Chapter 26
How Rocky Developed His Aptitude for What is Fun
Seeing it was a 600-mile trip to Norman, Oklahoma, we put some ground rules in place. Spontaneity being first, we didn’t have to stay a caravan. “We don’t all need to arrive in Norman at the same time, or even the same day,” Sally said. “If you want to break off and do something different – or take a detour to somewhere – we’ll just meet at the first Walmart on the right once inside the city limits.” Jack, Sally, and now Huck, along with Big Sam went in the Rover. Peaches and Sunshine were on their own. The rest of us in the Yacht.
We were off to visit a friend of Rocky’s, named Robin, who was a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. “The guy,” Rocky said, “who first introduced me to LSD. Anybody got any good trippin’ stories?” We were crossing the Texas panhandle on I-40 when this came up. Already we knew that Rocky and Robin had been contract-bridge partners and even competed for the Bermuda Cup in 1971. And we knew that Rocky took his bridge game seriously having told us the closest he came to being married was when a female opponent scored a grand slam bonus after he’d redoubled his bid, and he proposed to her on the spot.
Patty picked up on Rocky’s question: “Why don’t you tell us about that first acid trip, Rocky. I’ll turn the camera on. See if it can make-up for the lousy scenery around here – this is the flattest, most desolate land I’ve ever seen.”
“Well,” Rocky started, “it was while I was in high school, the summer of 1969 and everybody was talking about Woodstock. Robin and I knew each other from competitive bridge tournaments. Robin was the Bridge Club Coach at Mounds View, where I was a sophomore and his star pupil. Robin’s family were all big-wigs with the BNSF Railroad, directly tracing the family lineage to James J. Hill. At any rate, at age 16 he got me a job working for the railroad. One day he asked me if I’d ever dropped, saying he had been doing acid since 1964.
“Geez, I said admiringly, ‘Is that how you got to be such a good bridge player?’ And he actually answered yes, so I pretended I’d been doing acid too. Then Robin says, ‘You wanna drop with me?’ So of course I had to say yes.
“Well, lots of things happened fast. We were in the caboose on a run from the Twin Cities to Willmar. Willmar’s maybe about 100 miles west of Minneapolis. Little did I know I was signing up for a twelve-hour trip. When we get to the siding on the outskirts of Willmar, I started really coming-on. It seemed like there were trains on every track going every direction at once. When I told that to Robin he just laughed and said ‘good stuff huh.’ Then I started seeing colors, really hallucinating, seeing everything weird, and I said, ‘since when does the BNSF paint lightning bolts on their cars?
“That really got Robin laughing – uncontrollably – and then me too when he said, ‘Those are zebra stripes, not lightning bolts.’
“What they do, the railroad, is have a taxi pick you up at the switchyard and take you to a motel to get some sleep before you’re next assigned out. That would be for Robin because he was headed out to Oklahoma City the next day. For me, I was to do a quick turn around and head back to Minneapolis. But we couldn’t find the switchman’s tower where the cab would be waiting. Not that we couldn’t see the tower, but it kept changing where it was. We’d start down one track and it would disappear. So we’d go back to where we started and see it again and start out again – feeling our way with our hands – touching the box cars to make sure we kept moving in one direction.
“Well, the taxi driver finally came and got us ‘cuz he was watching us and says, ‘What, are you guys lost?’ and we both started laughing uncontrollably, again. We got to the motel and lots more happened, but really nothing. Anyone watching us would think we’re having a boring time, but it was anything but. There’s a body feeling too. Kind of a tightening and moving all at once in your belly. Your eyes are speeding ahead but your body is standing still. You can kind of taste a smell in your head – you smell yourself tripping. At any rate, Robin kept telling me we would come down for sure and not to panic. ‘Panic is what kills you, not the LSD,’ he told me. ‘It was panic that got Art Linkletter’s daughter to jump out the window.’ ”
“So what did you guys end up doing?” Patty asked.
“Well, we went to the Railroad Men’s bar and pretended to drink and play cribbage for awhile. Just kind of watching the scene and nursing our drinks. But we weren’t really playing cards either. The cards were purple and orange. Jacks looked like Queens. Eventually, we went for a walk on some abandoned golf course and just talked about life, saw lots of weird things, like snakes slithering across the greens (really just twigs blowing in the wind). When we finally came down, it was the next morning and Robin got me excused from missing my train – his dad being a big-wig – and got me another train back to the Cities. But you know, friends for life, the guys you trip with.
“Last time I saw Robin, some 20 years ago, we had a reunion in Bermuda to watch the bridge championships. By then he had mostly settled down somewhat and was teaching English somewhere, telling me his students’ favorite author was Hunter S. Thompson because he could do acid and write, which still makes me laugh – so you know, we’re just good friends laughing at things going on.” (Wow, we thought, that’s where Rocky got his taste for attire, his blue jean jackets, his aviator glasses – as well as his taste for fun.)
“Whew,” Patty croaked, “thanks for taking me on that trip. I got high just hearing about it – you know, the taste, the feel.”