Monthly Archives: April 2021

VALLEY OF POT by Peter Nolan Smith

August 1972 was five years past San Francisco’s Summer of Love. A college friend from Crane’s Beach and I had hitchhiked from Boston to the West Coast in 45 hours. A mutual girlfriend, Marilyn, was working as a topless hostess on the Barbary Coast. Three months’ tips paid a year’s tuition. After a few hugs […]

Rolling Rocks Into The Grand Canyon

Back in August 1972 I attempted to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon. My friend and I left the south rim at 7am. We had two full canteen. Nick and I ran out of water around Skeleton Point. The Colorado looked so inviting, but we were parched by the summer sun and quit our […]

DEMO DERBY Paintings by Jane Dickson / Writing by Peter Nolan Smith

On a summer night in 1969 a high school friend Dave Quaan drove my older brother, next-door neighbor and me to Norwood Arena in his family’s station wagon. The Ford Country Squire hit its top speed of 115 on Route 128. We got off the highway at US 1 and drove south to a ball […]

PAPER BOY by Peter Nolan Smith

Boston published three morning newspapers in 1960; the Boston Globe, the Record American, and the Herald Traveler. My family moved from Falmouth Foresides, Maine to a a suburb south of Boston. The Neponset River separated the city from the town. Our neighborhood had been constructed on an abandoned army base. Several hundred newly-constructed split-level houses […]

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER by Peter Nolan Smith

In the Spring of 2009 the old crew met at Miguel Abreau’s Gallery on Orchard Street to honor Brock Dundee’s documentary about Afghanistan that he had filmed for the UK MoD. The Scot had flown in helicopters to battle sites and crossed the mountains on foot with the assassins of the SAS. At dinner Dannatt […]