Avant-Gardeners
I’m not going to admit, at this late date, to being a card carrying cannabis communist — and I’m not going to tell you I wasn’t an Avant-Gardener either. In a way, all of us were. It was a small place back then, the South End, and it was a large circle of friends. Still is, really, so sometimes it’s best not to judge, just enjoy the comedy, the hortichuckles, and write it off to youthful idealism. Or indiscretion.
The Avant-Gardeners outgrew the old shack that came with their ten acres. Tipis and tents sufficed in the first summer, but not when the rains came. All dreary winter the intrepid band of itinerant pharmers made their plans for a geodesic dome large enough to house everyone and plenty more to boot. Ralph, their dropout MIT math-magician, did the necessary calculations, established the pentagonal dimensions, the number of 2×4’s to make the dome, the area of the footprint. All winter and spring the VW van ferried lumber from the Woodinville Lumber yard at the north end, and teams of co-ed Gardeners cut it to size and nailed it together. By late spring pentagonal units were stacked everywhere, waiting for the day Ralph pronounced they’d reached the required number. That day was the first day of summer, the Vernal Equinox for these happy Druid carpenters and everyone, man, woman and flower child rolled out for Construction Day.
By the first night the Dome was curving up and over their heads. By the second night it was arching into the tree branches almost beyond the reach of their tallest ladders. Day 3 they had to stop and build scaffolding to reach so high. And still it went Up and ever Up, a Babel towering overhead, frighteningly high.
It was the 4th night before someone realized the sides were never going to meet. At least not in the lower atmosphere. Ralph was summoned to a hastildy arranged Pow-Wow. He retreated for 10 minutes to his office in the main shack headquarters, then re-emerged, sheepish, if not completely apologetic. “Um,” he said, “I may have miscalculated this a little.”
The Gardeners, children of the Universe all, grumbled and wailed, bummed majorly, but eventually forgave Ralph. “We all make mistakes,” they said, nearly in unison, what would be more prophetic than they could possibly know at the time. After all, these were the 60’s and we all built domed cathedrals on mostly borrowed faith.
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