The Little Green House
Posted: January 26th, 2006, 12:09 pm
The Little Green House
During my first semester at North Texas State I commuted to class in Denton from my parent's home in Dallas. Bobby Mullen and I rode the thirty miles together in his Ford Galaxy 500. One day we made the journey in 13 minutes. It was open highway in those days, not the continuous strip mall that it is today, and we were doing 110 mph most of the way.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I had only two classes, so I had time to kill before the ride home. I met a guy in my art class. His name was Rick Nation. He was a quite accomplished artist and an avid pot smoker. We immediately struck up a friendship. Rick lived in a little house just across the street from campus. It was cloistered in bushes and trees, a little green house.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, six or seven friends from the English and art and music departments would gather at Rick's house. The participants varied according to who was cutting class that day. The house was small; we could barely fit into the little living room. We would sit around and listen to music and blabber and smoke. We called it the Tuesday-Thursday Club. We thought of naming it like a fraternity, you know, something like Lamba Sigma Delta, but we thought that the Tuesday-Thursday Club had more of a literary ring to it.
It was the mid 1960's and we were aspiring hippies and bohemians who fancied ourselves on the cutting edge of young intellectualism. Some of us were in the SDS. We smoked pot and listened to Alice's Restaurant. Our hair was over our collars. We read McLuhan and Leary and Hesse.
The next semester, Rick Nation either graduated or dropped out, I forget which, and moved back to Ft. Worth. Bobby Mullen and I decided to rent the little green house and move to Denton. Rick had 'willed' the house to us. Student housing that close to campus was at a premium and most places had waiting lists.
The little green house was actually the old servant's quarters behind a large green house. Mr. and Mrs. Portwood lived in the large house and rented the tiny one in the back to students for fifty dollars a month. That meant that Bobby and I were paying $25 per month in rent. As I said, the place was small. It had two little shoe-box bedrooms and a living room and a kitchen with a two burner stove and a tiny bathroom with a shower that two people would only fit into if they were on very intimate terms. The whole house was smaller than the room I am working in right now. It was a Hobbit house.
The Portwoods were a sweet old couple who reminded me of my grandparents. They were in their seventies and both were hard of hearing. This worked out well, since many times at three o'clock in the morning Syd Barrett would be busting out of our speakers with Interstellar Overdrive.
When we moved in, Bobby and I were told the only rule of the establishment was No Girls Allowed. These were the days before co-ed dormitories. What do you expect for fifty bucks a month? But the Portwoods were kind and old and not overly vigilant. When we had female guests at the little green house, they came in over the back fence and entered through my bedroom window. My bed was against that window, so when a young lady entered my house, the first place she landed was in my bed. It was very convenient.
Denton was a beautiful place to go to school. The major industries in town were two colleges. North Texas State, as it was known at that time, and Texas Woman's University. NT was co-ed, about 50/50 men and women. But TWU was 100% hungry college girls. From my point of view, the odds were good.
In the warm Spring afternoons, when I should have been in class, I would sit under a canopy of trees on the roof of the little green house and write and smoke pot and munch on nuts and fruit and watch the people come and go on the campus. Or I could stroll a half mile over to the Music Building and listen to the One O'Clock Lab Band, These were some of the best musicians in the country playing wonderful arrangements of music that I loved. It was a joy and it was free.
Then at dark the party would begin. The Tuesday-Thursday Club had become the Monday through Sunday Club. It was the usual bohemian mix--artists, writers, the occasional professor slumming it, political and anti-war activists and dope dealers. At night the little green house became a secret Hobbit salon. There was incessant conversation. Denton was dry at the time so alcohol was not often present, but there was copious pot and pills and coffee and cigarettes.
I lived in the little green house for a year. The day I moved out an overwhelming wave of nostalgia seized me. I sat on the roof till dusk and said my good-bye to the setting of what I knew even then, would be one of the most thrilling and satisfying chapters of my life.
During my first semester at North Texas State I commuted to class in Denton from my parent's home in Dallas. Bobby Mullen and I rode the thirty miles together in his Ford Galaxy 500. One day we made the journey in 13 minutes. It was open highway in those days, not the continuous strip mall that it is today, and we were doing 110 mph most of the way.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I had only two classes, so I had time to kill before the ride home. I met a guy in my art class. His name was Rick Nation. He was a quite accomplished artist and an avid pot smoker. We immediately struck up a friendship. Rick lived in a little house just across the street from campus. It was cloistered in bushes and trees, a little green house.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, six or seven friends from the English and art and music departments would gather at Rick's house. The participants varied according to who was cutting class that day. The house was small; we could barely fit into the little living room. We would sit around and listen to music and blabber and smoke. We called it the Tuesday-Thursday Club. We thought of naming it like a fraternity, you know, something like Lamba Sigma Delta, but we thought that the Tuesday-Thursday Club had more of a literary ring to it.
It was the mid 1960's and we were aspiring hippies and bohemians who fancied ourselves on the cutting edge of young intellectualism. Some of us were in the SDS. We smoked pot and listened to Alice's Restaurant. Our hair was over our collars. We read McLuhan and Leary and Hesse.
The next semester, Rick Nation either graduated or dropped out, I forget which, and moved back to Ft. Worth. Bobby Mullen and I decided to rent the little green house and move to Denton. Rick had 'willed' the house to us. Student housing that close to campus was at a premium and most places had waiting lists.
The little green house was actually the old servant's quarters behind a large green house. Mr. and Mrs. Portwood lived in the large house and rented the tiny one in the back to students for fifty dollars a month. That meant that Bobby and I were paying $25 per month in rent. As I said, the place was small. It had two little shoe-box bedrooms and a living room and a kitchen with a two burner stove and a tiny bathroom with a shower that two people would only fit into if they were on very intimate terms. The whole house was smaller than the room I am working in right now. It was a Hobbit house.
The Portwoods were a sweet old couple who reminded me of my grandparents. They were in their seventies and both were hard of hearing. This worked out well, since many times at three o'clock in the morning Syd Barrett would be busting out of our speakers with Interstellar Overdrive.
When we moved in, Bobby and I were told the only rule of the establishment was No Girls Allowed. These were the days before co-ed dormitories. What do you expect for fifty bucks a month? But the Portwoods were kind and old and not overly vigilant. When we had female guests at the little green house, they came in over the back fence and entered through my bedroom window. My bed was against that window, so when a young lady entered my house, the first place she landed was in my bed. It was very convenient.
Denton was a beautiful place to go to school. The major industries in town were two colleges. North Texas State, as it was known at that time, and Texas Woman's University. NT was co-ed, about 50/50 men and women. But TWU was 100% hungry college girls. From my point of view, the odds were good.
In the warm Spring afternoons, when I should have been in class, I would sit under a canopy of trees on the roof of the little green house and write and smoke pot and munch on nuts and fruit and watch the people come and go on the campus. Or I could stroll a half mile over to the Music Building and listen to the One O'Clock Lab Band, These were some of the best musicians in the country playing wonderful arrangements of music that I loved. It was a joy and it was free.
Then at dark the party would begin. The Tuesday-Thursday Club had become the Monday through Sunday Club. It was the usual bohemian mix--artists, writers, the occasional professor slumming it, political and anti-war activists and dope dealers. At night the little green house became a secret Hobbit salon. There was incessant conversation. Denton was dry at the time so alcohol was not often present, but there was copious pot and pills and coffee and cigarettes.
I lived in the little green house for a year. The day I moved out an overwhelming wave of nostalgia seized me. I sat on the roof till dusk and said my good-bye to the setting of what I knew even then, would be one of the most thrilling and satisfying chapters of my life.
