Wild Ponies

I got down to Ocean City Maryland just in time for the volunteer firemans convention, this my second, their idea of fun, was cutting down some long hairs locks. All in all, it all was working well for me, somewhere out there, someone was watching over me, what a weekend, what an ending, a fresh start to my Summer now, a new beginning! I spent Monday Night curled up, in one of those Old World War II Pill Boxes, that line the Southern Delaware Coast, woke early, then hitch hiked down into Maryland. It had been, after 4pm, before the Ferry docked in Lewis, the Gauntlet, getting through Rehoboth, glad I got some rest on the trip across Delaware Bay. Still was trying to sort things out, every thing changed, I saw my world in a different way. I’d just blown off my first job, I’ll tell ya, that sure became a hard habit to break. Other things stay the same, Ocean City New Jersey, Ocean City Maryland, it was 9th Street, and the Boardwalk, the gathering point for all the Tribes. A little young to be out alone, but I was out learning anyhow, a year earlier, I’d spent time, passed through this town, I see familiar faces, its nice not being a stranger. I’m told about Assateaque Island, that I can camp out with the wild ponies, that always, there is a pot of crabs on the fire out there. I wonder now, what happened, we didn’t seem to end, as a generation, at our intended destination. I’ve read some of the essays on www.thebear.org, I’m trying to wrap my brain around them now, they are insightful, thoughtfully written. It was a great scene, on the beach in the day, on the island at night, we were all young, all with tails of recent trips, not a lot of weed back then, people were always getting popped with it. Charlie the Narc could pop up anywhere, he was everywhere! A lot of goofy beat cops, were in that town too, summer cops, college students they’d say, thinking back, I have to wonder. There sure was a lot of acid though, they had to know, one summer night, I recall, this summer beat cop telling me, not to go pissing in the ocean, looking at him, obviously looking very confused, he told me, he didn’t want to see me out there, turning on all the fish. There was a contingent of junkies in town, there was some evil around, I didn’t know much about this stuff back then, the things I did learn there, I’ve carried with me throughout my life. We were like fish in a fish bowel, everyone had to know what was happening, they had to know more was going on, denial, at a grand scale! As I was hunting down that LSD 25, I’d run into Eric, the kid I traveled with the year before, coming down to Ocean City Maryland, he was looking too. It had been better than a year, since I’d seen him, we went on to join different tribes the year before. This guy that had the stuff, no one knew, he had just floated into town, then word went out. Word was, he was a straight looking dude, blond hair, cut short, dressed nice, that he carried a briefcase. Word was, this stuff was four way, that it was pharmaceutical, that it was expensive. $8 a cap, two at $15. Eric and I, when we found the guy, decided we’d pool our money, split one cap, then each save a hit for later. I never thought about it then, but now I wonder, where did that acid come from, where did this guy come from, they were the smallest caps I had ever seen, long, thin, small, and they were sealed. On one half of the capsule Sandoz was printed, on the other side, the number 25, there was no way to split this up without waisting most of it, Eric and I had ducked into a gas station bathroom. It was pretty dirty, we decided, what the hell, we’d each drop a cap.