Over the years we change.

Back in the summer of '70 I was on the road and made 2 rock festivals. One was the Powder Ridge festival in Connecticut and the other was the Strawberry Fields festival in Mosport Raceway north ot Toronto.

Powder Ridge was a mess and to a point so was the Strawberry Fields festival. 

At the time I felt a need to be in on the action so I volunteered to help out in the medic tents. There was little there that was actual first aid as one thinks of it. However, there were a lot of mind altering drugs going around as I'm sure most of us are aware of. A lot of users were not cut out for these drugs and a lot of bad trips were the result.

At Powder Ridge I got pretty good at handling someone reeling out of their head and was considered a pretty good hand. I saw every sunrise and sunset, sleeping in the mornings in a corner of the trip tent.

When I was spotted at the Strawberry Fields fest by someone I had met at Powder Ridge I got drafted and did it all over again.

At the Strawberry Fields festival I began to wonder why I was wasting my time on some of the people because they didn't learn. They'd eat acid, flip out, people would bust their asses to bring them down and they would do the same damned thing a day or two later.

I guess some people can handle it, some can't. My attitude got to be that if you can't handle something stay away from it. It got aggravating seeing someone return to the trip tent reeling out of their gourds seeing who knows what in terrifying hallucinations while screaming theri lungs out.

I won't get into the details but it made me think that there is a difference between being kind and helpful and being stupid. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!

Anyway, the following fall I was sleeping at home as I hadn't left yet. I had turned in early. That night a van pulled up in the driveway and a friend of mine simply walked into my room and shook me awake.

"Timmy ate some acid and is flipping out in my van," he said. "What should we do?"

I put on my pants, pulled on a shirt and stepped into a pair of mocs and headed downstairs. My mother had heard something and met me in the kitchen.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Nothing to worry about," I replied. "Some kid got a bad hit of LSD and I'm going to try and settle him down."

"Take him to the hospital," said Ma. "I can hear him scream from here."

"Last thing we want to do," I said. "They'll just club him senseless with thorazine and call the police. I'm leaving. I'll be back."

Mom paled. "How long will you be gone?" she asked.

"Between a half-hour and 8 or 10 hours," I replied. " Depends. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

We left, hit the road and if I recall it didn't take long to get him settled down. We took him somewhere with a bunch of lights and got him to walk around and he started looking at the lights and his demons went away. 

A couple days later I went looking for him and found him downtown. When we met he profusely thanked me for helping him out. I listened to all the grateful crap and accepted his offer of a slice of pizza.

Then it was my turn and I told him that I didn't mind helping out a guy that was in a bad way. However, because he had discovered that acid brought out his demons that he had best avoid in in the future. Furthermore, there was no way in hell I was going to help him out in the future if he decided to continue down the road with LSD. The reason is because if he hadn't learned the other night he wasn't going to learn and I had no time for someone that didn't have any sense.

He looked a little shocked when I said that and I got up and left. I never heard if he took my advice or not because I started to avoid the people around me that were into psychedelics and hard drugs.

I'm glad I did.

Still, that was about the time I stopped wasting my time on people that were going through life doing stupid things just to be cool.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY