Is this the same Johnny Wraith?
I once described Johnny Wraith or at least the one I knew as, "someone who got stuck in 2nd gear in 1965 and couldn't get out of it." An outsider looking in might agree, but to those of us who knew him well understood that he chose not to shift not that he couldn't.
It was the halcyon days of the Vietnam Protests and the counter culture movement. Johnny Wraith as in true counter culture fashion eschewed the Hoffman's and Rubin's of the Anti-Vietnam as too mainstream and he took up arms so to speak against the establishment with a counter counter culture movement.
I have to say these were memorable days indeed. Not only were we making history, we were living it and Johnny Wraith's presence in our lives was the key element to make this possible. Burning our draft cards here, protesting there, it was a very full time in our lives. Johnny Wraith loathed the leaders of the establishment that tried to impugn the honest man's drugs while smoking their cigarettes and ingesting their prescription painkillers with a high ball.
It was sad to see those days wane. Reagan upped the ante for capitalism and the cost of living by our principles just became too much. It was like seeing an athlete Ali, Aaron or Rose struggling with age as they aspire to ageless milestones. Johnny wasn't any different. There was an initiative to make the sales drug paraphernalia illegal. Johnny went into action, but it wasn't the same. The slogan, "If they outlaw bongs, only the outlaws will have bongs!" failed to take root among his supporters. I can only imagine how flattered he must have been when he realized the gun lobby hijacked his original thought.
In 1983, I saw Johnny in a coffee house near the Haite Ashbury district. The close cropped hair, the fact I was clean shaven and I wreaked of Ralph Lauren cologne rather than body odor, Johnny looked at me and knew immediately that I had all the symptoms of selling out. Johnny talked me out of twenty bucks so he could pay a transvestite for oral sex. I knew I wouldn't be seeing him or my money any time soon. After all the years, I understood how he thought. He wasn't borrowing the money, he was transferring wealth from one prostitute to another with felatio as the Finder's Fee.
You just didn't hold that type of thing against Johnny. Part of it was the price you paid for his relationship the other was I guess I just admired his grasp of the value a blow job has from a person with a pretty face and female breasts, regardless what does or doesn�t exist below the belt.
Here and there were interlopers pretending to espouse an intimate knowledge and relationship with Johnny Wraith. One such person suggested that the Ben Sanderson character played by Nicholas Cage in 'Leaving Las Vegas' was inspired by Johnny Wraith. I can only tell you Johnny Wraith would have regarded that guy as a lightweight. He was a socialist in every aspect of his life and the only reason Johnny drank alcohol was to provide everyone else with an appropriate handicap.
Over the years, I have thought about him often. Especially when my kids were in high school and I raided their stash. Not too long ago my granddaughter asked about what the 60's were like for a school assignment. I gave her bits and pieces, but I left out Johnny Wraith. At 14, I just didn't feel she was ready to learn how the world of Johnny Wraith revolved, but I vowed at that time I would chronicle Johnny's life for her.
In 2002, I was bird watching in the Buenos Aires Nature Conservancy some 60 miles southwest of Tucson near the small town of Arivaca Arizona, when my SUV needed a repair on one the tires. I was with my 3rd wife some 20 years my junior and I knew she was perturbed at this inconvenience. I was getting a time estimate from the shop owner when a man around the front. "Don't need anything done today, Sun Dog."
The man he called Sun Dog, I was pretty sure was Johnny Wraith. He was within a pound or two from his weight forty years prior and had those steel blue eyes peering out from a graying beard, some additional wrinkles and a whole lot more sun blotches. I think he recognized me as someone he ought to know, but without most of my hair and 60 pounds heavier, I am not sure he did. It could have been that he was afraid of me trying to collect the twenty dollars in question.
I knew it was Johnny when in Chapinesque fashion I pulled a C-note out of my wallet and handed it to him. He seemed so confused about the utility of this piece of paper and annoyed he was discharged with its custody than gracious about the windfall. He gave me a look that suggested that he was glad that if I sold out at least I got a decent price and turned and headed down the road to seemingly nowhere.
The sudden generosity shocked both my wife and the mechanic. The mechanic told me Sun Dog lived on a commune not far out of town and was always looking for odds and ends to complete.
When the tire was repaired and we were on our way, my wife kept bugging me for an explanation. In true matrimonial spirit I wasn�t about to give her one. I guess I just missed my friend Johnny Wraith and talking about him would make me miss him all the more.
I really doubt that this is the same Johnny Wraith, but in today's world with everyone having a web site, I just had to ask.
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