was called Celebration of Life. They had it on some land next to the Mississippi River in Louisiana."
"How'd you end up there?"
"I spent two summers hitchhiking. When I got to Texas people were talking about it so I hitched over to Louisiana. A carload of blacks picked me up and took me within walking distance of the festival.
"How much did it cost?"
"Don't know. Cost me five bucks. It was on a peninsula. On one side was a big drainage ditch with a dead cow floating in it feet up. One of the security guards in a canoe who was patrolling the ditch smuggled me in for $5."
"Who played at the festival? Any groups like the ones you loved so much?"
"Well, I was so tired that I slept through the first night's music. It was so hot that they only played at night. Some guy who sat next to me said I had slept through some great music. I followed him around the field up near the stage the next morning and he picked through all the garbage on the ground until he found a baggie of cross tops. He gave me two and told me to take one on each of the next two nights. The next couple of nights they had Eric Burdon and War, Chuck Berry, the Chambers Brothers, Stephen Stills, Ted Nugent and It's a Beautiful Day. Can't remember the rest of the groups; I was stoned the whole time. Anyway, on Sunday a busload of Jesus freaks held a church service. I sort of went to it for 10 minutes."
"What did you think?"
"Well, it was two years after Woodstock and nothing like Woodstock. Three or four people drowned in the river. When we went down to the river to take a bath, there were perverts on boats watching us with binoculars and perverts on shore taking pictures. The nearest town was miles away. The vendors at the festival were charging really high prices for food and drinks. So one day when I was resting in the shade all of a sudden there's apples and oranges flying over a fenced in area to a big crowd on the outside. I jumped the fence and started handing watermelons over the fence to people. Then a pickup full of bad looking dudes pulled up. They jumped out, broke up some wooden tables and came after us with clubs made out of the pieces of wood. I never jumped a fence and ran so fast in my life."
"Anyone get hurt?"
"I didn't hang around to see. Could have been worse. I talked to someone who went to a rock festival in Washington State. He said a biker pulled into the festival, looked around, pulled out a gun and shot dead some guy sitting in a tree."
"Whew."
"Yeah. Another case of peace, love and dope turning into war, hate and hard drugs washed down with booze."
"So you have any trouble when you hitchhiked?"
"Only got one ticket and had one pervert expose himself. Both those happened within 50 miles of home. Seemed like the farther I got away, the better the people were."
"Learn a lot?"
"Probably more than I did in all my years of school. One guy gave me a ride from Salt Lake City to the middle of Iowa, like a thousand miles. Told me about his girlfriend back in Toronto and how he couldn't give her the lifestyle she wanted so she'd have to wait until he made more money before they got married. Learned a lot from people who had been to Nam, too."
"Yeah?"
"I knew I was getting drafted soon and one guy told me what he had seen in the Air Force. He wanted me to dodge the draft and go with him to Thailand where he knew someone who grew fields of pot. He said the fields stretched for as far as he could see."
"What did he say about the Air Force?"
"He was stationed in Taiwan at CCK, I think. He said they would fly C-130s into Nam and kick the supplies out the back while bullets were flying through the plane's fuselage. One time he flew in there stoned and was watching the tracer bullets fly by. When the loadmaster yelled at him and said 'What are you doing?' he said, 'Watching the tracers, sir.' He said they would smuggle OJs back in the plane to Taiwan."
"What are OJs?"
"Opium Joints. He said they could buy marijuana joints pre-rolled with opium in them in Thailand. Only problem was that they would get addicted real fast."
"So you didn't go to Thailand with him?"
"Nah. I didn't feel right about going to Nam, but I didn't feel right about being a draft dodger, either. Another guy told me that he shot himself in the foot to get out of Vietnam. He got sent to Korea and got strung out on crank."
"Now that you've been out a while, have you used your GI Bill for school?" "Just a semester. I've got 10 years to use it all up. But I don't know if it's worth it."
"Why?"
"I read this book that Jesus is supposed to come back before 1988. It said there's only one generation of 40 years left since Israel became a nation again in 1948 and that world war, famine and the antichrist will make the last 7 years hell on earth. So what's the sense of going to school or getting married or getting a good job anyway?"
"That's just one interpretation, man. You can't plan your life based on that. Besides, the way you talk about wanting to bed women, you don't seem like you really care much about the future anyway."
"I don't know. All the preachers I hear on the radio say the same thing. All the crazy stuff happening in the Middle East is scary. You know what we did while I was in Germany in the summer of 1973?"
"Tell me."
"They had us paint our olive drab green trucks, jeeps, tracks and tanks four colors - green, sand, black and brown. They stuck out like a sore thumb in Germany. Then it all made sense when the Yom Kippur War broke out that September. The first day we sent medical supplies, then the next day two TOW missiles from each company in our battalion?"
"What's a TOW missile? Never heard of that weapon before."
"Sort of like a bazooka except that you can guide the missile toward the target. You use them against tanks. The last thing I saw was tanks being taken from our armor battalions on big flatbed trucks. When I asked the truck driver where he was taking them he said Rhein Main Air Force Base to put them on a C-5. Within hours they were in Israel. We were on alert, man. We thought we were going in there because the Russians were massing tanks to the north of Israel. I was never so scared."
"So you got foxhole religion?"
"Huh?"
"You know. It's when you get right with God because you're in a bind."
"I don't know. Somebody told me I was the kind that had fire insurance so I wouldn't go to hell. He said I just wanted Jesus to save me, not be Lord and King."
"Well?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know. Guess you're right. I want to have my cake and eat it too. You know - be a sinner but be forgiven. Anyway, maybe I can hook up with you in this worship music business."
"Maybe. You ever learn to play anything?"
"Tried to. I took piano lessons for a year and then talked my parents into buying me a portable organ and amp. My friend Bill called it an ass-tone organ and twin trouble amp. That sucker could play any song on guitar by ear; he showed me the intro to Light My Fire and gave me the chords to dozens of songs."
"So were you in a band?"
"Tried, but nothing ever clicked. One of my friends, Chris, could sing anything. He was great. He'd go into the black places and see groups like the Popper Stoppers. He said the lead singer was a blind black man who sang songs like Hot Nuts: 'See that man with the expression, lost his nuts in the last depression. Hot nuts, get them while you can.' I missed the boat."
"What do you mean?"
"Man, back then anything was possible. You could record a 45 with two songs on it. If a disc jockey played it, you just might break into the top 40 regionally or locally. There were lost of bands down South doing just that. Look at the Box Tops. Their first one, The Letter, started getting play around Memphis first and went on to sell 6 million copies."
"Yeah. If nothing else, you can say the Beatles were responsible for hundreds of garage bands."
"Right. I went to a Battle of the Bands in 1966. Cost a buck to get in and part of the money went to some charity. Saw Chris in the Minutemen. They did Dirty Water. Gil S was their lead guitar. He could play anything by ear. He said reading music slowed h
im down. Then there was the Bandits. Jim Bush was the lead singer and played guitar. He sung like an angel. Joe was with them shaking a tambourine. A couple of years later they needed a bass player. Bill took the strings off his electric guitar and put on bass strings to make it into a bass. Heard them play I'm a Man on the radio when the local radio station broadcast live from a movie theater holding a concert."
"So you gave up? Doesn't sound like the Sam I remember from long ago."
"Well, when I was a junior we moved overseas. The first dance I went to there the band played Sunshine of Your Love note for note. God, they were good. Tim F was the lead guitar and nailed the solo. Then they played Light My Fire - the long version. It sounded like the record was playing. Phil W was on organ; he played it perfectly. I just gave up after that and sold the organ to some girl and the amp to my brother so I could pay my parents back. That was strike one."
"Strike one?"
"Yeah my first missed opportunity. Then in the early 70s when the music scene was just taking off in Austin, Texas, I visited some brothers I knew from when we were overseas. Mike and Pat had been in a band in my senior year with Tim F. They could play I'm So Glad by Cream note for note. Greg, the bass player, sounded like Jack Bruce. Mike and Pat had a band there in Austin - two drummers, two guitars, a bass and keyboard. They were great. They played at some amphitheater outdoors in Austin. Hundreds of people showed up."