A Be-In
It was a balmy Saturday morning in
the spring of 1963 when I woke with the sun hitting my eyes and a strange
sound, the gentle strumming of a string instrument, coming from outside the
window.
We, girlfriend Donna and I, had
stayed the night at a friend’s apartment, the bottom floor of an historic
stone structure in downtown Bethlehem, PA.
I got up first, squinting into the
sun. Donna was still asleep when I took a first breath and caught a sweet
scent, her perfume, gathering in the air next to me. I was not conscious of
this but somewhere inside the cells of my body, as I inhaled, there was a sense
that my blessings were many.
We had come in late and the lone bed
was, as our friend, told us, a couch that would convert to a cot-like-pallet given the
proper rocking and shaking.
“You’ll hear a click,” he assured
us, which was the essential –and only - detail of his instruction.
It took the better part of a half
hour, an effort not helped by fits of hysteria that finally ended with the
couch miraculously unfolding into its intended flat berth, ostensibly room for
two, and us collapsing on top.
We slept like college kids.
I got up once, pre-dawn, wanting
air. I opened a window eye level with the couch (bed) and inches from our
heads. Like the college kids we were we had no plans to stir before noon. With
the night air on my face and the melodic clanking of steel mills like music to
my ears I fell back into a deep Saturday night sleep.
1963 be-in site. Grass lot foreground,
and hotel background
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As dawn came the dark curtain peeled
back and sunlight rose above the two story buildings across Main Street,
until at mid-morning it flooded the grass lot outside our window. The lot
separated our building from the bustling Hotel Bethlehem which was filled with
weekend guests. The guitar plunking sound that I heard was from this lot and as
I looked now I saw that there was a crowd of sorts. I tried to think. What was this? What was the intention of this group – maybe twenty – mingling outside, on the grass?
The group had the look of a cocktail
party and I immediately marked them as the leftovers from a declared frat-party-all-nighter.
“All-nighters” were often announced in those days, just about always
proffered at the height of the night’s intoxication with a raised fist and a
room shaking shout for all ears – All-Nighter!!! This brought a loud
chorus of approval from every soul in the room – i.e. a bar.
But there was little clamor among
this morning-after-gathering. Subdued, might be a more apt description.
The age or the crowd was ... well ... ours ... but a middle aged person or two
(approaching 30) was also visible. I stepped lightly across the room to the door,
careful not to awaken Donna. I slipped on my loafers – otherwise I was already
dressed – and ventured outside.
I drifted through the crowd,
aimlessly, trying to appear like I belonged. Despite my anonymity I felt
comfortable. I was, after all, an American college kid, and in my mind the owner of a permanent
Ameri-pass. I saw myself as universally belonging – welcome everywhere
by any and all. This was only fitting for one such as I, age twenty-three and naively - and
precariously- perched along with all of my friends, at the very top of the
world’s cultural pyramid. I moved fluidly over the lawn, brushing past others
like a gentle wind, the dew's cool moisture against my ankles.
Finally I tendered a question.
“What’s going on?” I said to a girl
next to me.
I thought the girl's attire was
toga-like, or thereabouts, a loose white linen blouse and wheat colored jeans
and bare feet. I immediately wondered, was this a toga party? *
Not
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“It’s a be-in,” she said.
I nodded as if this was my
one-hundredth be-in this month. I was
familiar with the phrase, of course; though, to my knowledge, I had never used it in a
sentence.
I saw here in a brief moment my
special status - a man-child, and yes, welcomed everywhere, and now
effortlessly stepping through the old culture into the new. And true, be-ins
were doubtless old hat in Boston or San Francisco, but here in the eastern
end of Pennsylvania, on this bright spring morning they were new, and the fit was
perfect.
I drew a be-in-style look of pleasant serenity onto my face as I eased my
way among the crowd. People waltzed by. It was then that I looked up and saw
Donna, the sun painting her hair, standing in the open doorway of the
apartment.
Had I been more astute I might have
seen that I had never been happier than at this moment, nor perhaps, would I be
again. Instead I allowed that this – the morning sun on glistening dew, the
grinding sound of steel mills, the gentle murmur of people, the melodic string
instruments, and the beautiful girlfriend – that this was all a part of life's
timeless mosaic for me. I was a blessed child of the universe and I had no reason to
think that I was not immortal.
*
Toga parties were at the top of the fantasized sensual merriment
scale in 1963. It is worth noting that, despite the existence of Playboy
magazine and an occasional news note about loose morals, toga parties, in their
dreamed up form, never materialized, at least in my experience. The fantasy was sarong like sheets loosely draped as outer clothing and a male dream of scant undergarments. The reality was sheets over everyday regular clothes. That's if there ever was a toga party,
which, honestly, I cannot recall.
