind of sand you would choose to lie upon to get a tan, and this is still Upstate New York, late September, with leaves turning color in spectral brilliance like the dying mahi mahi fish at a Hawaiian luau. The lunch hour, old and young couples sat in their cars watching a village of seagulls watching back.
Philip is privileged in many ways, and I hope he appreciates it. Unlike myself, and the disenfranchised, he has his house on the hill. He has a car, and the wherewithal to conduct his anti-establishment avocation. One doesn't have to be rich, but being securely situated isn't a bad deal.
Home again, home again I didn't really want to leave, but I had to cut the adventure short because I was expected in court on October 7. That, out of a physical altercation I had with a certain red necked neighbor, a troublemaker who provoked me to hit him. It wasn't the first provocation, but it would be the last-I hit him, as per his invitation. He promptly called the police. I regret nothing.
The Art Attack, the Film Festival, Woodstock would have to invite me back another season. It shouldn't be hard, unless I am unable to leave wherever it is I am destined to go next. Hell, I would take South America, or the Caribbean.
Philip dawdled in the morning, but he made me a hearty breakfast. We weren't on the road until about 12:30 pm, and he set me loose on a stretch of highway in the sleepy little town of Redhook. According to his reasoning, this highway was directly fastened to Massachusetts by way of Route 7. In theory, Whatever ride I got should vector me directly toward Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
The reality was that I walked and walked and walked. It seems the passersby mistook me for part of the scenery.
I would estimate I had walked nine miles from downtown Redhook to the junction of 109 and the Taconic Parkway. That was like a dead end, because there was no way around the Parkway, and hitch hiking on the Parkway itself is a very bad idea. Cars and cars whizzed passed, many bearing the red lettered Massachusetts license plate. I truly thought I would be camping out in the ditch that night, and donned my winter jacket, with hood, as drops of rain came down from a gray sky.
I even picked some clover blossoms and wild grapes. Nothing big and juicy, more like trail nibblers. There were no stores nearby. The only commercial building was an auto service shop near the junction.
A white box truck pulled into the repair shop parking lot. It honked. Surely, I thought, this couldn't be for me? I walked, taking my time. I would have run, but I didn't think they were stopping for me.
They honked again, and the driver waved his arm toward me. I picked up speed. It was two men, and the driver told me I had to throw my backpack into the box, which was like a moving van, with a big intricate iron latch. I didn't want to be impolite, but several suspicions about this operation were nagging me.
Oh well, I did it. I jumped into the passenger seat, and the guy next to me moved to the middle of the wide bench seat. He was holding a 40-ounce beer in a brown paper bag, which he shared with me.
They had the look of escaped convicts. Gnarly, lines etched in their faces, short hair, burly. If they wanted to take me out, they probably could have. Yet, that's not at all how the ride turned out. They were a blessing, and drove me to the southernmost Massachusetts town of Sheffield, and dropped me off at a very convenient rest area. They even gave me five dollars and change, so I could buy food and coffee.
I told them about some of the blessings I had had on my journey.
"So, then you at least believe in God?" inquired the driver.
"Oh yes," I said. "Not in the church going sense, but more like a direct pipeline to God. I am certainly thankful for the care the Almighty has given me."
The guy seemed to respond positively to this.
"If you had just a little more faith," he teased, "I would have taken you straight to Great Barrington."
Yes, that is really true. I did question the extent of my faith.
"I believe you're right," I answered. His lesson wasn't lost on me, I really did need to work on the insufficiency of my faith. Before I set out, I heard in some café or restaurant or public place, the song, "Have a little faith in me." I carried that song with me throughout the trip, and especially when Star pointed it out in the studio, on Tell-A-Vision.
After that a young man picked me up in his truck, and took me to downtown Sheffield. He told me that for $12 or $13 I could spend the night at a place called "Barbara's" (I think that's what he said, or maybe it was Donna's?).
From there a young Mexican lady picked me up in a silver Toyota Corolla, with three young men in the front and back seats. It was a squeeze. She seemed to be the only English speaking on of the group. They took me to Great Barrington. I said, "Gracias" and "Buenos noches," and one of the men smiled gratefully, for at least I had tried to meet them halfway in their own tongue.
From there, a man named Ed Hurley, a telephone company worker who happened to know my friend Fran; was, in fact, mentored by Fran some years ago, gave me a ride to Stop & Shop in Pittsfield, where I stopped to see if my daughter was still on duty. She was not. I had some beads for her that I would have to mail to her.
In Pittsfield a man whose car was filled with cigarette smoke picked me up. He seemed caffeinated, and was listening to some AM sports channel, after the Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels (still have trouble getting used to that). He dropped me off in the center of Cheshire.
In Cheshire, a guy in a small pickup stopped for me. I threw my backpack in the bed of his truck, but the tailgate was open. He had a real road rage problem, trying to play chicken with the car ahead of him. Several times he tried passing the car in a no-passing zone, but the car ahead would not let him. Swearing, cursing, and high beam-low beam maneuvers, weaving left-to-right.
"Goddamn it, those are the kind of people I just want to shoot," he anguished.
Luckily for myself, he was not going very far, and I was with him for only two miles. But, even then I sensed that the Almighty had put me here for a reason, that this was a person who needed my presence at that moment.
Listen, it's alright, don't let it get you down. God bless you man," I said in parting (also grateful that my backpack had managed to stay put). I know it wasn't profoundly spiritual counsel, but it was what my fatigued mind could conjure at the time. Sometimes, it's not what you say, but just the saying that is the meaningful thing.
I walked all the way through Adams. I stopped at a Cumberland Farms and bought myself a Snapple peach-flavored iced tea. It was rejuvenating.
"Do you know you're in Massachusetts?" asked one of the storekeepers. She was talking about my cardboard sign.
"Yes, I haven't taken the sign off yet, but thanks."
"Do you know where you're going?" she asked.
"North Adams," I said.
"Oh, you're very close, that's a few miles that way," she pointed. I knew this, but didn't want to get into too much small talk. I thanked her and left.
"I'm taking my sign off now," I said, smiling.
I walked through downtown Adams, and stood patiently on Route 8 waiting. A guy in a truck picked me up. He was intoxicated, and said so. Yet, he wasn't a mean drunk, and although he was boisterous and made macho overtures of prison and looking for a drink, he had none of the nastiness of the road rage man.
He asked me where I could get a bottle this late at night, I suggested he try the Oasis Plaza, which was closed. There was a police car following us, but not for long. His driving was passable, evidently, and I wasn't really too worried.
He told me where he would drop me off, and even went out of his way to take me a little further yet.
"I've killed people," he said.
"I believe you," I replied. He didn't appear to be a menace, so I didn't freak out.
Twice his girlfriend called him on the cell phone. When he told her he was taking "his Bro; a guy I picked up on the road," to a well lit destination on the Mohawk Trail, he followed with, "yes, he's going to cut my head off and put it in his freezer."
We both laughed, knowing it was a horror story plot that, although it might sometimes happen in real life, this evening in all probably would not end so morbidly.
"No, I mean like in war," he clarified. It turns out he was a vet of one of the wars, Iraq or Afghanistan. I looked him straight in the eye. He was so young; I might have known him as a child while I was old enough to be his father. He wasn't what you would call a natural born killer, and his display of machismo seemed amplified beyond his natural predisposition.
"Want a stick? I know how to use a stick. I win against everybody, every time."
I learned how to use a stick in martial arts, especially in my teens and twenties. Yet, I opted not to carry one while hitchhiking.
"Thanks, but there's a reason I don't carry a stick," I said with deliberation. "When you carry a walking stick, it changes your psychology, your demeanor. People see it; it adds something to my thinking that others pick up on. When I decided to hitchhike my way to Woodstock, I almost brought a walking stick with me. But, I didn't, and that's me."
We did talk about faith and religion, and like myself and others, his belief was very tight with his Creator, and bore nothing of the pompous religiosity of the churchgoer.
"I used to wear a dog tag, but now I wear the Lord's Prayer," he said, and pulled a dog tag shaped metal tag hanging around his neck to demonstrate.
"Enjoy your evening my friend, and God bless you," I said.
His was the last ride before a family member called and picked me up at about 12:30 am, Thursday morning. I had my jacket on, hood drawn over my head, and black rain cover over my backpack. Exactly one car was passing every hour now, so I saw no reason to prolong the agony.
I finally crawled into bed at 1:00, a full 12 hours since Philip left me to my own devices in Redhook.
Freelance journalist Gregory G. Lewis was a regular contributor to the West County News of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. As a correspondent to several Franklin County towns Mr. Lewis was better known by his Arts & Entertainment contributions, especially On the Marquee, a review of the region's outstanding art, music and drama.
"My assignments took me to dinners and breakfasts with the Governor; and to the 2006 Massachusetts Democratic Convention where I met candidate Deval Patrick, US Senator John Kerry, and even Kitty Dukakis," said Mr. Lewis.
Since the West County News closed its doors in August, Mr. Lewis has pursued the night life and high life of South Florida, in the
Proustian tradition. He now carouses tropical climes and exotic personalities, capitalizing on years of experience thrusting himself in the public eye.
His many published and exclusive stories can be found on his website, The Newsketeer!
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