Waiting For the Mother Ship

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there lived an old hippie man known to many free thinkers, wastrels, scoundrels and characters of assorted and sordid pasts, and those of shady associations. He and his partner were infamous local characters and were known to throw spectacular parties that sometimes achieved legendary status.

The old hippie and his partner were young men in The Sixties. They were living on the west coast when LSD and the psychedelic era was born. They were in San Francisco when it was legal to pay $5 for a psychedelic bus tour of the city. A person received a dose of LSD and a guided bus tour of the city's best sites, a two-for-one trip, so to speak. There were no laws against LSD at that time.

The two survived the sixties separately and became business partners in the seventies by some twist of fate. They sometimes threw monumental parties at their Kansas farm that were likely pale shadows of parties they had known back in their west coast days. At one such farm party, during the course of the evening, the old hippie ingested a prodigious amount of LSD.

He was a short and stocky man with a balding head and a barrel chest. What was left of his hair was blond and curly, wisping away from his scalp like wiry smoke. He easily reminded people of a crabby hobbit, or a slightly menacing Santa Claus. He was also an inherently funny human being.

During the course of his arguably most famous party, the old hippie ran through his house dressed only in a vest, carrying a cane, rushing to a high and formal meeting to which only he had been summoned. He was found perched in a second story window, hooting like an owl. He was convinced to remove himself from the window and to get dressed. But you cannot hold an old hippie back.  At some point he had disappeared from the general area of the party and his partner went looking for him. Eventually the old hippie was found behind the house in a newly plowed field. In a focused and highly efficient manner, using the arm signals known to flight crews the world over, the old hippie was carefully waving in the mother ship to the dark Kansas field.

That party became local legend.