The Magic Bus by Terry Miles

                              Excerpt from “The Mommy Decades”

                                                  THE MAGIC BUS

Timothy Leary wasn't dead yet! No, in fact, I had just arrived in LA at the peak of the

Summer of Love, October 1967 at the time when LSD was still the Avant-Garde's least

expensive course in the experience of art, music and psychological self-introspection. The world

was changing overnight but I didn't know about any of that yet. I came out to the west coast to

escape my reckless youth growing up in NYC. At that time, I was hanging out with a trove

of friends experimenting with new age freedoms in the New York style of cocktail parties and

reveling in following the modern art scene with artists like Andy Warhol, Salvadore Dali,

the Op Art movement at the Met, Guggenheim or the MMA, topped off with all night parties

and Mod discos like Studio 54. Greenwich Village was vibrant with jazz, folk music and coffee

houses.

       But the winters were brutal, and the roaches in our Greenwich Village hundred dollar a

month pad, weren't very inviting, so my boyfriend, later to be first-husband Terrence who hated

his job at a stock brokerage, had equal reasons to be open to new ideas. We both grew up in the

upscale suburb of Westchester County, as did most of our friends. Had we been in the

previous 50s generation, we might have ended up in the usual suburban lifestyle of finishing

college, commuting to a job in Manhattan, getting married, etc., but, as Bob Dylan was singing

around that time, “The Times They Are A 'Changin;”  we came up with the plan to drive cross-

country after watching "Surf's Up" on TV with those beautiful Beach-Boys-blue-ocean-waves

calling to us like Homer's sirens.

     Terrence knew of a service where you could drive cars cross-country for other people. We

ended up scoring a brand-new Oldsmobile someone wanted delivered to LA. We barely had

more than the clothes on our backs, my folk guitar and some saved money. Certainly, no credit

cards, no cell phones, no plastic bottles of water. One had to be fearless to travel in those days!

It was a pretty mundane drive until we hit the Mississippi River and then everything started to

look like all the TV Westerns I had to watch as a kid with my big brother. The scenery was

amazing and in retrospect, so sad that we didn't have a camera. The best part was getting to

Route 66 and seeing all the signs running through the desert. “Only 500 ft till Chief so-and-so's

curio shop ahead!” Finally reaching Needles, California, we were in the final stretch and as we

approached LA a dark cloud appeared in the distance. Thinking it was a storm, it was eerie to

get closer and closer to our destination, only to realize this was just smog. It was so dense we

joked about turning around and going home. But as it turned out, we would have the best air

near the beaches.

    Terrence had been to LA before and had contacts through his martial arts friends and so we

began our transition from the cocktail party stay-up-all-night culture of New York, to the laid-

back, hippie culture of Los Angeles with a little help from his friends! His friend, John, had a

place in Manhattan Beach, was a black belt, and looked like a cute Sonny Bono with bell

bottoms and wild psychedelic shirts. He had a blue VW Bus and was always willing to share

some new weed or adventures. I was introduced to the joyful high of tasting giant taco-burritos

on the pier of Hermosa Beach and the live music of Canned Heat playing "Goin' Down to the

Country" in an old gymnasium painted in black-light colors and flashing lights as part of his

regular "bus tours.”   I bought an old Singer sewing machine for twenty-five dollars and

transformed Terrence and I from button-down preppies to long-haired hippies over-night in

preparation to go to a “Love-In” down in Griffith Park the next week.

So our dear friend John informed us that he just landed some quality Sunshine Acid and

that he was going to be a guide for some friends to experience it at his house, and wanted to

know if we wanted to join in. He assured us that he was a great guide and we would have an

awesome "trip". As east coasters, we really had not be in the drug culture loop, but were mostly

drinkers, so this was something to think about. We had heard stories of Timothy Leary. He was

the guru of the 60s counterculture. As a psychologist, he was known for his talks on “Turn on,

Tune in and drop out”. But he also was known for experimenting with LSD to develop

a higher awareness and elevate your senses and creativity. Sunshine was considered one of the

purest forms of LSD, if you later might have read about the Grateful Dead and their connection

with Osley.  Certainly, I didn't know squat about much of all this at the time, but nevertheless,

we had faith in John as our leader to a higher experience and so we decided to join in.

  “Wow, it's just this tiny piece of paper," I timidly approached the ceremonial and

sacramental display and distribution site of the offering on his coffee table.

“Now it'll take about an hour for it to really come on, but I want you to enjoy the music, try

these headphones, and get comfortable and relax, Jimi Hendrix is the best!" John obviously

loved being the guide. I gazed at his selection of LPs strewn across the table; Cream, Sgt.

Pepper, The Doors, and Hendrix's Experienced were obviously the most played.

There was no turning back now. We all talked about Timothy Leary and his views of

using LSD to experience altered consciousness, and what was reality actually? Was our

perception of reality “actual reality” or did we all have a “separate reality”, or was there a

universal reality? Unlike later political commentary disparaging drugs, I would have to say that

here, we were all voyagers on an intellectual's quest to "tune-in" rather than "drop out."

Conversation was intense at first, and then without our awareness, slowly morphed into a

slower speed, like a record player on the wrong speed. Colors became intense, and everything

seemed alive. "Look at this pillow!", one of the group who was sitting Zen-like on the floor

intently examining a tapestry couch throw pillow. "The colors are moving! Wow!"

It wasn't long before we all were saying "Wow, Groovy" and other exclamations not

unlike Dorothy when she landed in Oz or Alice in Wonderland. We were all now seeing

vibrating tiny atoms on every surface, and all matter was no longer static. What used to be

perceived as solid colors were now pixels of multi-colors before pixels as we now know them

were even conceived. We were truly on a trip that could have been as far away as Bangkok, but

John's living room was just as vast and exciting to explore.

John, as guide, did his duty to stay straight and protect us, so I guess he must have

gotten a bit bored watching us meditate on his living room decor, so he announced, "Well guys,

time for us to take a ride and I'm going to show you some sights."

We all piled into his VW bus, and he drove off with about six of us staring out the

windows, the bright sunshine assaulting our over-active eyes. We headed down south on Pacific

Coast Highway down to Palos Verdes, one of the Ritzy coastal neighborhoods that winds up

around a large hill overlooking the ocean and the beach areas. Filled with fabulous adobe roofed

estate houses, we were in awe of the intense greenery, palm trees and the dizzying winding road.

"There's a park up ahead, we'll stop there a bit, and you can get out", our Tonto guide

announced, and we complied like little preschoolers on an outing with our teacher! We all piled

out of bus, in our hippie garb; hand-made sandals, hand-made beads, patched jeans and

embroidered shirts, no doubt making a spectacle of ourselves in this posh community. Just an

empty park in the middle of an older upper working-class neighborhood and parked there like

we just pulled into an RV park. We sat on the little island of grass in the middle of some local

residential streets our eyes trying to focus on the view of the ocean below the hill.

"I brought some Monterey Jack cheese so that you can experience tasting food while on

your trip," he started unwrapping a long white block of Jack cheese and cutting it into pieces

while we were all doing our best to figure out where we were and distracted by the new

environment.  Like little birds we stuffed our mouths with chunks of cheese under the direction

of our conductor, only to realize that food and LSD did not go together due to our extremely dry

mouths! There was much spitting, gagging, and laughter, only to then turn into a cheese

throwing fight.  Our guide wisely hurried us back into the bus to continue our journey.

"Next stop", he announced, "since you'll be on your trip for about ten hours, I'm taking you

to downtown LA to the Chinese Grauman Theater to see the new movie, 2001 A Space

Odessey".

"Wow, Groovy!," we were all very excited now. Our mastermind guide did not let us

down with this idea. It was still daylight, and he led us down the famous Walkway of the Stars,

on the way to the theater. Frankly I have no idea how he was corralling us all and getting tickets

while we wandered around the huge red and gold gilded entranceway checking out all the

movie posters and lights flashing. Into the darkness of the packed theater, we wandered looking

for a long row of seats to fit us all. But the only row that would hold us all was the very top row

up by the projector. We struggled to get our feet to work up the stairs, and finally managed to be

seated just as the show was starting. I heard one of our clan down the end of the row exclaim,

"Wow, we're really high up here!"

How true. The movie opened with the apes drumming on a pile of bones. Thank you,

Timothy Leary, my eyes have been opened.