The TV Repair Shop On West Dixie Highway

Eddie DeKneght owned Delta TV back when TV repair was big business and big console TV sets were fashionable furniture for the livingroom. He was a few years older than I was, old enough to remember living with his mother through WW-II, safe house to safe house, one step ahead of the Nazis.

I'd first met him at one of those Love-Ins at Greynolds Park a few years earlier. It turned out that we lived near one another and became great friends. He actually lived in the back of his shop. He had a Coleman camp stove and an itty-bitty refrigerator, and most of the "office" was filled up with a double bed mattress. This was even more amazing if you consider that Eddie had a full drum set in that little shop!

Eddie was from Holland where smoking pot was legal, and like a lot of guys I've met from there he had a thing for brown skin girls. I don't recall the name of this girl, but things were a lot more friendly and relaxed back in 1972. She was probably more concerned about being seen with rollers in her hair. Eventually Eddie fell in love with another brown skinned beauty, Eva, who had been my daughter Elena's nursery school teacher. They had a cute little girl named Shenequa, and then the three of them moved to Holland. I haven't heard from them since!

Flower Children! Sexy Young Chicks! And I Missed The 7th Annual Greynolds Park Love-In

I saw Bonnie walking towards me across the Publix parking lot clutching this little bouquet of yellow flowers matching our outfits. It brought back memories. My favorite radio station, 102.7 FM, had been talking for weeks about the big Love-In at Greynolds Park. The station plays sixties rock, and in the late sixties Greynolds Park had a Love-In every Sunday. Whatever groups were in town playing at Thee Image on Friday and Saturday nights would give a free outdoor concert in East Greynolds Park on Sunday afternoon. The 'Dead, Canned Heat, you name it they played there. If you were too paranoid to bring your own smokin' dope that was OK too. You could get a good buzz just breathing the hazy pungent air. There were a few cops there "just in case" but nobody ever got violent, no fights, no drunks, just mellow pot heads grooving to the music, and frankly I always had the impression that patrolling a Love-In was covetted duty, getting to hear some great Rock for free, lots of cute young scantily clad girls for eye candy, and the cops always seemed to locate themselves downwind of the action, right there in the thick of the smoke.

Every once in awhile I run into one of those former 14 or 15 year old "teeny boppers" and we talk about old times. I'd recently gotten a few Emails from Harryette, making sure I'd be at the Love-In, and I'd really been looking forward to going. Bonnie, however, has an election to win. Literature to hand out, phone calls to make, all that good stuff needed to displace another stuffed shirt from the North Miami City Council. A couple of days before the Love-In I sent Harryette my regrets. I'd survive. What I'm hoping? To get a majority of the council agreeing to start an annual Rock Weekend at the stadium! I suspect that I'd be much more likely to get a yes vote from Bonnie than from Michael. He just doesn't look the part.

I can envision Bonnie with flowers in her hair! But she, unlike Harryette, has a husband. Damn it!

It Was A Good Old Fashioned Love-In At Greynold's Park ~ At Least Monkette Scored A Kiss!

Monkette had heard about the love-ins at Greynold's Park and she thought it was pretty cool that big name rock groups would throw free Sunday afternoon outdoor concerts after a gotta-buy-a-ticket Saturday night indoor concert someplace. But that was the 60's. This was now. Then Harryette's email arrived telling us about an upcoming love-in at Greynold's Park.

Monkette was all excited, talking about nothing else for days and days. Driving me crazy, really! It turned out that Harryette (her actual name! For real! Honest!) had broken her foot a few days before. I offered to drive out west of Hollywood and pick her up but she said that it hurt too much. It would be too difficult and painful to hobble around.

Monkette and I went anyway. She was sitting on my left shoulder when she started pointing excitedly and pulling on my ear. She'd never before seen any kind of parrot, and suddenly there was this handsome yellow and blue macaw giving her the eye, looking her up and down, fluffing his feathers a bit. He was speaking softly. I have no idea what he was saying, but suddenly she jumped over to him and they nuzzled and kissed a bit. They exchanged phone numbers, but so far he hasn't called and Monkette feels out of place, being a girl and all that, calling him.

A Love-In At Greynold's Park

When I found out about the love-in at Greynold's Park I told Al that he's gotta take me! No excuses! I'd heard so much about hippies and the culture of the late 60's, love-ins at Greynold's Park, live rock music, free love, pot, the smell of incense, wildly painted VW Microbuses, miniskirts and bell bottom jeans...but to hear Al tell it? Girls, free love, ganga,girls, free love, ganga, girls, free love, ganga...Oh yeah, and rock music! Lots of great Rock Music (and girls, freelove, and ganga)

So here we were at Greynold's Park. No it wasn't in a time machine. Somebody came up with the bright idea of holding another love-in after a hiatus of forty years. And there weren't all that many sexy teenage chicks in miniskirts and love beads either. But what the hell. I'm a toy monkey and I'm female. I wasn't too happy to discover that all those handsome young guys depicted in Al's vintage photographs, the ones with shoulder length hair, fringed leather vests over tie dyed T-shirts (or even bare chests - yummmm!) still a few years from being hairy, bellbottom jeans, and sandles were now for the most part grey haired (those that still had hair anyway) old men with paunches spilling over what was left of a waist line.

Of course a lot of the ladies weren't in much better shape, but at least they had the excuse that making babies isn't exactly kind to a woman's figure. And there were the usual guys with chicks young enough to be their daughter, or grand-daughter even! Well, maybe they were. Let's give them the benifit of the doubt, OK?

The dudes all thought that Al was a complete nut (or REALLY stoned!) walking around carrying a toy monkey at his age. Toy monkeys? twenty year old chicks? Pretty much the same thing, isn't it? Reliving their earlier years, their childhood, the youth that's long lost but not forgotten.

Now the chicks, they're always fascinated by me, and they think that Al is one cool dude for having the guts to carry me around like that! I got more kisses and hugs from all those chicks than I've had in ages. I was hoping to catch a whiff or three of that ganga smoke, find out what that's all about, but these grey haired old fuddyduddies have all turned into beer drinkers just like their dads before them. Why can't they brew beer from bananas?