In November of 1970, I had a severe “adjustment crisis to adult life.” Someone tried to kill me. Not long after that, I cleaned up my act, did the straightening up and flying right routine, and generally became a Boy Scout. I also wallpapered over the previous aspects of my life. By the time I became a student at Boston University in 1971, I had a new me.
The Cover Story
By and large, most of the people who met me after this knew little of my Folkie days, my being a Pius Itinerant, or having an alias and living the ragged life in Greenwich Village. While I appeared a bit rough around the edges, few knew. None cared.
Laid Back, Staid and a Bit Bland
By the time I started work as a practicing anthropologist, my new cover story was in place and so good that even I believed it. After all, I was not supposed to stick out. I was working with communities, creating cultural programs and studying them. It was about them. I wasn’t supposed to be the focus. They were.
The first bit of my cover blew one night in 1988 on the stairs leading up to Georgetown in Washington, DC. I was on my way back from a club, and the music had stirred old memories. My alter ego stirred. He wanted out. I began a process of merging who I had become with who I had been. It was slow and not easy. Lots of people who knew me just looked at me oddly if I mentioned it.
The Band-Aid Comes Off
The clutch came when I started the blog in 2018. The blog was supposed to be about carving, and all the earliest posts are. Then I started seeding in stories. The stories were about my crazy friends, life in the sixties on Boston’s Beacon Hill, and being on the Road as a Pius Itinerant.
The Band-Aid got ripped right off after that. I had a new horoscope made, and it all flooded back.
So if you look at the contents of the blog over the years, about a third of the stories deal with the former life. Sadly, most of the people I write about are now dead—misfortune and bad habits caught up with them. I thought about packing Charlie up and heading out for a grand memory tour. A week spent in my old haunts. But all but one of my old group had died, the entire maps of the communities had changed, and there was nothing to go back to; to some extent, that’s the rationale behind the stories. Give some continuing life to the wacky life we lead.
So that you know, there is more in the vaults. But there are Top Top Secret seals on that stuff. You know, you have to recite a tongue twister to gain access to them. Being that I was young and stupid, I don’t come out looking so good in some of them.
There was that time in Ohio…nope, not going there!
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I am the last one standing- how the hell that happened I will never know. But I lived to tell and tell I do. In increments of course- and these days with some discursion. I love hearing your stories from back in the day Lou.
It’s strange being the last one standing. I like Lou’s stories, too.
It is scary to be the last one, Violet. I imagine that there are kids and grandkids out there. But I did once offer to let the children of a close associate in on dad’s doings, and was told that they weren’t interested in lies.
I have a few of those “times in Ohio”. I’m not writing about them, either.
I’m sure that the Statute of Limitations has expired, though, Martha!
🤣Maybe in a general sense…
I have phases in my life for even though I’m not the last one standing, I’m pretty sure the people who were there they don’t remember or wouldn’t admit it
I’m looking forward to the stories that do show up. You’re a gem, Lou. <3