Just Say No, Thanks

April 11, 2013
By Mickey Friedman

Will loves Simon and Garfunkel and Simon without Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. So when Will opens Fuel at seven, he tells Pandora to sing the 1960s. Which means early mornings at Fuel are all about flashbacks for some of us. Bob B and I hear a song and immediately recall a moment, or an event we lived through. “Happy Together” by The Turtles sends me back in a heartbeat to City College. I can see E walking past the Administration Building. And I loved E.

A bit later, Pandora offers Bob Dylan crooning “Lay Lady Lay” and I’m confronted with memories of M and my boatload of regret. I loved M. At some point, Anthony tells Bob B that he missed the 1960s entirely. Reminding us that if he had his way, Will would be offering us non-stop Frank Sinatra.

Will, of course, is trying to find background music that will keep the Fuel crew engaged during the morning rush while not offending the diverse bunch of his customers with the questionable lyrics of more contemporary tunes.

When Will hears “What a wonderful night for a moondance,” he’s not propelled back to Woodstock as the sixties dissolved into seventies, as the last remaining dreams of peace and love circled the drain. When the slogan, “Bring The War Home,” became an apt description of what was to happen, and students died at Jackson and Kent State.

And Van the Man, still drinking too much, told a small group of friends in Woodstock how he was repeatedly screwed by those who ran the music biz. Having seen the real Van, having survived the real moondance, our real frailties and faults front and center, our dreadful mistakes and lofty hopes and dreams, well I count myself so very lucky to have survived as Van has survived, lucky enough to have seen him transcend stage-fright, and perform in several different places over these many decades, his music making the journey so very rich and textured.

And I can’t go to any of these places Will’s music sends me without thinking of dear departed Artie, one of the kindest souls I have ever encountered, whose music I can’t hear without crying. Artie, who I met on the lawn at City College, and who years later caretaking, offered me Bob D’s Upper Byrdcliffe’s living room when I lost everything I had to fire on Ohayo Mountain.

So it is that it’s nearly impossible to have my morning’s iced latte without travelling back in time.

Beyond the exhausting mythology, there is much to be missed about the 1960s. I’ve been thinking most about lost hope, the great cynicism, and the lack of audacity that marks these days. So much isn’t done because so many have already decided it just won’t work. It’s almost as if a critical mass of Americans have downloaded the Don’t Bother app from the ever ubiquitous iTunes Store.

A generation of Americans fought more than a decade to force the politicians and generals to end the blood-soaked nightmare of Vietnam: some fled so as not to serve; some brave soldiers disobeyed orders. And we will never know the names of all those many thousands of servicemen and women who risked the brig to march against the war they were forced to fight.

Today, we know the vast majority of Americans yearn for an end to our never-ending war in Afghanistan: repelled by the knowledge that our money supports drug-dealing despots; and sickened that the Afghan police and military we train turn their guns on our soldiers. Our President, our politicians, our generals offer spurious surges rather than say they’re sorry. And yet our streets are empty of any sustained protest. Still, military recruiters are welcome in our high schools to spin a dismal mission into a story of glory, neglecting to mention the growing number of soldier suicides, the years of PTSD our warriers will struggle with, the silence they’ll return to.

And to bring this story home, we in The Best Small Town in America wait passively to see our town torn apart in the name of Downtown Redevelopment. Maybe I’m delusional but I’m told by many that they wish this wasn’t happening. They’re afraid of what’s to come but know it is coming. Just like they know they have been lied to: that the free money that made this project a gift from the governmental heavens has turned into almost a million dollars gone from our coffers into the hands of the planners.

I wish this idea was mine but it came from Alan Kalish. Let’s tell the State we won’t take the rest of their money – the four million – if only they’ll give us back the million we spent. Give it to Pittsfield. And with our million, we’ll fix our town one tree, one street at a time. Just Say No, Thanks.