We can get there by Dragonfly.

I was thinking about Jimi this morning. I guess it’s this time of year that he leaks into my thoughts. It was 51 years ago that he passed, and I still think about how I felt that morning. I was only fourteen. I was beginning my adventure. I had been up late because I had taken some “Ups,” as they were called.
I didn’t even know what they were. I was just a kid and had just started public school and experimented that summer with getting high. I remember buying them off this guy. A known junky in the hippy circles that I was on the periphery. Billy Lemberger was his name. He lived in an apartment complex behind the shopping plaza, which was up against the Park. The Park was the center of town, and of course, the local hippies gravitated toward there.
So, of course, I needed to be in the middle of all that. I bought the Ups off of Billy the day before. I don’t recall what type they were. Black Beauties? Bennies? They could have been diet pills, for all I knew. I was not an astute consumer of drugs whereas, Billy had a long history and had been in jail.
He was not a hippy. He was in his late twenties or maybe even thirty. He was the very picture of the classic creep selling drugs to kids. He was the guy we were all warned about that was out there waiting to corrupt young teens.
He had some disability that I did not recognize. He had Some malady that had to do with his neck . It gave the physical impression that his head was tilted to the right against his shoulder.
I had taken the ups the night before, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t understand why I was so jittery and had been unable to sleep. It was a Saturday morning, and I had just started the ninth grade in Junior High School. It was significant in that I was finally out of the clutches of the nuns and the catholic school. I had been there for the previous eight years.
So, it was six or seven o’clock in the morning when I headed off to the Park.

I remember later asking Billy that I didn’t feel so much like I had gotten high from the pills but felt sort of “Super Straight” he chuckled at this and said, “Yeah, man, that’s what ups do. They make you super straight!” I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t know what was going on and what to expect.

When I got to the Park, there was only one other guy there. It was a guy known as “Bendix” He had that nickname because he looked a lot like the film noir character actor “William Bendix,” who often played henchman to gangsters. But, this Bendix was a guitar player and known in the hippy circles as a talented musician.
He was about the same age as my older brother. Maybe four years older than I, but his appearance made him seem older before his time because of his Bendix-like looks.
He was sitting on the concrete wall that surrounded the Park. When I approached, he asked me if I had heard the news? I was a little addled and had no idea what he was referring to. He was picking on an acoustic guitar just sitting on the wall by himself.
He recognized me as a kid that hung around the Park peripherally. When he spoke to me, I was a little shocked that he was paying attention to me. Usually, at the Park, I was ignored by the older hippies as kind of a pest, and it made them anxious that my presence would bring the heat.
When he asked me if I had heard the news, I was dumbfounded. I said, “What news?” He looked down at his feet and said solemnly. “Hendrix, man. He’s dead.”
I was startled by this. I had been a fan as everyone else I knew was. He was already considered the greatest living guitar player, hands down. It wasn’t even an argument, and no one even tried to discuss it by comparing any other guitar players. Even the most well-known guitar greats would not put themselves on a same level with Jimi.
It has been said so often,and I feel bad using it, but it fits Jimi’s description the best. “He was from another planet.” It was evident to all that listened to him that he was connected to a different plane or, universe. His guitar playing was one piece of it. Still, his lyrics and delivery vocally all seemed to be generated from the same place.
Even as a juiced-up young kid, I could observe that he was artistically by himself. He had “come up” on the Chitlin circuit, and you could hear that jump out in his playing. He used aspects of that style a lot, but he pushed past it into hyperspace, so to speak.
Bendix looked over at me, Just then, Billy showed up. Now there were the three of us. Bendix had a similar issue with his neck that forced his head to the side. They joked with each other about whatever spinal affliction this was and jokingly commiserated.
Billy didn’t care about Hendrix and only commented something to the effect of “You take your chances when you use dope.” Bendix nodded knowingly and then sang a sweet version of The Doors “Love Street,” which for whatever reason and however incongruously fit the moment.
He was a good guitar player and respected for that by the other hippies. I was jealous of that ability. I wanted to be able to pluck a song out of the air like that. Just play and sing it at any time and anywhere. If I could do that, I could overcome -like Bendix , and escape whatever it was that afflicted me.
From my point of view, it did seem that Jimi had left the planet. How could he be dead? He went off and merged into that sound he had been making and lived there now. The wailing shrieks and bombs bursting. The gentle caress of his ballads like “Drifting”. The explosion of all the funk in “Stone Free.”
The humiliations he must have suffered being a black man on the chitlin circuit and in the military. It was in the plan all along that this comet would explode and dissipate into the astral dust of the cosmos.
My mind was working fast in an amphetamine-inspired delirium. Even then, I knew I was in over my head and knew I wasn’t ready to astral travel and hang with the big boys yet.

I could feel that it would not end well for Billy or Bendix. It was Saturday, September 18, 1970, when Jimi left this plane, and if anyone were going to astral travel, it would be him.