So … I accepted with the left, and left Moses Brown as a memory.
The summer of 1966 was my summer of emancipation. There were no tests to worry about, no sports teams to stay in training for, no college applications … I had a car (my 1960 Pontiac Catalina) and my guitar (a 1965 Fender Mustang). Gas was cheap, and I was in a band. If Hollywood was writing the script, then the time was right for my first love and sexual experience. Never happened.
Ralph (call me “Randy”) Smith, the drummer in the Van Goghs and our business manager, kept us busy. Since it was summer, there were no college jobs, so we started playing clubs and had gigs in Misquamicut Beach, Newport, and even Lake Winnapausaukee, where a bunch of kids got drunk and decided to throw our sound system into the lake. The equipment had been rented specifically for the party, so what the heck, Ralph took care of it.
My hair, no longer constrained by the Quakers at Moses Brown, began creeping down my neck. Dylan had taken folk electric the previous summer, so the Newport Folk Festival was definitely on the downswing, replaced by the British Invasion that was now in full force. The Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, the Zombies … there was music in the air, and it was loud and distorted.
A funny thing happened with the Van Goghs- we got good. Playing regularly just made us a better band, kind of like the Beatles when they went to Hamburg. (Speaking of the Beatles, my band mate Billy Gannon scored two tickets to the Beatles playing live at Suffolk Downs, the racetrack just north of Boston. The concert was most memorable for me in that the opening band was Barry and the Remains, for whom the Van Goghs had opened earlier that summer in Rhode Island. What is that … two degrees of separation?)
The Beatles were transitioning from teenage idols to cultural phenomena. Unbeknownst to us, or them, Suffolk Downs was their next to last concert, the last coming the next night at Shea Stadium. An era was ending, right before our eyes. And, fittingly, a new one was beginning.
The Van Goghs played regularly at the end of the summer at a club in Pawtucket called The Edge. The venue was utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it would get so hot and sweaty inside that moisture would condense on the ceiling and would subsequently fall back on the audience (and band) as “rain.” It was at The Edge that I played my final gig with the Van Goghs. The club managers treated like a big deal and had a cake and bottle of champagne for the farewell. At 18 I was “retiring” from rock and roll. It had been a great run with the band, however, so I was leaving with “no remorse.” Now, I was New Haven bound.
Of all acts of the parental experience, none is as poignant as dropping a kid off at college. The fruit of your loins is now fully on his/her/ or their own. Is there any acknowledgement or moment of appreciation? Never. There was no welcoming fanfare as our white, Chevy station wagon pulled up to, then away from, the entrance to my dorm, 59 Vanderbilt Hall, on Yale’s Old Campus where the freshman are housed for a year before splintering off to their respective residential colleges.
I met my new and eagerly anticipated roommates. My bunkmate was J.P. Lund, a classical music major and a southern gentleman from Virginia. Besides noting that he is a fine and upstanding human being, the most interesting fact I can relate about J.P. is that he kept his entire wardrobe in a laundry bag that he kept at the end of his bed. He would stuff the dirty items in their along with the clean ones. There was no telling the two apart. Every couple of months, he’d grab the bag and haul it to the laundramat and the whole process would begin anew.
My other suitemates were preppies from the Nobles and Greenough School, Bill Peck and Peter DeChellis. They had been groomed to go to Yale and seemed to take the experience in stride. Meanwhile, I arrived in full-blown rock star mode. My hair hadn’t been cut since I accepted with the left. I had a fledgling goatee that still needed some help from mascara. I wore a black t-shirt with tight black jeans. My new friends were suitably impressed. I was a badass!
This all changed in the first week. I had been awarded a scholarship by the U.S. Navy and was attending school by virtue of their largess. I was sworn in on the second day on campus. The hair and the goatee had to go. The uniform was was issued. By the end of the first week, I recognized my mistake and went to the NROTC office to return my uniform. “That’s not the way it works, son” I was told. “You are now enlisted in the You-Ess-Enn (USN).” Ugh. The muffled sound of a gut punch.
Years later, this is an era best looked in retrospect, I summarized my bright college years in my hip-hop rap entitled Autobiograffiti, a musical journey told via my various area codes:
I spent four years in the 2-0-3.
It’s a lovely place, but it’s not for me.
I moved into my dorm, and then,
I found myself enlisted in the U-S-N.
Once I had my Yale degree, the Navy had big plans for me.
But that was not for four more years.
Still time for parties and girls and beers.
But the world outside the Ivy calm
was booby-trapped like Vietnam.
JF-RF-MLK
Assassinations ruled the day
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
Along with 999 other “male leaders,” as we were dubbed by Yale President Kingman Brewster, I entered a world of jackets and ties, sherries with the Dean and Master and Old World civilities to a backdrop of the Vietnam War, rock and roll, and searing social injustice. Within scant months wour class of privileged punks had dragged the venerable institution down into the mud us. The traditions were quickly torched, not just at Yale, but across the nation as a combination of an unpopular war, the increasing popularity of marijuana, and The Beatles coalesced to shatter decades of institutional tradition.
Four years later we left, amid turmoil, capless and gownless, to go back to the garden and complete the Revolution. Several lifetimes later, I’m still trying to make sense of it all. On the surface, I look like a solid Old Blue. I’ve shepherded three, count ’em three, published books on the history of our class and have served two stints as president of the Yale Club of Vermont. My lingering impression, however, is of the schism that existed at the conclusion of my stint in New Haven.
From my Autobiograffiti:
As the Navy’s time was getting closer,
I was mighty sick of the “yessir, nossir.”
But to get away from Uncle Sam,
I’d have to win the lottery.
so I did … hot damn!
The “lottery” was the first Draft Lottery to decide by the luck of the draw and the date of birth who would and would not be accorded the honor of fighting in the unjust war. There is no one of a certain age who doesn’t remember the precise number of their birthdate on this fateful day. I am, was, and will forever be #338!
And we were also suitably impressed with ourselves. We were now “Men of Yale.”
Good Lord! I’m really glad I took this picture. Otherwise, I might have been in it. Clockwise from top, Bill Peck, Clyde Wilson, Brian Heaney, John Newberry. Four of the “1000 Male Leaders” promised by Yale President, Kingman Brewster? … more like
“The revenge of the Flower Children.“