I met Karen in Yosemite last fall, both of us traveling solo, both about the same age. We hit it off right away. She totally cracked me up with this tale of a younger Karen and her best friend Jana.
In 1978, Karen and Jana lived in Santa Cruz. Karen was divorced, raising two little boys; Jana was single. They lived near each other, close to the Safeway store they were both employed and where they first met. Jana ran the office, Karen ran the produce department. Occasionally they worked the checkout lines. They shared a birthday and Karen remembered those years as some of the best.
They grew their own pot back then. Karen’s plants thrived, hidden in the berry bushes in her vegetable/fruit garden. The harvest dried in the tool shed. She laughed as she told me her ex-husband would have blown a gasket if he knew about it; he lived just across town.
Along with a couple of other friends, they’d bought tickets to the upcoming Grateful Dead concert that fall, up in San Francisco.
Karen says she made a tasty batch of pot brownies and they started cruising up the Coast Highway in her Blue Ford Econoline van. She’d had one too many brownies, so she wasn’t even driving her own vehicle that day. Jason was. She thinks that’s who it was.
Instead, she was lounging in the back with Jana, relaxing, excited, and keeping time to the music in the cassette deck.
Arriving in the City, they pulled into a gas station to check the wall map for their location and best route to the concert. She and Jana scanned the map, smiling.
“Karen, we’re clear across town from where we ought to be.”
Karen answered with her thumb and forefinger.
“We’re only this far away…”
Laughing, suddenly, Karen lost her bearings, and fell onto the cold hard pavement, passed out. Her friends couldn’t rouse her. They called an ambulance. They all them ended up in the ER. Karen smiled at me, telling me this part of the story had to be filled in for her.
The ER staff grilled her friends repeatedly.
“What’s she on? What’s she taken? Coke? LSD? What?”
Again and again, Jana and the guys answered, “It’s just pot brownies, it’s just pot, that’s all.”
Four hours later, she woke with a screaming headache of a concussion. The hospital released them. After missing the concert, it was a quiet trip back home. They were totally despondent. Karen pined that no amount of brownies would have helped them feel better.
She brooded for a few days before deciding to write a letter to the concert promoter. She related the entire story of why they had missed the concert. She placed the four unused tickets into the envelope, mailed it off, hoping for a refund.
A week or so later, she heard the mail as it dropped through the door slot. Return address, Bill Graham. She ripped it open.
No refund.
Instead, she found a small flyer poster and a one page handwritten note ‘Enjoy the show’, signed by Bill Graham (which she still has), with four tickets to the upcoming Grateful Dead All Night New Year’s Eve concert.
The upcoming New Year’s Eve show was set to be the closing night at Winterland. Supposedly, there’d been 500,000 ticket requests. By this time, Winterland was pretty much a dump of a concert hall. Everyone in the bay area knew the last show absolutely had to be the Grateful Dead.
The opening act was a groovy set by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Up next, Blues Brothers live – the place was rocking. At the time, to the rest of the world, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi were bigger stars than the Dead. The vocals, the dancing, the mouth-harp, and the horns blew the place out.
Just about midnight, the lights went down. The room tingled with energy. A burning light lit up in the back of the hall, high in the balcony. Jumping and turning, everyone looked to see what seemed to be a giant marijuana cigarette, flaring from one end, like a rocket.
The crowd screamed with delight as Bill Graham coasted along a wire to the stage up front. Just as he landed, fireworks lit up the room, the place erupted and Sugar Magnolia roared from the Dead – the rest of the night was a magical spectacle, indeed, a Happy New Year! All night long. And then, the famous Grateful Dead Concert Breakfast was served.
All I could say to Karen, sitting in the Yosemite trees at the end of her story was, “Wow.”
It was a sweet remembrance of hers that I could totally relate to. We made a plan to meet up again this summer. Her son answered the phone recently when I called to make arrangements. He told me Karen died a month earlier. Cancer.
That’s when I knew I had to share her story with you. It was too good not to.
Rehearsing this reading, I mentioned to my own son and his friends that I was going to use a little prop for the story. Thinking I might pass around a joint, he said, “Mom, they’re going to love your reading!”
I was actually thinking of the poster. He also said, “Oh, now I get it – that’s why we were always having berry crepes!”
Addendum: A half hour before I was set to read this live at a Writer’s Open Mic, I was walking and relaxing along the Napa River. I got the munchies (yeah). I walked around the corner to the local Ben & Jerry’s to have myself a nice Cherry Garcia ice cream cone. Perfect, huh?
I walked in to the Napa Bookmine, where the reading was to be held. Looking through the shelves, I picked up Bill Kreutzmann’s book, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead in which he talks a bit about this last concert at Winterland. http://www.wsj.com/articles/grateful-deads-drummer-pens-a-memoir-1430236048
That’s the kind of day it’s been. Sunshine daydream; walking through the tall trees…
Writer Paints 
Great story, written beautifully. Thanks for sharing this.
LikeLike
Love it
LikeLiked by 1 person
I thought you might😎😎
LikeLike