by Carol Morrison Orledge, Wilmington, DE

In 1981, my friends and I got free Phillies tickets for being on the honor roll. We piled into Phaedra’s station wagon and headed to the game. When we got there we were in culture shock as the Grateful Dead were playing at the Spectrum. We never saw anything like what we encountered. We went to the Phillies but by the 7th inning we were ready to skip out on the game and explore the scene next door.

We ended up at the side doors looking in at all the hippies dancing and spinning! A lot of deadheads without tickets were begging the guards to please let us in for the end of the show. The guards were not interested in letting us in. One young kid started saying stuff to the guard about “yo mama” and the guard snapped and opened the door, grabbed the kid and starting kicking his butt! All the other guards ran out to join their colleague as he beat up this young kid. All the Deadheads outside started rushing the door. We paused for a moment, thinking we should try to help this kid, but realizing we were a bunch of 15-17 suburban girls and would not fair well against the big mean guards, we ran in too!

That was the first of hundreds of Dead and other hippie shows for us! We never looked back!!!!!