DRIVING INTO NEW ORLEANS; MARDIS GRAS!
It has been quite a while since I wrote on my hitchhiking across America story. You can catch the preludes here :
Well folks I've been working on a play THE BRIDES OF GHOST HUNTER RICHARD CROWE that I've been too swamped to get over here. Hitchhiking across country was a means of transportation those days and plenty of people would pick you up. In some cities like LA and San Francisco people waited in lines of at times over 100 people waiting for a ride. There were dangers, but when you're young you don't think you can run into them. I had no idea I'd be hitchhiking out of New Orleans!
So I hopped in the van with my new found pals and we drove towards New Orleans. Smoking joints and drinking along the way. America was in shock over the Manson murders and there had even been a copy cat murder when a soldier would kill his wife and kids- and blame hippies. 1969 had a huge film event that touched all of us, the movie EASY RIDER http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7tuUG6dLv4 which also tapped into the anger people were feeling towards us and all hippies I suppose immediately identified with. At the start of 1970 American flag jackets and shirts began to appear, the wandering lust was calling out to us.
James MacDonald would wipe out his family and blame hippies, but the cops investigating him doubted his story of a hippie killer clan, even after Manson.
Mick Jagger had paid a fine for pot possession.
The Chicago 7 had been cleared of conspiring to riot at the convention. The cops knee shows who was rioting:
BLACK SABBATH had put out an album which suddenly showed up in vans on 8 track all over America.
The Mai Lai Massacre indictments showed America a side of war it had never seen before:
Dead children was too much for even the Army to take
and Americans looked at pictures and began to wonder what we were trying to win. The one two punch had felt the first blow, Kent State would be the second.
It was a interesting time! The Chinese by the way, call "interesting times" a curse, as in, "May you live in interesting times" is not delivered with a smile!
We pulled into New Orleans and I couldn't believe it, the fog was drifting through the streets. It was a scene out of an old Jack the Ripper movie, the buildings looked old and we got out at the building we were to stay at. It was a office building, but it was clean and big and had showers and toilets. In keeping with the priorities of the day, we decided to trip that night! We walked into the city each going our own ways after writing the address and streets of where we were staying down. The keys were to be left in the mailbox and returned there by each person.
I journeyed into the new city tripping and came upon a guy selling a tourist paper. I talked to him, Carlos I'll call him, and he took me to his home. Here we smoked pot, I found out he published the paper which was mostly bar ads for tourists in for Mardis Gras and the first thing he told me as he rolled up a joint surprised me. He told me not to be on the streets at the end of Mardis Gras because the police would sweep through, arrest all hippies and put them to work to clean!
Life under Jim Garrison!
Not even Atlanta ever did anything like that, but I found out later he wasn't kidding.
I had made my first friend in New Orleans, and he was a writer! That morning I walked back to where we were, and passed by a coffee and beignets and heard a woman scream. I looked over and saw a woman dressed in a business dress yelling at two redneck cops that the person she was with was here on business. He was on the ground in a suit and tie, as the two cops beat him first with their fists and then their clubs. They beat him into the streets and looked right up at me and told me to get the hell out and I did.
I headed back to my place thinking about the difference between what I had been taught America was like, and what it was really like.
