Here's a little excerpt from a letter I wrote to the girlfriend of Craig, another beer-drinking Champaign buddy of mine who died recently. I thought I would pass it along.
We moved into 501, our great hippie house on the banks of the Boneyard river in September of 1968, about nine of us, but the numbers kept changing. We weren't peace and love hippies just beer-drinking, dope-smoking hippies.
A couple of the guys were still in school, Slivon, who I've written about previously, had done his time in Vietnam, another guy was in the national guard, and one of us was a woman. My 2-S was gone and I was sweating it. That was in between the dope and the beer of course.
There was another guy who stayed there for awhile, Schroeder, a high school buddy of Craig. He was back from Vietnam and he was rah rah about it, not like Slivon who didn't like to talk about it. But other than that he was okay, we made fun of him a little. One night we were sitting on the roof drinking beer and we noted his Chrysler, he had a new Chrysler, parked in the back. One by one we stepped to the edge of the roof and peed on it. As the last one of us was zipping up we heard him yelling from inside and we all laughed.
It wasn't a big deal, if any of us had owned a Chrysler, or a car of any sort we would have pissed on that too. Like all guys just back from Vietnam he had plenty of money and he was generous with it, and we liked him okay, and he became less rah rah about the war.
There was something called The Mobe (short for mobilization), an anti war conglomerate, and maybe it was them or somebody else, but sometime in the summer of 1969 there was an anti Vietnam war day. We weren't marching types but we thought we should do something.
Craig, the guy who collected the rent and walked it over to the bank who owned the place and was sort ot our leader bought a minute on the local tv channel, the sound was the Youngbloods Get Together, the video was a still of a peace symbol and the words were Brought to you by James Schroeder and his peaceful friends. Craig didn't want his name on it, and probably we thought that having the name of a Vietnam vet on it would give it more heft.
I'm not sure if it had any heft. I don't remember anybody saying much about it afterwards. We had a working tv at 501 at the time and several of us gathered to watch it, on a commercial break from Dialing for Dollars I think. Then I'm sure we had a beer or a joint, and that was it.
G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_inXx-J3nU
A couple of the guys were still in school, Slivon, who I've written about previously, had done his time in Vietnam, another guy was in the national guard, and one of us was a woman. My 2-S was gone and I was sweating it. That was in between the dope and the beer of course.
There was another guy who stayed there for awhile, Schroeder, a high school buddy of Craig. He was back from Vietnam and he was rah rah about it, not like Slivon who didn't like to talk about it. But other than that he was okay, we made fun of him a little. One night we were sitting on the roof drinking beer and we noted his Chrysler, he had a new Chrysler, parked in the back. One by one we stepped to the edge of the roof and peed on it. As the last one of us was zipping up we heard him yelling from inside and we all laughed.
It wasn't a big deal, if any of us had owned a Chrysler, or a car of any sort we would have pissed on that too. Like all guys just back from Vietnam he had plenty of money and he was generous with it, and we liked him okay, and he became less rah rah about the war.
There was something called The Mobe (short for mobilization), an anti war conglomerate, and maybe it was them or somebody else, but sometime in the summer of 1969 there was an anti Vietnam war day. We weren't marching types but we thought we should do something.
Craig, the guy who collected the rent and walked it over to the bank who owned the place and was sort ot our leader bought a minute on the local tv channel, the sound was the Youngbloods Get Together, the video was a still of a peace symbol and the words were Brought to you by James Schroeder and his peaceful friends. Craig didn't want his name on it, and probably we thought that having the name of a Vietnam vet on it would give it more heft.
I'm not sure if it had any heft. I don't remember anybody saying much about it afterwards. We had a working tv at 501 at the time and several of us gathered to watch it, on a commercial break from Dialing for Dollars I think. Then I'm sure we had a beer or a joint, and that was it.
G
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_inXx-J3nU
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