Side Roads and Dandelions

by W.H. Harrod



  SIDE ROADS and DANDELIONS

  A NOVEL

 

  BY

  W.H. HARROD

  Copyright 2010 W.H. Harrod

  ~~ Chapter One

  The image of a bemused young woman staring back at her from within the darkened window pane held Allison’s attention as she quietly gazed into the blackness of the cold winter night. The thought occurred to Allison that the imagined maiden before her might not enjoy seeing herself thirty-four years older. This youthful face belonged to a time when the possibility of great changes gave cause for young people, reveling in the sunshine of their days, to hope for a better tomorrow -- a tomorrow now long ago come and gone.

  “What? You have a problem?” asked Allison. “That’s right. I’m you! You never thought about being fifty-five years old, did you? Well, it happened. It’s not all bad though. Remember how you always went on about looking so much younger than your age? Guess what? You don’t have to worry about that any longer.”

  Allison shook her head to clear her thoughts halting the imagined conversation with the recurring vision of her twenty-one year old self. These mental digressions came upon her more often of late. She had grown accustomed to such intense periods of personal reflection by this time. Until a visit with her doctor, she worried she might be losing her mind. He only laughed and told her to not fret. He knew of her habit of taking the world’s problems and making them her own. She had always been this way, even back in the sixties when they attended high school together. Often he admonished her to lighten up and take life easier. “Try being a hippie again,” he chuckled, “like you were back in the ‘60s.”

  Her doctor gave a good laugh whenever he spoke of her experiment with the sixties counter-culture movement. Free love, drugs, and lots of rock-and-roll were the primary incentives to lure so many young people into taking part in such an intemperate, if not down right hedonistic, lifestyle. Her doctor had laughed because before she up and took off for San Francisco in an old Volkswagen bus, she epitomized the definition of the straight-laced, all-American girl. No one in town expected her participation in such craziness. In high school, the student body elected her senior class secretary, head cheerleader, and prom queen. Even her handsome boyfriend bolstered her elite status by becoming prom king and quarterback of the football team. She received full-ride academic scholarship offers by the bushel, only proving how ridiculous the whole hippie experiment seemed to every person who knew anything about her.

  Allison reflected on this obvious conundrum as she recalled this amazing aberration in light of her now domesticated and, until recently, contented life. Although it never made sense to others, she simply had to do it. That’s all. She had planned to settle down and start a family like everyone else. After graduating from college she expected marriage, children, and a long career with an organization to provide help to the needy would await her. She would be a great mother, wife, relative, citizen, friend, volunteer, employee, cook, etc. Until the end of her junior year in college, in the spring of 1968, she expected to graduate and begin her societal duties as a responsible young adult. Only something amazing happened along the way -- the country went nuts. For reasons that made sense only to her, she decided to go along for the ride.

  “See what you did,” said Allison, forcing herself to look again towards the vision in the window. “For thirty-four years I’ve lived with the wreckage of that decision. Hardly a day goes by that I’m not given some cause to reflect on your ill-conceived mendicancy. Most of the family still thinks I’m a brick short. They’re waiting for me to jump up one day and yell, ‘Let’s all turn on, tune in, and drop out,’ and hop into the VW bus and head back to San Francisco. There you are with your pretty blond hair, your flawless complexion, and that imbecilic look of youthful confidence that says, ‘Make love, not war.’

  You really showed them, didn’t you? You practically lived in the back of that bus, inviting in every toked out, un-bathed hairball offering to share his food or put you on to some Mary Jane. Why am I even talking to you?”

  Allison decided that whatever action she chose to take, today or whenever, need not be burdened with the mistakes of her past. She had thirty-four years of successful living to her credit since returning home in the spring of 1969. If she needed to draw upon some reservoir of strength or experience to guide her through the coming days, she surely had learned something during those years to show her the way. She only needed to sit quietly contemplating awhile longer in her private room created by that same high school quarterback she came back home to and married following her year of what she now thought of as her time of “wandering in the wilderness.” He said he understood her need for a place where she could be alone to think. For that reason, he remodeled the entire second floor rear sleeping porch into her private sanctuary. For almost thirty good years, she enjoyed her private moments there while never abusing this wonderful gift. She used it sparingly and only after her family’s needs were tended to first. Her dedication to her family stayed the same throughout her marriage and would never change.

  “You were lucky,” she said to the vision. “You came out of that craziness with your life and most of your sanity. Many did not.” How many of her generation perished from the weight of drugs, riots, war protests, civil rights marches, police violence, suicides, sexually transmitted diseases, and finally, the war in Vietnam? She had no idea. Over fifty-eight thousand victims, mostly young people, had their names chiseled on a wall in Washington, D.C., but, undoubtedly, there were many more casualties.

  She had arrived back in the small town of Iliom, Missouri, the same place she left a year earlier without any forewarning or fanfare. One day she was simply there, bruised, battered, emaciated, and worn out but by her admission, much wiser for it all. In the future, she would not waste time like many of her peers who stayed safely at home during this most inharmonic convergence of pent up and destructive social forces wondering what life might have been like if they hadn’t married early and had kids -- if they had tested life’s waters, so to speak. She had traveled extensively among the malcontents and dreamers. Time and again she recalled throwing her spirit and her body against the ramparts of a deeply entrenched military-industrial complex and the blind patriotism of a citizenry’s conformist attitudes formed during the crucible of earlier wars. Better to cultivate weeds as far as she was concerned. Whatever life held in store for her, she intended that it come to this small town located eighty miles west of St. Louis, Missouri, to find her.

  For the first time in many years though, latent forces stirred within her, and she could see dark clouds forming over the land. Not since the days when the country went insane during the ‘60s had so much greed, anger, deceit, intolerance, and self-indulgent excess come to the surface. She wondered what she could do about it now. Today she was a matronly, fifty-five year old woman with a home she loved, a wonderful husband, two grown children with their own families, and numerous volunteer responsibilities in various community services. She loathed traveling too far away from the safety of her supportive circle of family and friends.

  For over thirty years she had directed many of the community social services agencies. Only in the last few years had she begun to work part-time due in large part to the wholesale reduction in funds to the agencies that provided the plethora of social services needed. Forced to either cut her own pay or the pay of the younger staff, she chose to cut her modest salary and be classified as part-time to keep her dedicated employees from leaving. Though now classified as part-time, she worked many more hours than she received pay for, but that wasn’t all bad as it allowed her to begin an orderly withdrawal from her supervisory responsibilities. So why let another bug get up my rear
at this stage of my life? Why am I so intent upon going outside of my small area of the world looking for things to get upset about?

  Allison looked towards the reflection of her younger self in the window. “What is it you’re after? What is it you want me to do?”

  As usual, she received no reply. Only the unchanging and mysterious Mona Lisa like expression peered back at her. Never in all the years since the vision of her younger self first appeared had it ever done anything except be there to keep her company and listen to her problems as well as share quietly in her joys.

  That explained why, at about the time when she customarily questioned the wisdom of this oft repeated and ambiguous occurrence her heart stopped. She witnessed the vision’s lips move for the first time. Disbelieving her eyes, she neither spoke nor moved. Inside her head, however, it was an entirely different situation. Chaos ensued. What did you say? What did you say? The vision’s lips moved again, ever so slowly. Allison heard no sound, but she recognized the words formed, words never spoken and seldom thought about for thirty-four years. The vision repeated the words leaving no room for doubt in Allison’s mind. The words echoed across the years from another place in time, “Remember the Dandelions.”

  Allison’s eyes opened wide in surprise as she recalled the last time she had heard that phrase. It was while standing at the St. Louis railway station with her fellow refugees from a place in California gone insane. She even remembered who said it. It was Sam. He said it right before the group parted to go their separate ways, ‘Remember the Dandelions.’

  No! Oh, no! Not that! That can’t be what this is about. That happened a million years ago. This is about what’s going on now. Why would I want to drag that old hurt back into my life again? I’ve tried for all these years not to think about what happened back there. No, it must be something else. Allison’s mind reeled under the sudden impact of hurtful memories crashing into her consciousness.

  Turning back towards the window to confront the vision of her earlier self, she felt irritation at discovering the image had vanished. “Why do you do this?” asked Allison exasperated. “You always leave when the heavy stuff starts.”

  She knew it made no sense to badger an empty window. The vision, although it came often, arrived on its own terms and on its own schedule. Apparently, the subject now on the table for discussion presented too much heat for the vision’s presence. Like so many times before, she had to figure this out by herself. No one in her family understood when it came to the sixties stuff. She had tried a few times to tell them about the initial excitement, the energy, the hope for a new world that thought and acted differently, and even part of the reason why her dreams came crashing down upon her in Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco. But, they couldn’t understand. Not one of them ever would.

  She wasn’t being completely truthful. There were certain people who understood what she meant, or they did at one time. They understood that their individual as well as collective experiences in the San Francisco bay area during the ‘60s may well turn out to be the most traumatic events of their lives. Much of an entire nation had undergone dramatic, life altering changes during an intense confrontational period. It required only the barest amount of inductive reasoning to come to the conclusion that at least one of her fellow bay area escapees might have experienced a similar problem at some point.

  Allison halted as the recollection of certain events rushed forth from the furthest recesses of her mind. At times over the years, she had thought about the individuals and the places that had played so great a role in forming the foundation of her present day mode of thinking. If something held any potential for having a significant impact on her life it filtered through those memories. That became her acid test. Her concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, truth and deception evolved from the lessons gleaned from those alternating moments of exhilaration experienced during a chaotic period of her young life.

  Now thirty-four years later, she sat bursting at the seams. This sense of extreme frustration and anger had not come upon her quickly. Nothing came upon her quickly anymore, not since the time when she came up with the groovy idea of taking time off from life so she could go out to the west coast and go insane. All of her ideas now went before a committee in her brain, and for over thirty years, she never came close to repeating the same mistakes. That’s part of the reason why her current agitated state of mind confounded her. She should have blown this away by now, but this time her thoughts became more and more directed towards the present crisis confronting the country. She could not believe that people bought into the warmed over horse crap the present administration in Washington, D.C., was offering up as an excuse to send U.S. troops into war again. Didn’t we learn anything from the Vietnam fiasco?

  Her heart sank as she thought about the senseless slaughter of those young people so many years ago. The numerous and uncanny similarities between the issues that propelled the country into war during the ‘60s and the forces that were leading the country inexorably towards becoming involved in a similar military quagmire today caused her to reread an article, “A New Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” written in 1969 and published by a still existing anti-war protester group. The similarities between what the article spoke of in 1969 and what was transpiring in 2003 were so great that Allison had made a copy of the article and where it referred to Vietnam she lined through those words and wrote Iraq. Even as she reread the edited piece she could not help but feel a sense of anger and hopelessness as most of the underlying reasons that gave cause for the ‘60s disaster were again present.

  Allison scanned the paper still amazed by the similarities. The Vietnam [Iraq] war has reminded us that major decisions can be made in the United States in cynical disregard of the clearly expressed will of the people and with little concern for those most affected, at home and abroad. Closely linked to the government, providing its top personnel and shaping its policies, are the centers of private power, the great corporations that control the economics of the nation, and increasingly of the world. They are governed not by popular will but by corporate interests as determined by the autocratic elite.

  Scanning down the page she resumed reading. The war in Vietnam [Iraq] is neither a unique folly nor an error in judgment. Since the end of the last century, U.S. power has been used for economic, political, and cultural exploitation of smaller and poorer nations. The deceitful maneuvering in Paris [at the United Nations] are recent manifestations of a global strategy aimed at building an integrated world system dominated by the U.S. Thus seen, Vietnam [Iraq] is one of a long series of interventions in the affairs of many nations: Greece, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Iran, Laos, Thailand, the Congo, the Philippines, [Granada, Panama, Lebanon, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Somalia, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait.] Motivated by a mixture of private interests and misplaced convictions, Pax Americana continues to inflict suffering and subservience on much of the third world.

  In an attempt to maintain her objectivity, Allison sought reasons to dispute the evidence before her. “But a war hasn’t even started yet! You’re not positive they’ll go through with their threats. What about the millions of people around the world that demonstrated against war today? Hundreds of thousands marched in New York City alone. Surely people recognize the tragic consequences of blindly repeating the same mistakes. This is February 15, 2003, not 1969. There must be some way we can stop this from happening again.

  Hearing the word we startled Allison. Right then she knew she would be involved in doing whatever was necessary to prevent this insanity from happening. She could not sit by because something bad had happened to her and her friends at Berkeley in 1969 and allow this nation to go crazy. Maybe she did have unresolved issues with her experiences in California, but this was too important to let that become an excuse to allow another fifty-eight thousand young people to die for the wrong reasons. She sighed as she looked back to the decades old paper she still held in her hand.

&nbs
p; The triumph of illegitimate force has continued to enrich the rich. Defense contracts have guaranteed affluence to a handful of corporations and subsidized their growth, while the wages of workers have diminished. Welfare programs have been cut back or left languishing. Real welfare programs have been reserved for the wealthy: tax loopholes, airline subsidies, highway projects, and so on. Government policy has characteristically preserved or increased the distance between rich and poor.

  Had thirty-four years really passed since someone authored the anti-war article she held in her hand? What actually changed in the world other than the invention of a never-ending procession of technological contraptions that were supposed to make life on this little blue planet better for everyone? From her vantage point she saw more people needing help, more illegitimate children, more violent kids, more destruction of the environment, and less effort to do anything about it. That only took into consideration where she lived. All over the world, millions of hungry, poverty stricken people perished yearly from starvation and violence. Yet, there was more food available and more affluence among the world’s elite than ever before. The chasm between the haves and the have-nots grew larger every day.

  “What blindness causes so many citizens of this country to ignore the plight of their fellow humans? Why can’t they see they are only pawns being used by elitist groups of twenty-first century robber barons to achieve their own enrichment at the expense and detriment of the rest of the world?” said Allison aloud. “Don’t they know that they are next? Someday they will realize, too late, that they are not part of some privileged caste exempt from all the economic pillaging and plundering?”

  With resignation etched into her tired looking face, Allison finally halted her oft repeated and futile lamentations on the increasing economic disparity among the world’s population and changed course once more pondering her earlier experience with the youthful vision of herself. What does this have to do with what happened in 1969? I haven’t seen or heard from those guys in years.

  She couldn’t help but smile at the recollection of her companions from so long ago. What a crazy experience that was. She could not begin to imagine another situation where four such completely different people from dissimilar backgrounds might come together like they did, for any reason.

  “Remember the Dandelions,” she whispered quietly. “Now those guys, for sure, would understand when I talk about the sixties!”

  Allison radiated in the warmth of the memory of the individuals who provided her with the few pleasant recollections she retained of her 1969 adventure. “But, I can’t see what that has to do with right now,” she told herself as she made a mental note to table this matter pending further consideration. Whatever she decided to do could not be resolved tonight. Reacting quickly is what precipitated her disastrous San Francisco adventure in 1969, and nothing like that would ever happen again if she could prevent it.

  “Dandelions,” she said one last time.