The Friendship Route

By Nancy Caristia

From the LUV Fest Sixties into the paranoid new millennium, Kari chronicles emotions, explosions, friendships, abductions, conspiracies, advance technology and simple spiritual truths. Her story runs the gamut.

Kari's childhood was a mystery. She and her Mom moved around like gypsies. When her Mother died, she was left alone knowing little about who she was. By coincidence or destiny, for the rest of her life events fell in place that led to the truth of her past ... but ... what truth, when in the end ... Nothing is as it seems?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Caristia
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005357306

Book preview

PROLOGUE

It was a day in May, 1973. We were in southern New Mexico sitting in Jesse Lane's VW camper van. It was the only vehicle in the parking lot of Pancho Villa State Park. Jesse swiped his long, wavy blond hair from his eyes. I watched him as he studied the map propped against the steering wheel.

The sign, right over there, says we're on Route 9. I pointed to a National Monument info sign posted a few feet from the van. Says it's the Friendship Route.

I know … I read the blurb somewhere … called the Friendship Route cause some of it runs close to the Mexican border. Jesse moved his finger from legend to route to measure mileage. Maybe a little over a hundred miles to Coronado National Forest. It's right after you cross into Arizona. There's camping just a few miles in. Should make it before dark. He took a swig from the canteen.

Good, I said, opening the passenger door. I better go. I looked down at my flaky dry arms. If I've got any piss left to pee that is.

Returning from the outhouse, I stopped to look over Pancho Villa's monument. It was nothing but a square patch of cactus plants. There was an historic marker. Skimming it, I read: 1916 - Mexican rebel - Pancho Villa raided US military camp at Columbus, New Mexico - General Pershing storms Mexico in pursuit of Pancho … yada, yada, yada. All the cacti were in full bloom ... beautiful sun-blinks of reds, yellows, purples. Against the ashy-hot sweep, they looked like fallen angels.

When I returned to the van, Jesse was looking up through the windshield with binoculars. His mouth was twitching. He was mumbling like he always did when his thoughts were focused. His sights were on an airplane that had flown over the park and was now heading west.

As he replaced the glasses back in its case, I asked: What's so interesting?

Remember that KOA campground in Ohio … that big open space near the highway … we were tossing the frisbee and this plane, flying low ...

Yeah, you said it was a crop duster.

He put the binoculars on the floor between the seats and picked up the canteen again. Took a swig. Handed it to me. I lifted it to my lips, let a little water fall into my mouth, swished the liquid around. It was icky warm. I swallowed. UGH!

Then again at the Black Mesa, said Jesse. I swear it's the same plane.

Huh?

A De Havilland Beaver … got those broad wings with blunt ends. Saw one once … up close ... the Navy uses them to train pilots. The army used a lot of them as bush planes in Vietnam.

So … there's more than one then, I said, making a silly face.

That sucker that just flew by had the same gray paint job and a blue stripe on it's belly … the same radial engine sound too.

He sounded disgusted so I just said, Let's go.

He whipped off his t-shirt and started the van. His lean, white torso looked extra pale against his blotchy red arms and neck. Straight on, the sun was brutal. But, under the shelter of the light colored van roof, the dry hot was tolerable. Jesse eased the van out of the lot and we were off.

The Friendship Route was anything but friendly. It was miles and miles of gravel-grit. A dust cloud big as a semi followed in our wake. Early on, we saw hundreds of abandoned junk cars scattered on both sides of the road. Then, as we drove on, there was only scant patches of scrub grass, and caking sand sand sand. The monotone monotony was maddening. Then we saw the mounds ... in the distance. Closer yet we saw … BONES! Jesse slammed on the brakes. There were heaps and heaps and heaps of bones scatter to yonder. Cattle bones?

We left the van in the middle of the road. Why not? Jesse put his t-shirt back on and we both grabbed hats. When we reached the closest mound, all suddenly felt creepy-eerie to me. I wasn't sure why. I wasn't sure that I wanted to be there. Right away, Jesse started pulling out skulls and leg bones.

Shit, what are you doing? I asked. He was accumulating his own little mound. "What are you going to do with those?"

Souvenirs.

There's no room.

What's the big problem? When I find some rope I'll tie them to the roof rack. He jerked loose an even bigger skull deeper in the pile. This caused a mini avalanche and bones tumbled onto our feet. "What the ...?" Jesse kicked away some big bones until a little skull and part of a vertebra was completely exposed.

It's a little kid . . . isn't it? I screeched and backed up. "God! HOLY SHIT!"

Jesse stood rigid.

Then, we heard a distant whomp whomp whomp sound that became louder and louder as we watch a helicopter approach. When it reached us, it hovered in mid air just enough distance away so that its whirling blades didn't sand blast us raw and cause flinging bones to finish us off.

Suddenly, I just bolted. Ran. I had supposed that Jesse was right behind. However, when I climbed into the passenger's seat of the van and looked back, I saw him just then sprint away from the bone rubble. He looked like a quarterback clutching a football. When he reached the van, he whipped open the driver's door, jumped onto the seat, and flung the little skull over his shoulder. I watched it bounce off the ice chest. We peeled off.

As Jesse held foot to the metal, I could swear I smelt hot burning rubber. Eyes riveted to behind, I watched as the whirlybird casually followed. Stupid, I thought, we can't possibly outrun it! When it made a wide circle around us, I closed my eyes. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! I prayed to the sky, the galaxy, the universe. Thankfully, the helicopter swerved away, climbed, increased speed, and headed back north.

There weren't any big numbers or letters painted on it. I said when I had finally caught my breath. "Was it military? Goddammit, it's not like we were trespassing."

Jesse slowed down. Drove on without saying a word. He didn't even stop to switch drivers. Finally, east-west Route 9 ended at north-south Route 80. A few miles south on 80 we exited to a road east that crossed the border into Arizona and then a few more miles into the Coronado National Forest.

The road that led to our designated primitive campground was rough and rocky. We had to cross a creek before entering a canyon like clearing. There where six crude sites, each with a fire pit and battered picnic table. At the entrance, a water spigot stuck out of a cement slab. A sign read, Potable Water. A weather-beaten outhouse stood at the extreme opposite end of the campsite.

Not a sole was around. We chose the best-est site, and, like practiced nomads, quickly set up camp: moved the picnic table closer to the van, hauled out the camp stove, ice chest, and food box. As I bent to grab the 5 gallon water jug to fill up at the pump, I noticed that Jesse had shoved the skull under the van. It's huge eye holes taunted me. I wished it wasn't there.

While Jesse boiled hot dogs, I set off to gather wood for an evening fire. Mostly branches of Arizona cypress trees, or pine. I accumulated a clumsy armful, and, as I was hauling it back to camp, I noticed a building upstream from where we had crossed the creek at the entrance.

After supper I did the cleanup while Jesse set up for a campfire. It was dusk, not dark. Let's take a walk. he said.

I pulled long jeans out of my knapsack. After changing, I tucked my cut-offs into the bag. The luggage held everything I owned: clothes, undies, towel, soap, toothbrush, feminine stuff, wallet – everything. Even a pilfered roll of toilet paper. Although kicked out of Girl Scouts when a kid, I still remembered the motto … Be prepared.

We strolled over to the building by the stream. It was a utility shed with a Forestry emblem on the door. Looking through the window we saw tools, signs, scattered boxes. On the counter opposite one of the windows, I saw a tripod and two black cases with straps. I assumed they held special camera equipment because the cases were larger than average. They each had a large sticker on the front: a circle with a silhouette of a bird in the center.

That's pretty stupid, said Jesse. leaving equipment out in the open. That's government employees for you. What do they care, it's not their bucks?

It was dark by the time we got back to camp. Jesse lit the fire. We sat on the bench of the picnic table and watched the sputtering flames kindle to life. First, little twigs flared rambunctious, then, into a serious glow – blue-red-yellow-orange mix flames curled round branches and slithered up to passionately lick the dark.

Jesse abruptly stood up. Went over to the van. He returned with a three-quarter full bottle of Bacardi dark rum, a two quart bottle of coke and two coffee mugs.

After today, he said. We deserve a drink!

My system did not like hard liquor. No more beer?

Not since Albuquerque.

Jesse mixed the drinks and handed me one. I took a small sip. No ice and flat coke made for an awful syrupy sweetness down my throat and into my gut. UGH! I thought you were going to pick up beer when we last filled up."

Decided not to buy any more beer, or cigarettes. Not until California. Gotta watch the bucks. Jesse pointed his glass toward the rum bottle. Last of the Spring Street stock.

Jesse had been in the Navy assigned to a destroyer tender whose base port was in Newport, Rhode Island. The Spring Street Hotel, where he lived off base, was a rat hole wholly tenanted by sailors. Any cruises to Puerto Rico stocked their kitchen cabinets with bottles of rum … for about at least a week. Jesse had hoarded this one bottle.

The Spring Street Hotel was a dump, I said. Before we left Newport though, I think they started remodeling it … for the tourist trade. I thought about how after the navy had decided to remove the ships from the base, Newport had panicked. The exploiting the sailor gig was over. The Chamber of Commerce had started advertising ... Vacation in Scenic Newport.

CHAPTER 1

I had met Jesse on Spring Street. His van had been double parked in front of the Spring Street Hotel, clogging the narrow street. He and his buddies were carting cases of beer from the van into the building. I was chauffeuring my employer, and, when we were stalled behind the van, Mr. O'Brien got pissed. He stuck his head out the back window and rasped. "Move it you fucking assholes. Think you own the whole goddamn city!" He was a remnant of the old guard Newport upper crust. It was inbred in them to scorn anything Navy.

No one heard him though. My employer's throat and breathing had been compromised by years of smoking and barking obscenities. He had quit cigarettes but still smoked cigars and a pipe. The heavy driver's door of the old Cadillac creaked and groaned as I opened it. I walked up behind the group. You guys almost done? I asked.

Jesse was the first to look up. He grinned goofy face at me, his blue-green eyes blinking. Last case. he said. He hefted it and handed it to the guy next to him Bring it up. I'll go find a parking space.

That was that. He moved the van and I continued on to the post office and then home. Mr. O'Brien, Paddy O'Brien, owned a small mansion in upper Newport on a side street near where Bellevue Avenue starts. Bellevue Avenue was the tourist thoroughfare where the famous Gilded Age mansions stood; The Marble House, Rosecliff, Vanderbilt's Breakers. There was a path that followed the high cliff shore of Eastern Newport that allowed you to walk behind a few of the mansions, spy upon their backyards. I use to pack a lunch, a book, and sketch pad and walk the length of it and back. On weekdays it was usually a solitary walk. That is, back in the late 60s, before Cliff Walk became a National Recreation Trail and a Newport tourist attraction.

Paddy was the lone heir of an old money family. Pirates and bootleggers, answered Paddy when I asked him the origins of the wealth. I never discovered if he was kidding me or not. The three storied house was boarded up but decently preserved. At the edge of the property, near where the driveway ended, was a caretaker's cottage - cute as a doll house kind of place. It was Paddy's Pad. So said a wooden sign, in carved letters, above the door. My pad was a make-shift apartment above a two car garage.

Free rent was half my salary. I did the occasional chauffeuring, P.O. runs and grocery pickups, but my main job was paste-up artist. I prepared Paddy's Magazine for publishing. The garage space below my apartment was the office we worked in. It was one big room with pitted linoleum floor, wood panel walls, a compact little kitchen arrangement, a gas heater, an in-the-window air conditioner and a small bathroom in a back corner.

In the center of the office stood Paddy's huge, ancient, oak roll top desk. My drawing board butted up against the back of It. These two pieces of furniture featured as an island encircled by a sea of glut. Stacks of books, binders, newspapers and magazines covered most of the floor space and various folding card tables. The only sturdy table in the room, flushed against the back wall, was used to support the display type type-setting machine and an IBM Selectric typewriter for printing out text copy.

All day long Paddy sat at his cluttered desk enveloped in smoke ... reading, typing, swearing, yelping as his bushy eyebrows sprung up and down. There was always the ever-ready pencil perched on his right ear. He had a mop of unruly gray-white hair, and, since he shaved but every two or three days, usually sported a scrubby beard.

I was constantly busy and loved what I did. Loved the mechanics of designing the layout, spec-ing type, scaling graphics for Paddy's rogue magazine. I had learned the skills when a kid. Mom had been a freelance illustrator and graphics designer for New York magazines and publishing houses in the 50's. By the time I was eight, she had taught me all the mechanics. With me doing the busy work and she the major stuff, we had more time for fun: sketching trips, reading, hiking, excursions around New England in her station wagon. The big tank was painted a shitty brown and was outfitted functional. There was no back seat. Just a big empty space that was filled with art stuff and blankets. It served as our sketching perch and sleeping quarters on overnight jaunts.

Along with the routine, there were some fun-craziness too. If Paddy visualized an editorial cartoon to accompany an essay, all was put on the back burner. Hey Kari! Listen! Sketch this out! Paddy would have this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink scene in his head that I was suppose to make a three column five inch portrayal of. Miraculously, after copious reworks, Paddy would be satisfied. He'd pour the requisite measure of scotch into his coffee, toast to creativity, and acknowledge, "We did it".

Paddy's publication had originated in Greenwich Village, New York City. He founded, owned, editorialized, and managed it elusively. Financially it was a flat-line deal, but that didn't matter. All his life, the coffers of trust funds and family inheritance was the boat that kept him afloat. In his early years he had traveled and matriculated in various institutions of higher learning. When he finally attained a PhD at Columbia University in New York City, Doc O'Brien felt compelled to recite line after line of Whitman's Song of Myself: I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, to the ad nauseam of many of the Village's barroom patrons.

It was during the 1940s, when he was in his thirties, that he acquired the moniker Sir Paddy. A tribute to his frequent paddy wagon transports to the dry out. Ultimately however, having reached rock bottom, friends encouraged him to purchase an old printing press and celebrate himself on paper instead.

Paddy had moved back to home base Newport only a short time before I started working for him – mid 1968. He never mentioned why he had left the Village. Nevertheless, he was, in spades, nostalgic about the Village's life pulse. As I worked, he would recite tales of bongos and jazz , beatniks and hippies, Columbia U, and Village personalities. Some names even I was familiar with ... Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Merton, Berrigan Brothers, etc.

CHAPTER 2

Sometimes Paddy would tease-test me about how I could be so blasé about the world I lived in. He told me that my youth obligated me to be more Kinetic – with a capital K. "Christ, your part of the New Age generation. Your suppose to be following your bliss, crusading against all the shitworks the Government and big business is perpetrating."

Kudos to Paddy, I thought, close to seventy and still filled with piss and vinegar. Whereas I, in my twenties, was already stuck in a groove of what's the use? My attitude wasn't inborn. It had been implanted.

"What's the fucking use of caring? That was my Mother's oft posed question. One incident I will never forget. It happened when we were standing in front of Picasso's mural, Guernica, (During the period it hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art), a brutal portrayal of the slaughter of a Catalonian village during the Spanish Civil War. To my ten year old eyes, the painting was as chopped-up disturbing as my Mother's incipient bouts of wild weirdness.

In this instance, my Mother was determined to enlighten the other museum patrons about what she thought Pablo Casals' message was intrinsically all about. Dark forces! she practically screamed. Dark forces want to destroy the earth. The on-lookers gaped as the museum guards ushered us out. The humiliating image remained frame-froze onto my frontal lobe.

Not that Paddy was ill-intentioned picking on me. He was Irish. All his remarks, casual or not, were naturally pugnacious. If I was out seeking bliss and poking flowers into soldiers' rifles, I retorted, " how could I be helping you publish your protesting."

There's that, said Paddy. But you do live in your own little world Kari.

Paddy was right about that. I had often sneaked off to be alone, even as a kid. Alone, I was free to imagine the woods all mine. Free to collect tree mushroom and scratch pictures on them. Free to read funny-books (that's what we called comic books in the 50s) neath a tree or on the highest branches I could climb up to.

By age eleven, however, alone meant too much time to think. It was a time when I was asking: why was my life warping at the edges? Mom's bubbly good-fun had perniciously morphed into moody despondence, then detachment, then, way off yonder.

When Social services finally interfered and attempted to trace my Mother's parents whereabouts, they discovered that both were deceased. When no other relatives could be located, the State expeditiously enrolled me into a local orphanage. The Linberg Orphanage was a family charity home of long and venerated standing. In the early nineteen hundreds, a Swedish pastor, Rev. Eric Linberg had opened the home. His son and grandson had carried it on through to the fifties, even to the late sixties I think.

Even though a family operation, with so many kids to care for it meant that chores ranked higher than affection. Us orphans were all degrees of farm hands. We picked corn, milked cows, planted potatoes, gathered eggs and sold the produce door to door.

Living arrangements were regimented too. Like a boot camp. We slept on cots lined up on each side of a long room. Girls in one section of the home, boys in another. Nights, you could hear coughs and weeps and fidgety dreamers talking in their sleep. As I lay awake, I could sense dismal spirits hovering. Sucking off the excrement of fear and grief. The same beasties that had tortured Mom.

Only once was I brought to the Middleday Asylum to see Mom. Just before she died. To this very day, every egregious detail of that visit is sharp and clear in my mind. The long, curving driveway through the woods. The towering stone hospital that loomed out of the ominous gray morning mist. The empty hallways dimly lit with low-watt light bulbs hanging bare. Then, the even dimmer room. I told the doctor to let the sunshine in. Doctor Superior in his starch white coat, all erudition with no fucking heart. He didn't see what I saw. The troubled, pleading stranger staring out of Mom's unblinking eyes.

CHAPTER 3

"THAT NECKLACE!" The screechy voice had scared the shit out of me.

I was peeling potatoes, and, so deep into daydreaming that the dusky skin rinds were missing the catch-pail between my feet. The screech had caused me to I swing my head up so fast I wasn't sure what I was looking at – bulging boobs? Expensive fabric stretched over them like an elastic band. CRIPE! One of the charity volunteers was so close, her cloying perfume vapors were choking me.

The Charity Volunteers were the wives and daughters of the city's prosperous citizens. We Linberg orphanage kids were being forever warned. Be courteous and above all well-mannered in their presence.

"SHIT-bullar!" opined one of the kitchen workers about the charity motives of the volunteers. Köttbullar was the Swedish word for meatball but pronouncing it sounded like: SHIT-bullar. It was a work-around for the cook's urge to express vulgar.

"Charity SHIT-bullar… ti's to spy, the woman would say as she stirred a pot of stew. The massive flesh dangling off her upper arms jiggling with each stroke. Always snooping snooping snooping for dirt. That's for what they volunteer."

The volunteer who nose was snooping inches from the necklace next my throat, finally backed away from me and stood straight again. Then said, I'd spot that emerald setting anywhere … even from the moon.

The blouse I was wearing was sizes too big so it's neckline drooped, exposing the necklace I mostly tried to keep hidden. My Mother had fastened it there months before they had taken her away … told me to call it my "love button". I never took it off. Mostly because I didn't want it stolen or lost.

"CHILD, my name is Mrs. Amanda Koel Archer," the woman announced loud enough to inform the pigeons on the roof. I remained mute. My attention focused on the skin round her hairline. The strands were pulled back into a bun so tight it made her eyebrows pull toward the temples.

She grimaced at my silence. "Well, I suppose you have a name … do you not?"

Kari. I said.

She then looked me up and down as if I was a chicken for sale. You could be Svea's daughter I suppose. There's little resemblance though. She puckered her lips. All that beautiful Nordic bloodline. She again considered me closely.

Wherever did you acquire those dark brown eyes. she asked. I faked a shy shrugged of the shoulders. I really wanted to spit in her face.

"YES," she finally got out of me, I was Svea Peterson's (my Mother's maiden name) daughter. With that, Mrs. Amanda Koel Archer plunked her oversize ass on a chair next to mine and reviewed for me my back story.

Mom's mother had been Norwegian, her father Swedish. Emerald was Mom's birthstone. How did this Amanda know all this? When Mom had graduated from Normal School to become a teacher, her immigrant parents were so proud they needed to memorialize the accomplishment. They ventured to Koel's, the stellar Jewelry shop on the corner of Liberty and Main, to purchase the same emerald necklace that I was wearing. Amanda, the proprietor's daughter, had helped my Grandparents design the setting.

Your Mother was so beautiful, said Mrs. Archer. "Her flaxen hair, her blue blue eyes … my Father thought her Nordic features flawless. I will admit, I was a bit jealous."

To my Mother's parents dismay (this according to Mrs. Archer), Mom had foolishly renege on her teaching profession to pursue ART… of all things. Had moved to an artist colony in New York, somewhere on Long Island.

Mom had never told me much about her past. She had dropped tid-bits about teaching, and, her hometown's renown Museum of American Art, but little else. I knew she had met my Father at an art colony, that Dad had died in the war, that they had lived in a cold-water flat in New York City because that was where his work was at.

I had just turned seven, 1952, when my mother and I had moved out of New York City to Connecticut. Mom had promised me that "Connecticut was special and spacious." We bounced around this spaciousness like gypsies, switching from one crappy domicile to another. So many I've forgotten some. Except the last place we lived. There was a slanting barn behind the house that Mom burned down to rid it of demons.

CHAPTER 4

The first Sunday of each month the orphanage made a big sheet cake for all that month's birthday kids. In the May of 1960, the year I had turned fifteen, I ate my piece of cake outside. I had wanted solitude. I had wanted to exclusively savor the budding Spring. As I sat on the front steps of the all-purpose building, I thought of how Mom's favorite color was yellow, like the yellow forsythia, the yellow daffodils popping up. Yellow was always the first color of Spring.

The sudden engine noise snapped me out of reverie. I listened to tires crushing gravel. Then, round the corner, came a cloud of driveway dust. A black sedan pulled up and stopped just short of the front steps. At the same moment of the visitor's arrival, the Rev. Eric Linberg the third, bounded out the front door.

I had no inkling that the car had to do with me. But, the reverend introduced me to my Uncle Alonzo Donzo like I had been expecting him all along. My Father had a brother? Alonzo explained that he and his wife had been living in Europe for the past twenty years. The good Reverend mouthed sentiments about my good fortune. I was confused, there were to many questions.

Why Uncle Alonzo had fallen out of the sky was beyond comprehension. In any case, he quite speedily became my adopted guardian. It all had seemed so staged, so strange. It was like Alonzo and Tina, his fuzzy-headed pixie of a wife, decided one day to utilize their spare bedroom. Does that make sense? Whatever, I was more that willing to be anywhere else but the orphanage.

My new guardians lived in a moderate size house, but quality built and furnished. It was located in an upscale suburb of Hartford. I had my own room, an allowance, few rules. They did not attempt to be parental lovey-dove. Which suited me fine. Everything turned out fine. There was no working your ass off from morning to night. There was not a cow or chicken in sight. A cleaning woman came round once, sometimes twice a week. She cleaned my room. My sole duty, it seemed, was to unobtrusively exist. I was so extremely grateful, I virtually tip-toed around the place.

There was a framed picture of Alonzo and Dad on a corner table in the living room. They were both young men. Alonzo was older. Dad had been taller. Dad flashed a teasing smile like a romantic Italian actor. Alonzo looked aristocratic. All serious and standing erect in his tailored suit.

Alonzo's wife, Tina, was very short, very plump and had a very very pretty face. She loved to cook and garden. If she yearned for more than that, you'd never know it. She was boss of the household, which ran efficient and tidy.

Public High school was boring, but bearable. I did my best to stay under the radar. Made only friendly acquaintance with fellow students. Much of my free time was spent in the Municipal Library browsing between the stacks. I liked to let the vibes beckon me to what to read next. The pull-ins ranged from novels to poetry to classics to history to science. I would read deep into the night. I also learned and practiced cartooning from how-to-books.

At the end of my sophomore year, I was assigned a guidance counselor. She was starchy and dictatorial. She pretty much steered me into a college curriculum. When she ask me about electives I vied for a drafting course the Industrial Education curriculum offered. Drafting was drawing, right? You'd think I was pitching for Whoring 101. The guidance woman got extremely uppity and made it explicitly clear …"THAT course is ONLY for BOYS in shop".

I didn't make a fuss. What would had been the use? In the 50s men pissed standing up, women had to squat. So I drew cartoons instead. But then I found an after-school paste-up job. An easy bus ride into the city (Hartford) at a small mom and pop printing operation. At first I worried, considering the social status thing and all, that Alonzo and Tina wouldn't approve. But they didn't care. Said nothing.

CHAPTER 5

I went to the State's University because it was next on Alonzo's list and I had no alternatives in mind. The first week of attendance was freshman orientation. I was given a silly beany cap to wear and had to attend campus code classes and welcoming tea parties. It was all early 1960s corny. The counterculture do your own thing epoch hadn't taken hold yet. Only the art majors were feeling the vibes. They were tinkering. The guys were letting their hair grow longer. Girls began wearing colorful dangling earrings. Both sexes were splitting open their jeans at the knees. And, since LSD and pot wasn't easily accessible yet, they tripped on wine coolers and diet amphetamine pills swiped from their parent's medicine cabinets.

I had thought about majoring in art, but it was fine art's stuff being offered. I didn't want to paint pictures or study art history. I had always laughed inside whenever a councilor had asked me, with a straight face, What are your plans for the future? PLANS? Hop on a bus until it feels right to get off? But anyways, I enjoyed the free-style ambiance of the Arts Building located just across the back parking lot from my dorm building. I spent a lot of time wandering around the premises watching kids paint and sculpt and rehearse plays.

At least higher education wasn't the same old high school goody-goody pabulum. It was a wake up call. The humanities I came to understand was all about studying human behavior by torturing mice, making dogs drool, and wiring apes to electric shock machines.

Campus life itself was so so. It hummed along fairly well until the Friday in November when Kennedy got shot. The news hit the campus like a tsunami. Dorm mates went hysteric: screeching, crying, sobbing. I too crowded into the lounge to watch the TV coverage but as shocking as the event was I didn't freak out. I was to busy thinking … How could skinny, mousy, little dishrag Osborne had been capable of pulling off such a major game-changer?

The campus dramatics didn't last long because that particular Friday was the beginning of the week-long Thanksgiving Holiday break. Before the sun had set, the campus was practically empty. I had decided to stay on campus during the break because Alonzo and Tina were going to be busy packing boxes. They were relocating to Rhode Island. I would have just been in the way.

Saturday morning I fixed instant coffee and gazed out my dorm window. The setting seemed like the day after the world had ended. When the hall phone rang I almost didn't answer it, but then decided I should. Surprise, it was for me. A guy named Tommy, who I was only marginally acquainted with,