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July
20, 2002
Augusta,
GA.
Coming
of Age in the Deep South
by T.W. Croft
Part Two
Mayberry
through Dark, Dark Glasses
But, I digress. The few things I can
remember about the first forced year back in Augusta are: I had
an anal retentive probation officer named Vern (an old pal of
my Dad's) who cited scripture, and almost had epileptic fits
every time he saw me as my hair got longer; I sucked at Augusta
College, which I was forced to attend, and was constantly arguing
with the profs, who were all as stupid as Gomer Pyle on quaaludes;
I held and lost so many stupid jobs (that always seemed to have
something to do with a shovel and a ditch), that I lost count.
Then, there was sitting in front of the
TV for days on end (let's see, had I seen that Andy of Mayberry
episode?), and eating until premature heart failure the requisite
pig-out 8,000 calorie Southern Sunday Suppers (which, have to
admit, were damned good). Then, being all screwed up about who
and where I was (old drugs did that sometimes). I slept forever,
obviously screwed-up. I started taking anti-depressants.
In reality, there was nothing so scary
as sitting in front of a shrink for an hour--one picked out by
Dad and Carol to go to-- to convince me I had better get better.
He let me do all the talking. As he was writing on his pad, I
was trying to read the writing, upside down, and I was sure he
was probably spelling out D-R. C-L-E-C-K-L-E-Y. Yikes!
So, better I got, quick. I wasn't sure
of the answer, or, how, but I needed to get my shit together,
and get the hell out of my dad's house. My answer turned out
to be politics. It was the moment. The year before, while I was
at Georgia Tech, Augusta had gone through a horrendous riot.
Many black people were killed and wounded, and there was a standing
joke among the good old boys about blacks and the Savannah River.
The war in Vietnam was out of control. The killings at Kent State
and a small black college in South Carolina were happening. And,
all my friends wanted to raise hell, but also rock and roll without
having a hundred cops show up. Time to revolt. Time to party,
righteous.
Before completing the slow torture, I
left my Dad's house to find a place on my own. I said tell
Vern to put me in jail, if you must, I'm outa here. I was
living in communes, bagging school, getting turned on again with
strange friends, hitching to Hot'lanta to see the bands, doing
pick-up jobs, and getting political.
On one of those days, I met Buck Kent.
Lieutenant Buck Kent. Buck was just about the most ridiculous
excuse for a vice cop top dick as there ever was. He stood about
5 foot 5 or 6, buzz cut, dressed in green golf slacks, Izod shirt,
with alligator shoes and a white alligator belt. Balding, squinty
eyes, and always looking for the bad guy. He'd drive up to the
guys hanging on the corner in his convertible narc-mobile, with
big-assed, sweaty Durland, sweating little boy atom bombs, the
sweat drenching his shirts, sitting in the passenger seat. They'd
try to make a score or sell something. Oh sure, the hippies laughed.
Yea, there's a fuckin' single engine Piper coming in later
from Jamaica, Kent. Wanta meet us at the grass strip? He'd
peel away. You'd smell the guy from a country mile away. Oh
shit, it's Kent, we'd scream.
The House
on Monte Sano
It was 1971. I moved into a big southern
mansion on Monte Sano Avenue, near an old part of the hill in
Augusta, which had become run down. The new rich had abandoned
the 100-year old dwellings, moving to the 'burbs. Not too far
from the college, the old mansions, many with white columns and
wrap around porches, were perfect for taking over, fixing up,
and renovating. A lot of college kids did that. I moved in with
my buddies Frank and Raymond. We took over the first floor, and
I think a friend eventually moved into one of the apartments
on the second floor. A small group of stores and restaurants
were down the street at the corner of Monte Sano and Central
Avenue, friendly places, where we could walk to pick up cokes
in the heat, bought from recycled bottles we scrounged. Many
of the houses in the neighborhood were eventually "discovered"
by the heads; a network of long-haired redneck communes. We called
our place the Sunrise Inn.
Luckily, it was only ten blocks or so
away from my grandmother, Jentzie. Jenny Mae was Kate's little
sister, and where Kate was large and stern, Jentzie was slight
and sort of bent over, sometimes just as crankie, but she could
be sweet. Jentzie played the boogie-woogie on the piano up to
her 70s, and she taught my uncle to sing and play, Colquitt actually
winning a Ted Mack Amateur hour in the 50s when he was a pre-teen,
and later fronting a white soul band called The Pallbearers.
Jennie Mae thought she was surely dying for some thirty years
before she left the scene; she always had some new ailment, usually
a hypochondriac panic. Superstitious as crazy, at the first sign
of a cloud, would order you off the phone for fear of lighting
hitting the lines. But she loved me and my sister and brother,
having taken care of us for many years, and was always good for
a breakfast of eggs and bacon at any time of the day.
One of the houses close by was rented
by Sue Weed. Sue was a party animal, looked like a cross between
Cher and, ., well, Sonny. Have drugs, will trip. She always had
big dogs and drugs. Darlene and Laney, who lived down the road,
were our spiritual guides. They used to hide out Vietnam Vets
against the war. They were damned cool. Darlene was a tall woman,
had this real toothy smile, and Laney was a kind of earth mother
type, a bit overweight, long caftan dresses, a real sweet girl.
Once Darlene got into an argument with an old boyfriend who demanded
that she move back with her, that she shouldn't be living with
Laney, and asserted that she needed him, to do "man"
things. Darlene laughed, said, need you for what? To
open fuckin' jars? A little hot water, a little tap. Open. You
don't think I can push the little spray thing down on WD40? Shit,
I can do WD40! I got WD-40! I don't need a man!
There was a growing "community"
in the neighborhood, with a perimeter of hippie houses around
Monte Sano Avenue to provide look-outs in the event of police
incursions. Remember a national southern rock/jazz/bluegrass
band called the Dregs? (used to be the Dixie Dregs) Steve Morse,
the leader, was on the cover of guitar mags for years, later
fronting the Deep Purple reunion. The bass player, a great guy
named Andy West, would hang out and play frisbee in the front
yard and the street with us.
I had met Frank Reed through the grapevine,
an army brat. We hit it off, and started brainstorming (a lot
of that in those days) immediately on how to pull off the revolution
in Augusta. We had lived for a few months in an apartment until
being evicted due to a little mix-up with the landlady (more
about that later). Frank always listened to the most rad music
-- the MC5s, Moby Grape, and other bands that gave me a headache.
Frank was a smart guy, a real logic nut
who introduced me to Ouspensky and transcendental writers and
other radical theorists (all who ultimately convinced me I was
pretty stupid). Frank was always coming up with the cardinal
rules of the dayP.D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, the three orders
of phenomenum; Kant's twelve categories; the seven principles
of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes; Hume's seven relationships;
the seven primary qualities; the seven energy centers, or chakras;
the four domains of Yod He Vau He; the Trivium and Quadrivivum
of the ancient universityyou get the picture. I was always mixing
them up.
I preferred the popular writers and political cut-ups at the
time, you know, the Abbie Hoffmans, Tom Haydens, and a few more
serious writers like Bertrand Russell or a Herbert Marcuse. But,
I really loved southern progressive writers; and I loved history.
The Great Speckled Bird was pumping out great broadsides from
Atlanta. And a quaint quarterly called Southern Exposure covered
southern struggles, southern literature, and displayed great
black and white pictorial essays, such as black sharecroppers
and blues pickers in Mississippi. Good stuff was in the air,
on the radio, in the book stores, in the head shops, and on the
campuses.
Raymond was a long hair dreamer, a catfisher-painter
who was strange and always buzzin' on some new high, always finding
the next good tunes. He had the longest hair, the baggiest, droopiest
bells, an always exasperated look, a cross between confoundment
at life's little surprises, to a mescaline-like grin and rap,
where he was just kind of shaking all over with body giggles,
when we realized there wasn't anything we could do about it and
it was okay.
There was a ton of music to keep us going,
mostly purchased as records, or caught live, as the radio stations
were still top-40. The Allman Brothers hailed from Macon, a sister
town to Augusta midway over in the state. We could catch them
in Atlanta in the park for free, with other southern blues-rockers.
We still had James Brown running around;
he owned a couple of radio stations in Augusta at the time (which
continually played Say it Loud!) The man was the funk.
My mom worked for his radio station when I was in my early teens.
It was the basement of the famous old Bon Aire Hotel on Walton
Way, a grand, but run down hotel from the turn of the century
that had been turned into a senior citizen residence. The grounds
of the Bon Aire were surrounded by luscious, huge magnolias.
I used to watch Brown's entourage come through, him in a purple
convertible caddy, and learned later he bought that radio station
to piss off the locals that still populated part of the hill
(which worked).
When I was in the tenth grade, I would
go to his concerts at the Bell Auditorium, a venue for the great
soul revues of the day (me one of three young whiteys). James
Brown served up a smokin', electric, funkadelic, dressed to the
nines, shimmering, glittering soul exestuation. Big Macio keep
the band of twenty to twenty-five players and singers strung
across the stage in perfect rhythm with two drummers, horn section,
dolls providing vocals, and, then, of course, there was The Man,
who could traverse the entire 100 foot wide stage on that awesome
one leg swagger-dance he would do. Brown was always in trouble
later on, jailed for tossing his wife around the house. One of
his wives, when stopped by police for speeding tickets, tried
to beat the rap by claiming diplomatic immunity. She claimed
she was married to the Ambassador of Soul.
And then there was the country. We discovered
the country again during those years; often while high, and it
was bearable even straight. The beautiful blue ridges, if you
could get away. The beach. And around Augusta, all kinds of mysterious
places (at least on dope)--the Lake, the Savannah River, a peaceful
place always; the old levy and the quarry, two bizarre places
on moonlit nights.
So, somehow, I became some kind of political
leader, god knows how. Some Capricorn organizational instinct/curse.
Sunday in
the Park with the Freaks
There was a beautiful park in town that
became a hang-out. Since the hippies had free music in the parks
in Atlanta and San Francisco and Miami, etc., then well, we would
too. Olmstead Park wrapped around a lake that needed cleaning
up. My dad and other kids' dads used to speed ski on the lake
in front of large audiences when we were little. Since then,
the park had frayed at the edges, neglected. But huge oak and
magnolia trees still bloomed in the spring, sprouting giant magnolia
blossoms. Azaleas in bloom. The park centered around a great
little white gazebo. Great band-stand we thought. Great place
to get togetherand play live music. The problem was, as always,
it was against the law. Everything was against the law.
But then, we had Pat McNamara. Pat was
a wild, Georgia Irish son of a gun, a willingness to always get
in a scrap, a guy with long red flowing hair, a beard and 'stash
which proudly covered his red freckled face, a deep raspy voice
which sounded like a cross between Louis Armstrong and the sound
a gravel truck makes unloading, which he put to good use in blues-rock
bands. He was a hell of a blues-rock keyboardist, and could hammer
the hell out of a Hammond. We had been friends in high school,
Pat always getting in fights and me trying to avoid em. All the
big frat boys had gone off to Athens, or Tech, or Durham, North
Carolina, or Gainesville, all happening places, well into their
social affiliations and planning careers and marriage. Pat and
I were the fuck-offs who wound up stuck in Augusta. We'd see
the boys around the holidays, and since they had blown us off
the last years we were in school together, we could care less
about them. Fuck 'em.
Pat had his mom's Riviera with the best
sound system (and the only AC of any of our friends) in Eastern
Georgiahis sled. Blasting Whipping Post or Memory of
Elizabeth Reid from the Allmans Live at Fillmore East, until
the 8-track tape wore through, Pat and I would ride the night,
looking for something to do, some trouble to get into. We used
to hitch to Atlanta or Savannah or south Florida, where we would
always have big adventures or hairy near-escapes.
Once, on a hitch to South Florida, while
walking through the outskirts of Savannah after having been stuck
on Highway 25 in the middle of cotton fields all night, we saw
some construction workers just starting work on a power grid
structure, across a field, as the sun was coming up. The redneck
assholes started whistling at us, due to our long hair, which
they had not seen much of in those parts. Pat and I started yelling
at them, Pat grabbing the Irish Shillelagh in his pack just in
case. We were calling them every name in the repertoire, you
redneck, pig-fucking, stupid, greasy, dumb mother-fuckers can
kiss our ass! They started crawling down from the tower,
and, outnumbering us, were proceeding to come after us to kick
our asses. God dammmned!
Just then, an old bomber of a station
wagon with wood side trim came barreling hauling down the road
in our direction. Pat and I threw our thumbs and arms out wildly,
as we were back-peddling down the road, headed south, keeping
an eye on the necks, and as the car pulled over, a hippie chick
leans her head out the window, and yells, hey, you guys got
a hash pipe?
Pat says hell yes, we looked at each
other, and jumped into the backseat, realizing we're been picked
up by two of the most beautiful young hippie girls we've ever
seen, one a blond, the other a redhead, in the flowing hippie
dress of the day, baby in the back; and as they sped away (at
our urging), passing us a lighter full of hash, we turned around
to watch the assholes chasing us, the car leaving them in the
dust. Pat and I broke out laughing, and then got really bold,
sticking our necks out the windows, shooting them armed birds
and laughing at them, go fuck your sister, you redneck half-breeds!
Pat yelled at the top of his lungs. Saved again! We had a nice
leisurely ride to Daytona Beach, smoking a ton of hash and grass,
and we spent the rest of the day at the beach with the girls,
who were from New York, getting really high, before continuing
our adventure south.
Somehow, hours later, by about two to
three AM the next morning, we wound up on Key Biscayne, a bridge
away from Miami, where we tried to find a small beach to crash
on our bags, stupifiedly stoned and dead beat. Just as the calm
water kissed our feet into peaceful slumber, having been up for
40 hours, flashlights jar and disturb us. Police woke us"this
is Nixon's Island, son. Move on." Fuck. Nixon.
On a hitch back across the bridge, a
car comes squealing around the corner, screams to a halt, and
we were picked up by these three Cubanos. We sat in the back
seat as they went speeding around Miami. They pulled into the
back of an apartment building, and they all got out and went
inside, saying, right back, man. Pat's nervous, grabs the Irish
stick in the dark of the back seat. The dudes come rushing back
out to the car with a TV and anonymous small appliances, dump
them in the trunk, jump in the car, and speed off. Pat and I
look at each other. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. In the back of a car
with fucking Cuban thieves. We finally got 'em to let us
out at an all night Krispy Kreme, telling them we had been doing
drugs for two days and were starved. Cop joint, luckily, too
hot for them to hang around. We hitched a little further when
the sun came up, called my mom, and slept for that day into the
night. Somehow, we made it back to Georgia in one piece.
And around Augusta, Pat would urge me
on to do something big. Like, organize this thing with this
park, man, fuck the pigs! Fuck em! Stupid, neanderthal mother
fuckers, what right do they have to tell us we can't peacefully
assemble and listen to music. Man, that's the 1st amendment.
This situation is funk-o-la, man. We can win this, bro! Fuckin'
A, Man! And then, he'd get in the sled, and ride off to find
more dope.
So, I started organizing. With Frank,
Sue, Raymond, Darlene, Laney, some VVAW guys on the lamb, whoever
would come around, we'd organize concerts in the park, we'd organize
against the war, we'd go down and march with the black folks
downtown, we'd raise hell. And every time we'd screw up in getting
the right permit (an impossible task).
We put the bands in the gazebo and strung
wires from a generator. As the band was just warming up, and
all the kids were there, its groovy, its music in the park, it's
happening.and just as a general induced mass peace would set
in, oh, shit, it's Kent!, our old friends from the Vice
Squad would show up, with back up, before the second band had
a chance of a sound check. Hootch cigs being stuffed out in the
grass, eaten, stuffed down girlfriend's pants. People scattering.
And then Charlotte moved in. Charlotte
was a pretty, lost girl from Oregon whose fucked-up family had
landed in Augusta; her father had moved to Alabama by then, I
think. She showed up at one of our parties at the Inn. We went
in a station wagon to some other party one night, and on the
way back, we were in the far back seat, both of us totally contaminated,
her head leaning on my shoulder. I was in love. There were others,
all sweet Georgia peaches, all of them made all the more charming
by their neuvo-south politics, but Charlotte was the most beautiful,
the most fun, with a great laugh and the most marvelous tits
I'd ever laid my eyes on by that point. I was twenty, she was
16 or 17. Charlotte Semar moved in.
And around the time I met Charlotte,
Phyllis and Herb showed up. Phyllis was the cutest girl around,
younger than Charlotte (who had dropped out), still in high school.
I had grown up spending a lot of time with the guys on the block
where Phyllis lived. Phyllis was a tom-boy when young, and blossomed
later. There was much more to come about her later, a sweetheart
over the years.
Herb was Frank's friend, and was pleasant
enough at the beginning. As time went on, he became a walking
crank-case. Always crankin' on speed or whatever, always focused
on some scam which was the most important fuckin' thing in the
world at that moment. Herb was the quintessential jive hippie,
tight hip disco-ish pants that were always frayed; always blitzin'
on some new drug deal that we all should invest in (only through
him). Herbie fuckin' Hodges. McNamara was always avoiding Herbie,
and called him "the plague". (Oh shit, it's the
plague coming down the street. Get me out of this funk-o-la situation,
man).
A couple of blocks away, Bill and Pat
Bryan lived in a more fashionable section of the hill, in a beautiful
old house. Bill, a Vanderbilt man, had real southern pedigree
roots, both in terms of journalism and old money; his father
had been the first U.S. radio network reporter to enter Berlin,
and had been an editor at the Journal-Constitution in Atlanta
when it was a beacon for civil rights in the 50s and 60s. We
could always go to Bill and Pat's for a real meal, or a high
chat in the living room with Patricia, who would hold forth in
her rocking chair with a glass of bourbon.
I loved Pat to death, she was a kick
in the pants southern intellectual, a slight woman with an Emma
Peel haircut who looked great in khaki shorts and a tee shirt,
who would love to get in arguments with me, Bill, whoever. Do
tell, she would loudly proclaim when she wanted to make a
point of disagreeing. They had a small boy, Wright, who Char
and I would sit occasionally, and we would often comb their record
collections, which had tons of blues and folk, early Billy Holiday
and other classics, but also Bonnie Raitt, J.J. Cale, Jesse Winchester,
low-country mojo music. And, Billy let me play his s thirty year-old
Gibson, a thing of beauty.
Charlotte and I ran into Larry Jon Wilson
one night while hitching with a wounded owl that we found on
the road. A singer/song writer who had grown up with my uncle
Colquitt, LJ had moved around after military school, getting
in trouble, and later hanging with the likes of Willie Nelson
and other outlaws, in the mid-60s folk clubs. He had moved back
to Augusta and started a recording career, and later went on
to Nashville. Larry was another guy who kept an eye on me.
The Reces' were a couple in their thirtiesa
little older than the Bryanswho were radicals in residence a
few neighborhoods away, in a nice shady grove suburbanalbeit
Unitarian modest split level house. Ellis taught at the black
college. Margie was a grand lady, who watched over all us. Their
sweet kids, all in junior and high school, all volunteered for
the cause. The Reces' would have constant teach-ins against the
war in their house, and were members in good standing in the
War Resisters League (the grown-up movement, we thought).
Click here
to continue T.W. Croft's Augusta, GA
T.W. Croft
is the Director of the Heartland
Labor Capital Network. He can be reached at: t.w.croft@att.net
.
Today's Features
M. Shahid Alam
Through
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