Weekend # 5
Each weekend would bring another surprise to me via the girls from Vermont. I never knew what was going to happen next and I liked it that way. It allowed me to keep my sanity to some extent and continue to work in the industrial environment to which I was mentally opposed. Everything this weekend seemed as normal as one could expect, except the trip Dina and I took to a friend’s house in a remote part near town. It was kind of a farm with a winding rutted road that led to a two-story house in the middle of a large open space. Various patches of vegetation and semi-plowed areas of dirt surrounded the house. There was a sense that it was a farm, but it appeared unfinished some how.
There was no specific place to park when we pulled up to the house. I just brought the vehicle to a halt in a well-worn area that was laced with tire tracks from previous vehicles. A hippie-looking dude dressed in coveralls appeared at the door of the white farmhouse with a young woman emerging from the shadowed room behind him. They were all smiles when they saw it was their friend Dina. I could tell that it had been a while since they had seen Dina by the way they were flailing their arms about in competition to get a hug. Everybody was talking at once when Dina introduced me to the country couple. They quickly invited us inside for a drink. “What do you want to drink? The couple asked almost at the same time. “We have some home made beer,” the hippie dude said, with a huge smile on his face. “Ooooh shit”, I said, with a big smile in return. It was just past noon and we had started drinking, homemade beer no less. The farmer poured it from one of many quart bottles he had stashed in the fridge. I was not necessarily a beer drinker, but this brew was wonderful. Apparently the farmer had nothing else to do except sit around and perfect his own brand of beer. Jug after jug easily slipped down our throats as the afternoon passed oh so quickly.
We were in the kitchen that was neatly lined with shelves all around the top of the wall. There were many glass jars filled with a variety of herds and spices and everything else one might expect to find on a farm. “What’s that?” I asked, while pointing to a specific jar on the shelf. Oh, those are samples of some of my crop of marijuana plants that I've grown over the past few years. The row of Mason jars was impressive. There were a variety of shades, ranging from green green, to olive green, to brown. I had never seen such a variety of grasses so prominently displayed, as if no one would ever come into the kitchen that wouldn’t be able to tolerate the showcase of herbs. There was absolutely no attempt to hide his collection of grasses, displayed like so many jars of jams and jellies. Some of their friends came by to join into the impromptu party that was forming. The two couples came in and made themselves at home, easily finding the glasses and pouring themselves some of the homebrew. He had and unbelievable amount of beer including store-bought beer. It was unlikely that we would run out of the stuff. While the newcomers settled down and tried to catch up with our high, the hippie took Dina and me outside for a tour around the tacky little farm. He showed us a plethora of vegetables and some flowers his lady had grown and finally we took a stroll through his corn patch where we stumbled upon some marijuana plants inconspicuously placed in between the corn plants.
He had done a good job of placing the plants, because I didn’t see them until I was directly in front of them. I was truly amazed at the size of the plants. They ranged from five to seven feet, with stalks almost three inches in diameter at the base of the plants. One of the plants was loaded with little yellow flowers and he thought it was time for a couple of them to come down. The farmer walked back to the house to get an ax, while Dina and I checked out the plants and gazed in amazement at the size of the fragrant weeds. Soon he returned with the ax and handed it to me. “Chop it down.” he said with a shit-eating grin on his face. I took the ax and gave it a good swing, thinking that I would only have to whack the plant a few times to bring it down. It didn’t happen. I had to give it several good whacks to get the fibrous stalk to give way. The little flowers and tons of pollen flew everywhere as I chopped vigorously at the stem of the plant. I couldn’t believe the strength of the plant or it’s unwillingness to give. Finally it came down and we dragged two of the huge plants into a little shed that was adjacent to the house.
When we went back inside we were covered with pollen and we drank more beer to quench the thirst we had developed in the field. The others had done a good job of catching up with our “ high” with the samples they were taking from the shelf and passing them among themselves. The mood of the folks started to get loser and loser as we exchanged stories about the city versus the country. Everybody had a story to tell about some adventure they had during a visit to Boston. I did most of the listening since most of my experiences in the country had been more recent and what had seemed new and oddly exciting to me, was the everyday norm to these guys. The farmer loaded me up with a huge bag of his best stuff from a previous harvest, while the hostess started serving us some food and snacks that was in the fridge or on the counter. We had been drinking and smoking all day and now the “Greegees” were taking over our stomachs. Our hunger was now obvious because every drop of food that hit the table was quickly sampled by one of us. She kept putting the food out and we just kept devouring it like a pack of wolves or more like an old fashioned feast.
It was dark out now and we had clearly lost track of time. Actually there was no attempt to keep track of the time in the first place. The beer and the grass assured us that we didn’t have to do that. This hold instant party thing was something that I enjoyed very much, yet I had no idea that a cool little uppity babe like Dina could have put together such an event as this. But so far she had never failed to surprise me on these jaunts to Vermont. We were good friends by now and we had done a lot of things together but this was getting wild. Our friend Marie wasn’t there and some of the folks knew I was going out with her when I visited on the weekends. They knew this because they had seen us at the club. We all were the best of friends and there wasn’t a jealous streak anywhere among us. We had that understanding from the first night Dina; Marie and I slept in the back of the van the first weekend I stayed over night. It wasn’t a matter of trust, rather a matter of sharing. So it was okay for me to be there, partying with Dina, since Marie couldn’t make it on this particular weekend. After all I did meet Dina first, and they must have decided amongst themselves that that’s the way it was going to be.
In the middle of our little medieval feast, the hostess popped one of the guys in the face with some food. I guess she was stoned out of her mind and thought this was the appropriate thing to do. When we started laughing the guy felt like the only way he could save face was to return the favor, so across the table went a spoonful of mash potatoes or something like that. Whatever it was that hit her square in the face was catapulted with great accuracy. Suddenly the whole bunch of us was in hysterics as we took turns slinging the grub back and fourth at each other. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing but the hostess actually started it with one of the guess. We were all in on it by now, slinging food, beer and, water at each other and screaming and laughing beyond our control. The guys started soaking the girls with water, creating an instant wet tee shirt contest. I quickly grabbed my 8mm-movie camera and started taking pictures of what was happening. I always carried the camera with me and recorded many crazy parties, but nothing like this one. The kitchen had been reduced to rubble by the time I ran off some footage on what was the “state of the art” camera at that time.
The girls started running throughout the house with the guys hot on their tails. Meanwhile I was busy filming the craziness as the girls and the guys started to strip off their clothes. The film was rolling as the different couples wrestled with each other all over the house. They tumbled to the floor or onto a near-by couch or bed and went at each other as though some mysterious aphrodisiac had struck them. Dina was following me around and plugging the camera into nearby electrical outlets, as I filmed the various characters making out all over the house. They were totally uninhibited by my filming and went about doing what ever came natural to them. They were totally into it as though I had asked them to make an impromptu erotic film for me. But I really hadn’t said much all day. I was just hanging out and watching them go through a ritual- like activity that probably happened more than once in the past. They were still making out when the camera suddenly ran out of film. There was only 50 feet of film in the camera and some of it had been used before we got to the house earlier that day.
The inside of the house was a total disaster, with food and water slung about everywhere. There was no room un-touched by the smoke-crazed hippies. Dina grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs that led down to the kitchen where all this craziness began. We were slipping and sliding as we treaded through the gooey mixture on the kitchen floor. Our clothes were a mess when we ran out of the house and headed for the van. The couples inside the house were unaware that we had left the premises I’m sure, at least, no one saw us to the door or waved goodbye.
Sundays always came too soon on these weekend getaways, but I would need this one to recover from the party we had the day on the previous day. I stayed at Dina’s house, which was always a pleasure, and her folks treated me very well. Her father liked me a lot because we had some common interest, and we enjoyed talking about technical stuff. It was a good thing that he was around, otherwise I would have spent most of time going over the details of what happen at Meatland last night or something like that. He was a contractor and he built private custom-made houses from the start to finish. He took me on a tour of some of the houses that he had built in the area, some of them were occupied and some were not. They were all very beautiful and of the expensive variety of course. He knew that I owned a couple of houses in New Bedford and that I was doing much of the improvements. He taught me a lot about home building and construction techniques that I may otherwise not have learned. He was a professional scuba diver as well and he wanted to know if I was interested in it. “Of course.” I said. Then I started telling him about some of my experiences while I was in the military, and how I taught Search and Rescue methods, but I had never parachuted or scuba dived. So he wanted me to come up to the house for my first lesson the next weekend. I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get to work that night so I could tell Jimmy about this weekend.
At least I made it back to town without incident and got to work on time too. Jimmy had a lot of work to do that night, so we couldn’t goof off as much as we might have on other nights. But I could clearly see that he was anxious to hear what had happened over the weekend. He could tell it must have been something big by the way I kept looking at him and shaking my head side to side with a big smile on my face. When we took a break I gave him a brief run-down of what happened. Of course he spent the rest of the night kicking himself in the butt and regretting that he didn’t make it. But it was no big deal. We knew there would be more to come and he took the unbelievable account of the party with the coolness and calmness that was naturally his. On our second break we started making plans for the next weekend.