On one side lay the highway with its trucks and streaming cars. On the other, uphill somewhat, a trailer anchored on the edge of a narrow lot. Resident Tom announced preferences and epithets in designer tattoos wedged from biker boots to bald head. Tom was fond of wrastling too.

Jody and Gil discovered they could hear jeers and thuds from any study room they chose while trains racketed above and jolted the ceilings and floors. Meanwhile, there was rarely a day Pink Glory’s couches and bedrooms weren’t full. Guests talked as trains clacked and wrastlers thwacked. Visitors left or stayed and others arrived.

Once settled, Gil decided that during a war the best thing to do was not to pray but buy colorful clothes. So on Saturday before that holiday, and after Country Joe had played again for their breakfast of beans, Jody drove to the mountain he called home. There they cornered the lot on a thrift store shop: a full-length beaver coat, oriental shoes, purple velveteen bellbottom pants, a tophat and of course leather gloves. It’s necessary, he said, to meet a war well-dressed. And they did. Their yellow bug was full to the brim when they returned with odds and ends and bric-a-brac. Soon, with some creative welds and mends, their house was full with the artiest of things and men.

Some of this isn’t true, by the way. At least not in the world we tend to accept every day.

It wasn’t long before Glory had five major players, you might call them: friends that generally stayed. Two played in a band: horns and blues harp. Another was the livingroom genius. He sat cross-legged and serious, reading encyclopaedias for casual fun and awaiting consultation on whatever question might arise from anyone.

The other two were girls, whom some said looked alike, learning to be women through daisy-chains of unusual days and nights. One was a politico and the other was a poet. Or perhaps it was the reverse. It’s difficult to know because they laughed a lot, switching places, and sharing what they’d got. Both played piano and a little bit of strings. And everything they learned, they told and taught the other, so they grew entwined like sister beings. Most of all they loved freedom and kept each other safe and close, not just then but through all the wandering strange decades to follow.

Glory’s frequent visitors included a fair-haired waify-seeming fellow who drew caricatures especially and was so slight in every way he rose from the couch like an angel if you glanced away.

And then one night, they looked beyond too long and he was gone.

Another was an ex-marine who’d done ground-service as a medic. They called him Downtime Ben because, although he knew about various things and could be fun on some days, he grumbled and swore a lot. Still, he had a good heart and could be depended upon to be there, or where they were, doing ground-and-down-time when current scenes got too hot for the enchanted to handle in their particular soft and wifty way.

But Downtime Ben has gone away. And so has Mensa, and others that drifted through.

One’s still in Florida, another in DC, a few up north and on the eastern Coast. Others just disappeared. And then there’s Tennessee holding to the feet of volunteer folk and bringing them back for reunion days.

Myths die and myths grow. The Under-The-Railroad Gang comes and goes. In a circle of heaven they sit by the fire where shapes of ones still here inspire songs and dreams they share and memories of long ago.

Now Downtime Ben is saying again: Reality, dear. Reality.

They weren’t hippies, you know, or yippies or beatniks or bums. They were people, like you and me. They worked at jobs, some earned degrees, built or bought houses and babies they raised did as they pleased. A few went to jail, some got sick. Others ran businesses, two went to war.

But they all come back for this mental field to find the latest score: who’s up, who’s down, and who’s waiting behind that answer door.