1967, Part Two

So, what was a reasonably intelligent, fairly typical nineteen year-old doing in therapy? Let’s go back three months to find out. 

I was home for a weekend at my mom’s California ranch-style house high above the Sepulveda Pass, across the 405 from where the Getty Center now sits. I was fortunate to live in the pool house, detached from the main house, so I had privacy. Or so I thought.

I was listening to KMET—the first “Underground” FM station in LA—and  secretly smoking a joint when the door swung open and a hand yanked the curtain aside. “What the hell are you doing?” demanded my pitbull of a stepfather in his Philly accent. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m gonna call your father!” he barked as he stormed back out. Uh oh.   

I’d always lived in fear of my father, a spoiled, dictatorial scion who the entire family and household staff cowered before. I was just starting to awaken from the spell he had cast on me; this would be a major test. He swooped in on his way to a dinner engagement with this proclamation: “You’re going to the federal building tomorrow morning and enlisting in the Army. I’ve had enough of your insubordination!”

I didn’t realize I’d been insubordinate, but I realized joining the army meant going to Vietnam, a war I (and anyone who was paying attention) found immoral and based on outrageous lies (years before General Westmoreland’s and Robert McNamara’s dishonesty was exposed by the Pentagon papers). I had to find a way out of this, but in the next moment my younger brother was ordered to cut off my hair. I didn’t have the wherewithal to say No and just hit the road. Yet. So I sat in the bathroom chair and watched my brother tearfully hack off my locks; that’s how much it meant to have long hair back then, before it became ubiquitous. Now it seems quaint.

Satisfied with his work, my father went off to his dinner, and I started packing. I had a student deferral, so I was going to return to Berkeley and refuse my father’s orders, even if it meant ending our relationship. I figured I could get a job to support myself and still keep my grades up.

Well, I have to thank the California Supreme Court justice my father was having dinner with that night. When my father boasted of his plan for me, the justice friend was aghast. “Ed, he’s just experimenting with marijuana! It’s totally normal behavior at his age.” My father was momentarily silent; he was an attorney, and he had a high regard for this more powerful man. “Send him to a therapist, not to Vietnam.” 

Thus was I saved; and I gained a shrink in the bargain. And a weekly visit to the City, where it was Ground Zero for music; I sat enrapt at the Fillmore or Avalon Ballroom watching local acts like The Airplane, the Dead, Big Brother, and visiting bands like The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Cream, etc.

Stoned out of my mind, sometimes on acid, a fact that my father, thankfully, never learned of, may he rest in peace.  

Next: A Day in the Life — The Exeter graveyard, 1964