Lighting Up On The Common

"Hey look man, joint stains," said the curly little 15-year-old kid, holding up two browny-yellow smudged-up fingers. Everyone laughed. The kid laughed too, then lit up again.

The twisted paper at the end burned very fast at first. There was a little flame at the end. But when the fire got to the marijuana, it slowed down. The kid took a very deep drag, swallowed the smoke very hard. His face lit up. He threw out his arms and threw back his head. "Man, this is a groove."

And it was.

Three or four hundred young people were smoking pot on the Boston Common a week ago Sunday. And just as many did it again the day before yesterday. No one was arrested. There wasn't a cop in sight most of the afternoon. There it was--evening's empire returning into sand right in the middle of the Hub.

A good number of them were trying grass for the first time. Like one pudgy, freckly-faced little girl who told the mustachioed kid who was handing her a joint, "God, I was pretty goddammed freaked out there for a second. But it feels great now."

At the first of these affairs (which some callous person called a Smoke-In), everyone was sitting around on the grass, clustered in groups of 50 to 100 and looking very euphoric. They were quite thoroughly friendly. Everyone was passing a joint to his neighbor sitting squat-legged next to him. Very warm and communal and all.

They were young. Most were under 20, although there were some mommies and daddies carrying babies around on their shoulders, all inhaling the heavy bittersweet burning smell. People were playing guitars and bells and tambourines and singing. The whole atmosphere was grassed.

And about the police--they stayed away. A spokesman said that night that no one had been arrested "because no one was smoking pot." Pressed by a reporter about how they knew, the officer mumbled something about not wanting to cause a lot of unnecessary trouble by searching everyone.

But there was marijuana being smoked on the Common.

One fellow flipped open a flip-top box of Marlboros, offering the 20 carefully rolled joints inside it to a reporter. "Here, take one. It's free. We've got at least 2000 joints out here. Some guys are just going around waving big bags of grass. Wild, you know?"

And it was marijuana after all. It smelled like it, tasted like it, worked like it. No one who smoked any doubted that for a second. But no one was busted.

Last Sunday there were signs posted all around the Common reading: "Walking, Standing, Or Sitting Upon The Grass Is Prohibited. Revised ordinance, chapter 29, section 85." But people--hundreds of them--were walking, standing, or sitting upon the grass. No one was arrested, no one reprimanded.

By the way, that same Sunday, Cambridge police were rounding up 18 people in a huge drug raid. The apartment had been under surveilance for three weeks.

Even more surprising than the police inaction those Sundays was the way the press ignored the whole event. The Boston Globe did not carry the story at all last week. "There was no Smoke-In," one Newthinking City Deskman said. The Herald Traveler did say that 3000 young people had gathered on the Common, but it was not certain that marijuana was being smoked.

If there is some sort of conspiracy of silence going on here, the police and the mass media seem to have gotten the idea from New York. There, hundreds of hippies marched around Times Square into Grand Central Station, cops following them with prods of "Keep moving." Then they all hopped onto the IRT, riding downtown with newsreel cameras whirling in the subway with them. The newspapers said nothing. No one was arrested. The the East Village Other said:

But no, not a word, not a grunt, not a bellow nor a sigh; not a hiccough, not wail, not a curse, nor a cry. Not a hint, in fact, that the killer weed had been smelled uptown that day. If art is, in fact, anything you can get away with, then the Diggers have indeed added a whole freaky new dimension to the concept of Revolution.

The Smoke-Ins were sponsored by a mysterious group called the Committee For Sensible Marijuana Legislation. One member called it "just a bunch of people who got together and wanted to pull something off like this." They handed out leaflets in the Square two weeks ago advertising the session: "Free Grass. We Want Pot." It may have started as a civil disobedience in protest against the marijuana. But as more and more people arrived, a festive mood developed. Everyone was having great fun. There was no defiance since there was no one to be defiant toward. It became a kind of Be-In with grass.

But it was an important demonstration, especially so in contrast with the marijuana test case that was going on at the same time. It was almost a reaction against this formalized, institutionalized method of attacking the drug laws. It just ignored the law, and it got away with it.

There was some ugliness at the first affair. Some motorcycle clubbers hopped on their machines and began doing wheelies up Beacon St. The hordes followed. They loved it. Everyone chugged up the Hill to the State House, and about 100 people stood on the steps yelling, "We want pot."

Tired of that, they set upon a police station wagon, banging on the top and nearly rocking it over. An airport limousine got the same treatment and so did one of the motorized carriages that runs around the Common. Then, finally, the cops showed up. They conspicuously stayed away from the grass where people were still clustered around smoking. All they did was clear Beacon St. and the little road inside the Common fence. Last Sunday there was none of this kind of trouble, although one group of about 100 marched on the Western Ave. Jail near Central Sq., where the 18 who had been busted earlier that day were reportedly residing.

This whole thing may continue for weeks. There seems to be no reason for it not to. As soon as the police crack down (and it will be more than keep off the grass), there will be a reaction. Then, no doubt, there will be some defiance.

But until then, we must remember that none of this has happened. No one was smoking pot on the Boston Common. Our guardians (the cops) and our mentors (the mass media) have told us that. And by the way, who is escaping reality here? Who is refusing to face the hard rough facts, baby? Who is on the trip?

Of course, many of us love it this way. To go on smoking unmolested is magnificent. And to have forced this absurdity upon the law and the city is beautiful.