Big Al is Gone

A few weeks ago we heard that Big Al had died. We heard it on the old hippy grapevine. That's the system where the word just goes out from one old friend of the road to another. When I hear these things, the news of someone going away, it is, to me, a mark on time. It is not that it is so unusual, I guess. After all he was probably 60 now, but we were once young sitting on a bench out in the wild west dreaming of a different world where life was a touch slower, maybe not so materialistic, maybe more relaxed and more tied into just being friends and grasping every bit of life that presented itself.

It does not seem that long ago, just out of school, growing a little defiant hair, wearing some ratty, but very cheap cloths and generally just grooving. This was the Wisconsin band sitting on a bench in front of our old pottery shop in Elizabeth Colorado, the same bench that to this day sits in my Wisconsin backyard, but this is 2011 and that was 1973.

Big Al, along with members of the tribe, one day found themselves in need of beer, so they set off to the beverage shop in the Crowmobile, a broken down ghetto cruiser. On arrival the shot gun side door would not open, probably due to some previous contact with some hard object, so Al in his inventiveness decided to crawl out the window to secure the beer supply. In his haste, he flopped to the ground and broke his arm. Not shaken, he still obtained beer before going to fetch a cast. The act was seen as a true sign of commitment, camaraderie and dedication to a cause. It was a beautiful thing.

We are now all gray and noticeably older, those of us still kicking. In looking at Big Al it would be nice to think that the revelations of the seventies had carried over and we have become a more sustainable group of people but it would appear little has really been gained.

The world population has probably come close to doubling, more people want to consume more stuff, the air has warmed (remember After the Gold Rush and "Having mother nature on the run in the nineteen seventies"?) it is hard to see were we have gained.

But many of us are still out there and while Big Al is fading away, I like to think that the dream of the seventies has still a glimmer of hope. God Speed Big Al.