What: The All Along the Watchtower Hash
Where: Brendan Behan Pub
Who: Do Me Decimal, (not) Massage A Trio
Pack:
Wikipedophilia, Bring Out the Gimp, For the Love of God Finish,
the virgin from last week, the just who brought the virgin from last week,
Dribbles, Dry Hose, Sex TFF, Twat My Mom, Topless Barbie, Chunderelli,
definetly other people I’m forgetting.
Start:
Arriving at the start early - running because trusting the orange
line is like waiting for when I paint my masterpiece - the bartender very nicely
informed me that the hare had called ahead to warn the bar of our arrival, so
they had set up some orange food and pretzels on a few tables away from the bar
as to not distract the denzins at the bar. Rage. As I was walking in, All Along
the Watchtower was playing, on theme. Chunderelli walked right past the bar.
Pack slowly trickled in, with tales of woe coming in from all those who braved
the T. The hares and bag car arrived slightly be 7, and changed into an all-red
outfit (this is relivant later) and was gay, or straight, or whatever, they
left us alone at the bar with promises of beer lingering in the air.
Chalk talk:
Qatar Mile Queer led us in chalk talk, but decided to draw the
marks in white chalk, unlike the hare, who decided to paint the side walks
black with their chalk. The hare had given a whole set of “special marks” to
our earstwhile RA, but he had forgotten all but one of them - CN/CC which stood
for “Champange Near” and “Champange Check.” We were promised that it wouldn’t
be “divorce juice”
Trial Grey-marks:
Everyone was scouting left, and some were scouting right. I
scouted the wrong way around a super-market, and eventually I hadn’t seen
nothing like a trial mark, so I headed back to chalk-talk. I found some
grey-chalk-on-black-side-walk and followed until I saw cranium lamps bobbing in
the distance and ran towards them. Pack ran helter-skleter going
check-to-check; the hare living up to their origins as a cajun-hasher. Once we
found marks it was easy to follow, but pack hadn’t seen nothing like an easily
visible mark. Looping our way through JP - the lack of ability to see marks
made us run in circles without knowing it - we eventually couldn’t figure out
what any of it was worth and found marks leading into the woods with “CN” writen
in chalk on a rock. The hare then used the tried and true practice of “an
entire bag of flour over 100 yards” leading us through the woods to the
champange. Luckily they ran out right at the champange, laying only one
“wiki-mark” (as apparently laying down sticks in the formation of arrows is
called - who would ever DO THAT?). Next to the champange were the cards that
read “have mercy on their souls” as it was discovered this was, in
fact, divorce-juice. [For those who don’t know divorce juice is a term of
art for almond flavoured champange from trader joes] There was also hatorade
mixed with something for the feinter of hart. After trying hard to finish the
bottles, we looked around and saw that pack had shrunk to about six, so I went
back to look for the rest of them. Apparently they were confused by the
definition of “near” and didn’t see, or follow, the marks going up the spanish
stairs, looking around instead for champange near the champange near mark.
Trail “well, lets just assume it goes up hill”:
We all know the adage that “the hash runs up hill” and never has
pack seen this montra more faithfully executed. We hashed around the heath
street hill, through some parks and up some stairs. We got to an intersection
and ran up some more hills, then to another intersection and up more hills. We
were running a long a street at there was a check at the base of a flight of
stairs, there was one easily visible and a second mark not too far up them, so
I bounded my way up the stairs. Twat my mom kindly intercepted a local muggle
who asked him why I had just bounded up the stairs to his house. Twat replied,
in effect, that I was (am) an idiot, and that it was the wrong way. The man
invited Twat to run a 5k on Saturday as I ran back down the stairs to catch up
with pack. There was a check at the next flight of stairs, and trail did go up
those, to a second shot check.
Trial “this has to be where the beer check is, oh, no, wait.”
Starting from the mad dash up the stairs to the second shot check
all of our - or at least YHNs - beer-dars were going off, only to be
investigated as false alarms. After the shot check we finished running up all
the hills to the park which overlooks the city - really narrowing down which
one - and trial ran, unexpectedily down-hill, so we kept thinking that the beer
check would be “right at the next park.” It never was. Eventually we kept
running down, and down and down until we got to the Orange line tracks, which
we ran over, to a hash-sit-a-peed by whatever-road-the-orange-line-follows.
Continuelly getting my barings again, I suggested that we “scout up hill” to
that weird tower thing we went to once one a red dress after being kicked out
of Sam Adams. Pack blinked and ran down the “big road” while Chunderelli and i
scouted - and found - trail crossing 4 lanes of traffic and going up hill.
Trail came to an intersection and kept going up hill. It did this three, or
maybe four, more times, until finally, blessedily, we saw “BN” pointing into
the park with the aforementioned weird tower.
Beer Check Sex Cult?
The hare maintains that the tower was built in the 60s as part of
a sex cult? They were very adoment about it, but I wasn’t really paying
attention. I was paying attention to the fact that my legs were no longer
climbing hills. The only conversation of note at the beer check was about how
opiodes make you constipated, then people shared stories about suffering from
the inverse of constipation as an adult. We thought the hare had been away for
a while when we started talking about hashers who signed up to get colera, but
were informed that they had only been away for a few minutes. Not wanting to
talk about shit anymore, i wandered around the park, scouting in all the wrong
directions.
Trial “We have to go downhill to get to where we’re going”
If our beer-dars had been biased after the second shot check, they
were totally out of whack following the beer check, except that we totally go
lost at least twice looking around at “View Checks” whose views featured
tripple deckers with maybe a sight of a sky scrapper peaking over them in the
distance. I’m pretty sure we ran down more hills than we ran up, but according
to science that’s not possible. Fake news. They were perfect hills. We crossed
back over the-main-road-heading-south-west-from-the-city and Twat led us in
“Oh, sir jasper” to let pack catch up and reform. Sex scouted straight and had
a knack for not following the falses down all the sides streets which went up
hill,unlike YHS. However, that scouting led YHS to be slightly behind Sex at a
group hug in front of a cool chruch on a hill, which we had circle for moon
behind many moons ago. Sex and a few others went off scouting and calling
“OnOn” in, lets be honest, whatever direction doesn’t matter, because I saw,
running back towards us crouching and trying to stay behind trash cans, a
runner dressed all in red. They sprinted across the road mid block and i turned
and chased down the hare!
We sang the days of the week before running around the chruch and
on-ining at the park next to the parking lot where moon ended years ago.
ONIN:
Precircle food! Not only was it pizza, but it was, like, good
pizza. We stuffed our visages with it. After pack had enough time to eat the
delicous pizza buffet, QMQ started singing about the mayors daughter and we
carried the beer-cooler over to a basketball hoop in the middle of a round
court for circle.
CIRCLE:
Quarter mile took a long pull from his beer and called the hare
into circle, then went around asking for comments on trail. Disco showed up
looking dabber AF. We sang the hare the “Shitty Hare” song, and they sang us
... something? Mobile? Sure lets go with that. It’s not true, but it doesn’t
matter. When we finished their song and QMQ almost dismissed them from cricle,
but then called them back in because he had forgotten to get comments on trail
sign them a song. We, the pack, were slightly confused, so we all yelled our
comments out again, and QMQ sang “Shitty Hare” and second time, no knowing that
we had just done all this! The RA had lost control so the hare and YHS ran
around circle yelling that while pack stood looking dumb. The RA then asked
“what else he had forgotten” not wanting to retrace the entirety of his life
accused the RA of “forgetting circle” and sang to him that ... “he should’ve
used more flour and chalk.” Circle was quickly decending into madness but it
was the amazing level of madness which is as indescribable as it is fun and
intoxicating. There weren’t any virgins - not that I remember at least - but we
did call sweat test failures in. When pressed for a song, we sang that the
backsliders “should’ve use more flour and chalk....” The RA tried invain to
assert some kind of control over circle, and kept on calling in people for
accusations which should’ve had specific songs. The backsliders, for example,
were asked “where o where were you last week? We should’ve used more flour and
chalk...” There was a celebration of the end of summer by doing the same
swedish-frog-jumping-thing which we celebrated it’s start with, but that didn’t
take hold either. QMQ was accused of running into a tree, and sang to that he
should’ve used more flour, or chalk. The hare was called in for being snared,
and also told, for a third time, that they should’ve used more flour and chalk.
Eventually, with the time progressing towards 10 and the beer flowing quickly,
it was time to swing low and end this farce of a circle, which could’ve used
more flour and chalk.
On - you should’ve used more flour or chalk - On
-Wiki
EDIT:
The hare provided the following document about their research and references
for the trail:
All Along the Watchtower Trail: An Explanation, with
references
Summary of inspiration for the trail:
The Lyman Family, also known as the Fort Hill Community, is
a Boston-bred cult founded by musician Mel Lyman of Kwenski’s Jug Band. Lyman
had a bit of a musical spat with Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival,
when Dylan played an electric set to an audience who expected a different style
of show. After Dylan performed, the displeased crowd began to empty from the
venue, and Lyman retook the stage to play for 20 minutes on a harmonica.
Sometime between then and 1967, Dylan wrote “All Along the Watchtower.”
Two years after the festival, in 1966, Lyman, who’d moved to
Boston in 1963, started a cult near the “Watchtower” of this trail, Fort Hill
Tower. Like other charismatic cult leaders such as his more murderous
contemporary Charles Manson, Lyman was able to draw people to him and
manipulate them using sex, isolation, and music, topped off with healthy doses
of LSD. When not being actually-not-hippies in the Fort Hill neighborhood, the
Family was out selling a newspaper called Avatar, which got them into legal
issues while supposedly expanded the cult message. As the 70s approached, bank
robberies and assaults tied to the Lyman Family followed. Lyman supposedly died
in 1978, though no death certificate was ever produced. Family members
eventually founded a construction company, which may or may not exist today in
Boston. Coverage of the Lyman Family as a cult began in the 1970s and has
continued into 2019.
As a person studying information science, ol’ Do Me (Re)
Decimal has an interest in communities of practice, and occasionally argues on
trail that the hash, which is not-not-not-a-cult, as well groups like the Lyman
Family that are actually-freaking-cults, are also communities of practice. Do
Me heard of Lyman in a book ostensibly about Van Morrison’s album, Astral
Weeks. After reading the work last year while spending a month convalescing at
Buttler’s house, then discovering upon moving to Jamaica Plain that the site of
the Lyman Family’s intrigues near the Fort Hill
“Watchtower” were within
hashing distance from Nira Rock, Do Me began r*nning stairs and plotting a
route. Thus a trail was conceived, haphazardly, but with references, for this
not-a-cult-but-perhaps-a-community-of-practice.
Selected References
Brennan, J. (2018). Van Morrison: Astral Weeks, Movement and
Murder. Disgraceland (podcast).
Felton, D. (1971). The Lyman family's holy siege of America.
Rolling Stone.
Turner, G. (2019). My childhood in a cult. The New Yorker.
Walsh, R. H. (2018). Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968.
Penguin.
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