The Last Rafting Trip

I mentioned before that whitewater rafting was one of my activites in the mid-seventies. We knew no one doing this kind of thing, and had to search out everything we needed to do it- without the internet, of course! The raft had to be ordered from out West- from Montana I think. The huge gray rubber raft was like a creature from another time and place, far, far away.


In addition to the raft itself we had to find life jackets- they were beautiful, lightweight and bright yellow. They were nothing like the heavy orange canvas lifejackets I wore as a child on the lake. This was a new exciting time for outdoor gear. I used to ponder and ponder the REA catalogue as if I were studying a sacred text. The oars were also lightweight and nothing like the heavy wooden oars used for canoeing. At the time, plastic river sandals were hard to find, but we finally scored some. They were just right for protecting your feet, and the rubbery texture was essential for jamming your feet under the sides of the raft to help anchor you and keep you inside and seated. Then you could wedge yourself and use the leverage to increase the power of your stroke with the oar. I learned a most valuable lesson on life on that raft: "Keep your oars in the water". Think about it.

So off we went to try it out. We never attempted the Locust Fork of the river nearest to us in Birmingham, since it was only navigable after heavy spring rains. We went off to North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee to raft. I think we did Section 4 of the Chatooga River first. It was challenging- it took all day, and there were Class III and IV rapids. We had no guide, and no real idea of what was around each bend so to speak, but we were foolhardy and adventurous enough to go for it. The river in that section alternates between rapids and calmer stretches. Some areas have to be walked around. There was also a deadly rapid that had claimed many lives- sucking people down in a hole that held them until they drowned. It was off limits, and we abided by the rule. We made it down the Chatooga just fine, and at the end of the day paddled blissfully across the placid lake back to my truck/camper. Ah, what a feeling!

The Nantahala River is nice and easy compared to the Chatooga, so after getting that one under our belts we tried out the Ocoee. The Ocoee doesn't mess around. You get on the section of the river with the Class III's and IV's and you don't stop or even know what has hit you until you come out the other end. It was killer, and also didn't take as much time as the Chatooga. The Chatooga is nicer in that the scenery is gorgeous, and you are rafting through a wilderness area. The Ocoee runs next to the road a lot of the way, so it is different- but the ride is so wild you don't know or care if you are in the wilderness or in the middle of Manhattan- there's no time to think about it.

So we went back to the Ocoee a lot and took along unsuspecting friends to enjoy the experience with us. We needed a 4 person crew for each trip. We also camped out, enjoyed the outdoors and explored the areas nearby. We spent every available minute outdoors in those days.

The last trip was like any other. We brought along our Ananda Marga friend and crashed and plummeted down the river as usual. By this time we knew the river and where the big hidden rocks were and knew how to avoid them and also get the best ride. As we were nearing the Class III rapid near the bridge, we were coming up on a big hidden rock and for some reason we hit it too dead on. The front of the raft rose straight up and I remember thinking "this is gonna hurt". It threw all of us out backwards into the rapids, then hurled us down an 8 foot drop.

Oh yeah, another good thing about the Ocoee is that there were usually other people around- sometimes watching from the road, and sometimes fellow travelers who were also rafting, canoeing or kayaking.

I distinctly remember going under for the third time, thinking "this is it", when a kayaker yanked me up to the surface. I was happy to be alive, and then I looked back at the bridge and saw where my raft was- wrapped around the pylon with tons of water rushing at it, pinning it to the pylon. It was hopeless to try to get it, and we all knew right then and there that that was the end of the rafting trips.

We had done it, had mastered it, and the river had reclaimed the vessel for itself and we respected that.

Worbs just worbs

I started thinking about the expressions we used back in the 70's. They were far out man. It's a gas!


There were many ways to try to get across what was going on- like the term mind expansion! or that we were blown away, ripped, tripped out, tripping, freaking, freaked out, gorked, zonked, blasted, high, gassed, juiced, bombed, righteous, flying, turned on, rushing, out of sight, groovin, in the groove, digging it (can you dig it?), mellowed out, stoned, stoned out of your/my/our gourd(s), smashed, flipped out. You were either tuned in or tuned out, turned on or square, on the bus or off the bus. You made the scene, and were part of the happening, the teach-in, the love-in, the be-in, or the sit-in. You were blown away or maybe you just split. You might be ragged on or hassled by the unhip or by anyone or anything's bad vibes. Good vibrations, however, were a magnet. You could grok the vibes, man and just groove with it. The hipsters became hippies. The beatniks became beatles.

We snorted, toked, bogarted and stepped on various substances. It was cool to drop. It was also ok to drop out. It was a bad scene when someone got busted. Uncool to get caught holding. Some people were narcs!



The term psychedelic was invented to describe the effect of mind expanding drugs. It was easy to go over the edge- spaced out, freaked out,uptight, bummed or bummer, bad trip, rip off, and downer described the trip or tripper when it was not going so well.

We were in a new game with new bags to get into or out of. Hang ups were to be avoided, hanging out was what you did. You did your THING.



Words that referenced women were also curious. Old lady is my favorite- at once hip and quaintly precious. We were chics and birds, too. Not very liberating. Women were also heads, but that term was reserved as a reference to men only. Hmm. We wore granny dresses, Native American beads and love beads, macrame vests and bags, bell bottoms, India cloth shirts, embroidered clothes galore, and costumes of all imaginable types.



Things were hip, cool, rich, far out, freaky, kinky, geaky, weird, strange and free. Our minds were to be open- thus the term head. We tried to set our souls free. We let our hair grow and refused to wear bras or make up (didn't need it back then anyway). We raised our consciousness. We protested and marched. We took to the streets. Theatre and politics were one. Guerilla theatre! Bring it back!

We had the Gong Show- have you ever seen it? Compare to Idol. Says it all.

We had black lights and strobe lights. We painted everything Day-glo colors. We flashed the peace sign and posted the peace sign.

You know what is striking about the birth of all these new ways of expression? The only way to say love is still love. All you need, after all, is love.

Drop back again

Let's back up to around 1974. Setting: Crestline ultra-hip bohemian pad with assorted characters and misfits, intelligentsia and academics, dead-heads, pot-heads and pin-heads, and just plain Heads.

One of the nicest and most talented people I ever met was Howard Cruse, the cartoonist, who was from Birmingham (later moved to New York). Howard was just publishing his Barefootz comic books. He was a starving artist at the time, so I gave him $50.00 to do a large piece of cartoon art. It was splendid. It had a strange conglomerate creature looking rather bewildered at the top of an existential staircase that opened up into a universe of everything imaginable and then some. I managed to hold on to that maserpiece all these years until my son begged it from me to put on his wall in his own Southside apartment. That was the last it was seen. I guess it is only fitting that it has disappeared on the Southside. I can only hope that it is still hanging on the wall in some ultra-hip bohemian pad being admired by various characters and misfits that one always finds, even to this day, on the Southside of Birmingham.

From the Ashes

The timeline is a bit fuzzy now. Somehow, I have reported on 1973-75, and am now heading into 1976- 77. I am getting into the glory days (for me) of Southside.

I went back to work, and moved into a very nice one-bedroom apartment on Highland Avenue.

I remember that it had one black wall that I hung my large vanity lights on, with posters underneath. I put my 50's style chaise in front. It was kind of glamorous.

I was getting better physically and mentally. My own rehabilitation coincided with the rehabilitation nursing I was doing at the University of Alabama's Spain Rehabilitation Center. I worked on the spinal cord unit and found that I enjoyed the pace of rehab much better than the crisis-like atmosphere of intensive care. I was still in my early twenties so I could relate to the mostly young guys with injuries suffered as a result of car, motorcycle and diving accidents. They were the risk takers and the partiers that weren't so lucky. In those days, patients could stay at the hospital for months, so we had long term relationships with them and their families. It was all about teaching and creating independence- what a far cry from today's insensible medical "care".

One day near the hospital after work I ran into a friend's younger brother that used to come by the enclave in Crestline. He was working in the pharmacy at UAB as a tech. We started hanging out a lot and decided to go in together on a large apartment near one of the parks further down Highland Avenue. It was the top half of a big house, and it included a large attic that could be used as a room as well- later the site of many late night jam sessions.

In the back of the house was a large concrete courtyard that backed up to the side of the steep hill behind us. The hill was covered with gorgeous 60 foot tulip poplars. Sitting in the kitchen looking out the back of the apartment, all you saw was trees and a small cottage that housed an older man who had lived there for many years- he was a holdover from when his family took care of the house and grounds that we were renting. He had a hat collection and he rode a bicycle. He was very quaint but very quiet. We were respectful of him and his little house. God only knows what he thought about us and our raucous parties. I guess we were somewhat acceptable- we both had good jobs and were not dealing drugs!

The house was great, and just called out for parties and gatherings. We had them a lot. We would have double keggers- one would be out back in the courtyard and one on the first floor of the house. I can't remember any of the crowds of people that came to those parties other than my close friends. I had acquired so many record albums that we got several large heavy duty plastic tubs. I could stand the records up in the tubs, and then could easily flip through them to find what I was looking for. Unfortunately, when we had parties and guests over, they must have helped themselves to my records, because many went missing.

The place also had a claw foot bathtub. I loved getting in there and soaking.

Sometimes things were rather straightforward, sometimes things were crazy. In that one location, upstairs and downstairs, with all the people who were in and out, there were enough stories to fill several volumes. Two of the more endearing and interesting roommates we had were Ananda Marga devotees. One gave me a cookbook called Cooking for Consciousness. He saw more potential in me than I was showing at the time I am sure. He was raising his little girl, Angel, and she lived in the house, too. The next door neighbor worked in nuclear medicine but he knew everything about plants and had tons of them. It was a renaissance kind of culture and we were in the middle of it all.

I bought a Chevrolet pick-up truck with a camper top. We outfitted it with everything we could- carpet, curtains, and electrical outlet, speakers, a porta potty, and all our camping gear. We went camping and hiking everywhere within a days ride. I bought a raft and we started going white water rafting on the Chatooga, the Nantahala and the Ocoee Rivers. No guides, no lessons- we just started riding the rivers. We hiked the Appalachian trail.

Our dog JC (Joe Cool) was as much a Southsider as any of us. He was part collie, part border collie and part Gordon setter. He was beautiful and just the right size. He was so friendly and smart that he was genuinely loved by all, so he could go anywhere he wanted to. I imagine he fathered some Southside puppies, too.

We started having regular musical gatherings that would last for hours into the night. We would sing John Prine songs, Neil Young songs, Crosby Stills and Nash songs. Once a week we had craft night, and my girlfriends would come over and do macrame and needlework. See the twin peacocks shirt embroidery that I did during this time. I started listening to reggae music. We would put on Bob Marley or Toots and play their music all day. Katy Lied by Steely Dan and Sweet Forgiveness by Bonnie Raitt also stand out from that time.

Our neighborhood was a succession of parks so we could walk down on Sunday afternoon and play volleyball or play with the dog or go for a stroll. It was a relatively safe and pretty serene scene (discounting the night we had a party that got so wild that everyone started howling like wolves).

The trees, the people, the times were wonderful, but the times they were a-changin.

Mostly Madness - The L& N Cafe

I am sure there are people with unclouded memories who can say a lot more about the L&N- who owned it, who worked there, when it opened and closed. I keep hoping that these folks with find my blog and fill in some of the details someday. I will keep plugging away meanwhile with what few fragments I have remaining of a very fragmentary time of my life.

It is hard to describe a dreamscape. Having just seen Avatar, I realize that words on a page are hardly adequate. I am going to try.

Playing in the background are leftover riffs and phrases- Al Kooper, Staple Singers - and I am jamming with Electric Ladyland on the piccolo. The telephone and all the telephone wiring is flung into the frontyard. The sound of napalm bombings and cries of wounded soldiers and Vietnamese on the television provides the drone sound. I remember the exotic feel of the cassette tape spoken tour of American Samoa that John sent.

I tried to reconnect with some of my friends who had scattered, running from the craziness that I had fallen into. They had also descended into their own madness. Everyone was wasted. I think that is why the L&N was so appealing. It was the most "anything goes" place at the time. So I started going regularly with Caveman and friends. His household included his very smart artsy girlfriend, his roomate and my best drinking and hanging out buddy Bobby, some monkeys and other assorted creatures. He was actually an intelligent guy who went on to get several degrees-don't know where he is now. We payed Go and Mastermind and listened to Miles Davis and Charlie Parker when we weren't at the L&N.

At the L&N we would get a booth and start drinking huge mugs of beer that soon slopped all over the table. Each table had a large candle. We started a tradition of making melted wax art on the table top that was easily picked up and then plastered on the wall. After a while we could sit at our favorite booth with our own wax artwork surrounding us. That was carousing at its finest. How I drove after that is a miracle and something that still sends shivers down my spine. I was in a blackout most of the time. I do remember looking up at the bar one night just before closing, and a la Ugly Coyote, there were dancers up there, but all guys, who suddenly as a group- mooned us all.

I don't know why I quit going, or if the bar just closed. The curious thing is that I cannot recall a single memory of music from the L&N. It remains a dark and mysterious chapter in my life.

Creativity and Madness

During the strange time period I have just described, I became exposed to many ideas and issues. We interfaced with the Birmingham Reporter, later the Paperman. I wrote a music review of a Jerry Garcia album that was published. I started reading Chomsky and Foucault, became engrossed with semiotics and other exotic subjects.

I also started reading Southern Exposure and fell in love with its oral storytelling journalistic style-it was folk history combined with stories about the real players in power politics- an early version of Rachel Maddow. I read Global Reach and was introduced to globalization and its consequences.

After it got so intense that I quit my job, we left Birmingham to move to Victoria, British Columbia and got as far as San Francisco- at least my horizons were broadened somewhat. That was a crazy trip! We came back to Alabama when we ran out of money.

I am afraid that after this all ended so tragically, I did not know much what to do with myself. I started hanging out at the L&N Cafe downtown. That place should have been preserved as a museum. There never has nor never will be such a place as that again in Birmingham. I will describe it in detail in my next post.

Nexus

It was 1973 and all things seemed possible. I bought a Subaru that year, but first I have to tell you how I came to buy it.

It was maybe April, 1973. I was weeks from graduation from nursing school. I decided one evening to visit a friend and I brought along a new album to share and listen to. It was Fragile by Yes. A new horizon was barely visible and Yes music was perfect. This friend was someone I had met through my ex. He worked at the only computer business in Birmingham at the time, so I was impressed with his knowledge and cutting edge-iness. When he answered the door and I showed him the album, he pulled out the same album from his collection- Yes met Yes. It was an Event.

It turns out the this person I will call D was a frickin genious. The real thing. I could relate to him in some ways, but mostly I felt that I was learning at an accelerated rate. Remember the movie with John Travolta where he starts learning languages, learning everything, faster and faster. It was like that. The atmosphere was rarified with energy and real knowledge- not just philosophy and conjecture but actual stuff- mathematics, physics, biological sciences, architecture, music, acoustics, art, history, politics. He was talking about getting a personal computer. People did not have personal computers in 1973.

We ended up setting up house in Crestline Village. His parents owned the house. I finished nursing school and started work at the VA. For some reason he quit working and just stayed home. I made enough money to live on and then some, and it was fun to have someone take an interest in me. I was pretty much on my own in the world, not much in the way of family, so I enjoyed being taken in. I failed to notice that I was the only one working. I worked hard, and then had lots of time off to go on short trips, go to the beach, whatever. D held court all the time at the house in Crestline. We had all sorts of people dropping by to take part in the scene there and it was quite a scene. I was educated, but my folks were like the best of the hillbillies. D's family was well off, and well connected. I guess they tried to accept me- I was never treated unfairly by them at all. Everything was so loose back then, it was hard to know what the "norm" was.

We traded in D's van and I sold my Opal. I bought the Subaru. The subaru had an "airplane engine"- the newest thing. And it was lime green. Too bad we burned up the engine.

One of the most astonishing things I remember about that time was a trip to see the Grateful Dead in Indianapolis. We went with a strange group of unlikely people in a van. We all took some kind of acid and D drove without any problem. It did not seem to affect him at all. We were incapacitated for hours, some people worse than others- I mean really nonfunctional- and he just drove on, talked with me, in the most nonplussed fashion. It was like riding the jet stream. I knew then something was very different about D. It was a great trip, and the show in Indianapolis was fantastic in every way.

Initially then, everything was fun and very stimulating. I met some wonderful people who are still good friends today.

I will never forget our house. On the wall behind the sofa was a huge color graphic painted on the wall by one of D's friends who was an artist. We had orange plasic parson's tables with small orange plastic lights. At the time, it was ultra hip in a kind of futuristic way- not the hippy stuff I was used to. The house was in a small village so I could walk to the grocery store or library. It was a nice change from Southside, although most everyone who came over was living on Southside. We were just sightly removed and safe there, ie I did not feel like the police might bust in at any moment!

I made elaborate macrame plant holders and we bought huge lovely plants for the porch. It was the nicest place I had lived in thus far. We talked about everything, especially politics. I started reading the New York Review of Books.

We started a company to do software. We went to Atlanta and finally acquired something like a prototype of a computer. We could run it by connecting by modem to the main frame at the University. Just as that started to take off our partner the software writer moved to California. That was the end of the company.

Then other things started to shift. Our newspaper friend, J, moved to American Samoa to work for a paper there, and to have a South Sea adventure. D had started becoming more vociferous about various events. Of course we all were more and more concerned with the Vietnam war and the horrible things we saw on tv on a daily basis. It was a paranoid time, a time for paranoids. It was hard to separate things out.

The first strangeness was American Samoa. Coincidentally, Doonesbury was all about American Samoa at the same time- not before-at the same time that our friend arrived there. I cannot describe what was happening in my head then. It was all aswirl. The best analogy is Apocolypse Now! I was losing my footing in reality, and it was not from too many drugs. I rarely did anything at that point except smoke pot. Everything was too real- I did not need anything "recreational" to enhance what was going on.

So, to this day, I have no explanation for the things that happened in 1973 and 1974. I wish I did. From then on, things got crazier. There were more unexplained connections and coincidences. D was getting more manic. It became, and indeed was, just like A Beautiful Mind. None of us knew it, but D was descinding into Schizophrenia. It was tragic.

There was an intervention eventually, and more strange events that included Humphrey Osmond. What he was doing in Alabama at Bryce Hospital I will never understand. I survived somehow and had to remove myself. I moved back to Southside.