SAINT PAUL AND LAFAYETTE
Baltimore in the early 70's was the same one that John Waters mythologizes in interviews and films- same thrift stores, same bizarre characters. It was the first city I had ever lived in. I rented a hardword floor slum of an an apt. at the corner of St. Paul and Lafayette streets, infested with cockroaches and crawling with rats in the back alley. One of my roommates was an ex Coast Guard sailor a little older than myself and the other a young acid head just out of highschool. I hung with the sailor. The three of us attended art school on Mount Royal Ave.
I got a dog I named Shawna, a little female labrador pup whom i took everywhere with me. I didn't take to the city immediately but did like that fact that all i had to do at school was draw. I had learned stone lithography in Knoxville and continued working in that vein. In the fall two friends from up north showed up on their motorcycles. They were on their way south to Florida. One ended up as Milawyer. The other disappeared without a trace. We hunted rats with broomsticks in the alley and smoked copious amounts of pot.
In the spring i got a job at the local track, mucking out race horse stalls and cooling them down. I was Hotwalker. The job started at 4 am and ended by 10 am. Sometimes I'd just stay up all night, go to work, then class, and sleep in the afternoon. I liked the horses and my fellow workers- a trainer as young as I and a crazy Irish jockey who was always drunk by noon. I moved to the Overly, just outside the city limits, with a vegetarian hippie couple in an old farm house surrounded by suburbia. It was all that was left of the McCormick spice family estate. The trip to Florida with Sweets put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. On the last day of class I met Luscious. Within a week we'd moved in with one another. Nixon had just ended the draft. I worked hard on my art and didn't really need teachers to tell me what to do. With the draft over there wasn't any reason to stay in school. When the horses moved on to the northern tracks of Jersey, Lusious, Shawna and i packed up the '49 Ford pick up truck and headed for NY. Within six months we'd be married. I was finally a Hippie and it looked a whole lot like my parent's life.
I got a dog I named Shawna, a little female labrador pup whom i took everywhere with me. I didn't take to the city immediately but did like that fact that all i had to do at school was draw. I had learned stone lithography in Knoxville and continued working in that vein. In the fall two friends from up north showed up on their motorcycles. They were on their way south to Florida. One ended up as Milawyer. The other disappeared without a trace. We hunted rats with broomsticks in the alley and smoked copious amounts of pot.
In the spring i got a job at the local track, mucking out race horse stalls and cooling them down. I was Hotwalker. The job started at 4 am and ended by 10 am. Sometimes I'd just stay up all night, go to work, then class, and sleep in the afternoon. I liked the horses and my fellow workers- a trainer as young as I and a crazy Irish jockey who was always drunk by noon. I moved to the Overly, just outside the city limits, with a vegetarian hippie couple in an old farm house surrounded by suburbia. It was all that was left of the McCormick spice family estate. The trip to Florida with Sweets put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. On the last day of class I met Luscious. Within a week we'd moved in with one another. Nixon had just ended the draft. I worked hard on my art and didn't really need teachers to tell me what to do. With the draft over there wasn't any reason to stay in school. When the horses moved on to the northern tracks of Jersey, Lusious, Shawna and i packed up the '49 Ford pick up truck and headed for NY. Within six months we'd be married. I was finally a Hippie and it looked a whole lot like my parent's life.
posted by mike osterhout at 7:54 AM
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