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Still Light Outside (1968)

Still Light Outside (1968)

Last updated on: July 14, 2007 at 10:29 am by John Shore

Still Light Outside (1968) 2007-07-14T10:29:02-08:00 John Shore

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Chief amongst the mighty and majestic mysteries of my life is how in the name of Methuselah I could be 52 years old.

One minute I’m playing my green tambourine in a meadow of crimson and clover whilst trying to kiss the sky; the next I’m lying awake in the middle of the night fretting about my cholesterol level. How did this happen? How did I go from wearing tie-dyed shirts to (sometimes) wearing shirts with ties? From “Let it all hang out!” and “out of sight!” to “I can’t fit in these pants any more,” and “Where are my bifocals?”

Where, oh where, have all the flowers gone?

I know what the more mathematically inclined of you are thinking: “But John! If you’re 52 now, then in 1968 you were only ten. That’s not old enough to be a hippie! You wouldn’t know Eldridge Cleaver from Beaver Cleaver. Get some memories of your own, jerk!”

Wow. Pretty tough talk for someone who carries around a calculator. And I used to dance the jerk, okay? I used to “jerk” until my little 10-year-old back would spaz out and I’d have to hobble around like Jed Clampett. Sure, I was 10 in ‘68. But it so happens that my mother enrolled in college in 1966, and that she used to return home from campus demonstrations against the Vietnam War sporting tear gas welts and all kinds of nasty cuts and abrasions. She’d come stumbling in after a protest, my sister Nancy and I would bring her ice packs and ointments, and then we’d all settle in front of the TV to see if we could pick out Mom in any of that night’s local news footage.

One night I did see her on TV running from a cop who was chasing her, his club raised high. After that I wasn’t too interested in seeing my mother on the news anymore.

No one had to tell me the revolution was being televised.

Of course, my personal acts of social rebellion involved things like switching out my pet rat Algernon for my school classroom’s pet hamster, stealing every single board eraser at my school, and perfecting a belch so sharp and loud it shocked our teacher Mrs. Blinkard into screwing up whatever she was writing on the board.

But I knew what time it was, man. I was down. I railed against the man. I advocated the complete overthrow of that system by which the establishment attempted to oppress me by giving me so much homework I hardly had any time left at all to watch cartoons. I organized a protest, picket-line and all, against the 7-11 in my neighborhood when they raised the price of Slurpees from ten to thirteen cents. (That made the news, too, police and all.)

Oh, yeah. My freak flag was flying, baby.

Meanwhile, my sister Nancy, four years older than I, had transformed into Nancy Sinatra, with her frosty white lip gloss and white vinyl go-go boots. Her high school binder was covered with yellow and orange power-flower stickers. She thought Dean was cuter than Jan. (Young people: Jan and Dean.) She knew how to dance the jerk for hours without having to limp around afterwards. She wore mini-skirts.

One night during a dinner of hot dogs and chips I looked across the table at the place where my dad used to sit before, a year earlier, he moved out following my parents’ divorce. I looked at my mom. Her red eyes were wet and swollen, and she had a bandaged gash across her forehead. Peeking out of the chest pocket of my sisters’ frayed overalls was the white end of a rolled joint.

The light from the electric faux-candelabraux hanging above our table gave us all a sickly yellow hue.

For some reason the now-iconic photograph I’d recently seen of the Vietnamese man getting shot in side of the head came to my mind.

“Can I be excused from the table?” I asked. For what seemed like an eternity my mother silently regarded me. When she almost imperceptibly nodded, I slid off my chair. I headed straight for the front door. It was spring, and there was still light outside.

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