…or The tale of the British American Indian, the electrified hippie, and the guy from Brooklyn

Thursday I was sitting there in Epic minding my own business like I always do writing a little and IMing a little, communicating like the kids do. It was cool however the kids say cool these days.

A weatherbeaten man somewhere between 40-60 sat near me. His gaunt 50-70 year old hippie friend followed and sat next to me. Then a youngish guy of about 30 sat on the other side of me. I was surrounded by the New Age.

I’m not sure how the weatherbeaten man started on his tale of walking across France and into Franco’s Spain. I started paying attention when I heard a British accent coming from nearby and looked up to see him miming walking with a large pack on. The curious thing about him was that he looked vaguely American Indian but had a grand British working class accent.

He told his complicated tale of stumbling upon an army unit in the Basque region machine guns at the ready, sometime during the 1970’s and the Basque separatists were in full force. We all had a good laugh.

Then the gaunt hippie sitting next to me told his tale of starting a vision quest some years ago. He was on his friend’s farm taking a walk, I think…this part was a little fuzzy because to say he was all over the place would be a tad understated, when a grand storm came over the mountain abutting the farm. Thunder exploded, hail fell, his friend called out to him to come to the greenhouse. As he was running, lightning hit him in the head.

He held a finger like a gun to his head. “It was like be…be…being shot.”

Now, normally, I might take that kind of claim with a grain of the proverbial salt. In this guy’s case, it was probably truth and if you saw his nails filed into triangles, the eyes in another dimension, the stick figure-like animation of his being, you’d have to believe he’d been hit in the head by lightening. I’m sure years of drugs haven’t helped either but lightning was probably involved. Either that or a mislaid power cord combined with an acid trip. For minutes he left his hand in that gun position to his head while others around him talked.

The younger guy was originally from Brooklyn and seemed mostly sane. They all live on the mesa near Taos, New Mexico and they were here in Tucson for the gem and mineral festival.

I showed them maps to places to camp around Tucson on my computer. They regaled me with stories of Rainbow Gatherings, pot smoke-ins, why Abbie Hoffman was a scumbag, the British guy who looked American Indian was especially adamant about that, and other tales of daring-do.

And just when I was getting bored with Epic too. Sometimes the gods do smile upon you and bring you what you need.

Now if that beautiful little blond with the vibrant green coat would come in and sit on my lap, I might just believe in a loving God who watches all things and brings gifts to good children during the very merry month of February.

Or if I could get hit by lilililililililightning, (shake it off), lightning and win the lottery on the same day. It would be an inversion of probability and something like that can only be a force for good in the universe.

Hell, if I won the lottery I could just buy myself a beautiful little blond in a vibrant green coat. And if I got hit by lightning in the head, I could turn on light bulbs by putting them in my mouth like Uncle Fester and that would be pretty cool. But I bet that bastard Abbie Hoffman would try to take credit and keep the kids who were protesting the system, fighting the fight for Anarchy, hungry while he ate pizza.

Fucking Abby Hoffman.