FREAKS by Mike Finley ` 1 FREAKS A memoir of the 60s by Mike Finley Kraken Press, St. Paul © 2019 by Mike Finley ` 2 Note to Readers................................................................... 7 Vicklebar.............................................................................. 9 High on a Hilltop................................................................ 16 The Fake Riot......................................................................19 The Plot to Murder Me...................................................... 25 Dancing with Mister D....................................................... 33 Life Artists.......................................................................... 39 The Commons.................................................................... 44 Mail Order Ministry........................................................... 50 What We Lacked................................................................57 The Pickwick.......................................................................60 Good Soap..........................................................................64 The Creek Bed Glittered With Flecks Of Gold....................74 Trucking..............................................................................80 Big Bonito...........................................................................83 Deserters............................................................................90 Thompson's Chicken Ranch............................................... 99 Charles Manson and the Sons of Troy.............................103 ` 3 The Big Muddy................................................................. 108 The Great Earthquake of 1969.........................................114 Death of a Freak Farm..................................................... 120 ADDENDA Larks in Flight..................................................................... 97 Coming Back to Me..........................................................130 The Trip to Alaska............................................................ 140 The Potemkin Riot............................................................148 Michael from Mountains................................................. 158 The Mystic East................................................................ 170 Driveaway........................................................................ 174 Upon This Rock................................................................ 182 Gohonzon.........................................................................195 Ghost Story...................................................................... 199 Founding The Church.......................................................217 Thirteen Trips...................................................................218 Goodbye Tim Hardin My Friend.......................................227 Reunion Tale.................................................................... 244 ` 4 The Alien Corn..................................................................257 About Dreams..................................................................273 This Yeast Has Flown........................................................275 Chopping Down a Tree.....................................................296 ` 5 ` 6 Note to Readers This is a set of stories taking place in 1968 and 1969, the year a bunch of friends dropped out of college with the idea of living a groovy hippy life outside the system. Taken together, they are a big fat cautionary tale -- Don’t do what we did, kids. But they are also fond remembrances of how great it was to be young, and everything seemed possible. I tried writing these stories at various times and couldn’t seem to get them right. Either I made fun of the kids, or I tried to make them seem too cool, which they were not. Or I was explaining my youth to my own kids. Anyway, I didn’t know how to write it . Now I have metastatic cancer and I get one last swing of the bat. Ideally I will have time to do a sequel, which would be very groovy. I’ve had a fun life. You too - enjoy! Mike June 2018 ` 7 ` 8 Vicklebar It was about 2 AM when the explosion ripped through my dorm room. I awoke, my ears in pain from the violent noise, the room full of smoke, and a weird minty smell. I felt in the dark for the desklamp, but it was gone. I found it on the floor, pulled the chain, and the room filled with light. My room was splattered with broken glass and Colgate toothpaste. Members of the 5th Section had filled a Skippy peanut butter jar full of toothpaste, thrust a cherry bomb down the middle, lit the fuse, and thrown it through the sealed dorm window. I surveyed the damage. I wasn’t harmed. I didn’t own much besides books and clothes, and my clothes were mostly in the closed closet, unharmed. There was some spattering of toothpaste on my book bag. My roommate's stuff was another story. I roomed with a low prince of Morocco -- 147th in line to the throne, or ` 9 something. His name was Farouk Britel. We called him Peanut Britel, because he was like 5 foot even, but girls all called him Ze Bed, because he was always trying to talk them into surrendering to his powers. He was very continental, very French, and a little plump. But he had made the terrible error of leaving his "UN wardrobe" hanging in the center of the room that night -- beautiful authentic lambswool and camel’s hair robes that he would wear to groups to demonstrate what life in Morocco was like. They were ruined, torn by glass and riddled with toothpaste. One last thing. I felt under the covers and found what I was looking for -- a two-month old kitten my girlfriend Clare had given me to take care of. His name was Vicklebar, German for honeybear. He was small, white and, like many white cats, congenitally deaf. He was unharmed by the explosion, but pretty frightened. I had a terrific idea. I got on my slippers and a winter coat, and proceeded over to the Delta House. ` 10 Background. At Wooster there were no fraternities. Fraternities were cliquish. Instead they had sections or dorms designated according to Greek letters, and governing bodies who recruited members. In other words, fraternities. The jock fraternity on campus was the Delta Delta Delta house. They were all the football players, heavy drinkers, hot dates. I hated them. During the first year I was at Wooster, I was offered the work-study job of putting out the overnight newsletter for the college. Called Potpourri, it was a one-sheet announcement of all that was happening that day -- who was giving what talk where, where the Bloodmobile would park, etc. Art Kellogg, a hippie in a leather coat he had made himself -- as huge as a covered bridge -- gave me the job when he got tired of it. I was 17 years old, and immediately abused the position. I stole stationery from the student association and forged stupid letters from the president to the college newspaper, and did a number of other unethical things in the name of mischief making. One target was the Delta House. Every ` 11 day I did a crude cartoon of a Delt, as if by a Delt writing home to his mom. Crudely spelled and drawn, the message was that athletes -- poor scholars but social lions -- had preferential status at the school without being part of it in any academic way. I was a terrible asshole. The Delts didn't like my cartoons. After about a week of them they figured out who I was, and started bumping me off sidewalks, muttering vague threats, etc. After a while I was truly intimidated, but too stubborn to back off. Several times a Delta had pointed a finger and me and told me I was about to die,or something. Then, this, in the middle of the night. It was indeed a strong response to my cartoons. I walked across the quad to the Delta House and entered their smoking lobby on the first floor. Entering their main lounge, I stood among a group of guys watching Johnny Carson. Seeing me, one of the group leaped to his feet and dashed out of the room. ` 12 "Hey, Finley," said one of the guys, named Gene, with a crooked smile playing on his lips, "what the hell happened to you?" A couple of the guys tittered. "Someone threw a bomb through my window, and it wrecked the place," I said. "Gee, that's too bad," said Gene. "You should maybe like get blinds or something." I held up my hand, indicating silence. Then I took Vicklebar out from the bathrobe and set her on a table, on a checkerboard. The kitty looked about her, disturbed and confused. I stood behind the kitten, extended my arms as far as they would go, and then clapped my hands together, a couple inches from her head. She didn't so much as blink. One of the boys gasped. Even Gene was unnerved. "I just wanted to show you guys what you accomplished," I said. "This beautiful, harmless, innocent creature, deafened for life. What a brave thing you did!" ` 13 And I picked Vicklebar up and headed out the door. Halfway back to Douglass Hall, slogging through the slush, three Second Sectioners caught up to me, panting. "Hey, Finley, wait up," one of them, a basketball player named Cosby said. Cosby was actually one of the few Second Sectioners that I kind of liked -- he had a kind of funny “Who, me?” style about him. "We're really sorry, man," Cosby said. And I looked at the other two guys, and one of them was fighting back tears. The kitty-cat story really got to him. I laid out my terms -- they had to clean up the dorm room, repair Farouk's salvageable outfits or compensate him for the ones that could not be restored, replace