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When I think of Pat Hampshire, I think of winter. I see his shock of jet black hair being blown by the wind, light snow landing on his peacoat’s collar, his angular body striding purposefully toward our house. His skin appears almost alabaster against his dark hair — so white he could almost become invisible in the falling snow.
The ’60s didn’t end for me with the assassinations of the Kennedys and Dr. Martin Luther King, as terrible as they were. In a deeply personal sense, the Age of Aquarius ended when my brother-in-law died. Too often the ’60s are portrayed as a drug-filled, free-love zone where everyone wore tie-dyed clothing and beads and listened to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” It wasn’t that way for many of us, especially Pat and me.
We were both struggling with being fathers with responsibilities of which we never dreamed. I was older and further along in the game of life, but it was no clearer to me than him. I already had a stable income and he was still searching, but everything we did had an undercurrent of restlessness, born of the times. We didn’t know what we wanted, but we sensed there was more to life. It was almost unfair to be weighed down with the burden of caring for others when every day brought with it a sense of discovery.
He had thought he had conquered his wanderlust with a stint in the Navy, but, during the ’60s, it took more than some time out at sea to cure a person’s longing. And me, I was already bound to a desk in an office without windows and without hope. I was trying to fool Pat — and maybe myself — into thinking I had found the secret to a happy and fulfilling life. I wanted him to settle down so we could all grow old together safely.
Even in the early stages of our relationship, I sensed in the undercurrent of the footloose ’60s was the danger you might not survive. It was Robbie Robertson of The Band in the film, “The Last Waltz,” who said, “the road kills.” Well, the road not only killed musicians, but many of the others who chose it as well. In a sense, I guess you could say the road even killed the Kennedys and King.
Pat and I lived the ’60s through the music. Oh what glorious music we discovered. Our hearts soared. Our minds traveled to distant places. Our souls broke free of all restraints. The music was our drug of choice. We would gather in my living room with the lights down low and a stack of vinyl albums. We turned up the stereo so high that the speakers sometimes rattled. Most of my friends had not bought into the new sound of rock. I had not abandoned my love for Sinatra or progressive jazz, but this was something exciting that swept me away.
We marveled at the new electric sound of Dylan on “Like a Rolling Stone,” were blown away by the rawness of Janis, were entranced by Hendrix and Traffic and tried together to encompass the greatness of The Beatles’ “White Album.” It didn’t take much to transport us. There was a rock group named Chicago that had mixed in a brassy jazz sound and none of us really knew what time it was.
We started going to concerts too. You had to experience the sheer euphoria of rock concerts in the ’60s to understand the tumultuous epoch in which we were living. We saw them all — Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (soon after the National Guard had opened fire on the kids protesting at Kent State and their harmonic music that night turned angry), Canned Heat, The Youngbloods, Jethro Tull and The Kinks. The music had inevitably become mixed with the politics against the Vietnam War. Pat’s neatly-groomed hair became shaggy (he started looking like Neil Young) and my sideburns expanded until they almost met under my chin. We eventually wound up at anti-war rallies to hear the music and protest the war, ending up at 15th and Chestnut to see Phil Ochs singing “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” at a McGovern campaign stop. We actually got ourselves to believe Nixon could be beaten.
To my everlasting regret, I never convinced Pat to hang around. The last time I saw him alive he promised to let me try to get him a government job. It was the only time I know he lied to me. It was near Christmas when we heard from the police Pat had been found dead in upstate New York. I remember thinking the worst thing was he died alone. Maybe we all do. No matter how much Pat loved his wife and son, the rootless ’60s overpowered him as it did so many others. The road kills.
What bothers me to this day is I don’t think Pat realized how much we loved him. Some people just don’t love themselves as much as we love them, and they carry that misapprehension to their grave.
One by one, the comets that lit up the skies in the ’60s flamed out: Janis, Hendrix, Morrison, Mama Cass, even Rick Danko, who had warned about the dangers of the road, became one of its casualties.
I don’t think of love and peace when I think about the ’60s. I think of death, of dying young, of dying for no damn good reason other than the road kills. The damned road kills. SPR
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