I grew up in Grand Prairie, TX during the 1950s-1970s. My circle of friends grew outward from a love of The Beatles and all things music. One day a cute boy tapped me on the shoulder and asked to borrow paper and pencil, a conversation ensued, friends were introduced and the rest is indeed history. Sounds simple enough, but oh, there was so much more.
My first young love extended to that original boy. In fact, all my girlfriends had a crush or two or three as they made the rounds going steady, breaking and making up with all the guys. Many summer nights as we approached high school were spent sneaking out, walking through the neighborhood and staying out too late smoking cigarettes or watching Ed Sullivan or Hullaballoo. Bands named The Who's Blues, The Mondrians, and Jacunda's Prism were formed, played, broke up, reorganized and performed more becoming the early training ground from which a lifelong musical journey was created. There were pregnancies, abortions, free love, babies, drugs, parties, laughter, tears, shared cars, car wrecks, shared apartments and houses, evictions, arrests, prison sentences, fears, weddings, beaded doorways, incense, graveyards at midnight, kisses on rooftops, job hiring, firing and quitting and all to a backdrop of The Stones, Cream, The Byrds, and Jefferson Airplane. We were all looking for "Somebody to Love" and more often than not we were practicing "Love the One Your With" (Stephen Stills). A bunch of hippies living in the center of the Dallas/Ft.Worth metroplex, we searched out our individual paths and sometimes burned bridges.
Elements of our group literally left, never to return. They were with us through it all until they chose to flee the middle-class hell they thought existed there and never looked back. Others hung there for a decade or so after high school making families and trying to be adult...but cool at it. Then there were the musicians who took off for California or Colorado playing gigs that rubbed elbows with the greats. We all took turns sneaking backstage at concerts and some even worked their way into inner circles of stardom. But for the most part a core group remained and made a life for themselves that wove the unifying thread of music into every area of life. Mastering the licks, playing for cheap, hauling equipment the guys formed bands that have stood the test of time. The ones that didn't are still jamming around the coffee table with old friends on weekends and holidays. Along the way we got old.
Okay, not ooooold, just old. In other words, we aged. Now in our 60s we secretly judge each others paunchy middles, greying hair, and wrinkles. Some who wouldn't be caught dead with a fat girl now have a gut to be reckoned with. It's kind of funny, I guess. But here's what it really great...when I look at them with my eyes those are physical things I see. When I look at them with my heart, we are still 14, 15, 16+. Forever young is a term I've used repeatedly about these friends that I still love because they were the cast of characters that shaped and shared my early and later years. Tenderness overwhelms me as I hug the boy I first loved. Laughter fills me as I watch the swagger like Jagger one has and frustration plagues me when I see one who made multitudes of bad choices. Why some left and some didn't is a mystical thing in my nostalgia-prone mind. But one thing I'll always know. I love those people...always have, always will.
Yesterday we said farewell to one during a full moon. I thought about the irony of a full reflective moon that shines it's cool evening glow over all the darkness of the night and imagine that there's still a little glow left in all of us. One of the most popular and gifted musicians of the group entered The Light and joined a heavenly band that has an eternal gig. It was hard to say good-bye. However, it was even more so for all the guys...his fellow musicians and childhood friends. "My boys" as I like to fondly call them, stepped up to the plate and played in honor and tribute of their passing friend. A favorite song, The Weight, highlighted their harmonies. I Shall Be Released by Bob Dylan talked about the light shining. And they ended with I Saw the Light with a tag at the end of Will the Circle Be Unbroken. There were voices joining in, tears all around, and hearts that ached hard. The circle WILL be broken over and over again as we grow old, get sick, die...it's a guarantee. However, the circle of joined hands will close the gap and although the circle shrinks, it reaches for the hand closest to it to help it along. We're passing the torch on to the next generation. It's a freaky thing to consider that our children and grandchildren may never experience a similar magic like we had during the Hippie Generation. We "are stardust, we are golden" and I don't know if they will ever know what that was like.
My husband, not a part of this original group and more biker than hippie, has made a joke about all of us ending up in the "home for aging rockers and sitting in our rockers". He's probably right. I'll blink a few times and everything will have changed. Looking to my right or left I'll see a nearly unrecognizable face behind the ravages of time, but when I look deep into their eyes...I think I'll know who they are. Peace Baby!
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