1969: Helplessly Hoping

On a dreary September day, the Frontier Airlines twin engine bumped down out of the clouds with five emancipated preppies onboard. We were dropping into a world that seemed as foreign as any other. As we glided over the valley, I surveyed the boundaries of my future. The grasses and river rolled endlessly north and south. The gray mat of clouds hung low and muted the colors of the season. Dry buttes stood sentry to the east and to the west the green flanks of the magnificent Teton Mountains hinted at the majesty I’d seen only in brochures. The “airport” was one low building with sorry siding and large, dingy windows.

We deplaned, apparently the only flight of the day, and stopped on the cool tarmac to have a look around. I felt Betsy’s elbow jab at my ribs, a certain comfort. Autumn was well on and the smell of molding hay and pines wafted in on a light breeze. At that moment, and unbeknown to me, the scent memories of Rocky Mountain west stole my heart forever.
As we rolled toward town in our rental car, Betsy, Sarah and I sang hopefully along with Crosby, Stills and Nash on the radio:


Helplessly Hoping



Helplessly hoping her harlequin

hovers nearby awaiting a word

Gasping at glimpses of gentle free spirit

he runs, wishing he could fly.

Only to trip at the sound of good-bye.

We are one person, we are two alone, we are three together… we are for each other…

We arrived at our rental ranch in the twilight of a long day.  The huge log ranch house sat on a hill that the wind blew up. Tall, stout ranch gates heralded “Fish Creek Ranch.”  I felt daunted by the immensity.  But in the morning, a pallid sun lit the valley and eased the dread of night. Each picture window framed a perfect postcard of our new life: the snow-dusted purple mountains, the willowed creek beds, the fertile valley, the hills of golden aspens and road to town and the unknown. As if on cue, a tall great-antlered moose trotted out of the willows, moving swiftly toward a six-foot fence. Just when I thought he would crash into it, he lifted his legs and floated over the rails. Effortless and stunning, he took that obstacle in stride, landed on the road and disappeared. It happened, I swear to God, and as I watched I rethought the obstacles in my life.                                                                                                                          

1969 - Living In the Past?



listen to: Jethro Tull: Living in the Past

Returning to our old lives was impossible. So much had changed in our absence, before us lay a summer of music, expressive and raucous, enhanced by a fresh free spirit, enhanced by reefer/hash. Our old friends embraced us and led the way. I fell in, and found an exciting perch on the edge of a new craziness.

Our parents took us to Provincetown to see Richie Havens at the Blues Bag club. Uncensored P’town was a summer Greenwich Village: an artsy, musical, hipster circus atmosphere that enchanted and unsettled me. But the drums of change were calling, and I was caught up in the beat.

In late June, my best friend, Barbara Gregson, and I hitched a ride with Dede and Becky to the Newport Jazz Festival. I recall the frenzy and seduction of the music. She remembers:

 "We walked along with swarms of people, to the ticket booth and were told the show was sold out. We stood around for a minute or so and the next thing you know, people before us and behind us pushed the walls down, we just gingerly walked in... LA De DAh!... with a sea of people around us. Jethro Tull was playing as we came onto the concert grounds. We moved up front and I remember sitting next to some nice hairy people. They were passing pot and a gallon jug of red wine around, of which we partook, of course, and passed it down the line. We had such fun and had great seats; I don't remember how we got home..."

Later, we were deemed too young to go to Woodstock, so we will always be grateful to Newport and the mob.


Betsy (& Dede) got to go to Woodstock!


Note from Wikipedia on the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival: Miles Davis noticed and appreciated the spirited nature of the younger audience. But some clashes did occur. Excess crowds of several thousand who had been unable to obtain tickets filled an adjacent hillside, and the weekend was marred by disturbances including fence crashing and crowd surging during the most popular performances.

1969 – Just a song before I go… a lesson to be learned

Over nine months, we had seen thirty-four countries, on five continents, learned of innumerable languages, cultures, foods, and climates. It had been a groovy, shocking, scary and moving surprise, at every turn. By June, all travels and eye-openers would be behind us.

Except for one: we were heading home, but to where? The family, or travel agents,would have to choose our new home. Forget negotiating hotels in Arabic, cafés in Thai or flights in Swahili, we had to decide -in English!- where we would live next. A tall order for anyone, but when Daddy presented his wife and gaggle of teens the voting ballot, we knew there was no way out of it. We would have to choose.

The options were dynamic: 1) a village near Nairobi, 2) a farm in Tuscany, 3) the island of St. John, USVI, 4) an off-season dude ranch in Jackson, Wyo. and 5) a small town in New Zealand. We had been to most of these locations; Daddy reviewed the pros and cons of each. We’d never heard of Jackson Hole, newly opened resort touting “the best skiing in the world,” Daddy said.

When the votes were tallied, Jackson Hole won unanimously! Overwhelmingly, we wanted to be “normal” American teenagers, back in high school, doing those stupid things teens did. We’d be heading to all-American small-town Wyoming… We had NO idea what that meant, we had a lesson to be learned. But first… the Summer of Love was ahead of us, a time to catch up, get hip, get stoned.

                                                                 
          Crosby, Stills & Nash: Just a Song Before I Go

1968-69: Really Scary

setting up the tent for the first time - near Mt Kenya



Sitting by the Rift Valley with the Masi guides



 Flying, or driving, blind into unfamiliar locales gave us a peek at the local customs and reality, sublime and weird. At times, it could be scary and uncertain. But, after years of turmoil at home, I was already a little skittish. Add charging elephants, treacherous roads, slithering reptiles, leaky boats, water parasites, leering men. In the end, we suffered no serious injuries, or arrests, as we challenged the prudence of American tourists of the 60’s.

 Boating on River Kwai

January 5th, 1969 “We hired a long, really fast boat to go up the River Kwai to a beautiful waterfall, which is a mile long, consisting of thousands of little waterfalls. We started back at 4:00; it got dark at 7:00. We already had one hole in the boat, from the trip up, and we all (the driver and his son, too) were given buckets for bailing. We were in thick jungle, Daddy kept saying ‘I’m looking for the rock I can swim to when this boat sinks.’ But I couldn’t see anything, and we were all SO scared! We didn’t get back until 9:30.”

 

Camping on the Masai-Mara

camping on the African plains - laundry and school work

February 19th, 1969 “We are camping in the wilds. It’s so cool! We’ve seen cheetahs, lots of elephants, lions, wildebeests, zebras, etc. Beautiful. Last night, we heard lions roaring nearby. We waited to hear if they were going away, but the roaring got closer, so we all jumped into the van – left the fire going. It was really scary.”

 

exhausted night-roaming lions



My mother’s note: “As we were getting ready for bed, we heard lions roar/ grunt/huff, a sound I remembered from the zoo in Mysore, and the strong menagerie smell. We had to plead Daddy to sleep in the van, which he finally did. In the morning we saw that the grass was matted down and the smell still strong. And I could still hear their sound.”

 In the end I learned to value the freedom and suffer the fear, that without one it was almost impossible to experience the other.

Me and the Samburu



1968-69: Gross!

Gross! Snakes on Daddy

Gross! Camel Breath 

     
     Beyond the cool of the adventure, "gross" was ever-present.  Traveling as we did in second class there were plenty of stinky buses, filthy hotels and scary ferries. When the teenage-girl commentary on the trip became a whinery of complaints, i.e. “gross, stupid, ugly, gnarly, weird, grody-to-the-max,” Daddy decided that he’d let us make the decisions, live with the consequences. Just a few months into the year, he divvied the family into three travel agent teams: Daddy & Sarah, Mommy & me and Dede & Betsy. Each pair would be responsible for a two week stint, making all choices: where, when, how, why and the resulting travel and hotels were their burden or pride to deal with.


Djakarta, Indonesia:


      From my mother’s diary: December 12th, 1968 “Djakarta from air: dark orange tile roofs, green palms, red earth. Nonnie and I, as travel agents, got a dump. The Transaerea Hotel: no toilet seat, tile basin with bucket for shower, hard bed, peeling walls, no ‘egg-nishner’ (AC) -- Grimsville.”

      My diary was less kind: “Disgusting, rats run amok, bugs constant, toilet hole in floor, can’t sleep. Pan-American, tower of elegance, nearby but TT (tourist trap) and expensive. Nasi Goreng good.  First morning train -2nd class- to Bandung.”

      Daddy’s idea was brilliant. I had made the call to put us in the gross hotel, so my only complaints –except between sisters in the dark with the spiders- were quietly entered into my Dear Diary.  I was quickly learning to take and hold responsibility for my actions, and stand up for my decisions.  Like it or not.



Gross!  Wadi Halfa Hilton

 Train across the Sahara – Khartoum to Wadi Halfa

      From my diary: March 8th, 1969 “The train is waiting, the time is 6:45 am, the place is Khartoum, Sudan and the Coopers are there” for an open-air, over-night cross-Sahara train trip. “The train is hot and uncomfortable but interesting. The desert stretches as far as you can see. Mirages appear and disappear. We rode along the Nile for awhile.


      The people are friendly. The sleeping was really bad, with smoke and dust coming in the windows all the time. There is a common water jug in each car, Mommy, Sarah and I dip our washcloths in there and put them on our heads.  Later, we drink from it because it's all there is!  Gross!”

1968-69: Cool!

Bali:

From my mother’s diary: “December 1968: The color of Bali is extraordinary. Religious ceremonies with all the village walking to the temple – women dressed in batik print wraps, printed tops, towering head-dresses of fruit and vegetables, intricate palm decorations and creations made without benefit of Scotch tape or staple gun, Gamelan band with gongs, drums and xylophone-type instruments. The procession sand festivals are so bright and rich and contrast with a life lived close to the earth; bathing, laundering in streams, working in hot wet paddies, carrying towering loads on heads. Religion is life. A hard god must be appeased at all times by rituals.” House blessings, night processions, monkey dancing, even a funeral, when we saw them, we joined them.

Ngorongoro crater, Serengeti, Africa:

From my mother’s diary: “February 1969: The crater is filled with wildlife living side by side in lush meadow grass with a large lake in the middle. We got a Land Rover with guide and went down into the crater at 9:00am. After a box lunch in a forest clearing, Dede had her first marriage proposal from a Masai moran (he already had one wife). Daddy offered to trade Sarah for one of their spears, but he wanted two girls for one spear.” I recall that we were lucky that the guide rushed in to interpret, resulting in a good laugh and our freedom. Imagine how a handshake and a hand-hewn spear in the African bush could have changed all our lives…

We were living in the far-flung cultures of the world, the astonishing pages of National Geographic realized. It was startling, enchanting and cool!

Fall 1968 - Yellow Submarine



Yellow Submarine

“We don’t wanna go!!” my sisters and I cried. We were furious.

“Listen,” Daddy said. “You can come with me, explore new lands (first stop Disneyland!) and see the world.. Or go to live in the poor house in Osterville. You decide.”  Tough choice.


So we went. On Labor Day weekend, we wailed goodbye to our friends at Penn Station and began our westward circumnavigation. We were really doing it.

A boy-crazy, self-absorbed and rebellious teenager, I began ninth grade in California, beach boys and surfing, Disneyland as promised, then on Hawaii, a tiny hotel on an obscure black sand beach… it all seemed pretty groovy.


Polynesian grass shack

But in a grass shack on Bora Bora, where the passing of days -ten to be exact- was distinguished only by the rattling bicycle of a Frenchman bearing baguette, papayas and fish, I realized my isolation. With and within a family of five people I hardly knew, the year to come seemed an eternity. “Groovy… but BORING” was my diary mantra, punctuated by passages of "cool," "gross" and "REALLY SCARY."