Tag Archives: hippies

December 4, 1978 – East Village – Journal

4:10am I lie on the living room floor. My ribs hurt less that way. Vincent Price was killing zombies on the TV and the NY Sunday Times is scattered besides me. I’m reading the back pages of the travel section, wishing I had enough money to buy a round-the-world ticket. $1100. I only have $78 […]

NORTH END MIRACLE by Peter Nolan Smith

Throughout my childhood my mother cooked dinner for six kids and every Friday evening she drove our station wagon into Boston. We picked up my father at 50 Milk Street, where he worked for Ma Bell as an electrical engineer. He took the wheel and headed to a restaurant. Throughout my childhood my mother cooked […]

IN DA GADDA VIDA ON SNOW

In winter of 1969 I went skiing in North Conway with a bunch of townies from the CYO. We hit Wildcat hard. The coolest girl and I listened to IN DA GADDA VIDA in my bedroom. Her name was Susan. She smoked weed. I was straight. At the end of the song she said, “I […]

NAKED TO THE COLD SEA by Peter Nolan Smith

In the early 70s We stood on Nauset’s nude beach Hippies not yet punks. A thick ledge of wet seaweed Covered the high tide mark. Off our clothes We lay on the cool green algae Our bare bodies sinking beneath the sludge Comforted by the ocean’s endless bounty Each of us silent Seagulls squatted around […]

George, Washington 1972

Back in late August 1972 my college friend Ptrov Sinski and I hitchhiked west from Seattle. A rancher left us off at exit 149, serving George, Washington, a small farming community surrounded by endless fields of ripening wheat. The two of us ignored the sign forbidding hitchhiking, but within ten minutes a Highway Patrol car […]