You might wonder where the girl-next-door has gone. You know, the pretty girl who at 15, 17, any young age, has innocent eyes, soft, clean skin, and those nubile breasts. From an early age, they are prettier than most girls. For most, those looks continue into later life. 1950's television was all about them. Now, forty years later, are there 1995 versions of them and are they still symbols of purity and character?
And then there are the cherubs, the bright-faced, round- faced, chubbier and smaller girls with mischievous smiles. Cherubs like to have fun and always surprise me with their spontaneity. Unfortunately, like all of us, they too become older, and we see many former cherubs around, still seeking enjoyments in life.
I haven't thought much about cherubs or the girl-next-door but now on this, the Grateful Dead's Summer 1995 Tour, they are everywhere. I'm in Indianapolis, the first stop of my small portion of the tour. The next venues are St. Louis and Chicago.
In the parking lots, among vendors, walking around the entrance, cruising the cars in line, I see the girls-next-door with their lonely index fingers pointing to the sky. Many times, the other arm holds the tired one in a cradling fashion, with the index finger extended pleedingly upward. The plaintive, musical call of "I need a miracle" seeps through their peaceful, inviting smiles. Some even make the word "miracle" into a verb. They say, "Miracle me. Oh, please someone, miracle me."
I want to give them everything I own.
My Grateful Dead Tour began yesterday with Bud and the cherubs. Bongs, beer, and Bud's scotch drove us through a Bloomington, Indiana night of streetside-parked parties. Kendra steered the bus to J's job where we had some beers and made our plans. Then back to a street corner for more. The scotch finally got to me as we drove blindly to a country friend's party. We turned around and camped in town by the farmers' market so we could be the first ones there on Saturday morning. I slept on top of the bus.
Pebbles bouncing on the metal roof woke me. My head still spun. "What time is it?" I asked Bud. He had more pebbles in his hand.
"Seven o'clock. Time to wake up. Let's check out the market."
Bud's stamina at age fifty-nine amazes me. The night before last, he saw the Detroit show with his son and drove the bus all day yesterday to my house. "I never looked at a map. I just used the dashboard compass and headed south and west. Except for Jackson, Michigan, where the roads went in circles and I couldn't get out of the downtown, by going south and west, I got to Indianapolis with no problems." His white hair was combed, ready for a strong wind to stand it up again.
A few wake-up bongs, a hit of scotch and we ambled through the market. I stocked up on fruit. Bud got flowers to go on the bus' dining table. It stood between bench seats inscribed "Tundra Mama", after Ruth, the Cree woman we met last summer in Churchill, Manitoba. She ran the town with her bulk and powerful personality.
Then we embarked upon a schedule of activities that took until two when we had to leave to pick up Marty and Bud's daughter, Deborah. The Cherubs and their friends, Kevin and Jolie, left town with us. We stopped at The Fishery to get catfish for the evening.
Bud got way too many fish. He took a cooler, put some water n it and had the guy fill it with live catfish. They splattered and flailed in a squirming mass, splashing water until the white top closed off their world. They sputtered to mild swishes before becoming quiet.
One white fish swam among all the dark ones left over in the large holding tank. I took a picture of him. He was looking at me. I thought of Greg Brown's lyric, "You move through my dreams, like a trout moves through a pool."
We careened into the airport right on time but the plane was late. We found a somewhat peaceful parking lot nearby for the two hour wait. Planes occasionally screeched overhead, searing our bones in tremendous blasts of noise. We did bongs, took short naps, and got ready for Marty and Deborah's arrival.
When they finally got on the bus, Marty began a monologue from the movie "Pulp Fiction." He yelled in 100 decibels, "I'm a motherfuckin' mushroom cloud, motherfucker."
We went to my house and as evening came on, the party gained in force. We attempted to cut up catfish on the sidewalk but it got too dark. Then we moved through more drugs and into in my kitchen. Kevin, Marty, and I created a catfish slaughter house on the counter. Marty, wrapped in dark plastic trash bags, chopped the heads off. The loud thwacks splattered blood on the walls. Kevin cleaned out the insides, the first time he'd done this. He was soon imitating Marty, "I'm a motherfuckin' mushroom cloud, motherfucker!"
Marty said, "You know when he's saying that, right? He and Johnny Revolting are comparing how tough they are. So, what's his name, Jackson, comes up with the ultimate power."
Saying it slowly, with enunciation, "motherfuckin' mushroom cloud, motherfucker," Marty emphasizes the word, "motherfuckin'. "Yeah, listen to that. He uses motherfuckin' twice in the same sentence, as an adjective and a pronoun. Get what I'm sayin'?" Marty's intensity was joyously in your face.
My role was to take these raw fish bodies and create boneless filets. Slippery, slimy fish, squirting on the wooden cutting board. It was too small for the fish.
Jolie, tried her hand at fileting. It's quite a hard thing to do. She told me that she had first had sex about a year ago. With her first boyfriend.
"So, how'd you like it?" I asked.
"It was okay, but not all it's cranked up to be."
"Maybe you just need to practice more. You should tell your boyfriend that."
"He's not my boyfriend anymore."
"Well, good. This can be a time for you to experiment."
"Right, right," she said and roughly sliced the meat away from the bones.
Bud was outside cooking potatoes and corn-on-the-cob. He had poured coals into the gutter in front of the bus, lit them, and put a wire grill on top. The fire burned hot.
We had a midnight dinner which spread across my downtown lawn and below the three-tiered fountain that makes my eclectic neighborhood so unique.
Cherubs and scotch, mushrooms and bongs, laughing and rapping, "Motherfuckin' mushroom cloud, motherfucker." We enveloped neighbors and passersby into the party.
Lloyd and Pat, from across the street, stood with Bud, Marty and me in front of the bus in the dark hour before dawn. Lloyd, a 37 year old working guy, said, "Yeah, this is what I really want. To own a bus, fix it up, travel around. Yeah, that's what I want. I've talked about this for a long time. And I just can't believe it. Here it is right in front of me." The water, falling in the nearby fountain, sounded like rain.
I fell asleep in my bed, holding onto a cherub's beautiful breast. She couldn't sleep and went outside for sunrise over the fountain.
Bud was awakened at seven with banging on a bus window. "Yeah," he said, looking out toward a concerned lady.
"You've got to get these fish heads off the sidewalk. We're having a parade and people can't see that. Get out now and clean it up. I'm just the first of many people who are going to tell you this. Please, get up and take these heads away."
The evening's pre-Grateful Dead party continued during the morning as we got ready for the show, had breakfast, cut hair, played guitar, and lounged on my front yard until the neighborhood 4th-of-July parade. The feature was the "lawn chair brigade" of 1920's men using lawn chairs like rifles. They maneuvered them through acrobatic militaristic motions. I took pictures from on top of the bus.
Young girls walked by in beautiful dresses. Some pulled little brothers or sisters in red wagons. Old shiny cars rumbled by my perch. The queen waved up to me.
Oh, Indianapolis and Grateful Dead shows. My dominant impression is traffic jams. Even in the bus, we ease through the jam so slowly. I aid our movement at a crucial intersection by directing traffic so we can pull ahead of the line of oncoming cars. Marty cooks dinner as we roll slowly forward.
We use our Grateful bus connections to get through a side gate and bypass another hour wait. J meets us as we park. The cherubs are especially happy because he doesn't have tickets and will be hanging out with them in the parking areas.
We hurriedly catch our buzz and go for the gate. Bud always locks up the bus during shows so the outside people have to gather everything they might need. J leaves the video camera behind, figuring he'll get the journalist's experience of the outside scene. The Cherubs and Kevin and Jolie are out for a good time, for a Grateful Dead lawn party.
Bud, Marty, Deb, and I have tickets and amble through a crowd milling below a hill, which is the back of the outdoor, Deer Creek amphitheater. The people, who don't have tickets, surge forward in a large crowd, testing the scattered attendants trying to hold the line. There's a fun, mischievous attitude to the whole thing. Like they're really going to rush uphill and break down the fence. Right.
But in the time it takes to walk around the venue and gain entrance, people are scaling the wooden fence, bursting boards, getting through, and scattering through the audience. The Cherubs greet us as we start walking up the hill into the crowd of frenzied dancers.
"We got in," they say. "Man, we ran up the hill, just ran through the hole in the fence, and we are here." They have the speedy look of new acid.
I am beginning to be rocked by the music. Bud and I follow our heads away from the Cherubs. We walk right by the people checking tickets and get in the first rows of the second section.
The Grateful Dead. Around forever. Two drummers, Bill Kreutzman and Micky Hart. Micky got into the serious study of drumming and with his other band, the Voodoo Rhythm Devils, plays and instructs people about exotic, African-based beats.
Phil Lesh, skinny and intellectual, plays his bass, working the classical and jazz training into the Dead's weird mix.
Vince, from the band The Tubes, is another of the rotating keyboard players. Three have died. It's been especially hard to replace the first, Pigpen, who had a great name, and could sing blues and play a bad harp.
Jerry hunches over his guitar. He hardly moves. When he sings, it's just an upward nod of the head, barely moving lips, and the unusual pitch and unmusical voice of this gray-headed gnome.
Bob Weir is the most active, but he mostly moves his guitar and bobs a little up and down. When he sings, he has this intense look of hoping he doesn't forget the words.
The drummers put down their double sound background that dominates the song and moves the crowd in a dancing frenzy.
But the lights are all on. I expect they'll dim them in the second set. That's my favorite part. I love the songs "Drums" and "Space." The best place to hear and watch them is from far in the back, up by the fence, where you can look over the crowd and beyond the stage, to see the moonlit farmland. Plus, you're in the vortex of sound. It all comes together, right there.
It's now the second song of the second set. I'm in place. The song has a break that sounds like the beginning to "Space." Then I hear these background sirens that almost fit into the song. But they just don't sound right. I look through the fence behind me and see 40 sets of blue-lighted police cars winding through people towards the crowd at the bottom of the hill. Their sirens float over the music and crowd-noise and blend into it all. The sounds and dancing people barely stop as songs flow into each other. Then "Drums" begins.
Here, the show becomes an African village. Lights are usually out except for the shimmering, shaking, shocking lights showing hidden colors by the stage and the mesmerizing strobes that test everyone's drug space.
The drums beat but the houselights blaze on. Gone is the primitive community of bouncing, weaving bodies. Gone is the blackness illuminating the strange colors. Gone is the dark space filled with ancient beats. Even in "Space," when the future's sounds expand through our inner mind space, the lights shine on.
They stay on throughout the show. One encore and the band is through. It seems like the guys in the band are pissed; like everyone else, pissed at the lights.
Back at the bus, the party restarts. We bong, beer, and soon have balloons of laughing gas, nitrous oxide. With this drug you lose time, just want to sit with the "loon" and suck into its shimmering sounds. It's a real short lasting psychedelic high. But whereas some drugs are all visual, nitrous makes the sounds of life become amazing. Plus, colors blend into each other, weaving intricate patterns. Then its gone. Expelled from the body through breathing. It can't be detected with drug tests, so it is the drug of choice for pilots. I mean, what is nitrous oxide? Nitrogen and oxygen, just like the air we breathe. So change the bond, add oxygen to the nitrogen instead of to itself and whammo, laughing gas. It makes you laugh, and then it's gone.
We suck from the balloons, laugh, and more people get onboard.
The Cherubs recite their story of running with the crowd up the hill and into the show. J and Kevin talk of hanging outside and visiting vendors. Marty is pissed at the mob action. He is lecturing the Cherubs. "The Dead will never come back. This might even end their touring."
The Cherubs are still into the show. It all seems irrelevant. And it really does. Here we all are. In the parking lot, cars not even beginning to move. Bongs are being passed around. The 'shrooms are taking hold again, and the 'loons keep reappearing.
We finally join the traffic and drive to the campground. Pine Lakes, next to I-69. Here's where I rediscover the feel of the Grateful Dead entourage that I've experienced in previous years at Deer Creek. It's a Middle-Eastern Bazaar. The sweet and ancient smells of village foods. People hunch over tables of wares. Merchandise is strewn over blankets on the ground. Jewelry hangs on placards. Drums beat in the background. Dark shadows stretch across furtive faces. Hands reach across colors, sampling things hidden by bent backs. People whispering, murmuring, laughing, "psh, psh, psh..." "Yeah I got one..." "How much?" "Cold ones..." "Yeah, over here." Nothing conversations float into the dark. Everyone looks Arabic. Others look lost. Girls-next-door cook over hibachis. Cherubs wind beads into hair.
"Great show," I say to one.
She looks at me and says, "What?"
I say louder, "Great show. Did you see it?"
She looks at me, puzzled. Am I talking? It feels like it. I give up with that question and try another. "How long have you been on tour?"
"I don't know," she says. But I don't hear her very well. "What?" I say. But it's like a reflex because as soon as I say it, I know what she has said.
"I don't know," we both say to each other and give up trying to communicate.
I wander off farther into the village of vendors. The drums shape the shadows more. People's voices hiss like old records and the drums shove people onward.
"Do you want some of this?" A dreadlocked blonde guy, with a pencil-point jaw, holds some mushrooms in his delicate, skinny fingers. Bud appears next to me, gives the guy a ten, hands me a cap and eats one himself. I watch the dreadlock's skinny fingers pocket the money, turn to Bud and he isn't there. The hissing is. The drums, the darkness, the feel of the Egyptian night, the feel of Africans, dancing in the darkness, sounds of trinkets, jewelry, smell of garlic, curry, smoke in the eyes, trees bending into T- shirts, shadows into tie-dies, blackened hair of girls-next-door with bare shouldered pre-hippies, another circle of drummers silhouetted by a fire, their beats captured in the shadows of blowing leaves rustling in the trees.
I awake on top of the bus. The blue morning sky blends into a soft mist over the green fields. Trucks float silently down the interstate. I haven't been asleep long. I come down, have coffee, and a bong. Bud cooks breakfast. Somebody hands me a flier. Tonight's show is cancelled.
The party continues in the campground without let-up. Our cherubs have gone home and a new group has replaced them. Near day's end, Marty, Deborah, Bud, J, and I pack up and head to Putnam County. On a beautiful night we sleep in a vortex of wind channelling through trees at the end of an old farm lane.
A soft rain at dawn drives me from the roof into the bus. I welcome the gray, cool morning.
For breakfast, Bud makes eggs the camping way: Drop two pounds of bacon into the pan, cook it all down, remove the bacon, and drop the eggs into the deep, hot grease. It's like a poached- in-grease egg.
Marty, J, and I walk across the soy bean fields into the forest. I know these woods and take us to a very narrow ridge between two streams. It's like we are on top of an upside down "V". We catch our breaths and a bee buzzes by.
"Right below us is a cove," I say. "See how the creek created this little carved out area. It has the creek on one side and this bowl-shaped area around it. That's a cove, because it is protected so well."
The bee buzzes by again.
"Those trees just stay there. They don't move. Imagine that life. We get to move around and travel wherever we want. A tree stands there. So news to it would be this bee buzzing by. It might not come back, yet the tree just stays here. Everything comes to it. Like working in a store, waiting for customers to come in. That's why I could never work there again."
As we come out of the woods, the bus appears grandly parked in the tree-lined vortex. The dark brown sides and white roof of this former school bus is its incognito costume. It is fixed up nicely. An open area that can sleep three is in front. A bathroom, sink, stove, cabinets and a bed are on the driver's side. The bench seats and table and two beds over cabinets are on the other. The aisle is open for walking and in back, holds our packs. Bud keeps the bus very clean.
We gather our stuff, bong up for the trip, and take off.
First stop is Raccoon Lake. We back the bus down into the water and just jump in. The lapping water, horrific jet skis, and droning motorboats fill the lake with noise.
In Brazil, the county seat of Clay County, Indiana, we pull into a gas station. Marty backs up and ignores five warnings from Bud to stop until we get someone out to direct. Joe wakes up and groggily volunteers. Bud and I continue doing bongs and Marty backs into a sign.
When the policeman comes, Marty is the obnoxious guy from the big city. He threatens the policeman and the gas station attendant with law suits for putting the sign there. I have visions of the policeman following Marty to the source of his wild eyes and mad statements, but instead, the small-town cop calmly fills out the report and we continue on down the road.
Fourth of July and we're in Terre Haute, where they tore down their tall, ornate, creepy old stone buildings for a new one- story, plastic downtown. The old town used to look like Gotham City. Now it's worse than Wal-Mart.
The fireworks have already begun to explode as we park by an open area in a neighborhood. We pull out our chairs and watch the colors and smoke plumes over the trees. When they finish, we put the chairs back in the bus, drive off, and find the only nice campground in America that isn't overcrowded with July 4th traffic.
We have showers in the morning and then head for the St. Louis show. Bud drives and tells J to direct him south and west. He tells Marty and me to put the maps away. It takes all day to get there. We can tell we're getting close when we meet the traffic jam leading to the amphitheater.
"Hey, Bud. Get out of this line and let's go in the back way." Marty is looking at the map while sitting on a cooler right behind Bud.
Bud pulls the bus into the open lane and accelerates down I- 270. In two exits, he pulls off and follows a circuitous route through neighborhoods to a four-way-stop. We make the turn, drive around the back of the amphitheater, get in line and then make our final approach to the parking lot. Girls-next-door are standing by the side of the road. Their little outstretched hands. "I need a miracle."
We park in the far northeast corner of the lot. No one is around except for another schoolbus parked right next to us. J hops out with the video camera and films the other bus's wheel and moves toward the door when a bearded guy in his late twenties comes out and asks J what he's doing. J aims the camera at him and says, "I'm making a video of the Dead concerts for a TV show I have on a public access station in Bloomington, Indiana."
"Don't take my fucking picture!" and he closes the door. J apologizes to it and comes back into our bus.
"Man, fucking uptight. Did you see that, Bud?" J asks.
"Yeah. You should have asked first. You never can tell about people at Dead concerts. But you will probably be able to get some acid from him after the show. Meanwhile, let's party. And J, it's your turn to fill the bong."
"And your night to cook dinner, too," Deborah adds.
Meanwhile, people are politely parking and walking to a line forming at the entrance. Many others stay in the parking lot but they are so well behaved. There are very few vendors and the parking lot is oppressively hot and bright. The limestone gravel makes everything white.
Marty and Deborah leave before J finishes cooking dinner. They want to be first in line. Bud, J, and I are just finishing J's chicken and mushroom pasta when the first song drifts through the air. We secure our stuff and then head to the show.
We walk with a blonde-haired dreadlock. He parked next to us in an old volkswagen van. A perfect Dead-head. "I've been with them since Vermont. I caught the last tour too. I started this one with $6 in my pocket. I've seen every show and now I've got $75 in my pocket. It's been a great tour. I hope it never ends."
The parking lot is amazingly empty. No vendors are left. No loud noises of nitrous filling 'loons. No cherubs, moving cars, or skinny freaks.
At the gate, we see the girls-next-door pleading for unseen miracles. "Please, oh please," one says as I walk by. People are moving to the music. You can hear it pretty well out there. We continue walking around, almost in a daze, like the girls and guys, and hustlers working the crowd.
Security guards break up the moving dance crowd by seeking tickets. We come back from the trance and pass through the gates. We walk around the back of the amphitheater hill and enter from the side.
That first view of people at a Dead concert is always spectacular. It feels like a Robert Crumb cartoon. People are all dancing in weird, African, but very non-Black, movements. Some do a skipping motion, others just stand still, bobbing their heads with a rocking motion from the arms.
I want a long, high view so I take us up the hill and around the back of the crowd to the center point. It seems like a clean show. The music is crisp, the kids look like they've just gotten out of chemistry class, some people even sit down. My feet are tired so I sit down too.
Bud and J sit and Bud lights a joint. We pass it a couple times and I notice a group of girls-next-door sitting by us. One is looking at me in a friendly way.
"Do you want part of this joint?" I ask.
She takes it and inhales a big hit. "Thanks."
Bud and I take other hits and I give it back to her. She takes another hit and passes it back.
"Do your friends want some?" Bud asks. She passes it to a younger blonde girl. She smiles at us and holds the joint between her thumb and pinky. All five girls have a few hits and begin laughing. Bud and J move down to see the twirlers and I stay with the girls. Bud gave them some magic mushrooms before he left. After they eat them, the one looks at me and says she has some acid. I can't believe these girls, so fresh, so young and doing these drugs. I take the acid.
"Are you from St. Louis?" I ask the girl closest to me. She keeps leaning her head on my shoulder.
"Yeah, I just graduated. This is my summer of fun. I've been following them since Vermont. We all have. Were you in Indy?"
"Yeah, it was a good show. Except for the lights."
"And all those fucking people breaking the gates down. The Dead won't play there any more. Have you seen the Dead before?"
"Well, yeah, Saturday,"
"Oh, yeah..."
"But, really, I've seen them forever. The first time I saw them was in LA, about 1970."
She pulls away from me, "Shit, that's before I was born. How old are you?"
"46"
"You are kidding me. I like older guys but you are even older. But that's cool."
"Have you ever had sex with an older guy?"
"I haven't even had sex."
"You're kidding. I thought you younger people were much freer about sex than we were. How could you not have had sex?"
"We just mostly hang out in groups. Lots of times just with our girl friends. I'm not gay. It just seems easier to hang with them. Plus AIDS and all that. I figure when I'm in college I'll start doing it. Why, do you want to have sex with me?"
"Well, sure, I'd like to have sex with everyone. But it's more a flash of fantasy about sex with you instead of an actual thought. It doesn't seem too practical plus, as much as the age difference is exciting, I don't know, it would be weird. What are we going to do? Go behind the trees over there?"
"We could." She has this total seductress look. Her eyes are on fire. She seems to be licking her lips deliciously. I look at her friend behind her. She is also breathing heavy with a fierce, feline sexual look.
"Are we all going?" I ask.
"No, just you, Whisper and me."
We get up and walk along the fence on top of the hill. We flow with the traffic that melds around the bend at the corner and then down the hill toward the bathrooms and beer stands. We walk through some evergreen bushes into a little hidden area between the wooden fence and the bushes.
"We're just going to kiss. Okay?" she says.
"Sure," I say.
They begin kissing my neck, reaching up to my lips and licking the corners of my mouth, barely beginning to touch my tongue. Breathing in my ear, rubbing my chest, moving their little breasts against my ribs.
I become conscious of the music. Jerry is bouncing along on a lead run. "Friend of the Devil is a friend of mine, if I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep, tonight."
Whisper begins to moan and then says, "Manda." She has a heavy breath and continues, "We have to stop. We have to stop. It's too much."
"Yeah, yeah, ooh. But, oh, we can't do more. We agreed, right?"
"Yeah, right." She looks at me and says, "It's what we agreed to before the trip. It would be too easy to sleep with everybody. Just like you want to. But this is cool, I really do like this. But, like you say, what are we going to do? Fuck in these bushes? Maybe in a few years."
We come out of the bushes and head back to our area on the grass. The band is just beginning to get into "Drums." My favorite part. I take few steps back to the fence and begin to feel the drums beat through my body, in my bones, pulsing my skin, and then, I notice the lights. Still on. Damn! How can you concentrate on a song when the lights shine in your eyes? It's even worse than Indianapolis. Here, they shine straight into everybody's eyes. In Indianapolis, they just lit up under the pavilion.
The girls bring a joint back to me. We listen to the drums and nod at each other. But the lights, oh man, fuck the lights. In our fucking eyes.
I turn around and look over the chain link fence towards the southwest. Black clouds cover the horizon and reach into the dark gray sky. A flash ripples through an ominous cloudbank far to the south. Another lightening reaches through the clouds straight out from the fence. No thunder. Just brilliant flashes illuminating giant clouds across the whole horizon.
The drums beat through the pulsating, flashing bursts of light. Everything fits. People are all so well-behaved. And here are these girls, tripping in the space right next to me. I'm straight about what's happening. It's all been put here so we face away from the music. Appreciate storms, the fury of our Earth's mighty wonders. Lightening bolts streak across the black cloud horizon.
"Drums" becomes "Space" which floats into a sky erupting in brilliant flashes. And the clouds, foreboding, looming higher on the horizon. They are dark, expansive, huge puffs that fill more and more of the sky. Electricity rifles from the sky into my body. Flash, up higher into the sky, reaching into the black above. Pulse, pulse, beat, beat, stretching long notes that...where do they come from? I never see people on stage making the music. It almost seems that "Space" is phony. I don't see any musicians. I just hear weird music that can't be coming out of their instruments. It has to be prerecorded. If so, how fake. They sit at home, put together some computer music, hardly even play together. They just make it weird. Then after "Drums" welcomes everyone into its suggestive state, we are hit with the prerecorded "Space." Well, thank you Jerry, but please don't play me a recording of space music.
But no. This is Jerry Garcia. How could he do that? He couldn't, so I look harder at the stage, trying to catch some movement. The stage is dark and the bright lights makes it hard to see. So I give up and look back at nature's light show, which continues after "Space" and through their next songs.
Bud and J show up. We smoke some more with the girls, who soon leave. The show ends, there's a one song encore, like usual, and damn, the lights are on for the whole show.
People begin to clear from the grass. Bud, J and I stand still, almost alone. Scattered groups of people are clumped here and there across the grass. Their silhouettes stick up like sticks in a sea of old blankets, lost T-shirts, crumpled papers, empty cups, and other stuff.
"Time to move on," a security guy says as he walks by. We move a few feet. People are clearing out. We walk about halfway down to the edge of the amphitheater, stop and look back at the grassy semi-circle.
Bud says, "Look. See them? See the roachrunners out there? They look for roaches and drugs people leave behind. Every show they're here, just like the twirlers who just spin in endless twirls.
"Look, one of them found something. He just picked it up Yep, looks like a roach. He put it in his bag. They're always here, waiting for the show to end."
A couple of women ushers approach us. Each has one hand holding a large trash bag between them. They stoop every now and then to pick up something. Very random. I look behind them and see a network of these trash collecting teams, spread across the grass. They move in a broad swath, picking up increasing amounts of trash. Behind them is green grass, shining innocent and empty in the lonely light.
Back at the bus, we party as the cars politely drive away. The parking lot clears out quickly. Meanwhile, the lightening show continues. It's closer, with bolts stretching to the sky above us.
We are parked in the corner of the lot with the other bus and the dreadlocked blonde guy. We sit outside, in chairs, watching the storm blast into the south side of the parking lot.
Dust sears our faces followed by the soothing feel of wind- blown spray from the oncoming storm. The wind is fierce. Rain begins to pelt hard against the bus. Our faces erupt in pain when the large drops begin to hit. We retreat into the bus.
Bud makes some scotches and we sit back for the storm.
Marty is pissed. "The fucking lights man. How can you watch the show with them on. I know Jerry doesn't like this one bit. The fucking cherubs. And all those people for breaking in. They'll never play at Deer Creek again. The Dead do that. Fuck up and they'll play elsewhere.
"But Bud, did you hear Jerry? He cooked tonight. I can't believe they played `The Mighty Quinn'."
J has the video camera in Bud's face, recording his view of the show. "...yeah, Bobby and Jerry alternate singing. Vince and Phil get a few songs. They play seventeen songs. Then one encore."
"Why's it always the same?" Deborah yells from behind J.
"It's never the same," Bud says. "Every show is different and that's what makes them Dead shows. Everybody shares an event that will never happen again. People know that and look out for each other.
"But the seventeen songs, oh, it varies, but they just have it down. They know so many songs that they could play all night and into the next week. But the doctor ordered them to keep it shorter. Jerry's already collapsed twice on stage with a diabetic coma. He's got to take it easy."
J flops on his back, still filming, creating a panorama from the floor. "What do you think will happen if he dies?"
Marty speaks up, "That'll be it. He is the Grateful Dead."
"Nah, it's just to big." The camera is below Bud's chin, looking up into his teeth. "This operation brings in $30,000,000 a year. Bobby and Jerry have already talked about it. It will be different, but it will go on."
This trip is becoming a media event among us. J sits frequently on top of the bus, recording his thoughts, filling in between the quotes he's written earlier, piecing together a story for "Nuvo" magazine. Plus for his TV show. Bud is the star. His bus, his amazing story, persona, and confidence.
A knock bangs through the rain on our front door. In comes the bearded guy from next door. "Can anyone help us? Our bus won't start."
Marty takes the cue, reaches into his bag and pulls out some all-weather gear. He puts it on quickly and says, "I'll need someone to hold the flashlight." J, who still feels bad about Marty backing into the sign, hops up and says, "I'll do it."
Without shoes or shirt he follows weather-clad Marty into the wet night. Marty crawls under the hood. J holds the flashlight and shivers. Water runs down Marty's crack. He gets the engine to turn over but it won't start.
"Okay man, let's give up," the guy says. He is getting uptight about Marty ripping and tearing at his engine. J stands, holding the umbrella, amazed at Marty's mania.
"Okay," Marty says and with some grunting, groaning, and swearing, puts the pieces together. "Why don't you give it one last try." The engine starts right up.
The storm is subsiding, as is the traffic, so we head out into the night. We figure everyone will drive to the campground advertised on the fliers handed out in Indianapolis so we go in a different direction. We aim for the floodplain of the Mississippi River, just a few miles away.
Marty directs us onto sinking back roads through a flat, misty, insect-filled bayou. It seems like one, but really it is just flat, open land that was under eight feet of water in the big flood. We finally end up on a road going nowhere. One last house is a mile back. The river is a still few miles away. Bean fields are around us.
What a night. As the bus slowly sinks into the mucky farm lane, we drink scotch, pass bongs, and expand ourselves until the morning light. I climb up on the roof, take a picture of the sunrise, let the breeze keep the bugs away, and fall asleep.
The sun's warmth wakes me. It's still low in the sky. Rustling noises below indicate that the heat's gotten the others up also.
Bud drives us out of the mud. He gets around a difficult turn only to come upon a road crew, blocking the dirt road with a broken street-roller. They apologize for the hour wait but it's no big deal to us. We haven't eaten yet, so we warm the coffee, throw on some eggs, cut up a cantaloupe and have a great bean- field breakfast.
They get the roller fixed so we drive to a suburban grocery store for a bus-cleaning. We park in the fire lane, connect a cord to an outside socket, run fans, vacuum, wash dishes, get more water, shop for food, take showers in sinks. Bongs, bongs, bongs. How can we stop? It never stops. "Never get off the bus. No, never get off the bus."
"I'm a motherfucking mushroom cloud, motherfucker." Marty is back into Pulp Fiction.
We're there for two hours. Some curious teen-agers come on the bus to check it out. Then, finally we're off again, going to the show.
We come in on the same approach but get into traffic this time. We park by the main walking area, not in last night's far- away corner. It is a good place to watch people.
They are all so young. Young hippies all over the place. Walking by in their tie-dyes, long hair, dreadlocks, and far-away look of yesterday's drugs. It's weird. But I can't generalize that all the people look like that. There are short-haired college preps, military-looking guys, middle-aged former cherubs, gray bearded lawyer-types, redneck-looking girls, biker guys, the white T-shirt crowd, tall jews, no blacks, athletes, many kinds of people. Yet, they're mostly young and looking to be strung out.
A newly married couple from California sits with us by the front of the bus. This is their honeymoon. They have been following the Dead for three weeks. Staying in motels and hotels. After I started going to Dead shows on the bus and camping on it afterwards, I can't relate to seeing the Dead and then going to a motel room.
Debra is in the bus cooking dinner. The bongs keep the mellow buzz going as we wait for the show's chemical indulgences. Bud has a large glass of scotch, but it seems a little early for that. Especially because before walking to the show, he'll fill the glass with pure scotch over ice and then need my help to drink it.
He says, "Tonight, you have to see the twirlers. J and I almost got trampled by them last night."
"Yeah," J says, "I wanted to film being right in the middle of them, so I got on the ground. They spun into me and then, all of a sudden, they had some sense of where I was and didn't touch me."
I'd seen the Twirlers many times. Bud and I once sat in a twirler-filled, hot, summer aisle at an indoor auditorium in Louisville. It smelled like a locker room with smoke. Sweaty twirlers spinning to the weaving sound of the Dead. Yeah, tonight, I'd visit the twirlers.
The parking lot is getting empty again. Marty and Deborah leave. Bud, J, and I suck on our last bongs. I've never seen Bud get to a show on time. We get there late this night too.
The late afternoon sun peaks over the back of the amphitheater, bathing the Dead in yellow light. I am back in Robert Crumb land. All these cartoon character hippies and freaks bouncing maniacly to the rhythmic beat. And it is rhythmic. I used to come to these shows to listen to Jerry. But since "Drums" and "Space" began to interest me, I've come to hear the drums. They are in an enlightened space tonight. I can tell already.
As the Dead roll into their second song, the drums take over. They move the music in a tribal way. The whole village is gathered around this beating rhythm of life, dancing uncontrollably. The music keeps going. Jerry's on fire and Bobby's voice demands equal attention.
In the next song, Jerry sings a ballad. But the drums. I can hardly believe it. I heard them the other nights but now, I feel like I am back in Indy, in the jungle night. Dark shadows blend into writhing bodies. The setting sun's brilliant rays reach across the deep, blue evening sky. The Dead are bathed in orange.
We move up the lawn and dance with the tribe. How can you stop? A girl-next-door runs by singing, "I got a miracle, I got a miracle." I saw her outside trying to get a ticket. She's happy now.
We all are. All those different people outside are now jammed together inside as one. I'm dancing and trying to watch the band. But the biggest guy in the world is dancing in front of me. He's not really that tall but he's as wide as two people. Yet, he's not particularly fat. Just double wide. Almost triple wide.
I look behind Bud and J. Girls-next-door. All around us. Where do they come from? And cherubs too? The guys are there, sure, but the world is mostly these young girls and their rounder sisters. Bud, who's got the tiny "nths" of acid, opens the little box and offers it to the cherub next to him. I can hardly believe he's doing that. I expect her to be part of the "just-say-no" generation but, no, she looks at it, smiles, licks the tip of her index finger, picks up a piece and puts it on her tongue.
He passes the box to J and me and we get ready for the next set. The acid should kick in when "Drums" starts. We walk toward the twirlers in the aisle behind the pavilion seats. We sit on the grass, watching and then the set ends. We move to an island of grass by the concessions. People, so many people walking by and around us. No one notices us. One guy does squirt out of the masses and falls on the grass behind J. Bud passes him a joint. He takes a big drag, lies on his back, and says, "The fucking alligators, man. The fucking alligators."
It seems to make sense.
As the second set begins, we are among the twirlers, by the side of the stage. I take some pictures, setting the camera for slow camera speeds, trying to catch their motion. I want to see the twirl. Otherwise it might look like girls in big dresses in a strong wind. Hearing the shutter slowly open and close moves into my eyes. I see the twirlers as the teacups ride at Disneyland where people sit inside and spin tight circles forever faster.
The twirlers become blurred. Their faces lose all features, turning into fleshy blobs attached to dark shoulders, spinning around. Barely any eyes, nose, or mouth. The hair is there, but merely as a curtain falling over blank flesh.
Most twirlers are girls. But some guys spin with intricate arm motions of hands reaching for the sky. They twirl faster, more off-kilter, and bounce into others once in a while. Meanwhile, each girl just spins on an axis centered from their skulls into their toes.
Spin, spin, spin. Their long dresses unfurl in central arcs. Where are their minds? Are they so into the music that all they can do is twirl? Are they self-consciously wondering if they're spinning fast enough? Or pretty enough? Or so into the music and the spin and oblivious to everything? I don't see many expressions. Just blissed-out smiles, lost in the flesh and the spin.
J leaves to go back by the fence. Bud and I stay by the twirlers, their skirts sometimes whisping against our calves. We rock quietly to the music. Bud likes to move his arms like the twirlers. Not up over his head but in these lacy, intricate movements that hypnotically weave minds into their patterns.
I'm mostly looking at the video screen. The lace-dancing woman is twirling black and white on the screen. These videos are mesmerizing. Sometimes there are intricate color patterns, optical illusions. Other times faces, street scenes, moving images that blend with the music. I can't figure out if each song has it's own video or if some videos play for a variety of songs.
"Let's get some seats," Bud says. We move away from the twirlers, become invisible, and walk right by the ushers who are checking everyone else's tickets. We find two empty aisle seats and become dancing occupants.
It's dark now and, and it is really dark. No house lights. They've finally relaxed and created a real Grateful Dead concert-- where the music takes your mind through visual colors and moving shapes into a created space where the music and visuals become syncronistic. Where it all comes together.
Bud and I are in about the 20th row. The roving spotlights blaze by us as they change direction and intensity. Everyone is on their feet. Dancing. So much dancing. Never stop dancing. The only time people sit down is in "Space." That's when I especially like to stand and sway or bounce to the music. It's unusual because much of "Space" is just electric sounds. Where's the beat? Carried over from "Drums."
Jerry is leaving the stage now. Bobby is putting his guitar up and also headed into the dark behind the stage.
Drums. Drums. Beating imperceptibly. Hardly heard, but totally felt. They're even stronger when they are subdued. The expectation and knowledge of what they can do is like the after- image in your eyes after a bright light. Quiet drums now. But I know they will take me in their power and deliver me to the other side.
And they do. It's Africa. Fucking Africa. But it's this American kind of Africa. Not blacks, it's these middle eastern and Robert Crumb tribal dancers. It's dark. Weaving lights shimmer to the beat. The stage becomes trees. Dark trees. Little fires create black silhouettes of villagers. In groups. Dancing. Talking. Laughs shake their heads. But all I hear are the drums. People move in pantomime. The drums drive all motion. All lights. The lights of distant colors on the tree-stage bending over into this dark mass of moving, bobbing heads. It's all one. This sound. This beat. It beats. The drums. The village. We move. They fill, we dance, it beats.
The drumsticks flash at the ends of strong drum arms. Colors fill the video screens. Tie-dye is blended into the girls-next- door. Curly hair become blonde short crop but the drums don't stop. They slow sometimes, lose volume but then bounce back to life. Like now, the drums are in with the strobe lights mesmerizing all eyes. Crescendo. B-bump-d-da-da-b-bump-bump into the night. Into the colors, into the space, into the lone electric note. The note bends, the drums lessen, another "space" note seeps energy from the drums and becomes louder, stretching into sounds like someone strumming the strings of a piano.
Where's Jerry? Where is this sound coming from? Do these young kids really like this? It's like feedback when the Dead were at Haight-Ashbury doing acid-test shows.
"Space" is these weird sounds. Do they even form a song? I don't know, but they blend from the drums into the lights and it becomes like church, when you meditate during the drone of the minister's sermon. The notes flow into my brain which follows the sound and the moving lights into thoughts of universe, space, being, and feeling. Just being a nucleus of senses. Hearing the noise, seeing the lights, feeling the warm St. Louis air, and the smells. The smells of life, of thought, of exuberance.
After "Space" it is three more songs, an encore and we're back at the bus. We're in a spaced-out state. Scotch and the bongs bring us back.
"Motherfuckin' mushroom cloud motherfucker." Marty is expressing how powerful they were. "And see, Jerry had the lights out and the band cooked. I knew they were pissed about the lights. How can they get their show across with the lights on. Come-on, it's the Grateful Dead. You can't have the lights on for that. And did you see what they did in the dark. It was a real show. Fucking 'Drums' and 'Space.' Unbelievable. What a show."
We drive that night toward Chicago. We have to pick up Marty's friend, Dave, at the airport tomorrow afternoon at 2:30. That is too early. We'd planned to get there at 5:00 so we could have a relaxing morning. But he took an earlier flight. It's warm so we head for a lake in Illinois. We find it but it has a nuclear power plant on the shore.
A noisy nuclear plant. Breaking atoms. Making power. I fall asleep on top of the bus, thinking that nuclear power plants are supposed to be quiet. Why the noise? Maybe moving all that water. I imagine that's the water I was hoping to swim in the next morning. Clean water, that would be nice. I wonder if we'll have clean water after the Republicans are through changing the laws. Shit, things have been getting cleaner, but now they're going to tear the laws apart. I'll work on that more when I reenter reality, after the trip.
The stars shine brighter. J is also sleeping on top of the bus. "Man, you can really see some stars out here. It's like out west."
Bud had made a big deal about setting the alarm for eight the next morning. "Fuck, it's 8:30. We gotta get going." There's all sorts of stirring below. J and I raise our heads, feel the heat of the day, and look towards the blue nuclear waters.
"That water's going to feel good."
From below Deborah says, "Chris, J, wake up. We gotta go, we're already late." We climb on down, and start getting our stuff together. Marty's behind the wheel. He starts the engine which idles loudly, like a bus will.
"What about the swim?"
"We gotta go."
"Breakfast?" I imagine the grease-poached eggs again.
Deborah says, "I'll cook it but it'll be on the road. I'm gonna make crepes."
So, we drive down the road, 65 mph, and Deborah's making coffee and crepes.
We finally take "showers" behind the bus at an interstate rest area near Chicago. Semis on both sides keep the public from viewing. The chugging diesel engines and incessant traffic are much louder than the nuclear power plant. It's hard to even think surrounded by loud noises on hot asphalt. The cold water being poured from the cooler over my head is like a bright flash of cold lightening, streaking down my back.
We get to the airport on time. Dave turns out to be a middle-aged Dentist. He is pretty uptight. Does it deter us? No way. It is like point--counterpoint. He maintains a steady tenseness. The bus is too much for him. His close-cropped grayish hair, stocky, somber-clothed body is like a big gray floating rectangle.
Chicago, the Windy City, is a hot city on this relatively cool summer afternoon. We aim for the beach. Marty directs us to a place on the north side that is really a rock-filled breakwater wall. It is like a quarry with large rectangular blocks forming a few terraces down to the clear, blue water.
The water is still spring-cold. So refreshing. The long highway day had been worth it because the coldness and clean feel of the water rejuvenates everything. Lying back on the water, seeing the deepest blue sky, floating white puffy clouds, the buildings lined up on the coast, obviously Chicago. I hear an approaching engine noise carried through the water.
I look up and see a jet skier approaching. He whizzes by spraying water in my direction. I feel invaded. That searing noise screams across the water. Now a hydrocarbon smell oozes over everything, blown toward shore. It's around me. Why do we allow one person on a machine to disrupt a peaceful lakefront experience for so many others?
J is finally in the water. He can hardly believe its coldness so he goes with Bud back to the bus, while Marty and I continue swimming.
When we get to the bus, Bud and J are talking to this homeless-looking guy.
"Oh, yeah, I got four kids. Want to see their pictures? Ain't seen'em for a while. I get along with all their moms but shit, it's hard to keep up the payments when you don't got a job. I had a good one but I guess my drinkin' got in the way. Do you guys have a drink?"
"Sure," says Bud. "How about a beer?"
"Well, thanks but I don't know, I like the hard stuff. Actually I got a little bit left," and pulls out a quarter-filled pint of cold turkey.
"Oh, we've got some scotch. You should drink some of ours," says Bud. "We drink Scoresby's. You never get a hangover cause it's cheap. They don't age it in wood so it doesn't get the tannic acids."
Bud pours the guy a drink. "Yeah, this is right nice." The guy leans back. "Yeah, I been married four times. Four kids. I'm livin' with another woman right now. I think she's gonna kick me out though. That's why I'm hangin' out here. Really, I can't stand the bitch. But she's beautiful. I'm tellin' ya. She is one pretty lady. Really, though. All my wives have been pretty. I been lucky on that. I guess they all think they're gonna fix me. But I like a good time, you know? That is one thing about me. I like a good time. Like right now. Sittin' on this parking lot. The sun comin' down. Nowhere to go. Free as a bird. Good drink. Meetin' you guys. I sure do like your bus. That's what I should do. Get me a bus. Then I wouldn't need no woman's place to stay. I'd be travelin'. I could do that, you know. I could be a carpenter. Go from town to town. Stay in the bus. Work, travel, move on. But I like Chicago. Great town. At least in summer, 'cept when it's too hot. Plus my kids are here. Can't get far too from them. I got their pictures. Here I'll show'em to you."
They look like normal kids. Two of them are black.
"Them two aren't really mine. But I was like a father to 'em for a while. That's why I call 'em mine. Here's their moms."
They look okay. I wonder what a relationship with this guy would be like. As I look closer, they do have a county-fair look to them, where you see people you had no idea existed on this planet.
"Where did you meet them?" I ask.
"They're all waitresses. Same restaurant. I been goin' there for a long time."
Marty, who had been playing guitar in back of the bus, bounds down the steps and says, "We gotta get goin'. Let's check out the camping scene downtown, then get some dinner. Bud, what time do we hookup with Scotty?"
"I left a message for everyone that wants to see us to be at `Bucket o' Suds' at 10. If we don't see him there, we'll camp in front of his house. And Gail will just love that. She marries him and six months later a busfull of Dead Heads is parked in front of their condo."
We take the bus on a scenic tour through downtown Chicago. Right along Miracle Mile and the Wall Street of the Midwest. Then a mile south of downtown we find the new town of Dead-head, Illinois. Parked and camped between highways and railroad tracks are tents, campers, and thousands of people. Smoke from fires floats above them and through the scattered trees. I imagine the bus pulling onto an asphalt parking lot. With tents all around, parked cars, camp fire smoke and all-night noise.
We eat at a Greek restaurant then go to Bucket o' Suds, which is like a 1930's speakeasy. There's no sign in front and the door is locked. Bud knocks on the door. This 80 year old guy opens the door, nods at us and says its okay to come in.
Clarence has owned the bar for 60 years. He's famous for his mixed drinks but all my system can handle at this point is another beer. Bud's friends and Karen, a friend of mine, show up and soon we're back in the bus. Even Clarence is there.
He says, "Yeah, this bus might be nice to retire into. But I got a great retirement now. Every night I have a party in my club. Go to bed early in the morning, wake up late in the day, make drinks, have the next party, on and on. Since 1935. This is a speakeasy. This is how we did it. And this is how we still do it. People need to know."
He took a hit on the bong. "Haven't done this for a long time. I always wondered if I would do this when I was in my eighties. But, eighties, twenties, it's all the same in your mind. It's the body that gets tired."
"So how old do you feel?" I ask.
"I figure twenty-four. That's about it. I mean, I've lived through a lot and know a lot. I know I'm not the same person I was at twenty-four but the way I look at things, what I perceive, feel like I want to do, it's twenty-four. Except my body just won't do it. I'm glad what it does though. Party, every fucking night. I just don't move much. Get up, party, sleep, all in the same place, all in my 1930's speakeasy."
I look around the bus. The same crew and seven more people. It seems like the 1930's. A tired light comes in the side windows. Lone cars swoosh by. Cigarette smoke wafts out with the wind.
"Where will you be tomorrow?" Karen asks me.
"Surrounded by millions." I say. I imagine tonight's late night, dark night, bus party replaced by the heat, the bright sunlight, city streets, and gasping hoards of people out to see the Dead.
The next day, that vision is how it turns out to be. We enter the traffic jam and follow Marty's lead to some slums and former industrial sites southwest of Soldier's Field. Across the tracks and highway we get to a place that is too far south. Marty gets on the bike, that's normally strapped to the back of the bus, and scouts for a closer place. Locating a spot for the bus seems impossible but he finds one and comes back to show us. We wind through tight traffic and narrow streets. Everything is too small and crowded. It looks like we will become wedged into an immovable mass of cars. We stop.
In the parking lot next to us, four undercover cops are arresting someone for selling nitrous. I grab my camera and circle the scene, trying not to antagonize the "casually" dressed cops. Their clothes are unobtrusive but not real "hip." Plus they have flashlights, not-so-hidden holsters like cops have on TV, gloves, and radios. But in a crowd of moving people, you wouldn't notice them until it is too late. Advancing word of their arrival usually warns people because they travel in a large group.
This guy must not have heard any warnings. They have his arms handcuffed behind him. One cop says, "Well, buddy, you are going to jail in Chicago, Illinois. In Chicago, Illinois, you cannot sell drugs. When we catch you selling drugs in Chicago, Illinois, you go to jail."
"How do I get my stuff back? How do I get out?"
"Come-on, man. You know how it works. You can post bond but you're not getting nothing back. It's all evidence."
"Hey, I gotta get the can back. It's for medicinal purposes."
"Yeah, sure. You are going to jail in Chicago, Illinois."
The cop turns and glares at me. I don't want to go to jail in Chicago, Illinois, so I walk back to the bus.
Marty has made contact with a parking attendant who gets us out of the jam and to an alley and freight loading area behind a couple of tall brick buildings. It is good parking for a weekend.
J gets on top of the bus to write, the rest of us open up the pre-Dead party. The sheer size of this Dead show reaches through the old abandoned buildings and fills the space with echoing songs, tents, beers, groups, and balloons. The 'loons seem to be everywhere. Loud whooshes of nitrous oxide tanks expel their delightful brew, punctuating the air.
Our stereo plays the "Cowboy Junkies." Bud loves them. Margo Timmons' voice is so beautiful. It weaves into our souls.
We set up our chairs by the bus and sit down. "This is urban camping," Bud says, "urban Dead camping."
I look around. Maybe one of the ugliest places I've ever been. A parking lot west of us leads to Indiana Avenue. Across that is another parking lot and a ten story brick building with the windows broken out. It looks blackened in one corner, maybe a fire.
Moving north, the parking lot blends into the grafittied side of a one story building, its boarded storefront facing the avenue. Then stressed-out trees and the alley we're parked in, pointing due north. A two-story parking structure is next, filling the whole northeast quarter of our view.
From due east to almost south is a great optical illusionary brick facility. It is about 10 stories tall, with a couple of narrow smoke stacks in the corner of its L-shape. The brick on the tall facades has lines of dark color showing where each floor is. The color seems to be smudged, like it has dripped or oozed, downward. It looks like the building is melting.
Nestled in the "L" of the building is this two story brick cylinder. It is on its side, the round top pointed right at us.
Looking south, there's the alley and parking lot with cars and people. Southwest is a loading dock, dumpster, back of a tall warehouse and then we're back to the parking lot facing west.
Chicago. South side former warehouse district. Urban camping in the bus.
"It's great in winter, when snow covers everything and the Lake Michigan winds rock the bus. I get the heater cooking and we have a great old party," Bud says.
Susan, a recently joined busmate, is starting dinner. She's a friend of Bud's from Wisconsin. Bud is supposed to meet his lawyer at will-call at 5:30. It's past that already. Deborah is hassling him about planning for the show. She wants him to know where her seats are.
"Here Dad, this is where we will be sitting." She's writes down the number on a yellow slip of paper and hands it to him. He says "Okay." She turns away. He looks slyly at me, opens his fingers, and the paper slips out and blows into the parking lot. "Okay, but I don't think I'll come over there."
"Where are you going to be?"
"As close as I can get. I told John I'd take him right up by Jerry, so he can really see the band."
"Dad! You dropped that paper. Here, I'll write it down again. You might want to find me, so listen, our seats are Section 108, seats 7 and 8. Did you hear me Bud?"
That number sticks in my mind. "I wasn't listening." he says.
Marty, Deb, and Dave are leaving so the usual confusion is happening. But it is more intense. This show has the feeling of entering a war-zone. The tall buildings and so many people put it all into the big leagues. More aggressive.
J, Susan, and I finally get Bud going about 7:00. His lawyer has probably given up.
"He's just about getting out of his car, now," Bud says, "I know he got into the traffic. And where's he going to go? All he can do is wait, right? He's going to want some mushrooms and I've got those. We'll find him."
J and Susan are going to do the vendor-parking lot scene. Bud and I have tickets. We finally have all the bongs we need, have our stuff ready, and start the long trek. We hike on a long, rickety wooden bridge over railroad tracks, the Metro station, more railroad tracks, the southbound South Shore Boulevard, and finally get to the huge parking lot filled with walkers, shoppers, vendors, and partying people. Drums mix with the smoke and create a muffled sound between the traffic noise and clear air of the blue-sky day.
This bridge can handle people two abreast going both ways. It is like London Bridge. People sell beer, food, tickets, jewelry, T-shirts, sex, drugs, pop, art, on and on. It is swirling.
Back into the girls-next-door and cherubs looking for their miracles. It is all a miracle. We're all here. What's in and what's out. Bud and I will hear the music. J and Susan will feel the spirit of the traveling, suckling entourage. Without the Dead, where would these people be? Where would they be selling these wares? What would be their towns? How do you be a nomad these days? People eat at fast food restaurants. Go to Wal-Mart. Where's our food come from? We might eat at restaurants and we see pretty waitresses. Here, at the Grateful Dead nomadic village, we see the food being cooked. It's all personal. I see the cook, buyer, and seller all in one person and I watch it being cooked.
But then I see the T-shirts. Beautiful tie-dye. In neat stacks. Others with cool designs. In all sizes. When I first saw tie-dye, people made their own. Do these vendors make theirs?
"Fuck no," one says. "I work for this Italian guy. He manages about fourteen of us. I wanted to follow the Dead so I started doing this. I met this girl and she turned me onto this scene. I make good money. It pays for the tour. I had a ticket for tonight but sold it. There will be a lot of people outside. I should do good."
I run into the girls-next-door I kissed in St. Louis. They hug me. They are more stoned than I have seen most people.
"We know you," Amanda says. "Oh, where we've been. You wouldn't want to know."
"Why not. It's all been good I hope."
"Great. Great. Listen," She leans over like I'm to hear a secret. She bobs her head like she's having a hard time keeping balance. "The guys here can fuck great."
Whisper overhears and laughs. "Oh, we've been bad. We gave up on our vow. Last night. Figured it is the last stop. Enough is enough. Let's see what it can be."
Susan appears and grabs my hand. "We gotta go. Bud's moving away too fast." She pulls me along. We catch up. He is laughing. A bald guy selling bongs ribs J, who is filming his video. The crowd noise fills all receptors.
"into the after..." "next time, we'll get some early..." she's into the..." "how much..." "rally, rally so the..." "best of the..." "noon, before the show, we.." "a six pack for ..."
With Bud we continue through innumerable rows of cars and traffic jams of people, walking, looking at all the shit for sale.
"Where'd you get that bumper sticker?" Bud asks a vendor. It says, "Fuckin' Gonuts."
"I got them in Detroit. This is the last one. Do you want it?"
"Yeah. I'll get one after the show. Will you be here?"
"I don't know. This is my last show. I gotta get back to Texas. My grandson is getting married." She is a grandma.
We cut through cars. Some guys pass a pipe. They give Bud a passing hit.
We finally get through the scene, climb over another bridge and are right outside Soldier's Field. Mobs of people move into, out of, every angle by us. We find will-call and don't see John. I stand in one place calling, "John Tubman". I repeat that once- in-while but mostly watch the sea of people. Hundreds of girls- next-door, cherubs, and so many others.
"I need a miracle." The cry for miracles makes a deafening plea. The shuffle of feet and voices of recognition are mere background.
Plaintive fingers. One curly-haired girl with the prettiest smile and a derby keeps walking by. The same pleading smile. She looks so nice as to be sexless. Long purple print dress with little flowers. One hand holds the other, a lonely finger stands by itself. She wants a miracle so bad.
A couple carries a common sign about just being married and wanting another miracle. A tired couple sits dejectedly on the ground, holding their own signs, "Please, miracle me" and "Needed, Dead ticket."
One girl's sign says "Please - I need a miracle and some pot." Bud calls her over.
"We don't have a ticket or pot, but we do have some acid. Do you want some?"
She looks at him with a surprised look, as if he softly stepped on her toe. "Oh, I don't think so."
"It's just hits cut into little pieces. We call them 'nths. Lick your finger and pick up two or three."
She says okay, picks up three nths and walk off. Bud says he's still looking for John, that we'll find him, and walks over to J, who is interviewing people for his video.
The girl, with the acid still on her finger, comes back to me. "What is this? Really." She says.
"Oh, it's okay. Really. We cut the acid into small pieces so its just a small part of a hit. One is like a long stone from pot. All three would be stronger."
"Have you tried it?"
"Yeah, sure, I'm doing it now. It's quite fun."
She takes all three, smiles, and says, "Maybe I'll see you later." I look around. There are so many people, once you lose sight of anyone, they're gone. It is futile.
"Yeah," I say, and she is gone.
I recognize many of the people who need tickets. They loop in front, walk around in aimless circles, beg for tickets. So many are pretty young girls.
One girl is finally given a ticket. She doesn't seem too overjoyed when the guy stops and gives it to her. She smiles and acts like, "gosh, I hope you don't really want me to do anything for this, do you?" The guy sheepishly feels less comfort in his gift and walks off with his friends. She puts it in her purse and walks in the other direction. She goes about 20 feet, stops, slowly comes back, and begins begging for another ticket.
The girl with the derby walks by. Such a pretty smile.
A trashed out, bare-chested guy, stumbles along. A friend navigates for him. Police on horseback loom over the milling crowd. A somewhat older woman carries a sign, "Will do anything for a miracle."
Bud's friend, John, sees Bud and holds him in a big bear hug. He is so happy. "I thought we'd never find you. The traffic was backed up forever. I finally just turned west, found a place, parked, and then, we must have walked three miles." John is with another friend named John.
We retreat back to some yellow police tape blocking access to a trailer. J is interviewing someone, "Yeah, those people who busted the fence at Deer Creek really fucked up." Bud is pulling out the tickets for John and John.
The woman who would do anything for a miracle pops into our circle. "Do you have a ticket?" she asks the first John.
He looks confused and quietly appeals to Bud to do something. She doesn't wait. "Do you want sex for the ticket? Do you want a blow job? We can go over there? Do you all want one? I really want a ticket. Can we do that?"
John shakes his head slightly, like he is slowly waking up and not sure he has his senses yet. "Uh, well, thanks but I really do want to see the show. So, I'm sorry."
She gives an appealing look to the rest of us. We all shrug our shoulders in agreement. She walks off.
We leave J and Susan.
Near the entrance, it is rush hour again. The force of the crowd moves your body along and feet just give support. It's like standing in the ocean where your feet barely touch and the waves carry you in short, little hops. Going through turns feels like water being forced through a kink in a hose.
We spurt out by an entrance and go in. The music is already playing one of my favorite songs, "Sugaree." Jerry's distorted voice bounces off the white cement walls. We're in the caverns below the seats. Runways lead upward. The Johns stand in line to get a beer. I am impatient, tell Bud I'll see them at our seats, and walk up the ramp toward the music.
I enter a tunnel filled with twirlers. Toward the opening it tightens up. I feel the pressure and then the release of shooting into the open stadium air. A sea of heads, moving like small waves on the ocean, flow down to a crowded field and then up the other side and around this big oval that seems like the Roman Coliseum. At the north end is the huge stage and weirdly-shaped backdrop that is the set for the Dead's light show. Beyond the stadium is Chicago's skyline. An orange, setting-sun western sky blends into the blue over Lake Michigan. Sunlit reflections bounce off some distant windows.
As soon as I squeeze to the rail and can see the band, I know I am on my own for tonight's show. I'll never see my friends again. "Never get off the bus. No, never get off the bus!"
I love the song, "Sugaree." In the shows on the tour, except for the light-marred "Drums" and "Space" and one of Vince's tunes, this is the first true song that transports me into Dead space. Jerry's pleading voice, "Please forget you knew my name, my darlin', Sugaree." Then the guitar solo which expresses his plea so eloquently.
A tremendous roar of applause starts even before the last notes have been played. It is louder than cheers for a Chicago Bear touchdown. I move to our seats and, really, what seats? What are seats in a stadium full of people dancing strongly to the music. I am in the aisle by our row. I look to where our seats are. Just people, all crammed in, dancing. I especially don't want to fight through everybody to get to the seats so I dance where I am, in the aisle.
I remember that I have the acid, so I prime up for the second set. If I'm going to be alone on this one, then I'm going to be sure to fill that space.
The Dead's first set of songs are greeted with smiles. All these happy faces. So many. Stretching across the bowl. Corinthian columns above people's heads. I feel lost. It seems somewhat threatening to have so many people out of control. They're just following the music. I mean, who is this band, and why did they always go where we do? Is that it? We just happen to go to these places and all these people are already there. And this band.
To be honest, the music isn't all that powerful. It doesn't really fill the stadium with it's sound. It's been like that for all the shows. I like the clarity, which is what they are famous for, but many times we cup our hands around our ears for more volume.
The music just doesn't seem like it could attract all these people. Is it just the opportunity to get really fucked up? Is everyone like me, tripping, or at least stoned? If they aren't, I hardly see what they are enjoying. The music is so quiet, Jerry's voice off-key, and they all forget words. The melodies bounce along all-right but many times in a trite country or rock-and-roll way. But, rarely are the drums are subdued.
I welcome the break. Perhaps things will calm down and make sense. Balloons float above the crowd. People bang them on their way and the prevailing circular winds of the stadium blow them onward for someone else to propel them further. They come in singles, one balloon every few minutes.
Some synchronistic event happens and unites the balloons into a large gang. They move in a horde, like gnats swarming on a summer evening. People duck their heads and bat scores of the balloons onward. They darken the gray evening sky. The punting of the balloons is louder than the intermission music.
When they pass, I see a wave forming on the other side of the stadium. It circles into the south end and passes over me. A few people stand up and wave their hands.
The wave continues around the stadium. Sweeping across the other side, gaining in noise and waving hand participation. It swoops again through the south turn of the stadium and then, like a strong lakefront wind, it sweeps across and over everyone. Then into the north end, around to the other side and it sweeps toward me again. Even stronger now, people yell in anticipation of its arrival.
Its wind yanks everyone out of their seats. It pulls their hands above their heads and sucks the motion through their fingers. Thousands of fingers, wave toward this unseen power.
The wave rages through the other side. Screams roll across the crowd. It moves south again, into the turn.
I am underwater. The bottom currents reflect the waves moving overhead. The beautiful long green sea grasses whisp back and forth with the waves' powerful motion. As the last pull of the wave tugs on the grasses, their tips quiver with desire to continue moving with wave. But it's power wanes and the grasses are pulled back toward the ocean's darker depths.
The screams, sucked out of people's mouths by the wave, exhale into the strong wind that pulls at their rippling fingers. As the wave gains more strength and heads back to me, I have to get out of there. A final whoosh of wave action pulls me back into the crowd. Dark shapes of stretching bodies reach to the sky. I persevere and get to the tunnel.
Dank, grey, swarms of people. I push through to the inner aisle that circles the stadium. It is rush hour all over again. I retreat to the wall of the runway. It's cool grayness is clammy.
A girl-next-door says she's to meet her friends and stands next to me. She smiles. I nod, not sure if I can even talk. And what would be the point? So many girls-next-door. So young. Where do they go when they are done?
"Do you like the show?" she asks.
"Uh, yeah, sure. I liked Sugaree."
"Oh, me too. Is this your first show?"
"I saw them in Indianapolis, and St. Louis."
"I was supposed to go to Deer Creek. I had tickets for the cancelled show. That's why we came up here."
"Are you from Indianapolis?"
"Yeah."
Why do they all have such sweet smiles. Her breasts are characteristic. Small, with pointy little nipples sticking into her shirt.
"What do you do there?" I ask.
"I go to the University of Indianapolis. To be a physical therapist. I'm Becca Katzenzorrow."
I think of the TV show "Zorro." The masked guy.
"It's Italian. Here are my friends. It's good talking to you. Maybe I'll see you in Indianapolis." She moves into the surging crowd. Gone.
After weaving through the masses again, I get to my spot for the second set. As far from the stage as possible. In the distance, Chicago's lights are brightening the sky.
I watch the twirlers during the first songs of the second set. They are far below me, at ground level. A bright light shines on their sides, making silhouettes of circular dancing frenzy.
It's an unusual night. A fourth song, "Terrapin Station," plays before "Drums." The juxtaposition of light, arching notes brought home by pounding, powerful drums leads to a blasting crescendo that leaves everybody breathless.
"Drums" follows and further mesmerizes everyone. Many people sit in their seats. Knocked back. Unable to keep up with the intricacies and waves of pulsating percussion. They listen and barely move.
I stand, awed by the visual effects. The colors tingle through my skin and out my toes. The large stage creates more interwoven hues. Four large-screen videos show mind trips mixed with visuals of the band. I close my eyes and the lights continue. The drums create the lights.
B-ban bong b-bong, bonk, the sounds blank out everything. It is all gone. The stadium, the city, all the people. Just me, floating, feeling, sensing these moving blasts of sound. It's all gel. All flowing into itself. The sound. It comes from these small places, expands and enters my own small place. My ear canal and eardrum. Bouncing, beating in response to the drums. The drums don't stop. It is tomorrow. Are these people still here? I open my eyes. A hushed sea of heads flows into the dark in front. Criss-crossings lights rake across the front rows.
Drums fade away, quietly melding into "Space." Do people really like this? It's not a song. Just noise. Wouldn't people rather see Billy Joel sing "Piano Man". Or John Denver and "Take Me Home, Country Roads?"
My mind free floats. Is it the same for others? Does the band play the same "Space" every night? Just play the tape? I can't tell.
I'm almost glad when the concert's last notes sweep through Soldier's Field. I feel alone and there are all these people. I sit in this little seat at the top of the stadium. I look around the rim. The skyboxes, placed between the Corinthian columns, is architectural abuse. Would they do that to the Parthenon?
That adds to the isolation. Does anyone care about that? Everyone is filing out. Back into the crowd. Back to feeling like cattle moving through the yard.
I enter the uncontrollable motion. People are nice, but they can't help but move the way tight crowds make them move. A bulge pushes people into the wall, quicker down the ramp, or flush up against others sliding by in the opposite direction.
Outside. Fresh air again. Up and over the stadium bridge and the parking lot lays out before me. Already packed, waiting for the unloading people. It's all so alien. Millions of backs of heads. Down the steps.
"Keep moving. Keep moving, people," a cop shouts.
I jostle through a crowd so tight I'm never going to get to the other side. I look up and see these dark eyes looking at me. They are from a girl-next-door, sitting on top of a van behind the first row of vendors.
"Me? She's looking at me?" I look at the people around me. They are in their own trips. I look back. She's looking right at me. Is she seeing me?
She's my junior high school sweetheart. I loved her into high school and then saw her for a sweaty-sex summer after college. Has she been reborn? The same shoulder-length brown hair. The big eyes, full lips. I see her standing, waist-deep in the swimming pool, her long white dress floating in a large circle around her. Arching her body backwards, she spins a slow twirl. Fingertips crease the water and her dress follows in spiralling ripples.
The crowd pushes me toward her. She pulls me in with her eyes. I can move my feet again and continue toward her. I approach her van. She leans over, with my gaze still locked in her eyes, and says, "Can you please get me some water?"
I turn around and behind me is a guy closing a cooler of plastic bottled spring water. I pay him a dollar and hold it up for her.
"Thanks." She takes several big gulps.
"You look regal up there."
"I've been here all day. I was supposed to meet six friends, all coming from different places. I've met five so far. I'm still looking for one. He was supposed to meet me at the train station at five-fifteen but we missed each other. So now I'm looking for him."
"Where are you from?"
"California."
"Will you go back there when the tour's over?"
"I don't know. I don't know where I'll go. I just really want to find my friend."
As I wander through the crowd back to the bus, cops run through the cars in groups of twos and threes. People can tell they are coming so they cover the nitrous tanks, put down the joints.
They stop one guy with a huge balloon of nitrous. He lets go and it sputters into the night. One cop foolishly tries to grab it. He look pretty silly, snatching at empty air. They let the guy go.
Back at the bus, we sit outside through the warm Chicago night. Bongs, beers, people visiting from other cars. Dead-heads cluster around vans. Warehouse and telephone pole shadows reach across the parking lot. We party until the sun brightens Chicago's early morning horizon.
I sleep on the roof until a morning rain puts me under the bus where I dodge rivulets of water and a puddle forming at my feet. I finally get up at nine, feeling okay and ready for Bud's first bong.
Then we're in a famous Chicago breakfast place. The coffee is the best. Anything to renew the nerve endings. We have a bus cleaning at a Jewel supermarket and then head back to the show.
We park in the same area, but now by the loading docks instead of the alley. It's better because we're in the afternoon shade.
Last show. Last party. Following an entire tour looms as a future fun-filled challenge. Will there be another tour? Or is this, as rumored, one of their last?
The John's have gone. J is on the roof, writing. Marty plays guitar, inside. Deborah sits in the circle with Bud, Susan, Dave, and me. Deb, who works in a Doctor's office, is rapping about health care.
"This thing is so fucked. It's down to zip codes now. That's how we decide who to treat. We get a telephone call. `yeah, yeah, yeah,' I say. Then, `What's the patient's zip code?' If it's the wrong one, I just hang up. Don't even say good-bye. They're just trying to shove the patient onto us."
Marty appears at the door. "Fuckin' slick Willie, man. Trying to get into your fucking pocket."
"Wait," I say. "Is he saying you go by zip codes or are the insurance companies?"
"Oh, it's them saying they want the right zip codes."
"So it's the insurance companies. That is private medicine where the real goal is money. Clinton should go for socialized medicine, the single payer, where the goal is adequate care for everyone. That makes the most sense."
"Oh, it's all just the government reaching into our pockets."
"Come on, Marty, that's the excuse for dumping all our environmental laws. `Government's too big.' `Cut back everywhere.' So they cut EPA 30 percent and say they can't enforce the laws."
"Easy, easy, Chris. Have another bong."
"I can't take it easy. They're going to fuck us and they already are. Enjoy the air, while you still can."
A black guy approaches, selling T-shirts. J has been trying to video-tape Bud's explanation of how he got the bus and his philosophies of life. Marty yells to the sales guy that J will film him. Soon the guy is getting interviewed by all us for J's video. But Marty does most of the talking. He even answers the questions. The guy says a few words and Marty finishes the sentence. J gets frustrated because he's already taped guys like that and he really wants to get Bud talking. He turns off the camera.
Deborah cooks up some fried chicken, which, with corn on the cob, makes a great American last-show dinner. J wants to see the beginning of the show. We've haven't gotten there on-time yet. Tonight, he's moving us along.
Bud is dragging. "It's best to get there after a few songs," he says. "That's when it gets crazy outside. The miracle seekers are desperate. The scalpers are on edge and the buyers, if tickets are tight, are frantic. Plus twirlers are already twirling to the music coming from the show." But J still wants to get there early.
We hear the sound of a nitrous tank. "Here's ten bucks, J. Go and get us some 'loons." Bud says. J hesitates.
Marty jumps up. "I'll get them." He grabs the bill, leaves, and soon barges back in, holding large green and pink balloons. I know we're going to be late now. 'Loons make people want to sit and suck more 'loons. We all hit on them and Marty goes back for more.
We are crazy now. Laughing at the sounds, the preposterousness of hurrying. The buildings blend into sheer beauty. I say to Deborah, "It's amazing how when you get really high, that beauty is everywhere. Here we are in an alley, a parking lot. Sometimes you can smell the stench of the open bathroom by the dumpster. There is nothing growing. Broken asphalt. The backs of these buildings and the burned out hulk in the distance. But you know what? It's all beautiful. Angst- ridden yes but angst-ridden beauty nevertheless.
We close up and head for the final show. I'm going to stick close to my buds tonight.
Back over the wooden bridge and into the crowd.
Distraction, distraction, distractions all over the place. We have it down. Keep walking in the same direction. Keep in eye contact. If lost, stop and look.
We work our way forward. J wants to be inside. I'm wired by all the visual and aural stimuli. It keeps coming. Overload of the external stimuli discriminators. It's like being crazy. Too much to respond to. Some people turn off. Some overreact. I've learned to persevere. Keep driving through the noises, smells, wonderful faces, intricate patterns, and nonsensical scenes that demand more attention.
A cherub here, girls-next-door there. Leaning against cars. Selling T-shirts. All new. All old. But just more and more. Do they ever stop? Rows upon rows of them. I look over the steamy car tops and turbulent heads. All different, all the same. I see Bud, still moving forward. Susan is off to the side. J behind me.
The dreadlocked guy who parked by us in St. Louis is playing in a group of drums. He seems to be the leader, the most confident.
I'm leading now. Taking an easy walk with the crowd, on one of the parallel vendor avenues. Cut through cars like going through back yards. Approach the vendors from behind. You have to if you are going to move toward the stage in any straight direction.
Pockets of people lean against cars holding big balloons. It's pretty peaceful. A breeze from the lake licks its cool breath across the tribe. J passes me and takes us towards some jewelry. We skirt by and into a nitrous bust.
Two people run into the crowd, knocking over the jewelry and some T-shirt stands. The cops chase for about thirty yards and give up. The van we walk by has a guy spread-eagled against it, being searched. We catch a glimpse of this and keep going onward, onward.
Near the entrance I see the girl on the van again. She is levitated. This quiet, serene beauty, staring over the surging masses. J is quite taken with her, too. She smiles at me in a knowing way.
We go to will-call again to gather our senses before going inside.
"Miracle." "I need a miracle." "Please, someone, miracle me." "Miracle, please, miracle, please, miracle..."
I recognize several from the night before. That one girl is getting another ticket tonight. Two miracles in two nights for her. It's the smile, her endearing smile.
We get everything sorted out. Bud is hanging back, experiencing the last minute mania.
The girl who got yesterday's miracle walks by, with her finger upraised. She looks at us and croons, "I need a miracle". We nod "no."
She stops walking right by me.
"How'd you like the show last night?" I ask.
"I didn't see it. I couldn't get in."
"Oh, come on. I saw that guy give you a ticket. You put it in your purse and walked away. But, I did see you later, looking for another one."
"You got it. I work for somebody. I get the free tickets and he sells them. A lot of us work for him. Don't tell anybody I told you this."
"Why."
"He'd drop me. He's cool, doesn't bother us but he doesn't want anyone to even think this is organized."
"Why do you tell me?"
"You seem nice. Plus you're the first to ask and this is the last show."
"How much do you make?"
"Good nights, maybe seven hundred bucks. I'll get fourteen tickets, he sells them for a hundred. We split it. That's what I like about Larry, we make money too."
"Where are you from?"
"Florida, Tallahassee. Ever been there?"
"Once. What happens after tomorrow? Where are you going, back home?"
"I don't know. But not home. Maybe out to California. I've got some friends there. I've got money saved up so I can hang for about six months. Now, that's a miracle." She smiles and walks away, "Miracle, I need a miracle. Please, somebody, I need a miracle."
When we get inside, we don't even look at our tickets. Bud leads us through the jostling crowds to the first row above the field. Susan and I dance in the seats. J and Bud are in the aisle. They keep passing us joints. Bud passes the nths around. This pretty high school blond takes the container. She looks inside and asks what it is. I tell her, thinking she might have no idea what I'm talking about. She looks at me, licks her finger and takes about six. Her boyfriend takes a few. We look at each other with wild grins.
J's dancing in a crazy state. He's stopped writing the story and is just enjoying. I've left my camera in the car so it's free time for me, too. It's funny how having a camera makes me more of a recorder than a participant. I try to be both. I envision myself lying backwards, filming everything from the ground up, including myself, being there in the film. In the life.
Bud's doing his twirler arm movements. Susan is dancing next to me.
The music sounds great. Jerry is finally loud enough. The drums are in synch, of course, and Bobby is in key. A couple songs later and it seems like they are running out of gas. Jerry forgets some words, the music becomes muddled, and some people sit down.
We still dance, especially as they move through the last two songs of the set. Vince fills his song with soaring energy and then Jerry soothes us into the break. His lilting voice and doodling guitar bounces everybody's minds to a happy plane.
I think of 1970, tripping on some chocolate mescaline, when I realized why they are the Grateful Dead. Jerry's vocals are so personal. He pleads sometimes like a girl-next-door looking for a miracle. His voice, which is not like any lead singer's voice, expresses love and reality in ways we know so well. Yet it seems like it could stop at any time, except the music keeps going behind him. It's the Grateful Dead. Moving so smooth and slow that even on the most up-beat song, you think they could die. And you're so grateful that they don't. Onward, onward, they truck through and celebrate unchartered musical waters. They are the Grateful Dead.
As they leave the stage, Bud asks about going up high for the second set. "Sure, the place to be for all the visuals." The place we find is in the center but one of the video screens is blocked by balloons hanging from a tall camera stand. The second set begins with their three songs before "Drums." Good songs that all the song historians write furiously into their notebooks. Just more enjoyable Grateful Dead tunes to me.
"Drums" begins and it becomes "Space" too fast. Boo-bump-be-boom, and it's gone. Drumbeats do back up the beginning of "Space" and fill in other empty parts.
"Space" becomes feedback, like in the acid days of the sixties. It is almost silent, then churning lightening bolts of sound scream through the night. A driving back beat imperceptibly keeps things moving.
The song is losing time. Time is losing the song. How much time has gone by? I'm beginning to get tired. My eyes close. I see lights and hear the single notes stretching around the stadium. My eyes flicker open and I see a large animal standing above J. I know it's not real, just a creation of my mind from the shapes that are already there. Like a 3-D computer image. I let the animal grow, trying to figure out what it is. But my eyes close and it is gone.
Then they open and ten people are running up into the stands. Just running over people, running right up to us. They're taking huge steps. Stepping over three rows at a time. They pass and I feel the wind of their boots.
A screeching note and the wind is fluttering strongly through my hair. I look up and see one of the stadium's flags lying flat.
A high note drops suddenly and the people are liquid, flowing down the stands toward a vast pool of heads. Colors tumble over each other. Shimmering reflections of metallic liquid people, a soup, cascading down the steps.
I shake my head and I'm back in Soldier's Field. "Space" continues. Bud is wide-eyed, J is repeatedly saying, "Wow."
Then the songs begin again. Moving toward the finale and then the encore. Jerry sings "Black Muddy River." Same as in St. Louis. A slow, ambling song for the last. The tour is gliding to a close. "I will walk alone by the black muddy river, And dream me a dream of my own. I will walk alone by the black muddy river And sing me a song of my own, and sing me a song of my own." They wave their hands and leave the stage. The cheering continues. It's never going to stop. Bic lighters make the night into day. Finally, the Grateful Dead come out for a second encore. Pretty unusual for them to do that.
Phil sings "Box of Rain." One of my favorites but it doesn't seem like a song Phil should sing. He's out of key and changes the melody because of the notes he can't reach. Nevertheless, he sings the final lyrics beautifully. "And it's just a box of rain or a ribbon for your hair such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there." It's over. They wave their hands and leave the stage. The crowd keeps cheering. Some people start for the exits.
A loud boom explodes overhead. Ten fountains of sparks erupt behind the stage, along the rim of the stadium. Fireworks explode above. People cheer louder and start screaming delight at the fiery explosions of reds, blues, and assorted colors. The fireworks intensify. Every new burst of color brings wide gasps. It goes on and on. More colors. Booming explosions. Streaking sparks.
I notice the background smoke being blown inland by the lake winds. Great designs. Smoke-clouds, born from violent beginnings, show streaks and patterns of the firebursts.
Floating through these jumbled patterns is a large smoke ring. It's maybe fifty feet across. Like one of Saturn's rings without Saturn. I expect the winds to quickly dissipate it but it keeps moving, intact. Nothing bothers it. I'm afraid to show anyone because it might instantly disappear. But finally, I point it out to J. He's amazed. We watch until it's above us and we lose the angle. Then the finale fills the sky with so many colors that the smoke ring is lost to the brightness.
Finally, it really is over. J, Susan, Bud, and I remain until almost everyone is out of the stands. The roach runners have already been through and now search the other side.
Dark shadows and whispering noises sweep through the parking lot as we come off the bridge from the stadium. The queen of girls-next-door has an empty perch on top of the van, which is driving away. The cops are clearing the parking lot.
The vendors try for their last sales. Moving car lights flash across the wares. Security guys weave through the dark bodies. "Let's go people. Time to go. Wrap it up."
It's like refugees. Scattered good-byes, starting engines, idling motors, streams of water poured over fires, steam spewing skyward.
Back at the bus, we set up on the parking lot. The guy from the next bus drops by. He sold homemade pizzas. He says it was like being in a vortex of money. Sold out in two hours. Made $3000. Now, he's driving back to British Columbia with ten riders he'll drop off in California, Oregon, and Washington. It will take a few weeks to get there. He wants to hit some county fairs and art shows on the way.
For a last night party, we do like the band, close up early. Generally, the last night's show was disappointing. No wild climax. I wanted them to come out for a last song after the fireworks. A real rockin' song. Like "Johnny B Good," done in their Grateful Dead way. I'd have liked that.
"No way." says Marty. "They can't follow up the fireworks. That's the end."
So we turn in early. It is still dark. I climb on the roof for the last time. No cars move on Indiana Avenue. Chicago is quiet at last. So are we. I go to sleep, imagining the reality I'll be getting back to tomorrow, a long train ride, and longer car ride home. Life does go on and on. And then some. I'll take that ride as long as I can.
"Never get off the bus. No. Never get off the bus!"