Summer of the Lightning Bugs
From James Donahue’s journal
If there was one image that marked the summer of 1995 more than any other, it was the miracle of the lightening bugs. Each night, from late June until late in August, thousands of them rose from the tall grass in a field across the road from our rural Michigan house and danced for us. We always saw lightening bugs in the summer, but before or after this particular summer, we never saw them so plentiful. They filled the night sky at sundown, slowly drifting across the road into our yard, flashing their tiny displays of iridescence all around us as we drank in the beauty of their show and all of the other wonders of the natural world around us.
Our resolve to be free led us into a strange time of experimentation with psychedelic drugs, alcohol, new relationships and music. While the lightning bugs danced around us, we literally went on “the wild side.” Jennifer returned from her adventures with the Rainbow and “hooked” us up with sources of marijuana. Once I had sampled the marijuana while on the trip west, it was not long before I introduced Doris to the wild weed. The drug enhances your appetite, your senses, and your self-esteem. Everything is enjoyed to the extreme. I noticed that I became keenly aware of the ticking of clocks, the dripping of faucets and every creek and groan of the house. I discovered that I had difficulty thinking clearly and remembering complex thought patterns while caught up in conversation, and that marijuana was not ever going to be a tool for me to use for good writing. Also the effect of the substance distorts one’s sense of time. I could drive a car quite safely but found that I tended to think I was racing along the road when in reality I was driving at less than 30 or 40 miles an hour.
Why this drug isn't made just as legal as alcohol in the US doesn't make much sense. It is so popular and so plentiful it is obvious that there is a lot of money being made by the drug suppliers and the police fighting their so-called war on drugs. That war is so obviously a losing battle it is a total waste of federal tax money. The weed grows everywhere, even in cultured indoor greenhouses out of the sight of the prying eyes and cameras of roaming police and public do-gooders.
But promotion of marijuana is not the purpose of this writing. I am recording events that led us through our awakening and set us off on an adventure that we might never have imagined at this time of our lives.
Jennifer also put us in contact with a new circle of friends and a round of new and exciting experiences. We were introduced to a young man who will, for his protection, remain unnamed, because he turned out to be a wonderful source of marijuana. Once assured by Jennifer and her friends that the “old coots” in the little house on Deckerville Road were "cool," this young man was a frequent guest. He seemed to be amazed that people our age could be trusted to smoke marijuana with him. We were surprised to learn that the youth in our neighborhood suddenly enjoyed our company. They came to visit and share their stash.
We spent those warm summer nights sitting in plastic lawn chairs in a circle, sometimes with a small campfire burning in the yard, laughing and enjoying those precious moments while the lightning bugs twinkled all around us. It was as if we were in another world . . . a magic fairyland. I do not remember a happier time in our lives.
Among the high points that August was our trip to the Pontiac Silverdome where we participated in what I believe was the last great concert by Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Jennifer found out they were performing in Michigan and talked us into attending. I drove to Saginaw to find a place to buy tickets. One of Doris’s friends from the hospital, Sharon Nowicki, wanted to go too so we bought her a ticket. That was the night Sharon joined our happy little group of firefly watchers.
That night, we felt out of place as we sat in a massive stadium squeezed among the thousands of youth of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario Canada, some of them driving for hundreds of miles to catch that concert. And what a concert it was. I had heard recorded Grateful Dead music for years around the house, but never thought it to be something more than a half mixture of rock and country. But to hear it live, with everyone around us smoking marijuana and getting us stoned on the secondary smoke, was something else. LSD was flowing in that place like water. While police stood by, watching suspiciously, the drug peddlers moved among the crowd selling odd things, like little signs, pens, and pieces of paper. The pens were laced with LSD in place of ink. To use them, you simply wrote on a piece of paper and put the paper in your mouth. The paper items already had the drug on them. The police either didn't catch on, or they were purposefully looking the other way. Once the music began, everybody stood up and danced. To see the concert, we had to join them. But then, it was hard not standing up and dancing. We really had a great time.
Garcia's band moved on to Chicago from Pontiac that summer. We heard that the next concert was ruined by a group of rowdies that attempted to crash the concert. The incident turned into a confrontation with police. After that, Jerry Garcia died. His death was sudden and unexpected. And it was the end of the Grateful Dead. We were there for the conclusion.
Sometime during that wild summer we let Dusty and his girl friend move into the yard. We opened the little house for them to stay although we spent most of our time in the yard. Dusty had a liking for Royal Crown whisky, so we began mixing whisky and marijuana.
There also was a decision to move to Arizona to live among the Hopi because the information Doris received on her board and because Dusty convinced us that it was our destiny to do this. The question then was what we were to do with our houses and all of the things we had stored in them.
There also was a strange anxiety sweeping the land that summer, after the Oklahoma City bombing, that something sinister was happening in our government. Rumors were flying about a looming fascist seizure of everybody’s guns. Private militia groups were organizing everywhere. I began buying guns and preparing for trouble. Among the weapons purchased was a semi-automatic rifle with a scope, a special short barrel 410 shotgun designed for home protection, and two handguns, a Glock .50 caliber bought used from a county deputy and a small .23 caliber handgun that Doris thought she could easily carry in her purse. We found it easy to register the handguns, but found it almost impossible to get permits to carry them in Michigan. It seemed strange having so much armament around the house. I never fired any of those guns.
We began buying survival gear as well. We stopped at a military surplus store in Saginaw and bought gas masks and a military knife. We also shopped at a hunting and outdoor shop where we bought costly hiking boots and heavy winter coats for everybody. I am not sure what drove us to buy all of this stuff except that we were convinced at the time that our world was about to change drastically and we were determined to be ready for whatever was about to befall us.
In the midst of all of this insanity, the decision was made to hold an auction and dispose of all of our personal things. The auctioneer we chose was someone we were familiar with through Doris’s brother, Bub, and our days of flea marketing. He ran a big auction barn at Vassar and specialized in handling antiques and collectables. We sold several items through this barn and did well in the sales. When contacted, he not only agreed to hold an auction on our property, but also to attempt to sell the houses as part of the auction.
We were undecided about selling the property. We had trusted friends that were willing to rent the houses and we considered keeping the real estate so that we would have a place to return to if and when our adventures in Arizona did not go well. But we had a mortgage on the property so in the end, the decision was to make a clean break, pay off all of our debts and go west owning and owing nothing. For the first time in our lives, Doris and I were going to be free of debt and free to go and do whatever we wished. It seemed like a wonderful plan.
Thus it was that we held another auction in our yard and sold everything, including our beds, chairs, refrigerator, stove, my cherished roll-top desk and all but one small portable television set and a VCR. My entire record collection also went. Most of the great library of books that we had collected also was sold. It was extremely hard watching all of it go. Dusty and his girl friend were on hand to help set up tables and prepare all of the things for the sale. The auction was a big success. All of our antique and collectable glassware. . . everything was sold. In one day our two houses were stripped bare of everything but our beds, our clothes and a few folding chairs.
From that day on, we sat on pillows on the floor of the living room, all of us smoking pot and sometimes mixing the smoke with Royal Crown whisky. Let me tell you, mixing whisky and marijuana hits you hard. I had the distinct sensation of melting like an ice cube into the floor.
Among our other new acquaintances were Sharon Nowicki, Dusty and his girlfriend, also named Sharon. There was a spate of Jennifer's friends who were then, and still remain to me, a sea of nameless faces. Also a psychotic psychic named Darlene who was an amphetamine junkie. Talk about a strange mixture of people, we were it. We sat around on the floor of our empty house, or on the lawn chairs as the lightning bugs danced around our heads almost every night, all of us usually stoned and enjoying the moment. Doris and Jennifer bought a souvenir Indian peace pipe from a tourist trap store when they were in South Dakota. We tried smoking our weed in it, but that did not work well. Dusty produced his own peace pipe, made of real pipestone mined somewhere in Minnesota. That was the perfect pipe. We would load it, light it, and then pass it around the room, each guest sitting on a pillow somewhere in the circle. If the police had raided us in those days we would have all gone to jail.
From James Donahue’s journal
If there was one image that marked the summer of 1995 more than any other, it was the miracle of the lightening bugs. Each night, from late June until late in August, thousands of them rose from the tall grass in a field across the road from our rural Michigan house and danced for us. We always saw lightening bugs in the summer, but before or after this particular summer, we never saw them so plentiful. They filled the night sky at sundown, slowly drifting across the road into our yard, flashing their tiny displays of iridescence all around us as we drank in the beauty of their show and all of the other wonders of the natural world around us.
Our resolve to be free led us into a strange time of experimentation with psychedelic drugs, alcohol, new relationships and music. While the lightning bugs danced around us, we literally went on “the wild side.” Jennifer returned from her adventures with the Rainbow and “hooked” us up with sources of marijuana. Once I had sampled the marijuana while on the trip west, it was not long before I introduced Doris to the wild weed. The drug enhances your appetite, your senses, and your self-esteem. Everything is enjoyed to the extreme. I noticed that I became keenly aware of the ticking of clocks, the dripping of faucets and every creek and groan of the house. I discovered that I had difficulty thinking clearly and remembering complex thought patterns while caught up in conversation, and that marijuana was not ever going to be a tool for me to use for good writing. Also the effect of the substance distorts one’s sense of time. I could drive a car quite safely but found that I tended to think I was racing along the road when in reality I was driving at less than 30 or 40 miles an hour.
Why this drug isn't made just as legal as alcohol in the US doesn't make much sense. It is so popular and so plentiful it is obvious that there is a lot of money being made by the drug suppliers and the police fighting their so-called war on drugs. That war is so obviously a losing battle it is a total waste of federal tax money. The weed grows everywhere, even in cultured indoor greenhouses out of the sight of the prying eyes and cameras of roaming police and public do-gooders.
But promotion of marijuana is not the purpose of this writing. I am recording events that led us through our awakening and set us off on an adventure that we might never have imagined at this time of our lives.
Jennifer also put us in contact with a new circle of friends and a round of new and exciting experiences. We were introduced to a young man who will, for his protection, remain unnamed, because he turned out to be a wonderful source of marijuana. Once assured by Jennifer and her friends that the “old coots” in the little house on Deckerville Road were "cool," this young man was a frequent guest. He seemed to be amazed that people our age could be trusted to smoke marijuana with him. We were surprised to learn that the youth in our neighborhood suddenly enjoyed our company. They came to visit and share their stash.
We spent those warm summer nights sitting in plastic lawn chairs in a circle, sometimes with a small campfire burning in the yard, laughing and enjoying those precious moments while the lightning bugs twinkled all around us. It was as if we were in another world . . . a magic fairyland. I do not remember a happier time in our lives.
Among the high points that August was our trip to the Pontiac Silverdome where we participated in what I believe was the last great concert by Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Jennifer found out they were performing in Michigan and talked us into attending. I drove to Saginaw to find a place to buy tickets. One of Doris’s friends from the hospital, Sharon Nowicki, wanted to go too so we bought her a ticket. That was the night Sharon joined our happy little group of firefly watchers.
That night, we felt out of place as we sat in a massive stadium squeezed among the thousands of youth of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario Canada, some of them driving for hundreds of miles to catch that concert. And what a concert it was. I had heard recorded Grateful Dead music for years around the house, but never thought it to be something more than a half mixture of rock and country. But to hear it live, with everyone around us smoking marijuana and getting us stoned on the secondary smoke, was something else. LSD was flowing in that place like water. While police stood by, watching suspiciously, the drug peddlers moved among the crowd selling odd things, like little signs, pens, and pieces of paper. The pens were laced with LSD in place of ink. To use them, you simply wrote on a piece of paper and put the paper in your mouth. The paper items already had the drug on them. The police either didn't catch on, or they were purposefully looking the other way. Once the music began, everybody stood up and danced. To see the concert, we had to join them. But then, it was hard not standing up and dancing. We really had a great time.
Garcia's band moved on to Chicago from Pontiac that summer. We heard that the next concert was ruined by a group of rowdies that attempted to crash the concert. The incident turned into a confrontation with police. After that, Jerry Garcia died. His death was sudden and unexpected. And it was the end of the Grateful Dead. We were there for the conclusion.
Sometime during that wild summer we let Dusty and his girl friend move into the yard. We opened the little house for them to stay although we spent most of our time in the yard. Dusty had a liking for Royal Crown whisky, so we began mixing whisky and marijuana.
There also was a decision to move to Arizona to live among the Hopi because the information Doris received on her board and because Dusty convinced us that it was our destiny to do this. The question then was what we were to do with our houses and all of the things we had stored in them.
There also was a strange anxiety sweeping the land that summer, after the Oklahoma City bombing, that something sinister was happening in our government. Rumors were flying about a looming fascist seizure of everybody’s guns. Private militia groups were organizing everywhere. I began buying guns and preparing for trouble. Among the weapons purchased was a semi-automatic rifle with a scope, a special short barrel 410 shotgun designed for home protection, and two handguns, a Glock .50 caliber bought used from a county deputy and a small .23 caliber handgun that Doris thought she could easily carry in her purse. We found it easy to register the handguns, but found it almost impossible to get permits to carry them in Michigan. It seemed strange having so much armament around the house. I never fired any of those guns.
We began buying survival gear as well. We stopped at a military surplus store in Saginaw and bought gas masks and a military knife. We also shopped at a hunting and outdoor shop where we bought costly hiking boots and heavy winter coats for everybody. I am not sure what drove us to buy all of this stuff except that we were convinced at the time that our world was about to change drastically and we were determined to be ready for whatever was about to befall us.
In the midst of all of this insanity, the decision was made to hold an auction and dispose of all of our personal things. The auctioneer we chose was someone we were familiar with through Doris’s brother, Bub, and our days of flea marketing. He ran a big auction barn at Vassar and specialized in handling antiques and collectables. We sold several items through this barn and did well in the sales. When contacted, he not only agreed to hold an auction on our property, but also to attempt to sell the houses as part of the auction.
We were undecided about selling the property. We had trusted friends that were willing to rent the houses and we considered keeping the real estate so that we would have a place to return to if and when our adventures in Arizona did not go well. But we had a mortgage on the property so in the end, the decision was to make a clean break, pay off all of our debts and go west owning and owing nothing. For the first time in our lives, Doris and I were going to be free of debt and free to go and do whatever we wished. It seemed like a wonderful plan.
Thus it was that we held another auction in our yard and sold everything, including our beds, chairs, refrigerator, stove, my cherished roll-top desk and all but one small portable television set and a VCR. My entire record collection also went. Most of the great library of books that we had collected also was sold. It was extremely hard watching all of it go. Dusty and his girl friend were on hand to help set up tables and prepare all of the things for the sale. The auction was a big success. All of our antique and collectable glassware. . . everything was sold. In one day our two houses were stripped bare of everything but our beds, our clothes and a few folding chairs.
From that day on, we sat on pillows on the floor of the living room, all of us smoking pot and sometimes mixing the smoke with Royal Crown whisky. Let me tell you, mixing whisky and marijuana hits you hard. I had the distinct sensation of melting like an ice cube into the floor.
Among our other new acquaintances were Sharon Nowicki, Dusty and his girlfriend, also named Sharon. There was a spate of Jennifer's friends who were then, and still remain to me, a sea of nameless faces. Also a psychotic psychic named Darlene who was an amphetamine junkie. Talk about a strange mixture of people, we were it. We sat around on the floor of our empty house, or on the lawn chairs as the lightning bugs danced around our heads almost every night, all of us usually stoned and enjoying the moment. Doris and Jennifer bought a souvenir Indian peace pipe from a tourist trap store when they were in South Dakota. We tried smoking our weed in it, but that did not work well. Dusty produced his own peace pipe, made of real pipestone mined somewhere in Minnesota. That was the perfect pipe. We would load it, light it, and then pass it around the room, each guest sitting on a pillow somewhere in the circle. If the police had raided us in those days we would have all gone to jail.