By Tom D'Antoni
On Wednesday, June 5, 2019 Rachel Maddow led her MSNBC show with a story on Donald Trump's plans for a July 4th event at the Washington Monument in D.C. She started off, as she likes to do with some historical context. The context was that in 1970 Richard Nixon did the same thing, although he wasn't there. She had film of the event, including the battles between the "straights" (nothing to do with sexuality) and the "freaks" as we hippies liked to call ourselves.
I was there. I took the above photo...under glorious influence.
But I knew it as the "Smoke-In," during which as many hippies as could make it to the Washington Monument would smoke pot in protest against the war and because we liked to smoke pot. This was a pretty dangerous thing to do, especially since it was widely publicized in the "underground" press and given the virulence of law enforcement's role in throwing as many people in jail as possible for anything, particularly when it came to drugs.
My aim was to write about the event for HARRY. The following piece is the result.
Imagine my surprise when I received a copy of a hard-backed book entitled "Liberating the Media," in 1974 by a university journalism professor named Charles C. Flippen. My HARRY piece on the Smoke-In was in it. So were stories by Gay Talese, Jack Newfield, Tom Wolfe and other such "New Journalism" stars.
I was impressed with myself.
The book is still available online, although not many of them. I can't seem to find anything about Mr. Flippen online. I still have my copy.
At the end of the piece, I will add some details that either got cut by Mr. Flippen or never made it into the piece, although they are etched in my LSD memory.
I put this up as an artifact of the times and myself.
HARRY Reporter Drops Acid, Hears Billy Graham, Sees Apocalypse, Digs It"
By Thomas V. D'Antoni
Scene: The Lincoln Memorial -- its alabastard columns and its simple dignity -- symbolic. It's like the Parthenon, the Colosseum and the Reichstag. Undimmed by human tears but goddamned sooty from the polution.
Pan back: The Army Chorus, senators, congressmen, Kate Smith, Bob Hope, the Army Band, 4,000 hard-hats, Nixon freak, flag freaks, God's own prophet -- the gospel of Amerika incarnate -- Billy Graham, a huge Amerikan flag and your mother and father on the steps in front of the memorial.
They are singing the Star Spangled Banner, which as you know is that former national anthem. Some guys somewhere are firing a fifty-six gun salute.
Pan back further: Two thousand freaks on the banks of and inside the reflecting pool doing a number of interesting things including: (a) giving the scene in front of them (1) the fist and (2) the finger; and (b) just sitting there saying, "Far out, far fucking out."
It seems we had the Smoke-In after all.
Right and wrong ripped us off and the "movement heavies" couldn't get together so we did what we've always done, we just did it ourselves -- TOGETHER.
There was no admission, there were no fences, no speeches, no collections, no march routes, and NO fucking marshals.
People started arriving as early as Thursday and the D.C. free community put them up until The Big Day. Some crashed on the grounds of the Washington Monument on Friday night. Unfortunately they were forced to play a game of hide and go gas with the local constabulary. I heard they didn't mind too much though. Matter of fact, some of the people I talked to kind of dug it. Of course, they were stoned when I talked to them.
I arrived at dawn--stoned. There were about three hundred freaks there -- including a large contingent of Yippies who were painting peoples' faces with orange and blue war paint. I got some of the blue but none of the orange.
Everyone was sitting on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument smoking them funny-looking cigarettes and puffing on pipes. I joined them. Fast.
Was the dope good? Let me put it this way -- I took fifteen pictures before I realized I had no film in my camera. Yeah, it was good dope.
By nine o'clock the crowd numbered around a thousand -- all stoned. The Billy Graham Honor America Before It Honors You Buddy Day Ceremonies were getting ready at the Lincoln Memorial so I walked over to the area of their press trailer so's I could get press credentials. I was prevented from doing so by a cop.
"I can't even get into the press trailer to see whether I can get credentials," I said.
"That's right."
"Oh."
I was really stoned.
After an uneventful stroll around the reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial -- well I did rip off an Amerikan Flag from a vendor and tied it upside down around my arm -- I walked back to the Washington Monument Grounds and found the number of freaks had almost doubled. Upon visiting the Yippie tent (a large tree) somebody laid a tab of that dynamite white acid on me -- FREE! Yippies are like that.
From then on things became a little strange. Let's see -- I remember stealing a box of Cracker Jacks. I remember that.
I made my way back to the Lincoln Memorial and found that there were lots of freaks in the reflecting pool. Just then Deliverance Billy and Friends cranked up their Gods and began their show.
There was one disturbance at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the pool when the cops used horses to keep freaks from storming the ceremonies. Couple of people got kicked in the head by the horses.
I got off on the acid.
I'm afraid you're going to have to ask your friends about the details of what happened after that because -- well I know what I saw but it's hard to tell how accurate any of this is.
For instance, I don't think the Lincoln Memorial really turned into the Reichstag. I mean there really weren't any Nazi Flags were there?
As far as I can figure out, there was some head busting and gassing. This may have been caused by things like the Yippies liberating a giant supermarket opening floodlight, tossing it in the reflecting pool and using it as a raft.
By the way, there was a huge thunderstorm -- high winds, lightning, and lots of rain. We caused that. There was so much fucking freak energy that it directed itself upwards and the fury of the heavens broke loose on Bob Hope's festivities. Well, it's a nice thing to believe, anyway.
One disturbing thing -- and I have no logical basis for this statement. It's just a vibration I felt. This is going to be the last D.C. good-time demonstration. Don't ask me why.
So it was fun. It was also a microcosm, a confrontation on an intellectual level with the empire we want to get rid of, when we smoked dope at the base of the Washington Monument with a couple of hundred cops watching, and later when we skirmished with the police.
It was a confrontation on a personal level when we had to deal with the straights who were there, personifying our cultural struggle first and our relationship to our families second. That part was heavy. It's easy to talk about smashing the state, offing the pigs, trashing the oppressors but DOING IT -- when you're face to face to face with "ordinary" silent majority freaks who don't wear cop uniforms is another thing altogether.
I wonder -- when faced with this kind of confrontation -- how many would stick their thumbs in their mouths and curl up in a mentally fetal position.
I sure don't have the answer to that one.
Turns out, that's exactly what happened. The Smoke-In was two months to the day after four students at Kent State University, protesting the war, were murdered by National Guard Troops. It's interesting to me to wonder how much of my own behavior and feelings that Fourth of July in 1970 was driven by those events.
But yes, the movement collapsed after the Kent State shootings and the Boomers were broken, although not entirely and not completely until the election of Donald Trump, the real day the music died.
By the way, I somehow walked calmly through the storms and skirmishes, found my car and drove home...all while tripping. I remember pulling up in front of St. Elizabeth's Hospital (which would later house John Hinckley). I think I knew it was a mental hospital, which slightly disturbed me.
But let me reiterate, it could have been a hallucination. Happily, I found my way back to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and was overjoyed when I got to the end and saw the giant statue of Nipper, the RCA dog sitting atop a building, next to his Victrola.
I drove to Mt. Vernon Place, home to many hippies at the time, sat down on a park bench and finished the rest of my trip before I wrote this.
As rough as some of the writing in this piece is, it sure sounds like me. My naivete is embarrassing, but not overwhelmingly. I haven't seemed to have changed my style a whole hell of a lot. Good for me.
Oh, and let me add.....YIPPIE!!
There was no admission, there were no fences, no speeches, no collections, no march routes, and NO fucking marshals.
People started arriving as early as Thursday and the D.C. free community put them up until The Big Day. Some crashed on the grounds of the Washington Monument on Friday night. Unfortunately they were forced to play a game of hide and go gas with the local constabulary. I heard they didn't mind too much though. Matter of fact, some of the people I talked to kind of dug it. Of course, they were stoned when I talked to them.
I arrived at dawn--stoned. There were about three hundred freaks there -- including a large contingent of Yippies who were painting peoples' faces with orange and blue war paint. I got some of the blue but none of the orange.
Everyone was sitting on the lawn in front of the Washington Monument smoking them funny-looking cigarettes and puffing on pipes. I joined them. Fast.
Was the dope good? Let me put it this way -- I took fifteen pictures before I realized I had no film in my camera. Yeah, it was good dope.
By nine o'clock the crowd numbered around a thousand -- all stoned. The Billy Graham Honor America Before It Honors You Buddy Day Ceremonies were getting ready at the Lincoln Memorial so I walked over to the area of their press trailer so's I could get press credentials. I was prevented from doing so by a cop.
"I can't even get into the press trailer to see whether I can get credentials," I said.
"That's right."
"Oh."
I was really stoned.
After an uneventful stroll around the reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial -- well I did rip off an Amerikan Flag from a vendor and tied it upside down around my arm -- I walked back to the Washington Monument Grounds and found the number of freaks had almost doubled. Upon visiting the Yippie tent (a large tree) somebody laid a tab of that dynamite white acid on me -- FREE! Yippies are like that.
From then on things became a little strange. Let's see -- I remember stealing a box of Cracker Jacks. I remember that.
I made my way back to the Lincoln Memorial and found that there were lots of freaks in the reflecting pool. Just then Deliverance Billy and Friends cranked up their Gods and began their show.
There was one disturbance at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the pool when the cops used horses to keep freaks from storming the ceremonies. Couple of people got kicked in the head by the horses.
I got off on the acid.
I'm afraid you're going to have to ask your friends about the details of what happened after that because -- well I know what I saw but it's hard to tell how accurate any of this is.
For instance, I don't think the Lincoln Memorial really turned into the Reichstag. I mean there really weren't any Nazi Flags were there?
As far as I can figure out, there was some head busting and gassing. This may have been caused by things like the Yippies liberating a giant supermarket opening floodlight, tossing it in the reflecting pool and using it as a raft.
By the way, there was a huge thunderstorm -- high winds, lightning, and lots of rain. We caused that. There was so much fucking freak energy that it directed itself upwards and the fury of the heavens broke loose on Bob Hope's festivities. Well, it's a nice thing to believe, anyway.
One disturbing thing -- and I have no logical basis for this statement. It's just a vibration I felt. This is going to be the last D.C. good-time demonstration. Don't ask me why.
So it was fun. It was also a microcosm, a confrontation on an intellectual level with the empire we want to get rid of, when we smoked dope at the base of the Washington Monument with a couple of hundred cops watching, and later when we skirmished with the police.
It was a confrontation on a personal level when we had to deal with the straights who were there, personifying our cultural struggle first and our relationship to our families second. That part was heavy. It's easy to talk about smashing the state, offing the pigs, trashing the oppressors but DOING IT -- when you're face to face to face with "ordinary" silent majority freaks who don't wear cop uniforms is another thing altogether.
I wonder -- when faced with this kind of confrontation -- how many would stick their thumbs in their mouths and curl up in a mentally fetal position.
I sure don't have the answer to that one.
-30-
Turns out, that's exactly what happened. The Smoke-In was two months to the day after four students at Kent State University, protesting the war, were murdered by National Guard Troops. It's interesting to me to wonder how much of my own behavior and feelings that Fourth of July in 1970 was driven by those events.
But yes, the movement collapsed after the Kent State shootings and the Boomers were broken, although not entirely and not completely until the election of Donald Trump, the real day the music died.
By the way, I somehow walked calmly through the storms and skirmishes, found my car and drove home...all while tripping. I remember pulling up in front of St. Elizabeth's Hospital (which would later house John Hinckley). I think I knew it was a mental hospital, which slightly disturbed me.
But let me reiterate, it could have been a hallucination. Happily, I found my way back to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and was overjoyed when I got to the end and saw the giant statue of Nipper, the RCA dog sitting atop a building, next to his Victrola.
I drove to Mt. Vernon Place, home to many hippies at the time, sat down on a park bench and finished the rest of my trip before I wrote this.
As rough as some of the writing in this piece is, it sure sounds like me. My naivete is embarrassing, but not overwhelmingly. I haven't seemed to have changed my style a whole hell of a lot. Good for me.
Oh, and let me add.....YIPPIE!!
