I just noticed that someone had posted a video of In-a-gada-davida by Iron Butterfly on Match Doctor. Boy does that bring back memories!
I took a date to the Atlanta Civic Center to see a joint concert by Iron Butterfly and the Turtles. In-a-gada-davida had not been released yet, and Iron Butterly was an reletavely unknown group. I was a drummer in a rock band that played fraternity parties and school proms - so I went absolutely ape when Iron Butterfly played the song for over an hour. Yes, they were a one hit wonder, but what a masterpiece of psychodelic music.
Several months later I was collecting for Toys for Tots on behalf of my fraternity at Georgia Tech on a cold December Sunday morning. I was assigned the Midtown area, which at that time was the largest hippie community in the world. I was not having much luck until I knocked on the door of a townhouse rented by a Cuban artist from Miami. She invited me in and filled me with sangria. The wall of her townhouse were covered with anti-Viet Nam War posters. Her art class term project - a six feet high phallus, with melted wax on the top for realism - stood next to the newal post of her stairs.
She drove me over to the Ansley Park neighborhood where wealthy dealers lived. The first mansion we came to had no furniture in the living room, but had the form of a large pentagram taped on the floor. Candles marked its apexes and candelabras hung from the walls. The woman, who answered the door, was a famous blond actress dressed in a black gown. She use a psuedonym, but we knew who she was. A famous ABC sportscaster was in the back of the living room, also wearing a black robe. They gave us a $100 bill as a donation.
Teresa then took me to her favorite Cuban restaurant, La Habana, near the corner of Tenth St. and Argonne Ave.- across from Piedmont Park. We ate and talked for hours. Some time during that morning, she decided that I was the ONE. She drove me back to her townhouse - turned on a long playing tape of In-a-gadda-davida, plus psychodelic lights that blinked and strobed to the music. She swirled around me dancing for the hour long length of the song, then turned it on again with a mischievous smile. She announced that now was the time that the two of us would lose our innocence together - and our time in ectasy would last for the length of the song. Some how we ended upstairs, but I was so mezmerized by the music that I don't remember climbing the stairs with her. That evening we went to Peachtree Christian Church and heard a Christmas concert by the Robert Shaw Chorale. We had been together for exactly 12 hours when she dropped me off at the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity house.
I never was with Teresa again. The following weekend she was seriously injured at a demonstration against the My Lai massacre near the gates of Fort Benning. She was imprisoned at a secret location and accused of being a spy for Communist Cuba! Her father, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, eventually got her freed.
Last August on my birthday, as I was just finishing a hike up and down a mountain in NE Georgia, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to me. The car had a Florida tag, and a City of Miami sticker. The bodyguards up front told me that their employer wanted to see an Indian mound. The windows were heavily tinted so I could not see who was in the back. However, when one guard got out to look at my map of the Chattahoochee National Forest, I could see an elegant Latin American lady in the back seat - staring at me without expression.
As the car started to leave, the woman lowered her window, smiled at me, and blew a puff of smoke from one of her "trade mark" apple flavored cigarillos. She said nothing. Then, as the SUV slowly drove off on the dusty mountain road, the elegant Latin American lady, stuck her head out the window and blew a kiss at me.
It was Teresa! 
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read more blogs!
Blogs by Etowah:
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| One Cold December Morning - In-a-gada-davida Memories |
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Etowah
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Oct 4 @ 10:01PM
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What no comments? Yes, this is a true story. I will never, ever forget walking into the room of that Victorian House and seeing the pentagram on the floor, and the three people with the black robes standing there. At first we thought we were going to be sacrificed or something.
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MNwildflower
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Oct 4 @ 11:44PM
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Hey, another great blog. You should consider looking her up... sounds like Teresa might still be interested in the gadda-davida sex dance!! :-)
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Etowah
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Oct 5 @ 6:40AM
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Teresa isn't her real name, because if I used the real name, many people would know this person. She was well known in the entertainment world during the 1980s and early 1990s. She didn't speak to me, because she didn't want her body guards reporting back to her mega-rich husband that she had asked them to stop, so she could talk to someone, whom she knew from the past - AND looked a whole lot younger and physically fit than him. I've seen photos of him on occasions in the tabloids. He looks 20 years older than his actual age.
One thing about poverty is that it keeps you lean and vigillent - like a primieval hunter.
The subtlty of this story is that a beautiful, talented young woman had started life as being part of the "counter culture" but ended up with exactly the same lifestyle as the people she disdained at age 20.
This blog was a condensation of my soon to be finished book, "The Lords of Cumberland."
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