Flashback Friday

A long long time ago in a place far far away there lived 2 young women in a magical castle with three majestic felines and many strange and wonderful friends.

Well sort of. 

A few posts ago I mentioned my "colourful" past in the 1970s.  It was my most read post since I started this blog.  So in an effort to share some (just some mind you - the ones I can remember) of the fascinating stories from my youth I'm going to start a regular feature in this blog - Flashback Friday.  Here goes.

I was blessed to find my soul sister early on in life.  My BFF and forever sister - Jae.  We became roommates around 1972 - I think.  I had moved around a bit before then, had an apartment in an old house burn down, and crashed around on people's sofas for a while (thank you Ellen and Amy and everyone else!).  Jae was already in our "castle" sharing with a friend of mine from high school, I stayed on their sofa for awhile too.  When I came back from backpacking (that's another story!) around Europe I moved in when the other person moved out.  And this was our castle....

Jae at the mailbox.  We shared the apartment upstairs..it was very small but still 2 bedrooms.



Not much to look at really...and not any better from inside.  But it was a unique and truly magic place.  In fact the whole street was just like something you might see in a film about the hippies made today - very iconic.  We had great friends downstairs, across and down the street and around the corner.  You didn't borrow sugar from the neighbours but joints!  There were people there always.  It was fun and wild and I haven't laughed that much since...I don't think I ever will.

 

As for the felines...there were 3 females and later another one arrived.  A stray male the girls brought home one day....it was a recurring theme with the humans too.   The girls were - get these names and guess, if you can, where they came from - ... Roxy - pure white and the leader of the pack; Pearl - pure grey and very laid back; and Ziggy - tortoise shell and the cute baby of the bunch.  Goodness me, we had a blast with those cats running around the little apartment and occasionally bringing in chipmunks and moles as presents for us.

 

 



As you do in your twenties we LIVED in that little place.

There were the parties and boyfriends you would expect but the really special things came from the time in history we shared.  The Vietnam war was all over the TV every night.  Some times there would be 5 or 6 people there just to watch Walter Cronkite report on the scenes we were witnessing.  Never before had a war and its casualties been telecast nightly across TV screens.  After the news we would have debates and discussions well into the night about politics and the government ...  And then there was Nixon and Watergate unfolding every night as well.  It was both terrible and exciting.

During that time a landmark program also made its debut on TV - Saturday Night Live.  We had the only colour TV on the street at one time (I think) so throngs of people would come over on Saturday to see SNL.  Sometimes we had 3 tiers of people just sitting in the lounge room - back of the sofa - on the sofa and on the floor.  Laugh!  Great fun.

A typical Saturday Night crowd.

When we eventually moved out, Jae and I expected the house to fall down out of pure sadness to see that time come to an end.  It didn't.  Our castle on Marlbrook stood through a few more hapless hippies over the years then fell into ruin and finally, long after I had moved to Australia, Jae sent me a picture of it being knocked down.  Very sad to see it go but it will always stand in our minds .. and in the minds of many friends as well I guess.

It may not look like much now but I feel very blessed to have had this part of my life ... the places, the people and the point in history were special.  I know Jae feels the same.

OK...that's enough for one post.  I'll save the many strange and wonderful friends for next Friday.