Ramblings on my mind

Ramblings on a mid summers night

or, a point somewhere.

A short ramble by S Redenbaugh


We had an understanding, they being the Jock’s at West Lambert High and myself, a longhaired hippie freak. It was 1973 and the world was my oyster. I was in the prime of my life; I just had no idea at the time.

1973 was so long ago it’s back in style again, only I’m on the outside looking in. The landscape was very different then, as were we. The Jocks of course were the athletic souls that set records, drank beer and had the best bad girls. They came from families that placed a high value on those records, and high five’d one another under the table on the conquests of the females they kept handy. They drove fast cars, and lived the same way. It was also them that bestowed the nic-name “The Freaks” upon us.

You see, the year before I had an experience that altered my thought process forever. I had just moved from a small rural town with a population of 5300 people. A product of a no fault divorce (the victims), Mom and I moved 2500 miles away, on the day after my last day of my 1st year of High School. I know, its sometime hard to follow, you see, I came home from school and there was a moving van parked in front of the loser, 2 bedroom apartment my Mother and I had been forced into after Pop chased a weasel.

She hadn’t told me this until then, but she needed us to move out to Indianapolis. Her own Mother was near death with cancer and things couldn’t get much worse here. So, the next day, without proper time to say any goodbyes we split. Years down the road the collective group of Psychiatrists who “helped” me since then would tell me that this was the reason I deal with death and rejection the way I do. Anyway, The high school had maybe 350 students there, and the new High School in Indianapolis had 6000, the second largest high school at the time.

Trying to fit in at North Central High to whatever group would want me, it was there that I made the decision to part my hair down the middle and grow it long. The few kids that accepted me all had longer hair so the connection seemed clear. Many of the above mentioned Quacks would say this was the manifestation of a young boys cry for help, clear, and classic, but Mom had bigger issues at the time so I went back from Easter Break a new man, finishing the year sitting behind a huge girl that had the smell of grilling onions coming from her armpits. My hair kept growing, but so did the uncertainness of a misguided youth unfamiliar with the reflection in the mirror.

So by the time the summer of 1972 ended my Grandmother had past away, God rest her soul, and my Mom had re-married. She married a wonderful father figure who moved us north into his house, and that is when I met the Jock’s. Although I couldn’t have had a better new Father I pushed away. Maybe from fear of being rejected once again, first by the Weasel Chaser, and then by an array of “Big Brother’s” that just didn’t like me and stop calling, I don’t know. I just didn’t use the resources available to me until later in life. He was a great man, a great Father, and he taught me who I am today, at least the good parts.

When I started my Junior year my hair was to my shoulders. Uprooted once again, like a witness protection subject hiding from town to town, my identity changed again, reinvented I hoped to get it right this time, yet still miles from knowing what really made me tick. But, my hair was long and straight, much like the path I would walk each day to and from my 3rd new school in 3 years. Oh boy.

On the first day of school I started walking towards West Lambert High, my mind racing as to what this year’s crop of homegrown locals would be like. I was sad over losing the 2nd set of friends that should have been here, to help me find truth, and the way through this crazy thing called High School. But NO, my steering committee was again just some pimpled faced kid, unsure of life or how it worked, wishing for someone to hold his hand and make it all better again. Underneath my hardened shell a psychoanalysts wet dream lurking in a small child in a bumbling boy body, but with the long hair I prayed would somehow change all that. I also understood that all the things I learned from the last set of friends was really nothing more than just male cow poop scooped up and held as the truth, at least for that stinking moment. Still, in my heart the reality was that I was once again, and for the 3rd time walking into a place of mystery, and for the 2nd time, alone.

Alone, from the Greek language meaning to die a thousand deaths inside for no comprehendible reason other than I somehow knew my own Mothers happiness was at an all time high. I knew that I had sucked it up at 12, guided her home to mend and that now was suppose to be my time for the healing, for the acceptance of the pain and for the help I knew I needed. The final piece had been the new marriage. I hid more than my face under the long hair. If you think adult men are the worse at being stubborn asking for directions along life’s busy hi-ways, you ain’t been a teenaged boy.



The sky was clear and fresh that day, I made mental notes of places I could hide until school was out, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not because I wouldn’t, but because my Mother had taken a job as The Superintend of Public Schools secretary. In fact, most everyone that worked in my new school was connected to my new father. Miss any day, any time and she’d know. It was about then one my first day walk to WLH that I saw a beautiful girl crossing the street ahead of me. I slowed down so we wouldn’t meet but she turned and said “Hello”. She told me that her name was Katrina, which may have been Greek for girl with hair down to her, ah, her butt.

It was through her that I met the others like me. Broken children from broken homes, afraid, and good at hiding being bad. Even if it was just across the street in a vacant lot where we smoked pot before school. A new meaning to the term “higher learning” was born, at least for me. It was on this first day that I started to become poplar for the first time in my life. The new kid in town with, now get this, an accent! The Boys and Girls of the hippie community welcomed me with open arms and full bowls of low grade smoking materials. We were “The Freaks” and the Jock’s had mandated where we couldn’t smoke cigarettes during breaks. They claimed the entire front of the school, and we were to go to the North side of the building. This was our understanding. Stay away from them and live. Cross them and die, and for the next one and a half years that’s what I did, mostly.

My hair kept growing, but so did the uncertainness of a misguided youth unfamiliar with the reflection in the mirror. Who was that boy performing a magic trick with the cut off straw in his nose? I adapted, and through it I survived. The cost is still being worked out, the collateral damage totaled, and the benefits worked on.

To this day I think back upon those years of aimless rambling, late night smoke outs and learning to keep fear deep inside with a twisted smile. I remember all the hours of stupidity, and of all the broken hearts I gave and received. I was a teenaged moron; glad to never have been both the prior and a father. It was our day of sexual promiscuity, and unprotected hearts, and free love only cost a joint.

Now, as I sit here, wondering what ever happened to any of them, those friends that shared the pains, the fears, and the uncertainty I am somehow at peace. Where once the overwhelming need to contact them would fill my every waking moment, tonight there is only peace, and a joint.