The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin

Author:Don Lattin [Lattin, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Teacher: Marin County, California Summer 1966

It was all too far-out for Huston Smith, the MIT philosophy professor and ordained Methodist minister. He’d come to San Francisco not with flowers in his hair, but to deliver a well-reasoned paper at a reputable academic conference. Huston’s paper was titled “The Religious Significance of Artificially Induced Religious Experience.” A preconference party was to be held at a mansion in Marin County, the woodsy suburb across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, where the hosts hoped to provide some appropriate music.

They hired the Grateful Dead.

About two hundred people gathered on the grounds and around the swimming pool of an estate nestled in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais. Paul Lee, one of the conference organizers, surveyed the scene and could hardly believe his eyes. There were all sorts of people in the crowd—grandfathers, grandmothers, parents, children, teenagers—and many of them were running around naked. Owsley, adorned in a powder blue jumpsuit, was in the house handing LSD out to anyone who wanted it. He spotted Lee, a large man, and walked up to him.

“Wow, man,” Owsley said. “You have such a friendly and familiar face.”

Lee, who does not suffer fools gladly, replied with something between a smile and a smirk. “Yeah, I know, man,” he replied. “I was born that way.”

Owsley tried to press some LSD into his new friend’s hand, but Lee declined. He had to give a talk at the conference the next morning. Plus it was fun enough to just watch all the antics.

Everyone was standing around by the pool, coming onto the acid and waiting for the Grateful Dead to start playing. Then one of the hosts took the microphone and announced that the owners of an adjacent horse stable were about to call the police unless everyone moved their cars. They were blocking their driveway. The news was relayed to the partygoers, and there was a great groan from the crowd, like the moan of a tired elephant seal. Everyone was ready to just lay back, trip out, and tune into the Grateful Dead. Lee was terrified that the whole conference was going to fall apart right there. People would stumble out to their vehicles and, if they could get their keys into the ignition, start running into each other like a giant game of bumper cars. Then the police would come and throw them all in jail. Lee thought to himself, This is the test. If everybody gets up and moves their cars without incident, we are going to get through this week. Miraculously, everyone got up and moved their cars in an orderly fashion. They returned to the backyard, lay back, and the band played on.

The conference at the University of California offices in San Francisco went on as scheduled. But even before Huston delivered his paper, Lee could see that the distinguished philosophy professor was getting tired of the circus surrounding the early years of the psychedelic scene. What had been going on back east was bad enough.

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