page 6
daily nebraskan
Wednesday, january 28, 1976
99 9
Continued from p. 5
Then there's my left contact. A few weeks earlier I had
snapped the lid of my contacts case shut on my right one,
slicing it neatly in two. I can see OK with my left contact,
but it's tinted green. My eyes are blue. I looked like a test
tube mutant.
And then the clincher. In the car I had been snarfing
Fiddle-Faddle, an insidious popcorn snack, known to
coagulate brain cells, when-CLUNK-I bit down on a
nugget of silver.
"Ohmigod," I shrieked, tongue-in-molar. I had only re
cently finished an every -Tuesday-for-two-months stint
with my dentist. Before this spring I hadn't seen him for
almost two years. When 1 finally went in, I astounded him
with a new record among his patients-24 cavities in one
mouth.
We live in a state of glut. We smell better, look better,
eat better than anyone in hsitory. But it always comes
down on you one way or another.
Friday morning: Somewhere in the rear the chant started:
"We want to rock'n'roll. We want to rock'n'roll." The
cadence swelled through the ranks to the crazed Stones
freaks pressing at the gate. "Let's get naaaaaaasty," one
snarled back.
It's too hot for that. We had stayed at a motel the
night before and left for the stadium soon after we heard
on the 8 a.m. news that 15,000 persons had camped out
at Arrowhead the night before. It's now 10 a.m., and this
Friday is going to be a scorcher. The gates won't open for
another two hours, then it's another three-hour wait in
side before the music starts.
11 a.m.: A TV cameraman begins shooting footage of the
crowd from inside the stadium. The dazed suddenly spring
to life, doing the hi-mom waving routine. One man shot
America the moon from the roof of the stadium toilet.
A reporter emerged on a baclony level overlooking the
crowd, like the Pope addressing the faithful in Vatican
Square. He wore a suit that Bill Blass might design for a
disc jockey. "Why are you here?" he asked the crowd.
"We want to rock'n'roll, to rock'n'roll," it roared back.
The boogie machine was programmed for only one
channel.
third
rock concert
weekend
An instant brotherhood springs up among rock concert
disciples. The people are open and trusting, sharing beer,
cigarettes and matches, getting to know each other. Or
maybe this feeling, as one friend said, "could only happen
in the Midwest." I've never lived anywhere else, so I can t
say.
S'wanski loaned her giant-sized Dr. Strange comic book
to the guy next to us. He sat down, tilted the book, pour
ed out a lid of marijuana and began sifting out seeds with
amazing rapidity. Tipping his head back, he prepared for a
coyote howl. . . "Up against the wall, redneck mothers. . .
He's 34 and drinking in the honky tonk, Kickin hippies
asses and raisin' hell, he wailed.
There's something weird and
overwhelming, but very American,
about the whole scene.
What a leveler; all are. equal. . .
the successful and the poor, the hip
and the straight, who unite for a few
hours to escape middling lives.
11:55 a.m.: Five minutes to blastoff and counting. The
fiesta atmosphere had dissolved about an hour earlier
when people began wedging into position for the moment
of the gigantic shove.
I was boiling in this hellbroth: the heat from a thou
sand compressed bodies was putrefying. I was practically
licking the sweat off the back that was in front of my
face.
At noon the war cry went up. The gates opened. Thou
sands charged the center. My feet didn't move. I was
hooelessly locked between elbows and backs, being
Sied toward the gate by a magnetic discharge of energy.
A voung man tore forward through the mob, holding
a woman above his head. Her face was rubbery milk, her
ey glazed frost. "Let me through, let me through, she's
S1 Vou fakerf 'faker," growled people in front, refusing
t0 Theory grew desperate. He scaled backs, shoving,
clawine his way through. Then it happened. The girl threw
ud She must have hit 50 people. The waves parted and the
man was practically ushered to the turnstile.
The end was approaching now. The crowd narrowed
into aisles and the real crunch began. S'wanski got shook,
dropped her purse and began groping along the pavement
for it. She yelped in terror as thundering feet almost
mashe'd her face into the concrete.
The final catharsis and it would be over. I clutched
everything so tightly my knuckles ached. I was pushed
nearer, nearer, pushed under. What was happening? God, I
wasn't moving! 1 looked up and saw 1 had latched onto
someone's binocular strap.
Then it came!. . . I was down on all fours. Another
final lurch! It was over. I was through. I endured. I pulled
myself together and went looking for Craig and S'wanski.
I saw S'wanski standing apart From the crowd, jumping
and waving one foot around in a fast version of the
Hokey-Pokey. She looked like she might retch.
"What's wrong?" 1 asked. S'wanski could only point.
Her foot was covered with vomit.
3 p.m.: A hint of breeze swept through the 20,000 people
camped on the playing field. It was too good to last. Then
we exhausted our water supply. The heat was stultifying.
A woman in front of me who told me her name was
Susan broke the silence. What next filled the space
between us usually happens when two people meet who
don't know each other and need a neutral ground to feel
each other out: "When's your birthday?. . . That makes
you Aquarius. . . I'm a Scorpio. . . I don't know many
Aquariuses, most of the ones 1 do know are pretty weird."
Astrology-a quick delusion that you can catalog another
person's personality without getting to know him.
Continued on p. 7
J1L
TLX M AO
KLMS 148 and Chi Phi Fraternity
Invite You to
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Marathon Dancing Fun
on March 5 & 6 at 6 p.m.
Union Ballroom
Ail Net Proceeds to
, Muscular Dystrophy Association
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below or telephone for details.
Chi Phi Fraternity
1245 N. 16
475-6131
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