EARTH DAY, 1970

©2008 Dave Knechel

". . . on April 22, 1970, Earth Day was held, one of the most

remarkable happenings in the history of democracy. . . "

-American Heritage Magazine, October 1993

I remember the very first Earth Day. I was attending Hunterdon Central High School, now known as Hunterdon Central Regional High School and a lot of commotion was stirred by our teachers and fellow students preceding that day. The first thing to catch my attention, and those of plenty of my peers, was that all classes were to be suspended on Earth Day. Instead, we would have seminars in what seemed like a giant trade show, with local and state business and community leaders converging on our school to speak to us about our planet, how to improve our lives and what we could do to be positive forces in the world. We were in the middle of a terrible conflict in Viet Nam and drugs were becoming an ever present occurrence in all of our lives, whether we did them or not, and everyone was very much aware of those two things. At the time, I wasn't much of an environmentalist, although I never had anything against ecology and conservationism. My concerns lay more in the sphere of my social environment, so who we knew that went to Viet Nam and whether drugs were cool to do or not were more important issues than saving the planet from pollution. Remember, these were the days before the '73 oil embargo, Watergate and words like vegan and tree hugger had not yet parsed our lips.

I recall that about a week before Earth Day, we were given a form to fill out with explanations of each symposium. We had some that were mandatory to attend and many more that were electives. At no time during the day were we to have free time, except for lunch. That way, we were always accounted for, being carefree high school students and all. Just like regular classes, we weren't supposed to skip these meetings, either. Mandatory roll calls were to be taken, but they never were. After a while, we knew how to play the attendance game.

One I signed up for dealt with drug education. Of course, being high school kids and "hip" on the drug scene, a lot of my friends attended that one, too. I'm sure we knew more than the cops. Once there, we learned about the evils of marijuana, hashish, LSD, STP, heroin and whatever was big back then and the tools used to ingest them, like rolling papers, pipes and needles. We also learned how to detect users, how to turn them in and how to avoid frying our own brains from drugs. It was held in the main auditorium and there was a long table filled with all sorts of paraphernalia to view. Lou Rocco was the county drug czar back then and he was our lecturer. Several cops stood near him. I knew him well enough, too, because his daughter, Angie, had been the first to train me when I started working at the Weiner King restaurant in the fall of '68. He was a regular customer and Angie took a shining to me. She went on to be a nurse or something because she got a job at the Hunterdon Medical Center.

After his speech, good old Lou invited us to join him at that long table so we could get up close and personal with the stuff on display. We were allowed to pick up some things, but the real goods were kept at a distance. First, he explained what each item was, and then he prompted us to ask questions. I have always been known as a practical joker. During that question and answer period, I secretly swiped a piece of incense while Mr. Rocco's back was to me, answering someone's question. I don't know what the other cops were doing. This was no ordinary piece of incense, though. It smelled just like marijuana when burning and it was used to train police and narcotics agents. Oh boy, what do I do with my stash, I wondered.

When the seminar ended, I casually walked into the men's room by the main entrance, just beyond the auditorium. I waited for everyone else to leave and entered one of the stalls. The stalls, back then, didn't have doors on them in our school. Not the men's room, anyway. That way, teachers could make sure no one was smoking cigarettes. I carefully placed that valuable piece of pot incense behind the toilet and lit it. I hightailed it out of there before the stuff began to smell. It didn't take long before that became the biggest news at the high school that day. POT SMOKING STUDENTS USE HIGH SCHOOL MEN'S ROOM ON EARTH DAY! Imagine that, some stupid kids had the audacity to smoke pot with all those cops swarming about. They never did get caught, though, and Lou Rocco and the rest of his force never figured out a piece of their educational material went missing.

There you have it. My first Earth Day was spent smoking up the men's room with chemically manufactured marijuana. I'm sure it was filled with artificial ingredients. Since then, I've learned a lot about war, drugs and what we can do to keep ourselves and our planet healthy. I hope you have, too.

That would really be far out, man. Peace.