Who Will Remember the Followers?

“Nothin’ shakin’ on shakedown street, used to be the heart of town
Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart, you just gotta poke around.”[1]

As a song, Shakedown Street is like the Grateful Dead, not everybody, even Deadheads, likes it, but the people who like it, really like it. To me, it is a classic. It suggests finding the beauty in places that may have lost a little of their original glow. In a way it makes perfect sense. The Grateful Dead was as much of an institution as a musical group. A traveling wellspring of good will and happiness, with an army of acolytes, and followers. True believers.

Shakedown Street is also the area where vendors set up their little shops, canvas canopies, tents, trailers, and food trucks. Roads, winding around islands of tie-dye shirts, dresses, throw blankets, posters, stickers, iron patches, polished stones, crystals, food trucks, with a backdrop of extravagantly painted buses, and small, electric cars.

Shakedown Street, the location, is the strongest memory I have of going to Grateful Dead shows. Before going to the show, you would cruise Shakedown Street, have a cold beer. Maybe a Jerry Roll (a large egg roll, found, as far as I know, only on Shakedown Street). If you were interested you could get stoned out of your mind on Shakedown Street, without spending a penny.

My wife, her first Shakedown Street, was shocked when we walked up to small booth selling perfectly cut crystals and rocks in striking hues and colors, polished to a mirror sheen, and the old, grizzled man, with arthritic fingers and thick, dull nails offered us a small pipe, smoke curling and climbing with a long-forgotten aroma of escape from the small red bowl. He didn’t say anything, it was just an act of friendship.

“No, thank you. You have some beautiful crystals here.” I said, and he did. They glowed with an internal luminescence, a buried flame, it sparked and shone, like fires burning in caves of ice. But, in a way I was just trying to thank him for his act of kindness. I quit smoking so long ago my lungs might secede if I tried, even a small puff.

“Thanks, man.” He said, and it was all he said, making a distracted motion of sweeping some wispy hair behind his ear. He looked me and smiled, his eyes focusing on my face. It was a smile that implied ‘it isn’t really about the crystals, it’s a lot bigger than that.’ He was happy, and mellow, and in his element. He was probably a veteran, who knows how many times he had set up his little stall and shared a toke with strangers who were family.

My wife, who was not a smoker, of anything, ever, moved in behind me, and gripped my elbow.

We walked through the lanes, stopping to buy shirts, a few patches, and couple of bandanas. In one booth a young man sat behind a table reading a worn copy of Watership Down. He looked so young and innocent. He had a lot of shirts, and scarves, a few skirts, bright, with clean lines and gentle sweeping grades of color.

“Nice tie-dye.” He said, motioning toward my shirt.

“Thanks, I’ve had it a long time.” I told him. It was true, I love my tie-dyes and my wife is very careful with them. “Great book.”

“Just started,” he said, holding the book up to show his progress. “When was your first show?” He asked. It was a question with a history. It didn’t mean anything, and it meant everything. It’s the language of Deadheads. How many shows? When did you first hear Truckin’, or Scarlet Begonias, or St. Stephen? It’s something they can share. Since I was never a real Deadhead I’ve never been able to pull it off.

“I’m not sure,” I had to admit. “It was sometime in the mid-eighties. At Buckeye Lake.” I could have lied, and made up a year, but something wouldn’t let me. A feeling of belonging, a sense of time and place coming together forming a polished image. A mirror. Everywhere I looked I saw the same thing, and it was always me, even when it was somebody else. I couldn’t lie, because I would know, and so would they.

He told me his first show was shortly after Jerry Garcia returned from his close brush with death, and he was still coming back. There was a hint of sadness in his voice.

“He was still struggling, you know. You could tell.” He said, looking away, not really looking at anything, just specifically not looking at me. He seemed to feel guilty about seeing Jerry Garcia while he was struggling. It weighed on his young soul.

The Dead have an odd effect on people. Their music, enthusiasm, the long, intense passage of song, their stage presence combine to make people want to see the good, look at the positive. The young man was glad he got to see them, but he wanted to see more of them, see them at their highest level. I understood, I wished I had been more committed to seeing them. I wasted so many chances, living in my shell, keeping the world at bay.

We talked about his shirts, and we parted ways. Each carrying our own little package of regret, and our own joy at the chance to have been a part of something.

MY wife and I walked around, split a beer, and went back to our car. I looked at the tents, and wagon, and little booths, and I wondered what would happen to this gypsy community. If Dead and Company is done touring, what will happen to all these friendly, stoned, people, with all their stories and smiles and hugs, handshakes, and slaps on the back? Where will they go. Taylor Swift fans wouldn’t be interested. You don’t see a lot of tie-dye on Ed Sheeran fans. Like so many ancient civilizations, once their reason for existing is gone, so are they. Who will weep for the Deadheads?