Tennant had a plan of sorts for his band of Merry Pranksters. He loosely followed the model of Ken Kesey, who at that time was out of jail and holed up in the Willamette valley. The torch of the original pranksters had been passed to the musicians, the Grateful Dead and sundry others. Tennant scored tickets for these and other acts, including Linda Ronstadt. The prankster plan, of course was to take the trip out to the streets, creating art out of everyday life. More precisely, as Tom Wolfe describes the doings of that cast of characters, they went forth mocking the everyday life going on around them, while reveling in the distance between that life and themselves. Tennant's idea was much less grandiose than this. He sold books, and did not write them. He was not compelled to drive to New York for a publication party. He merely drove around New England in his company car trying to sell the dubious products of those who did. Sitting around in the living room staring at the fabric of faded jeans and making crayon marks on bits of paper was not his idea of a good time. As much as he liked the face on the fridge door, he preferred the great out of doors, the hustle and bustle of commerce, and the world that could be experienced just by taking a stroll.
I remember strolling with him from one side of the fens to the other, returning to our own cribs after an evening with Xenia and Rod. We reached the dividing point and parted company. I watched him saunter off, and saw him being approached by a pair of men, one African and one Caucasian. I saw them stop together for a chat, and saw Tennant rock back on his heels. I saw him empty his pockets and hand over his wallet. I saw him take off his gold watch and hand that over as well. I was watching my friend being "held up." I paused, and then, as his assailants went their merry way, ran over to catch up with him.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck."
"Shit, Laird. Were they armed?"
"Who knows? I didn't want to find out."
"Well, what are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to go home and have a good stiff drink. Then I'll call the cops. Which will be utterly futile. And then I'll set about the tedious business of getting a new license and canceling my credit cards. Luckily, I didn't lose much cash."
"Fucking hell."
I myself was held up. Twice. No, make that three times. Right in front of the Conservatory doors, I'd been approached for money, fished in my pockets and brought out the three cents that I held there.
"It's all I've got. Keep the change."
I got away with it. Since the first time, when I was pick-pocketed on the bus in Cambridge, thinking at that instant that I was being molested, jammed in a subway car next to a stinking man that had his hands in my pants copping a feel, only to later learn that I'd lost my wallet in that exchange, I'd taken to keeping my money in my shoe. I walked on my assets.
The company car we called the PH Mobile, for Prentice-Hall. In one spectacular entheogenic experience we packed into to it (it was a Buick Skylark) and headed south for the beach at Cohasset. We were all tripping, and Laird, in the role of Dean Moriarty, was driving. Lucy, beside him on the bench seat, with Van Dyke beside her, would murmur the occasional 'watch out to the right.' The two of them called this 'reality testing,' and it could get quite contentious. In the back seat there were four of us crammed in. Rod and his babe from the Bejart, Bou Bou, and a red headed woman that was a dance student with a serious interest in psychedelics. Bou Bou was beside me, Rod in the middle, and Jimmy (her name was Daniel Jimmy France) on the far side. Into my ear were whispered in the accents of a French woman well schooled in colloquial English odd phrases that still make some sense. We were in the PH mobile well before dawn. As Laird threaded the tangled freeways to the Interstate south, traffic was light. There were the endless manic cabbies with no fear or sense of space cutting it close as they made haste to make their buck.
"Hurtling hunks of metal," murmured Bou Bou in my ear.
"Hurtling hunks," I repeated.
Giggles from the front seat.
We were rushing to the beach to witness the dawn. After all this talk of the sunrise and its signifiers, Laird wanted to see it for himself. We spilled out of the Buick and rushed along the beach as the great orange ball appeared out on the horizon. It was not just sunrise, but sunrise on the Atlantic. On our knees in our crazy form of worship we shouted "Ra!" That was Ra, the Egyptian god of the midday sun. We were a bit early. Somebody had been poking around in that book of the dead.
On another trip, we strolled through the toy store, perhaps in search of more crayons and Play-Doh, but marveling at the marvels on the stacks. Reading from the labels on the boxes, Van Dyke calls out,
"Leap through space and time!"
Laird's cackle fills the aisle, and another set of synapses fall into the firing line.
