grey sky said:
So it wasn't the hippies?
No, man, you're not even close.
In 1972, I lived on Bassett Street, about a block away from the Mifflin Street Co-op. I was in college and I needed a cheap place to live and a garage for my bike. That part of town was a crumbling area of student apartments that at one time were older homes.
I was dating a girl from Chicago who rented one of the back bedrooms there from a hippie couple. One of the girls had left to tour Europe, and they needed another roommate to split the rent.
So, I got to meet the loving couple, Carla and Duncan. I don't know if they ever really knew it or not, but
their front bedroom was actually a closet.
About the time I got there, Carla had a birthday. Her
favorite gift was a small, cheap, stamp-steel vegetable grinder. She loved the thing, because it could clean and separate the seeds and stems from marijuana.
I'd stumble out of bed in the morning, checking my body for bites and wounds and searching for some coffee I could actually keep on my stomach. The hippies were already up, rolling numbers and cackling at jokes I never really got.
About
twenty years later I was a credit manager for a dental clinic. I happened to walk through the waiting area and I ran into one of the guys who used to live on the first floor of that apartment building.
He was still zonked out, in such a haze he kept re-focusing to follow the conversation--and
after about ten minujtes of chat, asked me who I was...
You have nothing to fear from these people.
