Page 27 of The Music Demon

“And the World War II generation was so damn sure they were right about everything, they couldn’t, wouldn’t, hear us. It was the first time in the history of humankind when the idea of ‘generation’ became a line in the sand. Before the 1960’s, people had shared perspectives regardless of age. Music. Pastimes. Religion. Didn’t matter whether you were old or young. Life had more or less been the same.

“Then came the sixties and life as we had known it was exploding. A lot of us were saying good riddance.

“Backlash. Tsunami backlash. We put the act into acting out. Not that it wasn’t called for. It was totally appropriate. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“I don’t get it. What about the whole Summer of Love thing?”

Cass’s responding laugh was soft and more genuine than earlier. “Glad you asked.

“There was a movement to tear down what our parents had constructed. A consumer economy based on greed. Law enforcement rampant with corruption. A political structure based on greed and corruption. And our parents and grandparents were perfectly fine with the idea of sending multitudes of teenage boys to a tiny country nobody’d ever heard of to die or be permanently mutilated in a war that was insane. They were still riding the high of believing their own press, that they were the ‘greatest generation’. They believed that if the U.S. was involved, it was automatically a holy war.

“It wasn’t working for anybody, but the people in charge couldn’t see it because their souls had been corrupted beyond repair. Happiness can’t be found in holding power over other people. It’s a dead end. A lot of times, when people become powerful and find that it doesn’t bring happiness, they think it’s because they don’t have enough power to control everything and everyone. Instead of reevaluating, they go for more power. More control. It’s the ugliest kind of depravity. Pure and simple.” She laughed. “And the irony is that it’s un-American. We’re supposed to be about personal freedoms and the sovereignty of the individual.”

She took in a big breath and huffed it out. She held her beer bottle out to Gray. “How about exchanging this for one of those pink wine coolers in the fridge? By the time you get back, I’ll be settled down. Promise.”

“Sure.” Gray didn’t hesitate to do as she asked. As he walked the few feet to the kitchen and back, his mind began processing what he’d heard. He hadn’t known exactly what to expect when he’d knocked on Cass’s door, but it wasn’t this. Still. He said he wanted the real picture.

When Gray returned, he sat and said, “I’m not arguing and don’t take it that way. But isn’t there always greed and corruption at the top?”

“Good point.” Cass smiled. “Enter Disney.” Gray just shook his head. “The difference between my generation and those before? The original Mickey Mouse Club. Idealism became our religion. We eased into the cult with Donald Duck, but were experts on morality and doing the right thing by the time we invented surfer culture as grist for beach movies.

“You wanted to know about the love faction? People are strange, but predictable. There are two ways you can react to extreme pressure. One is to get mad as hell and proclaim that you’re not gonna take it anymore. The other is to insist that love is the answer and become a pacifist. The second requires more self-discipline. It turned out that the discipline required to chill out can be helped along with mind-numbing drugs.

“And our moms had laid the groundwork for artificial stimulants. You can object to drugs while consuming a rent payment’s worth of alcohol or valium. But that hypocritical donkey shit is gonna fall on deaf ears.”

She paused to check in with Gray. “Want me to keep going?”

He nodded. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

She chuckled. “You have a month to sit there and do nothing but listen?”

Gray glanced at her big battery wall clock. “I got two hours before Kelsey leaves for work.”

“Two hours, huh? That’s two hours more than I would have thought you’d be interested in. So be it.

“Back to backlash. Our fathers made the military idea of ‘clean cut’ a dogma. So, boys grew their hair long. Shinin’, gleamin’, steamin’ flaxen waxen.” She stopped to grin at her reference to lyrics from the musicalHair. Middle-class parents were obsessed with the goal of having daughters project a demure ‘ladylike’ image. So, girls went braless if they felt like it, stopped wearing makeup, let their hair do whatever it wanted, and sometimes,” she gasped for effect, “they didn’t sit with their ankles crossed.

“Add another faction of mad. The older generations were furious that we didn’t do as we were told. We called them the ‘establishment’. They called us ‘non-conformists’.” She chuckled. “Like that’s a bad thing. And we of the so-called ‘counter culture’ developed the motto, don’t trust anyone over the age of thirty.

“Yeah.” She turned toward Gray feeling the old fires burst to life as she described an anger so palpable that its embers burned on into old age. “We were protesting. The war. Political corruption. The psychological manipulation of consumers. And the heavy-handed way we’d been raised.

“Is this what you wanted to know?”

Gray was captivated by the passion that had built visibly as Cass talked through her highly abbreviated version of the Bay Area sixties. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what she was like at his age. Not so much the old lady across the street who baked cookies and taught guitar chords.

He sighed. “Ah. Yeah.”

In an uncharacteristically introspective moment, he wondered about Cass’s family before realizing he didn’t really know that much about her. They had a relationship that went one direction. She’d been a fount of giving all his life. He’d been a selfish kid who never thought twice about taking what was offered, but never thought once about the source.

Her mention of family caused him to wonder, for the first time, why did she live alone? Did she have siblings? Parents? Were they alive? Had the damage of disagreement created a rift that became lifelong? Permanent?

While those thoughts were tumbling around in his head, he must have looked unsure.

Cass grinned. “Did I dump the truck? Was that more than you wanted to know?”

With a little furrow between his brows, Gray said. “It sounds kinda awful.”

“Well, in a lot of ways it was. Even those of us who didn’t have the greatest relationship with our families found it painful to be locked in an unwinnable battle with them.”

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