Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss
Douglas Gray
Copyright 2014, Douglas Gray
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Originally released as a blog narrative at https://www.wastedyear.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Only one thing I did wrong,
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.
~ Bob Dylan, “Mississippi”
Part 1. The Harvest
August 24 – September 18, 1971
Tuesday, August 24, 1971
I’m at the Charlottesville Greyhound station, shipping the seven boxes of books I packed last night. The little man behind the counter charges me $7.25 for 104 pounds of freight, to Oxford. While he’s not looking, I step on his scale and discover that I also weigh 104 pounds.
No coincidence, I think. Those seven boxes hold everything I’ve read over the past year. My mass is equal to theirs.
I am what I have read. I am, therefore, a text.
Valerie would probably detect some flaw in my reasoning, and remind me that this habit of trying to find meaning in everyday random events has gotten me into nothing but trouble.
I order a grilled cheese at the Virginian, then amble onto campus for one last look around. The English offices in Wilson Hall are mostly empty, but I find Eileen and Dr. Shandy chatting in the mailroom.
“Dr. Arnold tells me you’re leaving,” Eileen remarks.
“All packed and ready to go. Just waiting for dark, when it’ll be cool enough to drive.”
Dr. Shandy hasn’t heard of my departure. “I thought you were staying on for the doctorate.”
“Decided to go back to Mississippi instead.”
He looks doubtful. “Can’t be much future for you there.”
“My father runs a faith healing show. He’s asked me to rejoin the act. I play the poor afflicted kid in the audience that he heals every night. Sometimes I’m blind, or lame, or deaf, or spastic. I’m really good at spastic. I wear different disguises. We do pretty well.”
One thing I’ve learned, living away from home: people who aren’t actually from the South will believe any damn lie you tell them about it.
“What are you really going to do?” Eileen asks after he leaves.
“Cut the soles out of the bottom of my shoes, rest my feet on the porch rail, spit watermelon seeds into the front yard, and watch the kudzu grow.”
“Interesting career move.”
I say farewell to the Rotunda and Tom’s statue out front, then sit zazen on the hill by Madison Bowl until an uptake in traffic signals the end of the work day. Murphy’s is crowded when I stop in for happy hour, but I manage to squeeze into a space at the bar.
After my third shot, on my way out the door, I drop all my pocket change into the jukebox and punch it to play “Knock Three Times on the Ceiling” five times in a row.
The moment has come for me to put Virginia behind me for once and all, but when I get back to the apartment there’s a note from Valerie taped to the door. She’s back, early, from her conference in St. Louis. I carry the last boxes to the car, along with my typewriter and my stereo, and decide to leave a farewell note to Mr. Jonas.
“Dear Mr. Jonas,
“You’ll be disappointed to learn that I’m still alive. Nevertheless, I’ve admired your persistence in trying to kill me. The gas leak in the range was a clever ploy. So were the bats, the rats, the sewer backups, the loose ceiling tiles, the exploding water heater, the rotted porch steps, and the electrical shorts.
“Best of luck murdering your next tenant.
“Your friend, Daniel.”
Only a few units in the faculty housing complex on Mimosa have lights on. Most teachers are out of town for the break, and Valerie should be, too.
“Everybody in the hotel was getting sick,” she explains. “Some kind of virus. So the organizers cancelled the conference, sent us all home.”
“Are you sure you didn’t come back early just to see me off?”
“You’ve always been off.”
We go to bed, for old time’s sake, because there’s no way we can do each other more damage than we already have. I set Valerie’s alarm clock for 3:00 so I can still get a few hours of night driving in.
“Find a skinny blonde hippie chick down in Mississippi,” she says to me, in the dark, while I dress. “Forget about me. Forget about this whole damn year.”
“Only if you promise to forget about turning yourself in.”
“I promise.”
“Liar.”
~ ~ ~
Wednesday, August 25
I’m 15 miles outside Chattanooga, fiddling with the radio, when I pick up the first rock station since North Carolina. Everything has been country, gospel, or preachers.
I like this station. The deejay is playing “Riders on the Storm” as I tune in, followed by “Wild Horses,” “Sweet City Woman,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Mercy Mercy Me,” “Peace Train,” “Get It On,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Proud Mary,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Sweet Hitch Hiker,” “Power to the People,” and “Maggie May” – all without a commercial break.
The deejay’s voice finally comes on to announce that this is the seventh hour of his insurrection against station management. He’s barricaded himself in the booth and will continue broadcasting, commercial free, until the owners agree to his demands.
He doesn’t mention what those are.
I listen all the way through Chattanooga, and on into northern Georgia, where his signal finally dies out.
The last thing I hear him say is, “The next block of 30 commercial-free songs goes out to Tamburlaine, wherever he may be. We’re counting on you, man!”
In Huntsville, I pull over for gas, stand gulping at the water fountain for a few minutes, and realize I’m severely dehydrated, and a little nauseated from the heat of the car.
I won’t reach Oxford today. I know my limits.
The $7.50 motel room I rent turns out to be the cleanest place I’ve stayed in months. The sheets smell of Clorox and are almost painfully white. The bathroom is immaculate. I buy a six-pack of Cokes from the 7-11 next door, sit on the shower floor under cool water, and drink three of them.
Still wet, I put on a pair of shorts, gather my copy of Herodotus, and sit by the pool to read. I have the pool to myself, until two mothers with five grammar-school aged kids (three girls, two boys) come out for a swim.
A shadow falls over my book, and I look up. It’s the prettier of the two mothers – loose brown hair, a checkerboard print one-piece, good teeth, Alabama accent, trying to sound sweet as the situation allows.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, but would you mind very much putting a shirt on? Please forgive my asking. It’s just that your bones are frightening the children.”
~ ~ ~
Thursday, August 26
I’m sorry to leave my little room in Huntsville. It feels like a place where I could be comfortable for the rest of my life. I linger here until the 10:30 checkout time, find a little restaurant serving eggs and grits, read Herodotus in a booth, and don’t hit the road until a little past noon.
Not as hot a day, but the radio selection is a little worse, mostly ministers and local call-ins. I raise a little victory cheer upon c
rossing the state border. By the time I reach Tupelo, the road starts looking familiar again.
What passes for rush hour in Oxford has begun when I reach the Square around 4:30. The benches by the Confederate statue are strangely empty, no old men to be seen, so I take one facing South Lamar and commune with the traffic flowing widdershins around the courthouse. Within a few minutes, I’m meditating, zazen, comfortably at home again.
For the second time in 24 hours, a shadow passes over me and stays there. When I open my eyes, instead of it being a cute Alabama momma in a checkered swimsuit, it’s Deputy Hacker, glaring down at me.
“Good afternoon, officer.”
“Thought we were rid of you.”
“You’re looking well.”
“You’re looking like a turd. I suppose you’d complain I’m violating your religious liberties if I asked you to move along?”
“Not at all, officer. I was just about to leave.”
“Watch yourself, boy. There’s a new sheriff in town.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the town elected a new sheriff, stupid. Election, last month.”
As Hacker struts off, I noticed somebody waving to me from the second floor balcony above the Carroll Brothers appliance store. It’s Garrett, who is now clerking for the Carrolls. They’ve branched out their refrigerator and washing machine franchises with a record store run by their mother and this second-floor head shop, called There’s No Place Like Ohm, that they’ve put under Garrett’s management. Joss sticks, incense burners, tie-dyed shirts, Buddha statues, ankhs, beads, a big waterbed in the center of the room, and an inordinate quantity of leather bags with fringe, leather belts, leather headbands, leather key rings, leather bookmarks. The place smells like a sofa in some law firm’s lobby.
Garrett’s grown a blonde beard, and his hair’s down to his shoulders. He looks like a Norwegian leprechaun running a stagecoach stop for potheads.
He welcomes me with a big hug. “Uncle Daniel! As I live and breathe. Well, just imagine my surprise – we heard you were dead.”
“Only for a minute.”
The “we” Garrett refers to turns out to be almost everybody who was here when I went away to Virginia. Nobody’s left Oxford. I put name after name to him, like cards – Nick, Suzie, Andrew, Amy, James, Joan – until I have only one left to play. The big one.
“Melissa?” I ask.
“Haven’t seen her this summer. Dr. Stevens might know.”
“Can you give me a place to crash for a few days?”
“I can give you a room of your own, if you want. Just like Virginia Wolfe. Andrew, James and I have a house on Tyler. We’re forming a new commune. Big place, couple of rooms we’re subletting. Everybody’s pitching in $25 a month.”
“Andrew and James moved out of the Earth?”
“Brace yourself. There is no Earth, anymore. The Baptists bought the place. It’s headquarters for Campus Crusade for Christ now.”
“That’s blasphemy.”
“It’s a sacrilege, is what it is.”
We meet again later for dinner at Colemans. I treat Garrett to three barbecues and we share a joint on the back porch of the house on Tyler with a freckled redhead named Cindy. Garrett’s amazed that I’ve given up the idea of a doctorate in English, and have defected to the Classics department instead.
“Well, I’d guess Goodleigh and Sutherland will be glad to have you. As long as the department has students, the university has to let them keep their graduate program. Maybe Sutherland will cheer up for a few minutes and forget about killing himself.”
“He’s no better?” I ask.
“Three attempts last year, two months in the hospital. Poor Mrs. Sutherland finally had to leave him.”
A thought occurs to me. “Why are you still in town? I thought you had a job on the Atlanta Constitution.”
“That fell through. Long story.”
Later, even though I thought I’d retired to my new room, I find myself back on the porch with my head in Cindy’s lap, her asleep. Other people are talking. Somebody’s plucking a guitar, tunelessly.
“Who’s the new guy?” a slurred voice asks.
“That’s Daniel Medway.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“No, he just looks that way.”
~ ~ ~
Friday, August 27
Cindy, it turns out, is Andrew’s girl. They’re sharing the room next to mine. Andrew nailed a parachute to the ceiling so that the silk drapes down all four walls like a tent. Andrew and James have been away on some secret trip for the past month. They’re away a lot, Cindy tells me as we share a pillow on the floor and stare at Andrew’s interior decorating scheme. The effect is oddly soothing, like a womb of silk.
It’s time for me to unpack the car. Cindy offers to help, and seems surprised by how little there is to move – one box for my clothes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo and whatnot; one box with my sheets and towel, a coffee cup, a saucepan, two plates, two spoons, two forks, one knife, a plastic juice glass, and a can opener; two boxes of records; my typewriter; and, of course, my stereo.
She critiques my record collection as I unpack the boxes and determine the best placement for the speakers.
“You’re going to need to get a mattress, or a sleeping bag,” she points out. This is the one room without a bed.
“I’m used to sleeping on the floor. I did all last year in Virginia.”
“I bet your girlfriends didn’t like that.”
“I didn’t do much entertaining there. My friends thought it was a sty.”
Not at all like where I’m living now. The house that Garrett’s found is beautiful, even stripped bare of all its furnishings and redecorated in hippie poverty. I’m admiring the woodwork in one of the first floor rooms when it strikes me that I’ve been here before, at the reception Mrs. Hirsch hosted for Phi Beta Kappa inductees back in ’69. I’ve sipped sherry in this very room and made polite conversation with the Dean of Students.
Cindy, when I ask, has never heard of Mrs. Hirsch. She’s seen Dr. Hirsch around campus, of course, “the funny little man who spits a lot when he talks.”
I set off, in search of information.
The campus is practically deserted, as you’d expect on a Friday during break. Still, the first person I see turns out to be Amy Madigan, writing in her notebook on a bench in the Grove. Except for the fact that her hair seems to be longer now, she might have been sitting here in suspended animation since we last spoke that day after graduation.
She’s absorbed with the notebook, so I spot her well before she sees me. She seems, in fact, to sense my presence as I approach from the sidewalk behind her. She lifts her head from the page, and sniffs the air. I always suspected she’s got a touch of bloodhound in her. She’s built like one, all skinny and tensed-up.
“Harold told me you’d be coming back,” she says.
So it’s “Harold” now. Interesting. She doesn’t invite me to sit.
“You’ll be working under Dr. Goodleigh?” she asks. “Teaching aide?”
“Assistant curator. She’s expanding the hours for the classics museum.”
“You and Goodleigh alone with those pots. Every day. Weekends, too, probably. My my. How do you think that’s going to work for you? I mean, you’ve always had the most fatuous crush on that woman.”
“Congratulations on the book,” I say. “I always knew you’d get published before me. Prestigious reviews, too, I hear. Including the New York Times?”
“It was flattering to be critiqued in an international publication, even if the reviewer wasn’t exactly kind. Or fair. Have you read it?”
“I never read the Times.”
“I meant, have you read my novel?”
“Oh. No. Bought it, haven’t read it. Waiting for the mood to hit me. I’ve never been a big fan of equestrian stories –Black Beauty, National Velvet. Seems more like a chick thing.”
Amy sighs. “Monastery of Horses i
s just the title, Daniel. That doesn’t mean it’s about horses. The theme of the novel….”
“No! Don’t spoil it for me. I want to be surprised. Hey, do you know if something’s happened to Mrs. Hirsch?”
“She passed last April. Poor thing. I visited her every week, until the end. I think knowing that one of her protégés was about to be published brought her great comfort. We have no patron of the arts in Oxford now. Everything went to Dr. Hirsch, and I doubt he’ll be as generous with us.”
“The reason I ask, I think I’m living in her house.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re staying at the new hippie house with Garrett and James and all those adolescents pretending to be revolutionaries. For the love of God, Daniel, grow up.”
“But they always speak very highly of you.”
“Well, have fun playing your little boy games. Enjoy it while you can. I hear the Baptists are trying to buy that house.”
“It’s true,” Garrett confirms between mouthfuls at Colemans. “The Baptists are trying to buy the whole town. We’re wondering what their plan might be.”
Garrett’s ordered two barbecue sandwiches and a Hostess lemon fruit pie for dessert.
“Hirsch won’t sell, though. He hates the Baptists, he doesn’t need the money – everything in his mother’s estate went to him – and he’s in love with James. That’s the reason he’s renting to us, to have James under his roof.”
~ ~ ~
Saturday, August 28
Dottie Carroll retired last year from running the campus laundry, after four decades of managing Ole Miss’ dirty underwear. She’s invested her pension in a record shop just beside Gathright Reed drugs, in a storefront owned by her two boys.
It’s a narrow, long shop, maybe 10 feet across and 30 feet deep, every wall lined 6 feet high with racks of albums, and a very nice sound system that’s blasting “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” as Cindy and I duck inside for cover from this afternoon’s thunderstorm.
Dottie comes bustling from the back of the shop to greet us. “Put a nickel in the old nickelodeon,” she says, handing each of us a wooden nickel with the store’s name – the Nickelodeon – her way of greeting customers. “What can I do for you sweet kids today? ‘Seven hundred little records, all blues, rock, rhythm and jazz.’ No country. No pop. So don’t tell me you’re looking for the Carpenters or Glenn Campbell.”
I haven’t been in a good record store since the weekend Melissa and I went to Memphis, spring before last. Today, just like then, I find myself overwhelmed with choices. I’ve gathered six albums to select from – Poco, Santayana, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Neil Young, the Flying Burrito Brothers, a group called Black Oak Arkansas – when I spot a tiny, ancient Asian woman rocking out to the music. She’s sitting on a folding chair, her upper body swaying wildly while her feet and legs remain absolutely still.