Finally My First Post After 362 Days as A Medium Member:
A Silver Skull Poison Ring, The Seattle Pop Festival in 1969 and The Kindness of Strangers
The Train Trip Before “ the Trip”
Since elementary school, every summer, my mother, father, sister, and I would enter Union Station at Broadway and Main in Winnipeg filled with delight to be boarding the №1 train for Vancouver.
In the rotunda below the tracks we could feel the rumble overhead as the train pulled into the station. My father worked as a machinist for CN so we all travelled on a pass in the day coach. We lined up and, finally, they opened two sets of double doors and we mounted the wide, steep staircase. Emerging at the top of the staircase the sunlight was glinting off the gleaming silver rail cars. We jostled our way at a brisk pace through the throng of fellow passengers we found our car. Each car had a number but it was the names that beckoned to us travelers promising adventure. Names such as Vermillion River, Rainbow Falls, Burrard, Jasper and Yellowhead spoke of each car’s unique personality. The serious conductor glanced down at his gold pocket watch in his hand and bellowed out “All aboard.” I took my first step onto the stoop, followed by three more to stand on the floor of the gangway connection.
The heavy stainless steel door opened with a hiss. We walked past the tap that dispensed ice-cold water into conical white paper cups and found a set of two opposing seats and stored our carry on bags. Two of us would have to ride backwards but that was soon forgotten by the time we had the black table hooked in place and were playing cribbage. The prairies were flat and boring and I couldn’t wait until we made it to Edmonton and then Boston Bar and Jasper. Always, we packed a lunch. Egg salad sandwiches, dill pickles and oranges. Oh yes, the fragrance of fresh oranges aspirating the coach air is an unfailing memory. On earlier trips when I was younger, I loved to sit in the smoking car with its burgundy leather bench seats and the smell of sulfur from striking wooden matches. I’d walk from one end of the train to the other enjoying the rich aromas of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding wafting from the dining car. My goal was always to arrive at the Sceneramic Dome car and sit there, up high, looking out the curved glass as the scenery sped by. But my favorite thing to do was to go in between the cars in the gangway connection which swayed from side to side and pivoted obediently with the curves in the tracks. The clackety-clacking of the steel wheels speeding along the rails made my heart race with excitement. I loved it most of all when the top section of the Dutch door was open providing an infusion of pine-scented air as the spruce trees and mountains went whizzing by. It was frightening and exhilarating to stick my head out of the window and be blasted with the full force of rushing air.
This time, my sister wasn’t on the trip with us as she was back in Winnipeg working at the hospital she had graduated from as a Registered Nurse. I was eighteen and had just graduated from high school. The last four years in high school hadn’t been very good as I had discovered LSD through a friend in grade 10 and embarked on several psychedelic trips. Sometimes, I would drop acid in the morning and go back to bed for a while and wake up stoned and then go to school. But I could never make it past lunchtime. Instead, I’d hang out playing pinball with a friend at his father’s used book store. Normally, I would be coming down and very depressed on Sundays. Nonetheless, it was a magical time, filled with giggles and looking for kicks which kept getting harder to find.
The Short Bus Trip Before “The Trip”
On this trip we would stay in downtown Vancouver on Granville St. at the St. Helen’s Hotel and I would have my favorite breakfast of French Toast with maple syrup at the Peter Pan restaurant. We would visit my maternal grandmother and we would go to the race track on Hastings and ride the roller coaster at the PNE.
But I had a definite agenda this time. I had talked my parents into taking a bus trip to Seattle so I could check out the Seattle Pop Festival which featured many of the best bands in the rock world.
We arrived at the bus depot and took a cab to an older, dull gray brick hotel in downtown Seattle. We had lunch at the hotel to celebrate my 18th year on the planet. My heart was pounding with anticipation as I said my goodbyes and caught a bus to the festival site at Gold Creek Park in Woodinville, WA.
The Poison Ring
I walked along the strip and a noticed a head shop up ahead on my left. I went inside and took a deep breath. The burning stick of sandalwood incense filled the shop with a welcoming ambience. I gazed at the spellbinding collection of blacklight posters including ones of John Lennon, Timothy Leary and Jimi Hendrix. In the glass counter where jewelry was displayed a silver poison ring caught my eye. The front of it was a sinister skull that was hinged and opened to allow pills to be stored in it. I bought it as it looked cool and I thought it would be useful when I had the opportunity to pick my own poison.
The Seattle Pop Festival
I walked over a bridge that spanned a dozen railway tracks. I stared down at the Burlington Northern gondola cars and hopper cars, many spray-painted with puffed up Michelin man letters and multi-colored works of graffiti. I could hear music faintly in the distance pouring out of the park. My heart was pounding. I was getting closer. I checked my wallet for the third time that day to be sure my $6.00 ticket was still there and hadn’t mysteriously disappeared. I had purchased it at a downtown ticket outlet right after we checked in to the hotel. I was very tempted to purchase the $15.00 three day ticket but couldn’t as we had to return to Vancouver on Sunday morning.
I arrived at the entrance to the festival and a tall stringy looking character in his mid-twenties with brown hair down to his shoulders, dark eyes with dilated pupils and a long narrow nose, blissful smile faded blue jean vest tore my ticket in half and stamped the back of my hand. He said: “Have a good trip, man.”
I replied: “Yeah, that’s what I’ll be fixin’ to do.”
As I entered the venue there were thousands of people moving around — a tide of tie-dyed humanity buzzing with life — while the Guess Who were on stage several football fields away playing “Undone.” Those flute notes lifted me higher and higher but I had one thing on my mind: to score some acid and get high.
No doubt about it, I was an acid guy. Timothy Leary made sense. I dug the tune in and turn on part but being a pseudo hippie, I hadn’t dropped out. I bought two hits of Orange Sunshine and opened the skull door on my poison ring and tucked them inside.
It was a hot, sunny afternoon which was amazing for Seattle as rain would have been a drag. I couldn’t believe the sea of people who had already settled in the park with their lawn chairs and their tents and their Navajo blankets and their pipes of hash flavouring the air with wisps of Moroccan sweetness. And here and there potent patchouli punctuated the afternoon air.
“The Trip”
As if I were lifted up powerfully by a surging wave of irresistible excitement, propelling me towards my inevitable decision, I pulled up on the skull door of the poison ring and turned my hand to shake out a hit of orange barrel acid. But both pills spilled into my open palm. I took it as some type of benevolent sign and brought my hand to my open mouth and dumped them both in and swallowed.
I expected the acid to start hitting me in about 45 minutes. I was used to poorer quality acid, so I knew right away that it had been foolhardy to take two hits when one would have been more than enough. Certainly, I had done my fair share of acid over the last four years. I wasn’t a novice but my trips had been in safe and familiar environments. The Seattle Pop Festival was something completely off the charts. I couldn’t help but feel that “people are strange, when you’re a stranger.” And I was a stranger — somewhat afraid and alone but hypnotized by the mind-shattering Retina Circus light show and the mesmerizing Latin beat and Hammond organ of Santana playing “Evil Ways.” After the set I wandered through the crowd — down the pathways between the tens of thousands of revelers, drinking, dancing, and toking and talking and kissing and making love in tents and lying on blankets. I was caught in the riptide of an overwhelming wave of raw humanity, halfway between hallucination and horror, with transforming, Kafka cockroach thoughts creeping in between the cracks of my consciousness.
The canvas flaps of a tent were open and Voodoo Chile flooded through my ears. 6 was turning out to be 9 as trillions of cells in my brain were lit up and emitting alternating frequencies of multi-hued emotions punctuated with intense rushes of fight or flight. What was I going to do? Stay and embrace the fractured ecstasy of this unpredictable landscape and its progressively macabre inhabitants, or, run away as far and as fast as I could before the maelstrom sucked me deeper down into its bowels and my identity had melted into the tie-dyed sea undulating around me. My feeling was that some magnificent or malevolent force was on the periphery watching with emerald green panther eyes and waiting to pounce at a moment’s notice.
I couldn’t take it. I was way too stoned. I’d been blasted by both barrels of this potent LSD shotgun and it was transporting me to a different level of consciousness where I needed to turn down the rock and roll intensity of the electrifying night and find some peace, some solitude — a port in this psychedelic storm.
As I walked down a street in the Woodinville community near Gold Creek Park the music was gradually becoming more distant, more muffled. I felt a sense of relief removing myself from the intense sensory bombardment.
An Encounter with Grace and the Kindness of Strangers
The night breeze was refreshing as it dried the sweat on my forehead. I had no idea what I was going to do next. I had stopped resisting and was allowing myself to go with the flow of the universe, hoping it’s compassion would manifest itself at this crucial moment in my life.
On my right, on the corner of the street was a large, green, three-story, wooden house. Some of the windows had electric candles sitting on the sills illuminating them with golden light. A young woman appeared from around the corner of the house and approached me saying:
“Are you lost?”
“Yes, I am. In many ways.”
“What do you mean?”
“I left the Pop Festival because I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much for me.”
“You have an accent, where are you from?”
“Canada — the middle of Canada — Winnipeg. About 450 miles northwest of Minneapolis.”
She stood straight like a stalk of straw. Light blonde hair, blazing, deep blue sapphire eyes, medium aquiline nose, soft and shapely lips blushed with the lightest shade of pink and a smile as wide and inviting as a home-baked slice of warm peach pie. Stunning, gleaming pearl-white perfect teeth. And a mellifluous voice.
“I’m Marcy — with a y. How did you get here — did you hitch?”
“Nothing so brave. I came by train to Vancouver with my parents. Then, we took the bus here. They are back at the hotel in Seattle.”
“Do you think they are worried about you?”
“They may be.” I said turning the silver skull ring on my finger, around and around.
“I’m pretty messed up right now, I just dropped two hits of acid this afternoon and I’m not sure what I should do.”
“Maybe we can help you. I live in this house. We are a commune called The Sisters and Brethren of Christ.”
She led me by the hand. Her touch was warm and firm, yet soft and fragranced.
“Here’s a phone if you want to call your parents.”
“Yes, I need to do that for sure,” I said taking the folded piece of paper out of my front pocket with the hotel number in my mother’s small, clear handwriting. My index finger felt like a big rubbery sausage and, in my condition, appeared too large to fit in the holes of the rotary dial. I was peaking but not freaking out. The warmth in Marcy’s voice was my lifeline to humanity.
“Hi Mom, it’s me. Yeah, everything is cool. I’m with some friends I met who said I could sleepover tonight since it’s already late. Then I’ll see you in the morning. “
“Did you go to Longacres Racetrack? Yeah, that’s good. And you made money? $150 on the quinella. That’s great. Yeah, let’s take the monorail to the Space Needle tomorrow. Okay, bye.”
Marcy led me down the hall with it’s faded rose and gray wallpaper and opened the door to a small, rectangular room with a single bed, a dresser and a nightstand with a lamp that she turned on.
“You can listen to the radio if you like but keep the volume down. Are you thirsty?”
“Yeah, my mouth is so dry. I haven’t had anything to drink since I left the hotel early this afternoon.”
“I’ll bring you a Coke and get you a towel and show you where the bathroom is.”
I took several gulps of Coke and the explosion of carbonated sweetness was beyond words.
“I can’t thank you enough Marcy. You are the kindest person I’ve ever met. I’m messed up now but I hope we can have a good talk in the morning.”
“I’m just doing God’s work and it gives me the greatest joy to help people in need.”
Eventually, I fell into a restless dream-filled sleep.
The Conversation and the Exchange
After washing my face in the morning I joined Marcy and three of the brethren at the kitchen table and ate some oatmeal along with a cup of coffee.
“Thank you very much. I really appreciate your hospitality and helping me out last night when I really needed it. I can’t believe how foolish I was getting completely wrecked at the pop festival.”
The brethren acknowledged my thanks and left the room. Marcy was sitting across the table from me. She reached out both arms and held my hands in her palms which were warm and soft. She gazed into my eyes and said:
“You got lucky this time but if you keep taking drugs it may not be so good for you next time. Who knows — you might jump off a building or land up in the psych ward. You’re only 18 with your whole life ahead of you.”
She enclosed her hand around my ring finger and tugged gently at the poison ring on it.
“I’ll make you a deal. Give me the ring and I’ll give you something positive in return.”
I pulled the ring off and handed it to her and she smiled and lifted a necklace over her head and said: “Here, I want you to have this.”
It was a light brown strand of leather threaded through a hole in the top of a dark brown wooden cross.
“I’m not sure if you are ready to accept Jesus into your heart yet but wear this as a memento of me and your experience here. Hopefully, with time you will realize that there’s a much better path you can follow that is filled with unlimited joy and happiness. I will pray for you to find your way.”
With that she put the necklace over my head. Marcy was radiant. I was uplifted, transported by her love.
“Would you write down your address here.”
I gave her the same piece of paper on which my mother had jotted down the hotel phone number.
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to write and let you know how I’m doing.”
Seeing Marcy’s flowing script on the same page as my mother’s diminutive writing had a deep significance that I didn’t appreciate at the time. Growing older I’ve come to realize the huge debt of gratitude I owe to both of these women: one who gave me life and loved and nurtured me and the other who taught me the goodness of humanity through her kindness.
Did I regret missing the Doors and the other great bands that played that night? Yes, I did.
But I had been enveloped in the kindness of strangers and I was beginning to develop a deeper sense of gratitude for the love and compassion flowing all around me, outside and inside me, with each new breath of the universe.
The kindness of strangers can be a life-changing experience and it’s one that is well worth paying forward as many times as possible.
