Strawberry Alarm Clock

OK, let's get aboard the way back machine. The time 1969 your pal was 25 with 2 kids and a no good wife. At that time we would get together with friends on the weekend to have a couple of beers and watch the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Mission Impossible. One night, while we were having one of these get togethers, there was a knock on the door. It was old friends who had just returned from California, where my buddy was in the Air Force. His girlfriend and him were dressed kind of strangely. What I mean is they had bell bottom pants, leather vest and they were wearing beads around their necks. So that night we all caught up on our lives and promised that we would get together again. So the next weekend we had our party once again, but this time my friends from California were going to be there. They brought new music with them from the west coast. Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messinger Service, Steve Miller, Jimmy Hendricks,Big Brother and the Holding Company. Very cool. We started to listen to the music and it wasn't long before they asked if I ever tried *pot. I said sure I cook in one every day. He said not cooking but smoking. I said I had not. Then all my friends grabbed me tied me up and forced me to take a hit as they say back in the day. Well all of a sudden things started to change. Every thing became funnier, music sounded better and everything looked better. Everything was groovy. Now on the weekend we were all just being far out and having a blast. My vocabulary was becoming peppered with word and phrases like Bogart,bummer,crash, cool, do your own thing,freaks, hassle, and tune in turn on and drop out. Well any who, my world was being rocked off course.



This post is not to influence anyone to smoke marijuana . Life is best lived with a clear mind, 50% of the time.



On one of the weekend night all of my friends were at my house having a good old time, when my buddy received a call from a person that they had met in California. It was one of the members of a rock group, The Strawberry Alarm Clocks, and that they were in Newark at a motel and asked us to come over and meet them. They had a hit record at the time ,Incense and Peppermints, that was popular. Let me paint a picture of that night. It was snowing we had about 4 inch on the ground. It was about 10:30 at night, I had to go to work the next morning at 6:30. So naturally I said lets go. It was a hazardest trip to Newark which took us a good 45 minutes . When we walked into their motel room it was like waking into a heavy fog of pot smoke, groovy I thought. They were just a bunch of good guys having a good time. We were their about 45 minutes when all of a sudden there was a pounding on the door and someone shouting " It's the police we know what you are doing in there so open up". Well my heart just stopped and I think I crapped and peed in my pants simultaneously. It was the most frightening moment in my life. Some one opened the door and one of the band members came rushing in laughing like a dammed fool. When I realized that it was a band member I just started to laugh so hard that I once again peed and crapped in my paints. After that we all had a real good time. We left the motel about 2:30 in the morning so it was a not a real groovy scene to get up at 6 to go to work the next morning. But to meet the Strawberry Alarm Clock that was cool.

* The only long term effect from smoking pot in my younger days, is that today I have a great desire to do spin class and write this blog. Also I am an expert on the name's and taste's of every junk food that has ever been made.

Enjoy the song Incense and Peppermints