1960s, Berkeley, California

By Grant Flint

In the ’60s, I was in my 30s, and I was recently painfully divorced.

Berkeley was suddenly the center of the universe, in the news constantly regarding free-speech riots. And the ‘’Berkeley Barb'’ newspaper told me everything I needed to know about how to turn over a new leaf and let go.

I put in a personal ad and dated a series of enlightened coeds, including a witch who belonged to a coven and danced naked at midnight on the beach.

LSD was just gaining popular momentum. I went to a “Circle of Light” meeting in Berkeley to attempt to get some “acid.” We sat on the floor, circled by candles. Marijuana smoke and very affectionate couples surrounded me. The participants thought I was a narc because I wasn’t dressed correctly, and I finally grew frustrated and called out to the group:

“But where do you get it?” Meaning the acid, the LSD.

“From friends,” I was told by the leader.

“But where do the friends get it?” I persisted stubbornly.

“From their friends,” I was told.

“Narc,” someone muttered.

I got out of there before the peace and love got too disturbed.

My ex-wife thought she and I should be civil by smoking a joint together. A first for both of us. We went to Tilden Park, high in the Berkeley Hills.

“I don’t feel a thing,” she said disappointedly.

“Me either.”

But we eventually wound up giggling like idiots.

The Beatles came to the 49er football field, known as Candlestick Park, for a free night concert. I took my kids, but we could only get about 200 yards away. We needed a telescope. But we could hear them, somewhat, and the crowd was more than excited.

My ex-mother-in-law visited from Illinois, so we thrilled her by taking her to the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. As our car inched along Haight Street, peddlers banged on the windows, shouting out their wares: “Pot!” “Speed!” “Acid!” My ex-mother-in-law was gloriously terrified.

Finally, I got some LSD - through a friend who got it from experiments being run at Stanford University. I read “The Book of the Dead” for preparation, locked all the doors, put on long-playing classical records, and partook of the magic cube.

A half-hour later, I was bitterly disappointed. Nothing. What kind of a freak was I? Couldn’t even get stoned on acid? What an up-tight monster I was.

But then the water stain on the ceiling began to become interesting. Wow. Maybe something was happening. Then I heard distinctly the sound of a cat walking outside. Each step a thud.

The music became mischievously visual. I had an urge to go out to the lawn, to eat the grass. Wasn’t I an animal too?

I went back in time - back, back to the ocean. I became a fish that walked onto shore, a mammal, a rat, a horse, a man, a star. I was not separate from anything anymore, anywhere. I looked with amazement at my fingers. I saw the atoms of my fingertips - the surrounding atoms had no demarcation.

I had to go to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. In 30 seconds, my face changed constantly, became younger, younger, a kid, a baby, then went back the other way, to my 30s again, then 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s - an old, old man. Snow hair, big ears, ancient eyes.

Two hours later, I dared go outside, and I got in my car. As I drove down the street, my car became a toy car; I was way, way down low, having to look up at the huge cars around me.

Somehow, I made it to the restaurant. Was in the spell, out, in. I had tremendous, life-shaking revelations.

Finally, in the Summer of Love and flower children, I went to the Fillmore Auditorium for a light-show dance. The place was frantic, the psychedelic lights a miniature LSD trip. The music struck me deep in my timid soul, somebody shared a reefer, and I danced.

I had always been a mediocre-to-bad dancer. Could get by, only that. But here - the 60s, the wailing and haunting Eastern music, the pot, the avid, frantic, sweating, and chanting crowd - I danced. I danced madly, crazily, solo. I was a madman, a free man.

A black man came up to me. “Man, for a white man - I never saw a white man dance like that before.”

I had never been that way before. It was the ’60s.

The Great Depression and Grant Flint were born in the same year, 1929. Flint is finishing his ninth novel.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | Email This Post

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