The Acid Test
(C)May, 2001 (content circa 1965)by Hammond Guthrie
Editor of The 3rd Page www.emptymirrorbooks.com/thirdpage
An ongrowing journal of avant-art, literature and music.
My academy room mate Chip lived in the town of Huntington Beach, and his parents had thoughtfully flown off to Palm Springs for the week-end, leaving Chip and me with their wheels - a pearl white 1964 Chevrolet Impala two-door with red leather interior and wire-rimmed white-wall tires - talk about styling!
Cruising Hollywood Blvd. in the 1960s was every out-of-town teenagers dream, and we were no exception. Hair clipped for active duty service, and dressed for non-military action in our stay-pressed slacks, button down collars and Brogue shoes hardly worn from sitting in our closets at home, Chip and I thought we were ready for just about everything.
What little we knew as we approached Sunset Blvd. and pulled along side a miasma of color that quickly transformed itself into a unusual looking school bus with a plexiglass bubble on its roof. The destination plaque on the front of the bus read: “FURTHUR.”
Traffic began to move at a snail’s pace when Chip asked me if I had ever heard of writer Ken Kesey. I responded sharply with, “Big Nurse is probably watching us!” “Well,” Chip proclaimed, “I think that bizarre bus we just passed is his.” Chip then asked if I had ever heard of “LSD.” I though it must be the acronym for Kesey’s Alma Mater! Chip cracked up as he futilely tried to explain the chemical’s unusual properties, and enthusiastically turned the Impala into a side street to park.
Back on Sunset we found the colorful bus and a young man dressed in an orange day-glow jumpsuit dancing in the warm Santa Ana wind, arms akimbo and moving like an engrossed Dervish in slow motion. As we approached the oblivious character, Chip pointed to a scroll of butcher’s paper over the front door of a building that read: “Can You Pass The Acid Test?” Chip asked the jumpsuit guy if there was any LSD-25 inside. “Inside what?” he responded.
Beyond the doorway separating us from the outside world was a long white corridor, at the end of which was a desk, where an attractive young woman asked us if we wanted to “take the Acid Test?” We each gave her three dollars admission and received our membership cards (yes, I still have mine) for an Incorporated entity called “Intrepid Trips.” She pointed to a door on her left and said, “It’s in there.”
Behind this door was a large room augmented by a pounding version of Wilson Pickett’s R&B hit, “In the Midnight Hour.” As Chip and I walked on down the hall we found that we were soon standing in the middle of a frenetic rock band! We were feeling a little out of our element - one of the guitar players looked at us like we were from another planet - yet his guitar playing and exaggerated expression screamed at us to move within, where unfamiliar colors and indeterminate sounds seemed to come at us from everywhere and nowhere.
I remember looking at my wrist watch - it was 7 p.m.
Forty or fifty brightly dressed people wandered or clawed their way around the room’s liquid-like lighting, scaffolding was everywhere and an unused set of trap drums sat silently in the shadows without its skins. I walked through a blinding wall of nearly aluminum light and came to a green door marked: “Quiet Baby Sleeping!” and on the other side several people were gleefully bending over a wash tub dipping sugar cubes and little paper cups. Beside them was a card table with a large supply of cups and cubes next to a colorful little sign that read: “Take One or Too Many.” Erring on the of side of safety, I went back into the arena, where Chip was nowhere to be seen. Decades later I found him curled up under a card table peering through a piece of green glass. Intrepid Trips indeed!
When I again looked at my watch, it was 10 p.m.
Chip and I had been inside for three hours and the band was still playing “In The Midnight Hour.” The strobe-lit distractions of Lady Godiva’s silken hair passed in front of my face forever as I merged atop some of the scaffolding. There I found the overhead projectors, and joined the finger painters, smearing oil and colored goop onto pieces of convex glass which threw a prismatic liquid across the room’s ceilings and floors - while down scaffolding film loops roamed the ill-defined space like cinematic-flies soaring through an ageless atmosphere. The band finally stopped playing but the serial track continued with a reverberating voice that announced:
“The Police Are Coming In The Door and There Is No Paranoia!”
(And then faster) -
“ThePoliceAreComingInTheDoorandThereIsNoParanoia!”
(And then much slower) -
“T.h.e..P.o.l.i.c.e..A.r.e..C.o.m.i.n.g..I.n..T.h.e D.o.o.r..a.n.d..T.h.e.r.e..I.s..N.o..P.a.r.a.n.o.i.a!”
I have no idea if “The Police” ever came in the door but there certainly wasn’t any “Paranoia.”
There was a most frenetic man in what I imagined to be his late thirties, dressed in neon orange and yellow stripes, with flaming red hair, a pointed red mustache and an equally stunning Vandyke beard. He was dervishing away uninhibitedly with an stunningly beautiful woman, who wore an elegant floor length mink coat with nothing but lace pantied bare skin under the expensive pelts - oblivious to the astounding atmosphere surrounding them, they disappeared - replaced by the rapid-fire voice of a handsome man in torn white t-shirt remains who sat on the floor rhythmically beating on a wine bottle - taunting and challenging the air with the refrain:
“IndecipherablesEverywhere!” he screamed.
The everpresent band, looped lights, liquid flesh-cameras and poly-echoic tapes played in sync as I enthusiastically sat in with the band by air-drumming Gene Kruppa/Sandy Nelson on the trap set without skins. My button-down collar long gone I played the night away and when next I looked for my watch it was 7 a.m.! People were leaving, packing Test equipment or, like Chip, staring at bare light bulbs through pieces of broken glass.
After we were finally kicked out of the Test Space, Chip and I headed for a nearby Denny’s restaurant to consume expanding plates of skrambled grok before cautiously driving into sleepy Beverly Hills, cruising the Sunday morning streets of the rich and famous in our pearl white Impala, shouting at the world to: “Wake up! and smell the roses.”
PostDosium:
Chip and I dutifully returned to military school with our Test secrets intact. Then one day we picked up a copy of Life Magazine. The front page article, written by a journalist named Larry Schiller was about “LSD-25” and inside the cover was a full page photo of my Lady Godiva swirling about in a sea of repeated light, along with the mink-pelted woman and her Vandyked Dervish partner. The photo’s caption identified the stunningly memorable woman as Rory Flynn, daughter of the late swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn.
Other captions, other photos passed as Chip and I flipped the pages in fear that our farcical cadet-mugs would be shown drooling liquid light, as both of our parents subscribed to the magazine. No photos revealed our recent whereabouts, and the article went on to describe the FURTHUR crew as Ken Kesey, (who wasn’t there), Neal Cassady, hero of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On The Road” (who was), a band of Merry Pranksters and a musical group - (formerly known as) -The Warlocks.
Did Chip and I pass the Acid Test?
In retrospect I’m not really sure, but military school was most certainly never the same.
"The Acid Test" is taken from "AsEverWas - Memoirs of a Beat Survivor" - from SAF Publications in London:
www.safpublishing.com
Available at amazon.com
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