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FURTHER UP; FURTHER IN; FELLOWSHIP WITH MEN |
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© Copyright 2001, Jim Laney So here we are living in New Haven, summer of '69. Three of us from the law school, one from the drama school. Jonny Krown had brought the Hog Farm to the Law School for a happening or two earlier that year after reading Tom Wolfe's piece and somehow hooking up with at that time Hugh Romney. The dining hall of venerable Yale Law School had never seen anything like it. So now it's summer and we had just watched the guys landing on the moon and this full page spread in the New York Times heralds a rock 'n roll event in Woodstock, a full page of great bands. Hard to believe they'd all be there, but then we hear the Hog Farm will be there as the Please Force, and so let's go up a week ahead and say howdy to our friends. A bunch of us drove up, tents and all. The drama school guy, Henry by name, was doing street theater and couldn't break away; a few years later I see his face on Time or Newsweek at the grocery stand checkout and it turns out he's the Fonz now. But that's another story. We're camping in a field near where the bummer tipi and the free kitchen are going to be, glad handing those we know, helicopters buzzing overhead, cameramen hanging out shooting footage, a huge stage being built, and it looks like it may be a real deal. So everyone gets ready to go home Sunday and I announce I ain't going. I'm staying, feel something in my bones. Me and my tent. So about Monday we hear that Further is on its way cross country, that Kesey is not onboard but Babbs is. Wednesday we hear they're getting close. Wednesday evening we're all traipsing across the green, still Hugh Romney not quite yet Wavy Gravy leading the way, Babbs and his gang coming from the other side, and we meet in the middle and Wavy says the auspicious nature of the event calls for consulting the I Ching and the coins are tossed and I'm just about to take off on some 'here-you-want-some-Sunshine-offered-by-some-unknown-maiden-twenty-minutes-a go' LSD, and we're all looking on waiting to hear the hexagram and it turns out to be Fellowship with Men, and I can't believe what I'm hearing as Wavy reads it because that's what I'm looking for, and that's what this is all about, and it's happening here, now. The rest of the night was a bummer. I was alone and started to freak out and one of the camera guys came walking by and sat with me for a while and left me with a candle, so I felt a little bit like I belonged, but it was a long night. The next day I didn't know what I had hit me. If I'm remembering correctly that was the first time I had tried LSD. I wandered in a daze for a while and then pitched in with helping prepare the free kitchen as it became clear that a lot of people were showing up and we'd probably need to feed a bunch of them. They passed out the flying hog red armbands of the Please Force, and now I really belonged. The only things I remember about the music was how the Grateful Dead did not have a good set and we were going to get them over to the free stage by the free kitchen, but it never came together. The one thing that did come together was The Who playing Tommy, the night, the lights, the banners, everything came together. Abbie Hoffman getting up on stage between a number and Peter Townshend cracking him on the head with his guitar. Incredible music. And the Jefferson Airplane were next, but as the light started to show itself in the East and they started their set, it was clear that they had been upstaged by The Who. They just couldn't match it. So I got back to New Haven and my summer legal assistant job, and decide I'm not going back to Law School, but I'm going to find the real deal, the fellowship with men, a new way of living, all the promises of those times. Ran into the Hog Farm in Orlando the following Spring, got on the bus, actually found an old Navy bus and christened it Wavy's Navy, built it out over a few days, and headed up to Cincinnati, about five Hog Farm buses in caravan, where the Grateful Dead were going to be playing and Ken Kesey would be there. And so they were. Great music, good times. Workingman's Dead. Got off the bus at the start of the Great Medicine Ball Caravan in New Mexico about a year later. BB King on stage in the background; Paul Foster coming up with big old burned out eyes, hey Laney what's going on, and it was clear that drugs had melted beaucoup brain cells and for me it was time to move on. But the journey had begun and so it does. A few years later in Big Sur, running a natural foods store, watching some real-deal Jesus people for a while, I come to faith in Christ and He becomes my guiding light to this day. Paul did too, so I heard. Further up. Further in. Fellowship with Men. |