10 minute read
Changes - That Was Then: Roger Vaughan
That Was Then
Excerpt from a novel in progress by Roger Vaughan
I. Grayson
We had gotten married in the upper east side Manhattan apartment where we had been living. Our neighbor and friend Grayson presided over a homemade ceremony wearing velvety red scarves draped over his purple silk shirt as vestments. The guests were as colorful, looking like Sly and the Family Stone groupies. But then, it was the late 1960s. Grayson was officiating under some sort of bogus mail order license. The legitimacy of his provenance didn’t matter to us, and it surely didn’t matter to Grayson. He had plenty of ego, more self-righteousness than a room full of Roman Catholic Cardinals, and a total distrust for systems and institutions. Self-ordination was his thing.
Grayson was also stoned all the time, which created a problem for a guy his age whose proudest extracurricular accomplishment at the University of Virginia had been building a gentleman’s bar in his room. As Grayson once explained, he had been raised in the South. His grandfather’s crossed Confederate swords hung over his bed. He had been taught in school that the South had won the war, a lesson that was reinforced at home.
When I first met him at The Magazine, Grayson wore three-piece suits and had the close-cropped, combed-down haircut favored by greater-Ivy League fraternity boys of the 1950s and ’60s. Grayson was an editor at The Magazine, known for habitually rewriting copy whether it needed it or not, relying on a justifying phrase that burned like a brand into the psyche of every Magazine writer: “because I can.” One frustrated fellow on the staff, an award-winning published poet, once took Grayson to task for altering his picture captions without apparent reason. He asked Grayson why he thought he had a right to do that. Grayson’s response became legendary: “Because,” he told the poet, “I have commanded men at sea.” Grayson had an ROTC commission. His dark secret was persistent seasickness. He was as brutish with his own family.
Pot smoking, which had gone on underground in a very small niche (music, artistic and entertainment circles, mostly) for many years, went public in the early 1960s. It was also illegal, a fact that required of users a certain casual dismissal of what was widely considered in that milieu a ridiculous law. That assessment would eventually be borne out, but at the time, using marijuana required stealth. The Narcotics Control Act of 1956 specified a jail term of two to ten years (thank you, Harry Anslinger) and a fine of up to $20,000 for the first offense. Normally law-abiding users found themselves not-so-subtly linked to a less wholesome crowd by their criminality, a situation as unnerving as it was unfathomable. It also created a certain collective, a not-that-secret society of stoners who often recognized one another by the vibes that were exchanged, who coalesced by their common need to be wary.
Like alcohol, pot has a different effect on everyone. At the time, the quality of the effect could be graphed by a curve based on age. The younger kids suffered because they didn’t have either the experience or the maturity ~ the perspective ~ to handle the liberating effect of marijuana. Their brains
were not fully developed. For them, pot was too much of a carnival ride, too much fun, too easy an escape from things like schoolwork and other responsibilities. They tended to be stoned too deeply and too often. For many, the deleterious effects were long term. Conversely, pot often arrived too late into the lives of older people. Those in their late 30s ~ especially those in white-collar management jobs (again, a generalization) ~ had developed a comfortable reliance on alcohol for their altered state. Yes, the late 30s were considered "older" at the time. They were wary of pot, and with good reason. My boss at The Maga... pot was too much of a zine, whom I will carnival ride, too much call Harold, pushed fun, too easy an escape me for months to invite him over to smoke some pot. I ran the Youth and Education department, so he assumed I, like a good reporter, had given it a clinical trial, possibly more. It was a request (an order?) I resisted for as long as possible. Harold was in his 40s, a Harvard graduate who had replaced his wife and child in suburban Connecticut with his former secretary and their new child. He was advancing the cycle by dating his current secretary. Harold was more administrator than idea man, which made him easy enough to work for, but he was nervous, uptight about his boss. He was the first person I knew to 138
take a speed-reading course, a big fad of the day. Walking back to the office after a multi-martini lunch, he would kick passing cars, taxis mostly, whose drivers had the audacity to make turns in front of him as he was crossing the street.
When the inevitable happened and Harold finally forced the issue of trying pot, he insisted on drinking three martinis before he got into the weed. He smoked half a joint, fell asleep on my couch for the night, woke up with a hangover and said the dope stuff was certainly overrated. I’m sure he kicked a few cars after he left.
Grayson was in his mid-30s when weed hit the mass, but still underground, market (In 2021, 18 states have legalized marijuana, but possession has always remained a Federal offense). Grayson's age, in combination with his need to control every situation he found himself in, made it predictable that pot would not be a good fit for Grayson. Unlike many of his peers on the corporate track who had tried it and thought better of continuing, he became annoyingly enthusiastic about it. We all watched his metamorphisis. His hair grew into a tangle of black curls. Soon the three-piece suits were gone, replaced by overalls and a blue-and-white-striped railroad engineer’s hat. He affected carrying a wine skin and bought an old hearse for transporting his family. A couple years after he married Jill and me, Grayson’s fascination with Malcom X spawned rampant paranoia about Manhattan exploding into flames of racial unrest. His penchant for writing inflammatory letters to public officials on Magazine letterhead drew a stern reaction from management. The editors also began taking a more critical look at his office. It was amusing at first, with the gumball machine and all the plants. Grayson was cartoon editor, after all. May as well put the
Grayson’s fascination contributors at ease. with Malcom X spawned But after a while, the rampant paranoia floor tiles had begun to curl up thanks to being constantly soaked with water. Grayson had a stag-horn fern hanging on one wall. Every morning, he would heave an eight-ounce tumbler full of water at it. The residue ran down the wall, leaving a stain and curling the tiles. Realizing the end of his New York mass media phase was approaching, Grayson went to Spain and purchased the remains of an ancient ruin of a farmhouse, then returned and began preparations to move his family ~ a wife and five children ~ to Europe by ship. He decided to round up his pals and make it a communal scene. That
wasn’t a bad idea. There was a lot of work to be done on the farm before they could even move in. The pictures showed one section of the house was minus a roof.
Grayson could be persuasive. It was his nature to counsel people in all matters, invited or not. He was, in fact, smart, insightful. Before he became habitually stoned, bought the hearse and began writing the inflammatory letters, he had displayed a keen intellect. His presentation was overly aggressive, but those of us who knew him forgave that, until that was all that was
left. Once, after listening to me rant about Jill’s habit of leaving wet towels on the bed, he told me to either forget about it or move out. There were some things, he said, you will never change about a person. Wet towels on the bed was one. There was important advice buried in with a large round head there that I neglected to take seriously unand fierce dark eyes, it was til it became a crisis: daunting when he engaged “or move out.” Add another click or two to Grayson’s controlling side, and he would have been mixing Kool Aid for his subjects to drink. He was 6’2”, 230 pounds, with a large, round head and fierce dark eyes. It was daunting when he engaged you. When most of his EASTERN SHORE
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pals managed to resist his pitch, he started inviting acquaintances, even total strangers, to go to Spain. His most memorable invitation came the night he was cruising Third Avenue dressed in a band uniform jacket with brass buttons he’d bought in a secondhand shop. An extension cord crossing his path brought him to an abrupt halt. Actually, it was many six- and nine-foot indoor extension cords hitched together. One end disappeared up the rickety stairs of an old apartment building. The other end went beyond the curb and under a Volkswagen Beetle to power a work light for a man whose feet were sticking out from under the car.
Enthralled by this scene, Grayson cleared his throat to get the man’s attention and hailed him with a hello. The man rolled out from under the car, got up, drew himself to his full 5’ 8”, flexed his plentiful muscles and asked Grayson what he wanted. The conversation went like this:
Grayson: “May I ask you, sir, what you are doing?
VW man (with no hesitation): “I am fi xing this car that my wife and I will drive to Florida, where we will get jobs this winter at The Fountain Blue Hotel. In the spring, we will drive to Mexico, where we will sell the car, then use that money and our savings from the hotel jobs to fl y to the Canary Islands, where I will teach karate to the police.”
Grayson: “Aha. But listen, instead, why don’t you come to Spain with my family and me and several friends. I have bought a farm there and plan to establish a commune. We’ll be leaving after Christmas.”
VW man: (With only a the briefest hesitation) “Okay. Count me in.”
The VW man and his wife and new child were three of seventeen who made the voyage to Spain. That’s another story.
Roger Vaughan recently moved to Easton after living 41 years in Oxford.
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