LSD and The Magic Carpet Ride

My mother was quite the artist. Her far out creativity was all over our house, the car, and our clothes. We lived in a modest three bedroom house, which my mother and father purchased with my dad's V.A. loan, when they were married. The most memorable area of the house was our hallway. Sounds strange, doesn't it? All my friends would report back to their parents about our black walls. Nobody had black walls in their house, except us. Better yet, the entire hallway was painted and decorated like it's own party room.

I wish I had an actual picture of it. When you entered the hallway from the living room, you walked through a panel of floor-length beads, which hung from the ceiling. Yes, the walls were black, but they were also decorated with wild psychedelic paintings and drawings in flourescent colors. Even the ceiling was splashed with flourescent paint. Blacklights hung from the ceiling at each end of the hallway.

There were lots of flourescent lime green, hot pink, orange, yellow, and purple flowers everywhere, peace signs, phrases like "sex-drugs-rock-n-roll", and other words I was too young to read. Mom would drop some LSD and just start painting whatever images were flashing through her mind as she was hallucinating.

Our bedroom door was right there, off the hallway. Many nights, when a meeting (church) or party was taking place, they would congregate in the hallway. There was always alot of loud voices and music from outside my bedroom door. I would hear them laughing, using nasty words at each other, and falling against the walls, often falling down. Usually, when someone fell down, they would stay there, tripping on all the colors swirling around the hallway.

Now I know where the song,"Magic Carpet Ride" must have come from. My sister and I sat in our room, hoping nobody would try to come in. We always locked our door. Inevitably, someone would try like hell to open the door. I don't know, maybe they were looking for the bathroom, or just a bed where they could pass out.