Once upon a time.....

It was 1975. Hot. The highway melted, woven like a braided leather belt and in the rear view mirror, the trails of where we were yet to travel streamed behind us endlessly...... like those fluorescent tassels Skinny had on her new bike. We were piled into Christian's Impala, blazing down the interstate, Jethro Tull on the 8 track, and I can't count how many of us piled onto the shiney blue bench seats. I picked at the cotton peeking from a burn mark on the seat under my knees. Mesmerized by the sheer endless quantity of it. Sure that if I was really quiet, I could syphon it all out of the seat and the driver's side would slowly deflate, leaving Christian sitting on the floorboards. I giggled to myself. I could wad it all up at my feet, take it home on Sunday and put it on the spinning wheel. Yup........

My Mom had given me the dime. Not the nickel-dime bag, but the customary, traditional, "put it in your shoe" dime. We were headed to Tampa for the 24 hour fest.....KISS, and I wish I could remember all the others, but....it's hazy....24 hours of nonstop music, towel tents pitched in the sun, beer and Strawberry Hill, naked babies, peace......

The dime was to call home if I needed to.

I didn't .

The temperature rocked 100 by Saturday afternoon. The port-a-lets were full, the beer was gone. We were hot. The sun gave up and began to fade, giving in to the pyromaniacs on the stage. And then.....the water main broke. A giant upside down waterfall in the middle of thousands of sweaty, stoned, day-drunk hippies. We charged it. Bodies everywhere dancing in the make-shift rain. Lapping up the miracle falling from a hundred feet above our heads.....

It made the11:00 news...

"Throngs of youth out of control as heat and drugs, rock and roll, descend on Tampa Fairgrounds....." My Mother sat on the vinyl leopard skin couch, scooching closer.... "She's there"....

She watched as Eddie-wanna-be-newscaster-live-on-the-scene-in-his-three-piece-suit spelled it out for the audiences at home, as channel 9 flashed pictures of bare chested chics and bare bottomed guys with the tutorial black rectangle emblazoned on their privates danced across the screen....

She cringed.....

The 3 minute "Live from Tampa Fairgrounds" ended with a frozen shot of the ambulances..... dozens of them.....parked in the dirt......

She waited.

I had a dime, afterall....

She finally fell into a fitless sweaty sleep on the vinyl couch......"My God, they're naked....doing all those things" "What if someone put something in her drink?" "How many babies were born after Woodstock?" "Maybe they had enough sense to leave, but then.....why aren't they home, did they get in a wreck?" "Surely,the sheriff would have called me".........waking on Sunday morning to the Preacher on channel 9..... "You can be saved....."

We stopped at IHOP on the way home and laughed. "It's all good"..... We rolled in on Sunday night, sunburnt and kind of dirty actually, but fine.

I saw her face the minute I fell through the kitchen door.....

"You could've called".....