Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom to make us take a look at our lives and decide to do something different. I turned 20 in Boston that year, no longer a teenager and not sure where I was heading. There was no big celebration, but I didn’t care, all I wanted to do was get out of there and go back home where I would start a new life.
I didn’t have a very long view of things. I knew my draft notice was likely to arrive that fall, but I was classified as a conscientious objector, so at least I wasn’t looking at a tour in Viet Nam. My plan was to go back to school and take some art classes, since that is what seemed to activate a spark in me. Just a plan for the next few months was all I could come up with.
But here it was the third day the ad for our van was running, and no calls. As if to brighten our outlook, that afternoon we got a call from a prospective buyer. I spoke with the man and tried to convince him to come look at it. He said he would the next day around 4 o'clock.
Our spirits were brightened and we began thinking about how we would move out of our living quarters into K’s 65 Mustang. Besides our clothes there were a lot of tools and other memorable, not to mention a couple of guitars. Obviously it wasn’t all going to fit in the car. We went to sleep that night feeling hopeful our sojourn in Boston would soon be over.
The next morning the sun was shinning brightly as we slept in. Before we got up there was a knock on our door. We had a For Sale sign on our van and this person was inquiring about purchasing the van. We let him in to see the interior and talk over the deal.
He was a young man a few years older than us. He had very long hair and we felt comfortable with him as he was very amiable and friendly. He worked for the Parks department, but as he explained to us, as long as he kept his boss supplied in the drugs of his choice he really didn’t have to do any work to receive his pay check.
It was then that he informed us that he wanted to trade us 1,000 hits of LSD for the van. Yikes!! That was not part of my paradigm. I had been known to enjoy partaking in marijuana, but drugs were not part of my way of life, and there was no way I would ever participate in anything more powerful than pot.
We explained to him that what we really needed was cash so we could finance our trip back to Seattle and drugs of that nature weren’t really our thing. We informed him that we already had a prospective buyer who was coming by that afternoon and we had already promised him the van. He left his offer on the table and said he would check back with us tomorrow.
What a long day that was, waiting for 4 o’clock to arrive. We waited patiently but by the time it was 6 o’clock we realized our buyer was not going to show up. That was a dark time. We were both very quiet and went to be alone while we contemplated our blight. I went for a run and K. played his guitar.
By that evening we were forced to accept that our newly found drug dealing friend was our only hope. We had no other choice. The food was gone, we only had enough gas to drive a few miles and we were hungry. We went to bed that night hoping our new friend would keep his word and return in the morning. Our plan was to see if we could get him to offer us enough cash as part of the deal in order to drive home. Once home we figured we would have some connections that could sell the LSD. There was no way I we were going to ever use the drugs.
In the end we didn’t care what we got for the van we just wanted to go home.
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