I met Carol and Jack when I left home after the altercation with my Mother (that story is told in the Unpublished Post referred to in the opening act. If this ever sees the light of day as an autobiography it will appear there. Chilling!). I lived with them for almost a year until I realized that having joined the research team in the Everglades I needed to be away from the counterculture’s 24-hour schedule to be able to work. Jack was an architect. Carol was a community organizer.
The day I left home I needed a place to crash. Some hippies in Peacock Park on Biscayne Bay directed me to a house made of quarried coral rock on Oak Avenue. People lounged about on the front lawn. It was dusk. The front door was open, yellow incandescent light streaming out and illuminating the front walkway. It was very busy, people continuously coming and going. I reached the top step. Straight ahead of me, in a big stuffed chair against the wall, sat a tall, gaunt, flaxen haired man with an equally blonde little girl in his lap, reading a fairy tale to her.
Hanging above his head was a banner, in a Tolkien Elvish script, that said “No War Toys”. Carol was the local chapter’s chair. As I stepped across the threshold, another tow-headed urchin, this time a little boy, leaped out from behind the wall blocking my path. A bed sheet was tied under his chin and draped over his shoulders like a cape. He was brandishing a TOY PLASTIC SWORD, silver gray.
“Halt! Who goes there? Wanna fight?”
No War Toys indeed! And that is how I met Tad and Sarah.
When I lived with them in the Grove I bought a white clay Dutch Meerschaum pipe just for marijuana. It was clay with a long curving stem, not with only the separate bowl of meerschaum as most of them are made. It was translucent when held up to the light. In just a short time it developed not only a wonderful aroma, but the most magnificent colorful permeation of resins from the smoke; brown, green and gold. I loved that pipe. It was the envy of many friends.
One morning Tad and Sara shook me awake.
“Phil, wake up. Wake UP!”
I opened my eyes. There were the towheads, standing over me, sudsy toothbrushes in hand, with my PIPE!!
“Look, Phil! Your pipe smelled funny” they said, wrinkling their little noses and screwing up their mischievous faces.
“We washed it for you!”
Gee, thanks, kids, I love you too! Carol was very upset and wanted to discipline them, but I took it with great equanimity. That might surprise my kids to hear that now! It became their bubble pipe, so it was not a total loss!
Carol was from the farming region called the Redlands, south of Miami near Homestead. Her family was quite religious and conservative. They spent Thanksgiving with her family every year. As so often happens in the company of many adults, the children were getting very little attention. Children know how to remedy that. Sarah declares:
“My Mommy smokes marijuana!”.
Before anyone could react, Tad hauls off and hits her in the shoulder:
“Mommy told you never to talk about that!”
I would have given anything to have been there!