Random Sequence

I began to notice something peculiar about the other drivers. Some were getting out of their cars and talking to each other as if they were friends. And most of them didn't look like rural upstaters but instead like hippies -- long-haired, tie-dyed, multi-generational hippies -- a class of people I thought had pretty much vanished decades ago. This was beginning to feel like a bizarre dream.

"What the hell is going on?" I thought. I rolled down the window, intending to ask one of the passing "freaks," a guy in sandals wearing a yellow T-shirt that said "Play Dead," if he knew what the holdup was. Before I could say anything, he flashed a grin and asked, "You going to the Dead concert?"

"Uhh, no," I said, feeling confused. The Dead? The Grateful Dead? Weren't they...dead?
--from "A Long, Strange Trip" (by me), originally published in Hudson Current