It was a balmy Summer night on August 13, 1969. John Anthony almost stowed away with his older brother’s friends on a journey to upstate New York. Had he escaped his mother’s final clutches to keep him from being exposed to the wilds of the world, The sky was an eerie dark shade of black. He was halfway into the car when he heard the screeching sound of his mother’s voice, “Don’t you dare, John Anthony you get back in this house right now!” At 14 years he didn’t have much of a choice. There was such a stink about it that his 6 years older brother Jim couldn’t go either. He was really pissed at me for that one. We stood side by side on the warm macadam of the driveway as we watched the headlights shrink and disappear into the road. He would’ve been a part of the social revolution called Woodstock. From that point, he waited impatiently for the next opportunity to Journey away from his childhood home. Having been drafted and having a high lottery number there was always a sense of nervous, fearful energy looming. With a backpack full and ready to hitchhike to Canada the draft was called off in the mid-summer of 73. This shifted his focus to California and the beginning of over 40,000 miles of hitchhiking through Canada, the USA, and Mexico.
“I was Here when Led Zeppelin Appeared
From one Irish Boy to Another”
Older brother Jim had been away for his freshman year in college, studying in Switzerland. Being the firstborn, he got special privileges like a college education that the rest of the five boys never did get.
John never resented him for that. He just didn’t know any better. Besides, he liked the idea of not being down to any kind of institutional, regulations, or rules. Jim was home for the summer but spent most of his nights staying with friends. John had moved into his room the year before while he was gone and he wasn’t gonna give it up. There were six boys and one girl living in a four-bedroom house. Of course, his sister got her own room and the parents had theirs, which left two.
“I got Jim’s room and my younger brothers got to share one room. One of the perks that came along with my room was Jim‘s music collection. He had a great year for what was happening in the scene and had been collecting records for two or three years that had just been coming out. Because he went to school in Switzerland, he wasn’t able to take them with him so it was a part of the perk that came with the room. At 13 and 14 years old John Anthony began to explore, the first released records from bands like Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, The Animals, Neil Young the list went on and on. I found some fluorescent – glow-in-the-dark tape that I cut up into pieces and put little half-inch by half-inch squares all over the ceiling and rolled some of it up in the balls and hung it from the string of the ceiling so they appeared to be planets. It made an illusion of the universe above me when I would lay in bed at night, Staring at this illusionary universe I would listen to Steppenwolf Magic carpet ride and look up at my ceiling and dream of what could possibly be next. I wasn’t smoking any pot at that point or drinking any alcohol for that matter, I didn’t need to. Everything was so fresh. The mental journey and exploration were intense. I did buy a black light and I would turn it on from time to time I listen to music. I basically went into my own world during that time.
Jim never did come home. He got married right after he graduated from college And I stayed in that room until I was 16. I started spending more and more time away and let my other brother take it over. There’s a great story when I was 16 I actually was sleeping down in the laundry room of the house in the basement. I just set up a cot and a dresser. I didn’t spend much time there, so it really didn’t matter. My mom would come down every morning with all the laundry that she had collected and did the laundry I got used to that didn’t really matter to me. I had bought a 69 van that I turned into a little hippie Vehicle and stayed in that from time to time, but always got reamed out when I didn’t let them know I wasn’t coming home. So it was always kind of on the edge. This really funny story is one… I was able to get a buddy of mine to get a case of beer from his older brother. I got my three brothers together and my two neighbor buddies Michael and Albert Martucci. We went into the cornfield that was directly in the back of my parent’s house. The corn was really high, like 10 feet tall at that point. It seemed like that anyway. We cleared out a space in the middle of the field Made a little fire and started drinking beer. This is one of the first times ever so when we got a buzz we were in another world. I remember us just looking at each other and smiling and bending over and hugging and kissing each other and telling, one another how much we love them and we do anything for them. It was hilarious really. Then as we got to the end of the case – empty beer cans surrounded us. I think was Albert that came up with the idea to start lighting farts. So one by one we were laying on the ground – on our backs – pulled on our pants to our knees and roll back with our asses in the air. Then someone would hold a lighter up to someone’s ass and push and blow out a fart and it would create a stream of fire that would be a foot long. This created an abundance of laughter. We would be rolling around out of control. Well, when it came time for Albert to have his fart lit and I was the one lighting it! When he pushed it out he started laughing and it actually pulled it back into his ass and it kind of exploded and it hurt him a bit. He was running around and we were a little freaked out, but laughter overcame the fear, and we just started doing it again. The last one to light up was my brother Brian. And he was probably 11 or 12 years old. I’d say 12 years old. So he was really afraid to do it and of course, he was the youngest of the whole group. So for him not to follow through, he would lose face, and Brian was the kind of guy who love to make everybody laugh! He certainly didn’t want to not be proud of himself. So he agreed to do it – on one condition. That was that he keep his underpants on. So as we said knees to the ears, he pushed out a fart that blew a flame about a foot long, and the same thing happened. It came back into his ass, but because he had his underpants on it protected him. But his underpants caught on fire. We started smacking his ass and put out the fire and we laughed and laughed. Finally, way after midnight, our neighbor friends rode their bicycles back home and we stumbled back into the house. Me onto my cot in the laundry room. Boy did I have a headache the next morning as I heard my mother come down the steps and into the laundry room. With a basket, full of clothes, she started up the washing machine and begin sorting through the laundry.
Now you’ve got to think of my mother for a minute. She was an Irish Catholic woman. A strong, beautiful woman, had a lot of pride, and when she picked through the laundry, she knew who belong to whom. When she pulled out Brian’s underwear, all I heard was her yelling out with her Irish brogue because she was from Ireland’s first generation in the states. She said, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – Brian what the hell have you been eating?“
it was hilarious. I laid in my cot with my covers and pillow over my head, a bladder full of beer, and laughed and laughed and laughed!
A story I should never forget.”
