ON THE ROAD
When I got back to the storefront in New Orleans I was confronted by Danny. It seems after I left Atlanta my crew cutted Dad had gone to where I lived and asked my roommates if I was around. Stoned, they mistook my dad bringing me my comic book collection- for a cop. I had no idea what Danny was talking about when he said the cops were looking for me in Atlanta, handed me a bag with about 1/3 of the LSD and pot I had found and told me I'd have to stay somewhere else. I was shell shocked, and headed over to the writers pad.
I told him I had just lost my pad and he quickly offered me his. He didn't even ask why I had lost it, those were the days. He told me he was going to be selling papers in front of a concert venue and we could check out the band. They were called Z.Z. Top and tickets were $2. I had never heard of them but he said that all the bands playing at the venue were cool, and it was a great way to meet other hippies in the area. I looked through the papers he had, and found a copy of Rolling Stone when I caught a story about one of my heroes, Buddy Holly. It seems his band had a recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico and many tapes of them rehearsing and working on songs. I got the idea to go to Clovis and interview them for the paper, listen to some unreleased tracks and tapes of how they worked together. First however, I had to check out Mardis Gras.
Z.Z. Top before they had the long beards!
We quickly sold out of papers to the New Orleans hippies going to see Z.Z. Top and joined them inside this warehouse building. I don't remember the opening act, but I had a great time watching Z.Z. Top as the smell of reefer permeated the hall. Joints came at us from every direction until I couldn't smoke anymore. People didn't just pass a joint to their date or immediate friends in those days, the joint would disappear into the crowd! If someone held on to it while speed rapping someone would say, "Don't Bogart that joint" and the joint would continue on its way.
Mardis Gras has the biggest crowds at the end but for almost two weeks leading up to it there are all kinds of parades and events. Mardis Gras was a drinking party, it seemed like everywhere I went women- straight women(!) were flashing their breasts for beads. People were throwing up in the streets. Fights were breaking out over nothing. It was a great time.
Mardis Gras itself I was told was a pre-Christian celebration, a fertility party based on the Lupercus celebrations in ancient Rome. Those were drunken street orgies that were followed up by 40 days of fasting. One night walking home I decided I needed to take a leak and couldn't wait, so I turned into an alley only to see a half dozen couples having sex standing up against the wall! Give me that old time religion!
The Christians gave up trying to get converted pagans to stop the party and named the period foremerly known as the fast, Lent.
When otherwise newly uptight Christians discovered they could get away with drunkeness and orgies the practice spread throught Europe. In England the noblemen would hand out cakes and dubloons to the poor, which is how we got the King Cake and beads for boobs.
When the French owned Louisianna they were appalled at the "drunken orgys" and banned the party. Once they sold the state, the Creoles convinced the government to re-instate it. Originally, they wanted to do it all year long, but that was asking a lot!
The floats in the parades are unreal- they are created by krewes as they are called, and can be racist, silly, sexy, and fun. Or at least that's the way it was in 1970.
Mardis Gras was and remains an open celebration of lust.
To get arrested you had to really go out of your way in those early days of the celebration, smoking a joint would suffice. So I'd get wasted until I left the pad for the Bourbon Street area. It didn't take long for me to find the hippie chicks, strippers and straight girls who wondered what sex with a hippie was like. Once again I was scoring every day to my roommates astonishment.
One incident made me decide I should move on. I went to the strippers parade and found myself in a crowd so packed my feet were off the sidewalk. I was being held up in mid-air, and if I had fainted, I had no idea who would be able to pick me up. It was a scary experience, and I was starting to get tired of the drinking and crowds which were only growing larger. After the parade I sat on the sidewalk to gather my wits, and a young woman came up to me and asked me my name.
"Flash", I said, which was my hippie name in Atlanta. She was gorgeous, but dressed in what I would call straight clothes. She did however have a cleft in her chin and dimples on her cheeks, a look that still gets to me. She invited me to see a movie with her! Well, this seemed cool, until she told me it was a Barbra Streisand movie. Getting laid was pretty easy in The Big Easy, so I said no! She asked me what kinds of films hippies liked, I said I wasn't a hippie (all hippies said that), and how about going to my pad to smoke a joint and listen to some music?
She confessed she hadn't smoked a joint before, so, OK!
We got to the pad and my apartment mate was gone and started smoking pot. By the third joint I was locking lips and blowing the smoke in my mouth into hers. For the first time and last time in my life, we started fucking to Simon and Garfunkles BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER. She selected it, don't blame me! We hung out for a day and a night, I told her my plan to go to Clovis, and she asked if she could come along! I said yes, she quit her job over the phone, and we were going to drive to Clovis. That next day!
She left and a couple of hours later my roommate came home and told me to come outside and watch what was going on. We walked carefully outside and peaked around a corner. There I saw about 30 hippies under arrest and being put in police wagons. Some were saying they weren't vagrants and were staying at hotels. One showed a cop his room key, the cop took it, threw it down on the ground and said that now the hippie was a vagrant! I decided I was getting out while the getting was good.
She made good her promise, and showed up in her car the next day. I said goodbye to my writer friend, rubbed my lucky quarter for good luck, and off we went.
I finally asked her what her last name was.
