Begging for joints at the Summer Jam—28 July 1973.
My 15-year-old self. “Mom, can I please go to the concert at Watkins Glen?”
My mother. “Only if Steve says you can go with him.”
Of her five children—Steve, the middle child—was my mother’s favorite. Hands down. None of her other children came close to what he embodied. In her mind, Steve was brilliant beyond words. Honest to the core. Trustworthy. Could do no wrong. Was the only one who could make difficult decisions.
Because of this, my siblings and I gaggingly called him the Golden Boy.
It gets worse. Steve was the baby of the family until I entered the world seven years after him. He had a terrible case of sibling rivalry. I loved him with my entire being, but he never forgave me for pulling breath. During my growing up years, he vacillated between feelings of contempt and barely tolerating me.
Still, Steve allowed me and my friend Kevin to hitch a ride with him and his friend Michael to the concert. Out of my 30-strong-friend group, Kevin was the only other person besides me who was allowed to go.
The Summer Jam was attended by a record-breaking crowd estimated at 600,000 to 800,000. The audience enjoyed hours of music provided by just three acts: the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, and The Band.
This was the first time I ever went to a Grateful Dead show.
It was also the first time that I ever went Upstate New York. Being from flat Long Island, I was in awe of the mountains and of how green everything was. The towns were smaller than the one I lived in, but like mine, they were strung together by a two-lane road.
That is where the similarities ended.
At the time, my town of Bethpage had a population of 18,000 people. Although we had many immigrants living among us, I was surprised by how different the Upstate locals looked from the people in my neighborhood, likely because I’d never met anyone from the countryside before. By comparison, I didn’t see a single soul who wasn’t pasty white. And where I went barefoot and wore the fashionable clothes of the day—ripped up blue jeans with patches on the holes! —their attire of sneakers with white socks was definitely not in vogue. City dwellers from Manhattan considered Long Islanders to be “country folk.” After this concert, I remember thinking if they thought that about us, then phewww, it would have blown their minds to go Upstate!
I can’t recall how long it took in my brother’s panel van to drive to Watkins Glen. All I know is that 10 miles from the venue, we came to a dead standstill. For hours on end we crawled along, entertaining ourselves by making commentary on the local’s reaction to the hippie invasion. People were lined up along the side of the road staring at us with their mouths gaping open. It was as if they were watching a parade pass by, which I suppose they were. To me, they looked like they hailed from another universe, and I’m sure to them we looked like we came from the heartbeat of Hell.
Two miles from the venue, we gave it up.
After ditching the van in an empty cove, we got in line with a throng of people and started hiking the rest of the way in. Soon enough, we crested a rise, and below us lay the site. And what a site it was! Of course, I’d been to New York City many times, but I’d never seen such an expanse of big green open grass fields before. Or, an enormous stage, or the sheer number of people who were already there.
I still cannot believe my mother let me go to this concert.
But because Steve was taking me, and because he was God, there I suddenly was, immersed in a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people. We could barely find an empty place to set our blanket down. Once we did, the Golden Boy, the trusted child, the most brilliant child, the child who was to keep me safe, ordered me to go into the mob bumming for joints.
Walking barefoot on the grass, I squeezed my way through the horde searching for someone who looked nice. “Hey, do you have an extra joint to spare?” The first guy said, “Aren’t you a little young to be here? Oh, never mind, here you go.” Thanking him, I walked away with two joints and started looking around for the next kind soul.
I don’t know how I found my way back to our blanket, but I did, with five joints in hand. Steve was shocked that I pulled it off, and that is likely one of the few times in my life that he was ever impressed by me.
The joint I smoked must’ve been laced with something.
After a few hits, I had to lay down and close my eyes. It was scary to be that high, but also amazing to be listening to the most incredible music I’d ever heard in my short life. Because of their Europe ’72 tour, the Dead were now a household name. At Watkins Glen, I heard songs that I’d only previously heard Steve play on his guitar, yet at the concert, those lyrics were streaming into my ears straight from the source. Tunes like Bertha, Sugar Magnolia, and my all-time favorite, He’s Gone, took the edge off my frightening high. I loved the music from all the bands, but this concert began my love affair with the Dead.
What must’ve been hours later, my friend Kevin asked me to scootch over so he could lay down too. Side-by-side on the blanket, both of us looking up at the stars, he giddily exclaimed, “Glor, isn’t this unreal?! The music! Being this high!” By this time, I’d come down a bit so I said yes, it was unbelievable. Because it was. Such an enormous crowd, and yet everyone was so kind and thoughtful, just groovin to the music together, even if we were squeezed in like rats and were acres away from the stage.
I have no idea what time the show ended. It went by in a flash. Before I knew it, the sun was rising, and we were walking the two miles back to the van.
It wouldn’t start.
Wonder of wonders, Michael’s parents lived nearby. The van was towed to a repair shop and Michael’s dad drove the lot of us to his bare-bones cabin in the woods. The rudimentary kitchen and living room took up the downstairs. The bedrooms and the restroom were located upstairs.
I was horrified by many things having to do with this cabin, but mostly by the toilet.
We were instructed to leave it be if we went No. 1, but to flush it down if it was No. 2. The problem was, you had to flush the toilet with a bucket of water. Which meant, going upstairs for the bucket, going back downstairs to fill it up outside at the well, and then going back upstairs with the sloshing water. In front of guys. With everyone knowing what you were about to do. When I was still just a girl. Oh the embarrassment!
Here’s to you! if you also have childhood memories that are both wondrous and cringeworthy. We were stuck in Watkins Glen for nearly a week. Finally back on Long Island, I walked through the door of the house-of-torture a filthy mess and went into the kitchen to tell my mother I was home. Without turning her head from cooking at the stove, she asked how it went, and I said it was great. She repeated that under no circumstances would she have let me go had it not been for Almighty Steve, A Man, My Protector, chaperoning me. Thinking about that still makes my eyes roll!
The Photo. Me, on the left, the summer of 1973, and my friend Judy. The tiny screened-in porch of the house of torture is in the background. My friends, who I call the Ceil Place Gang, hung out in that 8’ x 6’ space on a regular basis. BTW: Lest you think me a pothead, I was an early bloomer. I haven’t smoked a joint since I was 19.