My favorite things are the outdoors, trails, woods, canoeing, gardening, along with writing -- and singing when alone in the bus. I've had some really deeply peaceful or satisfying experiences with these. Well, perhaps not while singing when alone in the bus.

But I'll never forget the Grateful Dead concert we attended in Foxboro, MA. It was nearly worshipful.

And strange. Not being a follower of popular singing groups, I wasn't prepared for any of it. I was prepared for my oldest daughter's asking me to take her and a close friend to the concert, as she and company were routinely dragging me here and there.

Like the time these two planned to overturn our canoe on Moose Pond. No, we'll skip that one for this trip. This trip is to the Grateful Dead concert.

I will only say that when your daughter and her friend tell you you don't need your glasses or watch in the canoe, you just know something is afoot.... or aoverturn. It was, but we'll skip that one for this trip. This trip is to the Grateful Dead concert.

First was the uniform. I hadn't known the Grateful Dead required a uniform. The kids informed me of this. I'd be wearing my favorite old slouch hat -- no problem there -- and old, raggedy shorts, which I wore anyway in Maine's long summer season of....what is it now, ten days or so. The two of them somewhere or somehow dragged up my Grateful Dead concert-attending shirt, a T-shirt that was tie dyed...if I've even spelled that right I don't know. It fit, so all was well.

I refused their final uniform item, bare feet. I knew there be lots of pinkies, sandals, and who knows what on the ground there with the Grateful Dead crowd. I didn't want to cut a toe on it or catch it.

I wore shoes. Old ones, of course, that almost fitted me in as a Grateful Deader.

The highway approaching Foxboro was jammed with Grateful Dead goers, because they couldn't get their microbuses and other vehicles into the parking lot fast enough. While we sat and waited, we observed apparent Grateful Dead fans selling things, most of which seemed to be drugs and tickets to be scalped -- if that's the correct word for tickets sold outside the huge outdoor stadium by other than official Grateful Dead ticket sellers.

We already had our tickets, and we didn't do drugs. But we enjoyed observing, and observe we did. Some of those we observed stood on their vehicles to make their sales pitch. Others wandered the too-crowded-to-be-traveled highway lanes, moving from car to car with their items of some repute. There was heat too, as it was summer. Summer in Massachusetts is a little longer and hotter than in Maine.

Inch by inch we crawled toward the gate to the parking field. Finally, we arrived, and the two kids got out to race inside, while I parked our long, high-powered Ford station wagon in that parking field. I never had seen a parking field so large and crowded before -- or since.

After I found a place to park Henrietta, which some students at a private school at which I taught had named her, I began the trek toward the entrance gate. I had a half-dozen offers to buy my decorated T-shirt all of which I declined. I'm not much for attending a Grateful Dead concert or anything else public without a shirt. Probably lost a fortune by turning those buyers down that hot day.

No one offered to buy my shoes -- or any other items of apparel.

I finally got to the gate, presented my ticket, and walked on into a long hallway. I walked and walked, seeking the right alphabetized section where I hoped I would find the kids.

And, as I walked, I noticed this young guy, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt -- not decorated like mine -- walking along behind me. Then he began to run and short, "Hey, you!"

"You" wasn't my actual name, but he shouted loud enough that I turned in response. He caught up with me. I don't recall his opening line, perhaps something like, "Hey, you!"

"Who are you?" I asked this hey-youing youngster, who was now face to face with me.

He informed me he was a security guard. What, no uniform? No gun? No badge?

But this was a Grateful Dead concert. I hadn't been fully versed in what security guards at these events wore.

"There's a lump in your side pants pocket," he informed me.

I knew that. There had always been a lump in my side pants pocket, since that's where I carried my keys and chapstick.

I removed the lump-making items and showed them to him. He must have been too young or dumb to be embarrassed. Or maybe he was used to this type of lump in side pants pockets. I don't remember the rest of our not-overly-frendly conversation, and I moved on, still looking for the kids.

I found the correct section, which turned out to be a little easier than finding Dolores in the supermarket when I phone her cell phone after I enter the store. I call her to locate her in an easier way than wandering the overcrowded aisles and stumbling over kids and shopping carts because I'm busy looking up to find Dolores.

Her cell phone is generally buried at the bottom of her purse, so she doesn't hear it. For awhile, I wandered until I saw her, then moved up until I was behind her and phoned her again. She always seemed to hear it ringing somewhere and began to search for it.

Until she found me behind her.

Now I just look for her.

I found the kids.

We sat and settled in for a long night of really nice music -- and lots of marijuana infected air wafting around us. If I were ever high, it was that night. I recall going somewhere for large sodas. You needed "large," because anything smaller would have been totally spilled by the time other Grateful Dead goers had bumped you with their elbows on your way back to your seat.

We drank the remainders of the large sodas.

The music continued, the aroma wafted, and the sky grew darker.

It was when night had fully descended on Foxboro that the worshipful feeling came. The music was quiet for the most part and seemed like worshipful music. The twinkling stars overhead added to that feeling of worship in the great, open outdoors.

Someone recently asked me if that night they had begun with Such and Such, which isn't the name that he actually asked me about. It wouldn't have mattered had it been, because after all these eons I couldn't remember what songs anyone sang or played. I'm lucky I can remember going. (I wonder if the security guard remembers me in his old age.)

It seems the someone who recently asked me that had also attended a Grateful Dead concert there and in the same century as the one I had attended had taken place. I think it was the same century.

After the concert ended at about 10:00 p.m., we joined the throng milling out of the stadium toward the parking lot. We eventually found Henrietta, waiting where I had left her. And we settled down to wait for traffic to begin to move.

The kids napped on the roof until about 2:30 a.m., when cars around us began to inch toward someplace I couldn't see in the dark or glare of parking field lights. I awoke the kids, and we joined the inchers toward someplace.

We eventually reached a highway and headed for home.

I'll never forget that experience, especially the almost worshipful part.

I find it hard to tell people, such as Baptists, that it was almost worshipful at a Grateful Dead concert. I'm not knocking Baptists. I'll bet some of them went. They just won't admit it.

At the time, I owned a Grateful Dead microbus in addition to Henrietta. Actually, it was a VW microbus, fully decorated with Grateful Dead stickers placed there with love by a former owner. (I loved this VW microbus, except in winter when it was 20 below zero and the rear-end heater failed to warm the front compartment where I was dressed in winter jacket, hat, gloves, and boots good down to 20 below. Then I said religious words about her. I just can't remember them now.)

Eventually I sold the VW Grateful Dead microbus to a Baptist Sunday school superintendent. That's important to the tale, because he had planned to use the VW Grateful Dead microbus to pick up the Sunday school kids and drop them off at their homes again after Sunday school.

"Of course, I'll have to remove the Grateful Dead stickers," the buyer had told me.

"Why?" I asked, innocently enough, I thought, even though I already knew why.

"Because the Grateful Dead are evil," he replied.

"How do you know that?" I asked. "Have you heard them speak or sing?"

"Oh, I wouldn't go to hear them," he said. "They're just evil."

He bought the microbus. Whether he removed the Grateful Dead stickers or not, I have no way of knowing.

I didn't think they were evil. Nearly worshipful.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2011