Barrel Toking

AWW ~2/23/11
non-subject ~reinvention

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1974. Late spring or early summer. 2:00 AM.

Myself and Cathy and Bill Bailer were on the playground at Jaycee Park in Hickory, the Jaycee Park over near Highway 321 where the 321 bridge crosses Lake Hickory. After driving over the bridge there was a small marina on the right. Not a fancy one but more like a place for George Dickel fisherman.

Down the dirt road, after passing the dirt driveway that led to the marina, there were small lake cottages. Not the fancy lake houses for the rich, but the musty cottages where some time during my teenage party years I landed at one of those cottages. Seems like a bearded man named Mac in his 30s owned the place.

But this time in the late spring at Jaycee Park was before I ever visited Mac's cottage by the lake.

Cathy and myself and Bill sat in the giant wooden barrel on the playground at the park. I was 15; Cathy was 16; and Bill was 18 or 19. Bill was good friends with Ricky Holster, who was in his 20s and drove a green Porsche. Bill and Ricky were both handsome and known as ladies' men. There were also known to have dope.

I felt privileged to be sitting in the giant playground barrel with Bill Bailer. I was now part of the cool group, the "freaks", as opposed to the "jocks." And now Bill was gonna supply my first experience with marijuana. I felt like I was being initiated into a world where only the brave dare enter, the world of the mind and the expansion of consciousness to discover what is truly real.

Bill's family lived down the street from Cathy's family. I was spending the night with Cathy and we had snuck out to meet Bill at his house. We waited quietly outside his house at the rendezvous time. Cathy and I were a bit early.

I was a master at sneaking out of the house at night. I'd started when I was in 6th grade some three years previously. Mostly I'd meet up with boyfriends in the woods or climb into their houses and sleep in their beds. Then I'd leave in the wee morning hours to walk or ride my bike back home. Oh the many stories. Running from the cops and hiding in the field, almost wrecking my mother's car before I ever had a license, drinking Boone's Farm wine over behind Viewmont School in the playground, being destructive by throwing dirt clods at cars, stealing milk from porches and raiding corn from gardens. Antics that gave me an adrenalin high.

Now I was going for a different kind of high, on a different playground.

Cathy, Bill, and I loaded into Bill's VW bug and Bill drove the short trek to Jaycee Park. I recall hearing the song "Keep on Truckin'" by Eddie Kendricks. It must have been playing on Bill's radio in the VW; we would have all kept quiet at the park.

Jaycee park was equipped with big swings and little swings, various kinds of monkey bars, sturdy plastic animals big enough for adults to ride that were mounted on staitonary heavy-duty springs so one could sway side to side and back and forth, plastic-type pony swings which hung from heavy chains from swing set bars, a big spiral slide, a few other regular slides, a playground merry-go-round where one could make themselves dizzily sick, a gigantic slide that went all the way down one of the hillsides and was scary, a couple sand boxes, and the giant slat-wood barrel that was mounted so that a person, if she was short enough, could stand in it and walk making it spin.

The Jaycee Park playground was a regular visitng place day and night throughout my party years.

So, I smoked dope for the first time that night, or rather morning. But I didn't feel the effect. I pretended I did to a point, but I was more high from the danger of sneaking out and doing something illegal. Maybe my adrenalin high cancelled out any effect from the Mary Jane.

Mary Jane. That was the name of the mare I was riding when I fell off, or got thrown off, five years prior to my first toke.

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