Orange Barrels

I actually checked emails the other morning. Near the top of the piled up spam was an email from John, a fellow cadet from back in high school. John seems to be the self assigned historian of all there is to know about Charlotte Hall Military Academy. John's email was about past cadets who became famous statewide, nationally, and even worldwide. An institution that lasted 200 years is bound to have a sizable celebrity bucket. 

I looked through the list. In a school that never had more than 200 students in any given year, I was impressed by the number of eventual movers and shakers who would make headlines later in life. 

There was one ex-student who was conspicuous by his absence. Owsley Stanley was a student for one year at Charlotte Hall. He was expelled for supplying enough alcohol to intoxicate a large charge of the student body. Owsley would continue his manic way through life, upsetting conventional apple carts wherever he went. Eventually he would stock the nation with enough LSD so millions of Americans could: 

"Turn On, Tune Out, Drop Out"

Owsley never graduated from high school, yet he was accepted into college. That lasted one year and he was off on his own road again, landing out west where he took a job as an engineer at some high end defense contractor. It was around this time in the early 1960s, he discovered LSD 25. He learned how to brew it up in his homeade lab and the rest of his influence on the planet became legend. 

Owsley Stanley became the largest manufacturer of LSD on the planet. There is no way to know how many hits of LSD he made and distributed, but in the mid to  late 1960s and early 1970s, nobody made more. I was told the Orange Barrels LSD I ate on my first trip in 1969, was Owsley Acid.

Owsley Stanley was not content to just flood the West Coast with LSD. He sponsored and gave out free acid during many Acid Test hoe downs the Merry Pranksters took on the road. The Acid Tests was where he hooked up with the Grateful Dead. They were the local band that played at most of the Acid Tests in the west.

LSD was but one part of Owsley's life. It is however, what he is most famous for. Many people consider him one of the pioneers of the modern audio world. He took a job at some point during the Acid Test Days as the sound man for the Grateful Dead. From his LSD profits, he paid for, designed and built the band's famous "Wall of Sound". It was the sound system they hauled around for awhile so the huge crowds that attended their concerts could hear them, up to a 1/4 mile away. The system had over 500 individual speakers and ran on 28,000 watts of power. 

Sadly, the system's reliance on antiquated tech created so many gliches, they abandoned it after only a few years of use. But it set the bar high. The sound company I would drive for a couple of years later, owe Owsley some credit for showing what was possible.

A wonderful biography by Robert Greenfield gets right into the weeds with his book, "Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III".

Regardless how anyone feels about Owsley's influences on the American landscape back in the Hippy days, he was a giant in the roles he chose to pursue. His nickname was "Bear" which he got while going to Charlotte Hall. I find it interesting he ended up at Charlotte Hall for the same reasons I did. He was deemed unmanageable in the public schools. Montgomery County did the exact same thing to me. I was a punk, that is for sure. My time at Charlotte Hall came at a perfect time in my life. I enjoyed the three years I went there.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ...............................

________________________

What to play? 

After some consideration, "In Da Gadda Da Vida", by Iron Butterfly, is the only song that could fit. Spring 1969,  someone asked me if I wanted to Trip. I was still at Charlotte Hall Military Academy at the time. I knew I wanted to. But where? We were stuck on campus for that weekend. The fellow who had the LSD lived in the New Barracks on the side that bordered woods. He told us there was a small clearing just a few feet into the woods. We would start there. "Start there?" What they fuck was he talking about? Where were we going?

I found out. He put this 17 minute long version of "In Da Gadda of Diva" on his record player and set it to repeat. For the next I don't know how many hours. this song blared out through his open window while we played in the woods. He said that if we got lost, follow the sound. It would take us home. I remember my anxiety level jumped a little more. Lost?... Follow the sound? Shit, what was I getting into?

He told us the LSD we had just ingested was called "Orange Barrels". It was made by Owsley. Okay. Yeah, so what? I would find out during the many LSD trips I took over the next few years, Owsley LSD was far and away the best of the best. Chemically so pure, I never had the uglier side effects of pre trip cramps and coming down was always gentle. I might wake up exhausted, but I was ready for whatever came next.

While the other guys eventually wandered off into the woods, I settled down in a prone position and watched an ant hill for what seemed like forever. Iron Butterfly's song washed over me, time and time again, raising the hair on my body and causing laughter inducing rushes to rage back to back. I never left the clearing physically, but mano - man, my brain left the planet. I was  in that anthill, man... in that anthill.

I understand if one might not want to listen to the whole song. Yes, It is long, But it kept me calm in the face otf what could have been something else. Or so I thought at the time. Apparently, I was one of those people who never allowed LSD to completly take over. I certainly gave it plenty of chances.

And today, as I write this ode to Owsley Stanley, I feel a circle of sorts has been completed, or was completed on that day when I first ate LSD. The man who provided the way to a different approach to Life, had come back to reap some revenge on the power structure that had always tried to keep him down. Owsley was never tamed.