The world is just full of people full of themselves. We live in a world that if somebody plays an instrument, is a Hollywood actor, an elected official, a TV news reporter, etc...they think that they are something special.
And yet, in reality, they are no more special than anybody else!!! Some people even wait in long lines to get the authograph of somebody else---hard to believe.
Below is a comment I left on a website that featured the Jefferson Airplane rock band from the '60s and '70s.
I wanted to share with the Jefferson Airplane an experience I had while hitch-hiking through San Francisco back in the early '70s: (oh this could be the 40-year anniversary of this ride of mine)
Just wanted to say I remember how Jack Casady picked me up while I was hitch-hiking in San Francisco back in the early '70s.
What is strange about all of this is the fact that when Casady picked me up, he told me he had to drive his fancy car around an entire block and come back to pick me up because traffic was so bad at the intersection.
I felt somewhat suspicious of somebody going around an entire block in San Francisco to pick me up hitch-hiking. I had hitch-hiked a lot during this time period and I had never experienced anybody going around an entire block to pick me up
Then he asked me where I was going and I told him Santa Rosa. He told me he was headed to Mill Valley. Shortly, he asked me if I had any dope to smoke and I told him I didn't carry dope when I was hitch-hiking. He then pulled out his own stash of marijuana and we smoked a joint together while in his car.
Shortly afterwards, I asked him what he did for a living and he immediately stuck out his hand to shake mine and announced "I am Jack Casady, with the Jefferson Airplane." He didn't inquire as to who I was. I didn't know much about this rock group but did remember a gig this group had played in Rido Nido, CA (about 45 miles north of San Francisco), back in 1969 when I was living at the Rio Nido resort and asked him about that.
He didn't comment---I think he didn't comment because this event in Rio Nido brought back a bad memory for him and his band because not very many people paid to get inside.
The place the "Airplane" performed at was called "The Barn" and nobody wanted to pay to get inside The Barn to listen to them because they could hear all the music they wanted outside the building for free.
I asked him what instrument he played and I think this was the insult he didn't expect to hear from the long-haired guy he picked up in San Francisco on this day.
When he left me off in Mill Valley, so I could continue my trip to Santa Rosa, I was so stoned that it took me 15 minutes to realize that Casady had left me off at a freeway entrance heading back to San Francisco...I must have laughed for twenty minutes afterwards realizing what had happened.
I am sure I am one hitch-hiker Casady has never shared with others. It appeared to me that his sole motive for picking me up in San Francisco, on this day, was to impress me of who he was.
It turned out that he didn't get the response he was looking for from the long-haired young man he picked up at a busy intersection in San Francisco.
It is also possible that I was the only long-haired young man in San Fransisco on this day who didn't know who he was. Note: I never intended to make him feel unimportant, I just didn't know the Jefferson Airplane rock group that well and he just happened to pick up somebody who wouldn't know who he was.
Frank S. Nordby
