There are some other stories. Imagine a quiet hamlet on a 10-15 mile ridge line some 15+ miles from Manhattan. A place where in years past, the wealthy built large castle-like houses to enjoy the skyline after work. Imagine an odd cult moving into the biggest of these: an enclosed compound with a large driveway that meandered through the estate. A cult of odd red robbed Kool-Aid drinking followers, wearing robes and sandals 24-7, who may or may not have been brainwashing new followers there. The castle, surrounded by tall timber, is not observable from the outside.
Imagine you hear about this at 17, with access to a car. HS people made it sound like visiting this place is ‘fun’, an adventure, as long as you leave quick (same dudes who say they slept with cheerleaders, but you won’t get your Bullshit Detector installed until college). So, you have nothing planned, not a lot of friends to spend time with and you wonder: What would it be like to pay this cult a quick visit?
Your ears go back. You get the devil in your tail. Its good weather on on a Fall night in October. You’re alone in a car with a full tank of gas on a Friday night. You put on a good song and in the back of your head the mantra of youth; “I am 17 and I am Invincible!” starts to play. Tonight is going to be interesting, and while there may be trouble, there’s just no turning back now.
You turn off the radio as you enter the driveway. You turn off the head lights (except the running lights) so you are harder to see. The road twists and winds past the “Private Driveway, Do Not Enter” sign, and while you keep moving, you make sure you run at the quieter low-revs of upper gears. Music is playing from loud speakers nailed to trees; an odd woodwind/bongo music that you can’t place. The Castle, because it IS a castle and is made with parapets of stone, looms up in the night sky ahead of you with very few lights on it turned on.
As you approach, an alarm goes off, broadcast by the speakers on the trees and flood lights turn on. People, who seconds before seemed to have been studying class-room style at basement windows are now diving to shut and lock heavy internal wood shutters. People in red robes are running into the castle and hiding from you… or are they? No, they are getting 2x4s and bats to run out, chase your car and attack you for what could have just been a wrong turn.
You turn on the head lights (no need to hide now) and you speed forward and ahead down the several hundred yards serpentine drive that leads to the other exit to the street, because you know its time to go. Now. Ahead of you, at the brick-and-stone posted gate, at the place of freedom, you see something that becomes brighter in your headlights as you approach. A long metal cable has been locked in place across the driveway exit.
You have 1-2 minutes max and a crowd has already gathered at the house. There’s no room to turn around and you’d be driving through a crowd of armed and angry people if you did. So you do what you do best; you think fast. You get out of your car,you slip the cable up over the hood, get back into your car and slowly ease under the cable, using an open window and your hand to guide it over the car. As you exit, the crowd, which had run the other way (thinking your way sufficiently blocked) is upon you.
You hear yelling, screaming, pounding, as they hit your car with clubs and lumber all the way through first gear as you drive away from them, Second gear (possibly the fastest you’ve ever shifted into second) leaves the angry crowd of unwashed reddleman behind you, some running, some panting and some stopping. You turn a corner and you are out of there… free to turn a knob on the radio and hear Carol Miller play a Pretenders song as you start to wonder how you’ll explain the club-dents in the back of the car.
As you get home that night, your mother asks what did you do tonight.
“Oh… Nothing….” Is all you say.
Of course, you’re right. There are no such high ridge lines that far from NYC. There are no such stone castles, for if there were I’m sure the local counties would have taken them over for taxes and made Sheriffs offices out of them. There was never any cult lead by The Bhagwan Rajneesh. There was never was any DJ named Carol Miller, and if there was, she certainly wouldn’t have ever played The Pretenders.
What did I do in highschool…?
Oh… Nothing….
