Believe it or not, the Sixties are still saving us

Special to The Millerton NewsA few years ago my best lifelong friend casually told me that she’d be out of touch for a few weeks next month. She had to go the hospital for an operation to get a new heart valve. We joked about her choices, a machine, or part of a pig heart. It wasn’t likely to be life threatening, but I could tell she was scared. So was I. She is a woman of simple tastes: writing, family, writing about family. Sports on TV. And the music of Arlo Guthrie. Whenever he was near Philly, she’d get herself out there. I live close to the Guthrie Center at the old Trinity Church up in Great Barrington, and it’s a lovely, peaceful place. It never advertises itself (“Come visit the town and church that inspired Arlo’s brilliant Alice’s Restaurant! Come see the church that played such a big part in Arthur Penn’s brilliant movie! Come catch famous folk singers at the stage that used to be an altar! Come see the church that Woody Guthrie’s son restored!) No, it’s just a place in the Berkshires that feels like peacefulness, a beacon of quiet next to the Housatonic Railroad track, across the street from a rushing stream.So anyway. One day I went up there and, in the small gift shop, I found a hooded sweatshirt with Arlo’s name on it. Over the heart. I bought it from a sweet girl, maybe 16, and told her my tale. About how I was going to give it to my friend. And the sweet girl, who was sort of ditzy and innocent in that way that anyone with ties to the Guthries, and the last 50 years of the kind of American music that inspires nothing as much as hope, has to be. She told me that Arlo was playing there in a week and a half, and maybe he’d sign it for my friend. I told her that would be amazing. She wrote down my name on a scrap of paper, and said, “Come back before the show a week from Saturday.”I sort of doubted, as I drove away, that it’d happen. I sort of doubted that the piece of scrap paper hadn’t already been put somewhere off to the side of a pile of notes that people probably constantly left for Arlo, never to be found again. As he’s grown older, and his curls have turned white and grown so long, his music is not only better than ever, he strikes a most amazing visage. An inspiring one. If at Woodstock he was the wide-eyed balladeer (“The New York Thruway’s closed, man!”), now he’s the quiet muse. I had no doubt that the pilgrims to his church are many.But I showed up on the appointed Saturday anyway. And sure enough, my heart sank as I saw all the people spread out on the lawn, on tablecloths and blankets, waiting for the doors to open at the sold-out show, because in front of the locked doors was a big guy, a security guy, a guy who didn’t look Arlo-ish at all. He wasn’t a steroid freak in a shiny sharkskin suit packing a Glock 9mm or anything, but he wasn’t in tie-dyed T-shirt and jeans, either. He vibed serious.I went up to him anyway, and he said, “They don’t open for another hour.” Then I stammered out my thing: “Um, I’m not here for the concert, but a few weeks ago, I bought this sweatshirt, and …” The guy interrupted, with no change in his impassive expression, “You Peter Richmond?” Yes, I said. “Come on in,” he said. I followed him into the chapel, waiting for him to lock the door behind us. “He’s not here yet,” he said. “Just take a seat back here.”He led me to the room in front of the stage — the room where people used to worship a deity, I guess, but now gather at tables to listen to all the folkie names your parents remember. Even some I remember. I sat at a table. “He’ll be here in a while,” he said, then went back to his vigil. The while was about a half hour. I sat with my sweatshirt and my Sharpie and looked around the room and, sure enough, something happened that I hadn’t anticipated: I started to soak in the vibe. The one that the Center could advertise, if they were a different sort of people: “Come here and check out of your world for a minute or two.” I walked up to the balcony, where, in the movie, Alice and Ray slept. Maybe in real life, too. I looked at symbols of various faiths hanging on the walls. I listened to the quiet. I looked out a window at all the people out on the lawn, awaiting their night of Arlo.Then I heard a door open downstairs, on the side, and from above, I saw a large shock of white curls come in, carrying a guitar case. I came down the stairs, and he looked at me. I said, “Hi.” He said, with a smile, “Hi.” “They said that you might sign this for my friend who has to go to the hospital,” I said. “Yeah, they told me,” he said. He put his guitar down, and sat down and I gave him the sweatshirt. “What’s her name?” he said. I told him. He wrote a really nice message to her, next to his name, and I thanked him, and he said, “No problem. Give her my best.”We didn’t talk. His band was coming in. He had to rehearse. I had to leave, lest it turn into a dream. I overnighted her the sweatshirt. Afterward, she told me she wore it the whole time in the hospital. The surgery was a total success. She got the machine valve. She says she can hear it click. Maybe in an Arlo rhythm.Lots of the-older-you-get-the-more-you-forget people talk these days about how the Sixties was, at best, an illusion; at worst, a time that derailed the culture in a self-indulgent and silly way. Maybe they’re right. I would disagree, though. I would say that the Sixties are still saving us.Millerton resident Peter Richmond is writing a young adult novel and a biography of basketball coach Phil Jackson, both scheduled for release by Penguin in late 2013.