Monthly Archives: July 2016

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In 1969 I lived in San Francisco from December thru March of 1970. I was working in a hospital on an internship. I worked on a general surgery floor and had contact with all types of patients. It was a valuable experience, but what I remember most about that time was my experience in the city. I remember the people, the culture, and the music. It was still a very free time and San Francisco was the center of that universe.

People led very open lives with no real boundaries. Drugs were cheap and harmless until later when amphetamines and cocaine took over and people began to die.

The memory of that time was brought back this week when I went to a Dead and Company concert. This group is made up of three members of the original Grateful Dead band and two or three guest musicians.

Last summer all of the surviving members of the band had the Fare Thee Well concert in Soldier’s Field. The ticket price for that concert was ridiculous but even so it quickly sold out. The Band members are aging but were surprised at the response (and the money they made). Due to that they decided to continue with this version of the group.

My son had asked if I wanted to go and I agreed. I drove to his house and he drove the rest of the way. We stopped and ate at a McDonalds. I hadn’t eaten there in years. It seemed different and certainly more modern. Now we eat a lot of Chicken and Broccoli and healthy stuff, but damn that burger tasted good. I had forgotten how much I like fast food. The whole night was bringing back memories.

Now the last concert I went to was about 20 years ago. It was a Peter, Paul, & Mary Concert at Ravinia. This was certainly different. From the time we parked and began to walk thru the parking lot I saw scenes of the past. Guys were running around shirtless, showing off their tattoos, or wearing some tie dyed material. Women were breast-feeding their babies. People were partying, throwing Frisbees, drinking and doing whatever. There were a few people trying to sell clothing and many people asking for tickets. Once we finally got in the Band had started. The music was great and I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed looking at the crowd. There were a lot of 20s and 30s there. There were also a lot of 50-70s. I saw a lot of guys I would stereotype as old bald guys with ponytails, but I also saw some well-dressed folks who really were there for the music. There were also an awful lot of people there for the alcohol and the drugs.

I hadn’t been around that group for quite a while. I knew this was going to be different when the guy next to me pulled out a pill bottle full of marijuana and casually began to fill his pipe. My son elbowed me and told me to be cool and not say anything. As the night went on the dope increased. By the middle of the second set you could see waves of smoke all thru the place. There was one fairly obnoxious drunk but he was gone fairly quickly. I looked around and saw everyone dancing. Age, sex, clothing didn’t matter. We were concerned that one guy was so far under the influence of something that his dancing approached the level of a seizure. Everyone seemed to be having a very good time. I know I did. I’ve been listening to tapes of the concert ever since.

I missed the music. It is an important part of my life and at times I have let it go. I did like the folk music of the 60s, but I also liked bands like the Dead, the Who, the Allman Brothers, etc. I think I stopped really listening when glam rock came in and then the whole rap scene, which I could never get into. I know there is a whole generation of alternative music that I am totally ignorant about.

Did you ever wonder what the sound track of your life would sound like? I once told my wife that I wanted the Rolling Stone song “You Cant Always Get What You Want “ played at my wake. I still remember the “Big Chill” and thought that would be a cool way to go out. I think I told her that in my late 30s or early forties. Now I probably want people saying rosaries but maybe they could still hum a little Stones? I think I’ll put that in my will. Maybe now I’ll change the tune to Jack Straw so folks can sing the chorus “Roll On, Roll On” as they carry me out.

Whatever.

I just need to keep remembering some of the important stuff I have forgot.

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So recently I’ve been throwing things out. This is difficult for me since I know I am on the hoarder spectrum. I will find clothes that I haven’t worn in years but still don’t want to get rid of. In any case I opened one of my dresser drawers and found an old watch in several pieces in the back behind old rubber bands and business cards. I showed it to my wife and she asked about it. I told her that my mother gave me that watch on my 21^st birthday. This was about three months after my father had died and both she and my father wanted to give me something special for that important birthday.

It is an old Hamilton watch and I hadn’t worn it in over 40+ years—maybe even longer than that. It was a dress watch and back in those days I was pretty casual. When I told my wife the story,  she said we should get it fixed because of the family history. I agreed and sent it off to a jeweler.

The strange thing is that it did trigger memories. I was given that watch exactly fifty years ago. I still find that number difficult to accept. Last fall I drove thru a university I had attended and realized that I had started there fifty years ago. Fifty is not that large a number but fifty years is a very long time.

I know this blog has a recurrent theme of aging, but maybe it’s not so much aging as time passing and memories surfacing. How many ticks does it take for a watch to measure fifty years?

Yesterday in church the priest began talking about his parents and how they helped him experience God. He asked what our memories of that were. I began thinking of my childhood and the almost magical view of God I had. I don’t think this was totally due to my parents. I think the nuns and priests I was exposed to then had a very large part in this. I remember when I was in 5th or 6^th grade I would have to wear three or four medals and two scapulars to bed. I would literally clank every time I rolled over. This was because I had been told that if you wore these things you were guaranteed entrance to heaven. So if I died overnight I had a lock on the pearly gates. My parents never tried to dissuade me from this type of thinking. My grandmother from Ireland lived with us. She prayed two rosaries a day for her dead husband and had many more prayers throughout the day. Our house was filled with holy cards given as prizes and rewards from the nuns at school. We also had countless holy cards from the many family funerals.

I remember my parents had this large crucifix hanging over their bed. One time I took it down and found it had secret compartments to hold candles and holy water. I was told that this was for emergencies if someone got sick and the priest had to be called. Apparently many families had these special crosses.

I think death was always a presence in our family. My grandmother’s first child died of complications from scarlet fever and pneumonia when he was nine or ten. My mother’s sister had a child who died of testicular cancer at eight or nine. My parents lived thru the trauma of WWII. My mother was sure my father was going to be killed. She couldn’t sleep and lost a great amount of weight during that time. She also spent much time praying.

I think there was always an expectation that something terrible could happen and we had to defend ourselves as best we could. Polio was a real fear for the parents of that time. I think the vaccine began to come out in the mid 1950s and everyone hoped it would work. One of my cousins told me that there was one day she came home from school and it was like a plague had struck the neighborhood. There were police cars everywhere preventing people from leaving because a few children had been diagnosed with the disease. Given the time, culture and our family history, it’s no wonder that I had such a magical view of spirituality.

So now we are in the second decade of the 21^st century. We are constantly exposed to new marvels of science and technology. However there is still a sense of uncertainty about the future. Instead of Polio, we have terrorists and lone wolf gunmen, and new strange viruses. Every day there is something new. Politicians are trying to get votes by focusing on this fear. The media pushes it because it sells “If it bleeds. It leads—etc.” There is an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. It is difficult not to get sucked into all of this. I think I have grown beyond my medals and my scapulars, but I still gather comfort from small prayers. I think I always will.