The Brewer Fountain on Boston Common, which is a bronze copy of a fountain
which won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in the 1860's.
My intitating experience at the Brewer Fountain is dear enough to me
that I've written this short essay:
Around '68 or '69 I was a sophmore or junior in Needham (Mass.)High School. My girlfriend and I conspired to skip school one really nice spring
morning and ride the commuter train into Boston. This trip was a true adolescent adventure for us as previously Boston was some place we were driven through by adults. In the late morning we started
across Boston Common diagonally from the Park Square area towards Park
Street Station. Just as we got to where the Information Cabin now is,
we encountered a real life anti-Viet Nam War demonstration parading
down Tremont Street.
At the time the anti-war Hippies were making legendary and controversial headlines and TV news with draftcard burnings and cetera but in our protected suburbs we had never actually encountered them. At this parade the Hippies seemed rather surprisingly serious. They may have been shouting or singing but
what I remember is that they were not happy. The parade was sombre . .
. and ragged. I don't think their were 50 marchers. Twenty would
have been more like it. And they had all the traffic on Tremont Street
rerouted or stopped in support of their demonstration rights*. I have a
vague memory of the parade being preceded by some motorcycle cops. What
I won't forget is that the parade was led by two ragged guys carrying a
wide anti-war banner that must have read "STOP THE WAR" or something.
The banner carrier closest to us was in his mid-twenties. Maybe
mid-thirties. Maybe ageless. He was shirtless, likely barefoot, and he
had a long beard. He is what I remember most.
So the parade passed, and my girlfriend and I had one more awesome
illicit teenage scenario to file in our catalogue of growing independent
experience.
We continued on up the Tremont/Common walkway and not too much further
we happened upon Brewer Fountain with its bronze half clad longhairs
sitting along its base. We couldn't help but be struck that these
bronze figures seemed to have come to life to hold the anti-war parade.
Maybe the spray from the fountains got to our heads. If you ask me, it was on that day at Brewer Fountain that we, for all practical purposes, got "baptized" as Hippies, bless our pointy little suburban heads. We certainly weren't the same after that day as evinced rather quickly by our fashion style.
After the fountain we crossed Tremont over to Winter St. and climbed the stairs to the poster and hip ephemera shop!
Brian Joyce
*Footnote; Around this time Alabama Governor George Wallace, who gave a
speech at the Boston Common Gazebo (a hundred feet from where we stood)
was running for President and one of his threats was that he would have
his limo run over any dirty hippies who blocked traffic and who
inconvenienced him in the way that the hippie parade had done.
--
Brian Joyce
bjoyceart@123mail.org
Brian Joyce
P.O. Box 8313
East Lynn, MA 01904
Phone:
339 970 4760
email:
AncientOrderOfLonghairs@hotmail.com
For More BJoyceArt links to Art, Opinion, Videos, and More go to BJoyceArt.blogspot.com
