The Summer of Love

The West Awaits

June 12, 1967

I was sitting in the motel room bed smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer while watching the nightly news with George. That day, the supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional to have interracial marriage illegal. But that still would make it a big deal, in the south you'd still probably get run out of town, up north it was still something to be shunned and shamed about. But marriage was the last thing on my mind.

There were a couple other things on the news that I didn't really pay attention to. They were in the background as I contemplated rolling up some grass. Something about Israel winning a war in six days and a race riot in Cincinnati where 300 people were arrested. This was a common trend in the news that I noticed upon returning from 'Nam. Everything seemed to be getting worse and worse and everyone seemed to be getting angrier and angrier. Blacks fighting whites and Hippies fighting the establishment. The America that I had left in late '65 was a completely different country than America in the summer of '67.

George and I were in New York City, where I was born and raised. George was with me because he didn't really feel like going home, which I couldn't blame him for.

At the moment we didn't really have a plan. Kick ass and smoke grass was what George suggested. I was fine with that. Being a drifter was fine with me. The government didn't really give two shits about me or George. A nigger and a faggot. That's all we were to them. But George could at least hide his sexuality. (Kind of.) I couldn't hide my race.

I don't think the hippies cared much either. When I left for Vietnam, it was a trend, but upon returning it was across the country. When George and I landed in LA, there were a group of college age hippies waiting at the airport, two guys and three girls with tie-dye shirts and flowers in their long and unkept hair. The one who appeared to be their leader was a skinny and scrawny student with his brown hair down to his shoulders. He spat on George, and when I confronted him about it, he called me a "Baby-killer." Needless to say, I broke his fucking nose. George and I walked away while his groupies tended to him.

One thing we had noticed was that the news and other sources were saying that the war was going well. That it was not. We weren't making any progress. For every one we killed, they had 5 more to replace them. But nobody cared what we had to say. We weren't honored or respected like the generation before us defeating the Nazis and Japanese, rather, we were both dismissed and discarded, like shit on your shoe.

We had flown to NYC from LA. Now that we were in New York, I now had back my most prized possession back, and her name is Charlotte. Charlotte's my black 1965 Ford Mustang that I won in a car dealership's giveaway at the state fair, I had to make a basketball shot from the other side of the court, but luckily I had game.

We didn't have a whole lot on us. We had a  couple sets of clothes to wear and I had my Fake ID so I could buy George and I some booze. I would be 21 in September, but I had been drinking since I was 15. I think George had a spare set of glasses that were identical to his round ones. But the more important stuff we had was my grandpa's Sawed-Off Shotgun, about 3 pounds of fresh Vietnamese Marijuana, and about $1,000 in cash between the two of us. 

"So Trey, are we just gonna hang out here for a while?" George asked out of nowhere. It caught me off guard. "What?" "Are we gonna stay here, in New York? Or drift somewhere else?" He seemed to want to know what to do. I knew he obviously didn't want to go home. "Well I don't feel like hanging around in New York, that's for sure. But where would we go?" George shrugged.