Life was pretty innocent in 1972. At least in Mardell Manor. We enjoyed watching Acre Creature Feature on Saturday nights after hours of playing Ghost In The Graveyard outdoors in the Central Illinois moonlight. That Summer before eighth grade was a wonderful summer. The music on WIRL was one of the best playlists of all time, and it was our soundtrack to numerous activities and sporting events. I was still playing baseball at the time and actually made the ALL STAR team that summer. Girls were becoming important as well. Soon there would be invites to Boy / Girl parties with slow daces and stolen kisses.
One thing that was becoming a reality to Central Illinois at that time; the youth culture. It had actually been happening for five or six years on the West Coast and big cities around the world.... but the Late sixties, with its fashion and counter culture mannerisms, didn't really hit Bartonville till around 1972.
As a kid, I had noticed it in flashes. On television, The Monkees were getting kind of trippy and the Yardley commercials from England told us that there was things happening in Swinging' London. I remember seeing hippies with LSD spray painted on their tent while our family camped one year. In many ways, I WAS KEVIN in the WONDER YEARS!!!
The Blue Boy episode on Dragnet told a tale of the drug LSD and its danger, but nothing, effected me more than a 1968 movies called Psych Out with its hippy backdrop in the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco. The Music, clothes and hallucinogenic drug trips in that movie were curious to a young boy like myself back then. But the thing that really sparked my imagination was the anti drug PSA's at school.
In 1973, we found ourselves in eighth grade....and it was in eighth grade that the anti drug PSA's were shown in Science class. These short films were produced in the mid to late 1960's and were actually out dated and cheesy even by by 1973 standards!!! LSD INSIGHT OR INSANITY and many others films were shown in dark classrooms on noisy film projectors against pull down movie screens to warn, scare or intimidate our fragile eggshell minds of the dangers of drugs...especially Acid and other hallucinogenics. Well, it did the opposite to me!!!
The flashing lights, swirling colors, incense and peppermints, you name it...especially the MUSIC... just really excited me. I WANTED to go to one of these parties!!!! I WANTED to hallucinate!!! To this day, I still gravitate to the fashion and music of those times. However, one grows up and I have developed and matured past those simple peace and love philosophies... which seemed wonderful then, but totally naive at the same time. I still believe in many of the catch phrases of the time. Love Everyone...I still believe in peace and love, but know that you must help yourself in order to achieve your own peace. Peace from within.
It was after graduating from grade school in May of 1973 that I asked my Mom if I could join the Psychedelic generation and paint my room something a little less reserved. So, down came the posters of Gene Washington and Carl Eller of the Minnesota Vikings and were replaced with BLACK LIGHT POSTERS and BEATLES / band pictures. The light green walls were painted BURNT ORANGE and I had one wall that was completly CORK!!
Lemon YELLOW SHAG CARPET!!!! My desk and Dresser were BLACK with ORANGE AND YELLOW drawers. The bed was eventually replace by a BLACK VINYL HIDE A BED than I bought myself. I was like GREG BRADY MAN!!!
I was still very innocent and had yet to touch any drug harder than asprin, but for the next year and a half, I'd listen to Jeffereson Airplane, Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour, Jimi Hendrix and other LPs while burning insense cones and gazing at posters illuminated by my trusty black light. Sometimes I'd sit in my Black BEAN BAG chair and dream of what I was going to do with my life over the next 20 years. I loved my ORANGE ROOM and it became my home base for many years.
The drug experiences did eventually happen, first though marijuana and later psychedelics.. but all the while, my friends and I considered our use recreational, and I had some incredible times. I don't really regret those years much, however, I'm sure it took it's toll on my learning development at school. That I do regret. As a parent, I did NOT want my kids following my footsteps and tried my best to be on the lookout for tell tale signs and make sure they stayed on course as much as possilbe. I guess I turned into a hypocrite. But that's part of life.
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