OCR Text |
Show RIVER from high school he was academically third in his class, the Rotary Club citizen of the year, high scorer on the basketball team, and senior class president. The object of all this frenzied activity was to be admitted to Stanford University. We both tried and were rejected. Vince took it hard. In one year he went from being voted "Most Likely to Succeed" to being a drug-crazed itinerant musician. People would hear his name and shake their heads. We used to joke about friends who succumbed to the temper of the times, calling them "Casualties of the Revolution." Little did we know that we'd soon be counted among the walking wounded. After high school we worked and traveled around together a lot and started, as they say, experimenting with drugs. By the spring of 1969 we were drug-crazed: we saw our chemical warfare as a way of setting ourselves free of our "conditioning." We were pretty well deconditioned. I remember particularly well the time when Vince stole Stockdale's car. School had closed and the university had been empty for several days. Only a few druggies, too disoriented to move on, were lingering on campus. Two musicians, Stockdale and Smith, and Vince and me, were standing around the vending machines late one night, when I paused and looked at the change machine. It was a small, safe-like box mounted on the wall that ate dollar bills and spewed forth change. Being broke, it occurred to me that this machine was full of money it didn't need. We came up with a scheme to get the money out of the machine and into our pockets. Since I did most of the planning for the operation, I didn't feel that I needed to be involved in the actual liberation operation and went to bed. At five o'clock the next morning my pals snorted speed and attacked the change machine with a crowbar. They almost, but not -47- |