Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"Hide, witch, hide
the good folks come to burn thee
their keen enjoyment hid behind
a gothic mask of duty..." --Paul Kanter (1970)

How did Peace and Love mesh with Black and White? How did neophyte Back-to-the Earth suburban kids relate to the real deal: trappers and other backwoods individualists who'd never even SEEN a thermostat (no less padded down the hall on the wall-to-wall to spin one to the right at the first instant the evening temperature dipped below tee-shirt weather)? And what were the limits to and the real effects of Free Love?

Besides the fact that I am always eager to read what T. C. Boyle has come up with next, and the fact that DROP CITY begins just outside my adopted town of Sebastopol, California, it also caught my attention--when I discovered it a couple of weeks ago at NCIBA--because the story is set at a commune in 1970.

"...Put your old ladies back into bed
Your old men back in their graves
Cover their ears so they can't hear us sing
Cover their eyes so they can't see us play
Get out of the way
Let the people play
We're gonna get down on you
Come alive all over you
Dancin' down into your town..."

1970. I was a high school sophomore back East, a young antiwar protester, a founder of the Ecology Club. I read Jerry Rubin's DO IT for an English book report. It was just a couple of weeks into that school year when Daryl Dobson came into biology crying because the guitarist Daryl had styled his wild hair after--Jimi Hendrix--had just been found dead.

Fast forward a few years:

I'm a student at UConn, frequently daydreaming about Northern California (which I'd never experienced) and lamenting that I'd been born a decade too late to have experienced the pinnacle of civilization at places whose names such as "Morning Star" were, even then, eminently familiar to me.

"...Tyrannosaurus Rex was destroyed before
By a furry little ball that crawled along
The primeval jungle floor
And he stole the eggs of the dinosaur
Close your eyes and create the sound
Open your hands and rebuild the ground
We are egg snatchers
Flashin' sunshine children
Diamond thieves..."

But, no, despite having now spent the past 18 years living in a town known for them (and, indeed, having worked alongside people who were really "there"), I never did experience that lifestyle. Too much of a worker, I suppose. Too arrogant, too much of an ingrained political activist. No matter how many Dead shows I lost myself at, I couldn't relate to the band's apolitical stance. Instead, I delighted being able to think to myself, "I told you so!" when they finally switched gears and announced their involvement in the Rainforest movement. Come on! How the hell can you contentedly live in Eden, if they're building a nuclear power plant a dozen miles upwind or dropping napalm on little kids?

"...You unleash the dogs
Of a grade B-movie star governor's war
While you sit in the dark
Insane with the fear of dying
We'll all ball in your parks
insane with the flash of living
I AM ALIVE
I AM HUMAN
I WILL BE ALIVE AGAIN
So drop your f___in' bombs
Burn your demon babies
I WILL BE ALIVE AGAIN..."

DROP CITY has the same problems that (I've since been told by my "experienced" friends.) really existed at our community's communes: Two bathrooms for fifty or sixty people. A couple of dozen tourists "dropping in" for dinner. A handful of hard workers and a hoardful of stoned leeches. Not to mention "unsympathetic" neighbors and authority figures. I can only cringe at the vision of the psychedelic circus that Boyle creates at Drop City, thirty-two years and a couple of miles away from where I'm now sitting, and the repercussions that so logically follow.

So when they're about to fall over the cliff (actually, when they're three-quarters of the way down the cliff and the ground is coming up at them really quickly), the good citizens of Drop City hop on the magic bus and head for Alaska where you don't have to deal with the (mutter, mutter) fascist Building Inspectors, and cops and judges and tourists, and draft boards.

"...HEY DICK!
Whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant
Both to us now and to you
We are the present
We are the future
You are the past
Pay your dues and get outta the way
'Cause we're not the way you used to be
When you were very young..."

The hairy, unwashed characters of Drop City (as well as the "neighbors" of Drop City North) are well-drawn and recognizable without being mere caricatures. Caring or clueless, funny or somber, bossy or get-along--all sorts of merging and clashing dispositions and attitudes are present in respect to work, race, children, sex, drugs, diet, and decision-making. Standing out amid this impressive and extensive cast of characters are Ronnie (AKA Pan) and Paulette (AKA Star, goat milker extraordinaire), who together have made the pilgrimage west from New York. Also notable are a young Alaskan frontier couple (Sess and Pamela) who are the real deal.

"...We're something new
We don't quite know what it is
Or particularly care
We just do it -
You gotta do it
Open your eyes there's a new word a-coming
Open your eyes there's a new world today
Open your hearts people are lovin'
Open it all we're here to stay..."

DROP CITY is a major work of historic fiction, an incredibly haunting look at what that Peace and Love stuff sometimes meant, and a book that I'll never forget. It is unquestionably the most enjoyable adult book that I've read this year. While this is NOT one that I'll be turning my middle school students on to, it is unquestionably relevant to today's older young adults who are in the process of finding their way while wandering through the shadows of a war-mongering President, plastic consumeristic idiocy, sexual exploration (and exploitation), and the latest in drugs.

"...Open it
Open it
Open that door."

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com