The Wilderness Years - Friday Night to Sunday Morning pt. 1

When the weather broke and spring began creeping in i began to ride my bicycle to Hippie Jack's, these days the local hipster cyclists and their politics get on my nerves a bit, but back the day (as an crotchety old man would say) it wasn't a lifestyle choice or political statement it was a fucking means of transportation and since finding transport to the Hippie's apartment was always a challenge the bike gave me a little freedom, of course the weather had to cooperate cuz the last thing i needed was a soggy pound or two of grass, which at this point wouldn't be a complete knockout blow but would set the plan back to almost the beginning, not to mention the stigma of fuck-up on the resume', even one that was an act of nature, didn't matter, so it was with great care and forethought when i hopped on the bicycle to head over... or at least i'll claim there was...

Now being the ever present student i soon took note of the secret knowledge of back roads that ran between and behind and underneath various East End neighborhoods, the snaking twisting roads that were like a mystery, unknown to a large portion of the population but there nonetheless to be used by the drug runners, drunk drivers, and criminals of the city, the Melwood/Gold Way trail was like a backdoor in and out of Polish Hill, the Strip, North Oakland, all depending on which way you were going, it runs down a hill below Bigelow Blvd. and under the Bloomfield Bridge, a few stray backs of houses, a couple old brick garages carved into the hill,  some twists and turns, lush green urban weeds filling the hillside, graffiti on every paintable surface,  around another bend and you've snuck into Polish Hill, one cardiac hill away from Hippie Jack's back door, i came to love this street, a street i'd use for over fifteen years, a street i've driven at practically every hour of day and night, but in these days i used it to ride to Hippie Jack's house on the sly, load up the backpack with gear and ride it back, sometimes not seeing a car the whole time i was on it...

And so on an unusually hot spring day i came home from work and made the call, it was a Friday and it worked out that i could ride right over to his place asap, i could be back to my place by 5pm or so and be off and running for the weekend, i counted out the money (twice), grabbed the backpack and off i went, through the infamous parking lot behind the fire station, past the Roach Motel apartments, a quick sprint down Baum Blvd and over the busway, a sharp right and on to my quiet and serene backstreet, it was fucking lovely zipping through the shade and around a S-curve as fast as i could, roughly twelve minutes later i was walking my bicycle up around the corner past the shady dry cleaner and up to his porch, a knock, a bit of laughter seeping out and into the always hazy, always smoky den of Hippie Jack...

Amazingly the old hippie had a lot of furniture, helped out by a keen eye for sidewalk specials or what one might call gently used, discarded and ultimately recycled furniture, there was always a seat to be had, Jack always sat on the couch opposite the door, with a love seat to his right, a chair that looked right out of my grandmother's place right inside the door and offering a view into the mostly unlit back of the apartment, in the center of course was a decent sized, wooden oval coffee table usually covered with any number of illicit residues, fast food wrappers, empty beer and soda cans, scraps of paper with random phone numbers, take-out menus, basically a fucking mess, there was a television that i never saw turned on and a stereo with a tape deck and a turntable, around which were piles of cassette tapes of the Dead, Zappa, Garcia Band, Marley, Tosh, almost all bootlegs of varying quality, there was a crate of records but like the television i never saw a record played but did occasionally see vinyl on the turntable, mostly it was Hippie Jack rambling on and on about the nuances in songs and various versions of bands, it was somewhere, depending on how much time i had and how much patience, between mildly interesting and fucking highly annoying, but sometimes you had to deal with it...

As i entered his place i noticed he had some company, sitting on floor in front of the love seat was a frizzy red-haired girl, a bit pudgy and looking to be maybe legal drinking age, old Hippie Jack was holding court and he introduced us and i immediately forgot her name and Hippie Jack went on to wax poetic about what a helluva find i had been, this cat can move shit maaaaan, he said laughing and pointing towards me, i shrugged and sat down and he offered me a beer and i took it, seemed something was a bit off in the room, i couldn't quite put my finger on it, Jack was all grins and the girl was a bit spacey, maybe they'd just fucked for all i knew, that would put a smile on good old Hippie Jack's face for ages, but they hadn't, at least not yet, Hippie Jack kept grinning and said, got any plans? other than getting some food on the way home and moving some of this not really i replied, he picked up a small vial with a dropper lid, feel like a dose he said?

Now if this were an mid to late eighties John Hughes flick it would be at this point and time when Anthony Michael Hall would look into the camera and break the fourth wall, when asked this question it felt a bit like i was an astronaut, there were a myriad number of calculations that needed to be done in a split second and so i paused... and then said, sure why not, just don't go fucking hog wild on me, and so he took the dropper and squiirrt, he dropped a fucking doozy down the gullet, the kind of hit you can taste, in a nutshell i was gonna be fucked, motherfucker i said and Hippie Jack laughed hysterically and the girl just looked about the room half-freaked out/ half-blitzed with a smile that flickered between pure joy and pure panic, damn Jack i said a little hit man, i half complained, he giggled more and said, maaan i gave you the same we took, he then made fucking weird googly eyes and began laughing some more, i pulled out my loot and said let's get this show on the road while one of us can still count the fucking money, and so he leaned behind the couch and grabbed two freezer bags full of weed while i counted out the money for a whole one and half the other, amazingly he checked to make sure they weighed, i made sure Hippie Jack had the money and put it away, then placed the pounds in my backpack and drank my beer...

There's this funny thing that happens with acid sometimes, it's like fucking time travel except you don't really go anywhere or do anything while simultaneously doing and feeling and thinking everything at once, particularly with clean lsd, and this stuff came rolling in like a warm wet wave of light, my ears roaring, and i sat in that chair and drank a few more beers and talked shit and when i left i walked some unknown number of hours later out into the blue twilight, pie-eyed and invincible, and i climbed onto my trusty steed and began the ride home, for some unknown reason (food) instead of taking my secret little back road home i headed instead for the Bloomfield Bridge, and as Bob Frost would say, that would make all the fucking difference...