The Black Light Room

I think everyone that grew up in the 60's and 70's knew someone that had one of these. Sure you did. It was the neighborhood hippie with the Lennon glasses, bell bottom jeans with peace sign patches and love written all over them. They had the long straggely hair, 20 strings of beads around their neck and, of course, the paisley or striped shirt unbuttoned halfway revealing the not quite yet matured 3 hairs on the chest. They always had that lacksadasical walk that told you that they could give a flying F#$K what you thought about anything. Yup, they were my role models and I wanted to be one too. Well, I finally worked my way into the circle of friends that happened to hang out at one of these places, and was invited to hang with them one night. That night changed my life more than you know. First I should tell you about my friend, Lynn. He was one of the few people in school that had long hair which in itself made him one of the coolest guys in school. Second, he was one of the first guys that had a car too. He'd let anyone drive his car too. Didn't matter if you had a license or not. I remember once that we were riding snowbanks, which is stupid but a lot of fun, and Eric was driving. He hit a snow bank that had pretty much frozen into a block of ice. And there we were, doing about 30 miles an hour on 2 wheels. Everyone of course knew what to do and began screaming at him dufferent instructions at the same time on how to resolve the problem so we didn't all die. It was scarry as heck. Finally, Eric let go of the wheel and the car seemed to manage it's way back on all 4 tires. Charlie had wet his pants. I don't think we let him live that one down for some time. There was one other time worth mentioning. We were driving through the snow that had drifted onto the road. Doing this makes a cool explosion type effect. Really cool. Anyway, Stan was driving this time and just before us...the mother of all snowdrifts. It was huge. It stretched all the way across the road. We were in for a treat. So as Stan speeded up to 40 mph, we all anticipated what was to be the coolest snow explosion in the history of our doing it that day. Well, Stan hit the drift and lost control of the car. We started spinning in circles, couldn't see a thing in front or on the sides of us as snow was covering all the windows. When the snow finally settled, we found ourselves in the middle of a cornfield about 150 feet off the road. After all the excitement and ranting about how cool that was, we realized our dilemna. We were in the middle of nowhere off a country road, in someones God-forsaken cornfield, stuck without a clue as to how we were going to get out of this mess let alone, make it to school. We were screwed. After a couple minutes, we heard a farmer with his tractor coming. He told us that he saw us stupid kids riding the drifts down the road and figured he had better get the tractor out and drive down the road just in case we did something stupid. I figured he must have teenagers too. After digging us out, he asked why we were out in this blizzard. Said it was one of the worst storms this year and that all the schools were closed. I guess he was right..we were idiots. So after we thanked him, we started to head home but not before we added to the list of stupid things we did that day and did some bumper surfing. If you've never bumper surfed, let me explain it to you. Bumper surfing is when you hold onto the bumper of someones car when the road is icy and slide along on your feet. This is fun for a few minutes until you hit a patch of dry road. Remember Charlie, who wet his pants? He also broke his leg that day. No one really knows how he broke his leg except for the few of us who had to do a blood pact to never tell. So that's how I got in good with Lynn and made my way to the Black Light Room.
Ah, the black light room. It was in a house in the second floor apartment. I'll never forget it. You walked in the side door and immediately had to go up the stairs. Once up there, there was a tiny excuse for a kitchen on the left that seemed to have more empty beer bottles than the local party store and more flies than the rest of the state. Directly in front of me was the bedroom that consisted of a mattress on the floor, a bunch of clothes that I wouldn't have my worst enemy touch, more empty beer bottles, cigarette butts everywhere but the ashtray and a sheet covering the window. And to the right... The Black Light Room. I carefully sidestepped around the piles of clothes in the hallway, stepped over whoever the hippie was passed out in the hallway and made my way into the room. There it was. A room full of posters illuminated by 8 4-foot black lights. Incense burning and the stereo so loud, you couldn't even hear yourself think. Awesome. Bean bag chairs everywhere and a couch that you had to be careful where you sat. Don't ask. The round table in the middle of the room was full of dirty ashtrays, crushed up cigarette packs, empty beer bottles, some of which doubled as ashtrays, rolling papers and 4 different sized bongs. There was 5 people enjoying the room at the moment. No one saying anything, just looking around through their squinted eyes and bobbing their heads to the music. I think it was Frankenstien by Edgar Winter. I remember Lynn introducing me to a couple of the people and showing me how the bong works. It seems the posters illuminated by the black lights came alive. You could actually see things moving around in them. What was really strange was the fact that they seemed to move with the music. I don't remember much after that. I do know that, even tho' I can't remember most of what happened after that, that it was cool and it changed my life. I'll elaborate on that some other time :)