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people could take a look at the hippies. People would be jerking their heads all around,breakingtheirnecksjusttolookatus,yellingthingsatus.Wehadtolook out after each other. Back then, if you saw one of us, you saw three or four. . . . “One of the only places we really felt at home was down at Mama Louise’s littlerestaurant.AttheH&H,theydidn’tcareifwewerewhiteorblackorpurple. Mamadidn’tsayanythingifweweretrippin’ourassesoff.Now,shemighttellme tocomeinthebackdoorinsteadofthefrontwhenIwasmessedup,butreallyshe just fed us fried chicken and loved us.” The late ’60s was, of course, a heady time to be a rock & roller. Free love. Communalliving.Cheapdope.Afeelingofcamaraderiethatcamewithbeingpart ofthecounterculture.Butforalltheirswaggerandbravado,forallthetalkofdrugs ingestedandwomenseduced,theboysinthebandwerejustthat:boys,overgrown teenagersfarfromhome,farfromtheirmamas,setlooseinastrangetown.Ofthe original six, none were natives. Duane Allman and his younger brother, Gregg, were born in Tennessee; Dickey Betts and Butch Trucks in Florida; Jaimoe Johnson in Mississippi; and Berry Oakley in Illinois. Forthemostpart,thebandstuckclosetotheirself-styled“HippieCrashPad” that summer. Just a short walk down the street was Rose Hill Cemetery, a rambling antebellum graveyard of Italianate terraces dotted with marble statuary, carved into the bluffs of the Ocmulgee River. The cemetery proved to be a sanctuary for the band, a place to gather in the early morning hours and drink Ripple, smoke pot, maybe play a little acoustic guitar. Here, in the moonlit shadows of listing tombstones and spreading magnolias, the band composed the blues-rock songs that would make them famous. And before three years passed, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley would be interred here, side by side, each the victim of a motorcycle crash. In the years that followed, the time spent at Rose Hill would take on an eerie significance. Afewblocksintheoppositedirection,inthemidstoftheblackbusinessdistrict ,wastheheadquartersofPhilWalden’sCapricornRecords.Oneblockwest, on Forsyth Street, was the H&H. “It was the place to go for soul food in Macon,” recalls Walden. “It was, how should I say this, economical. And when I brought the band to town, that was the place they were sent when they were hungry.” TheH,asregularscalledit,wasn’tmuchtolookat.“Backthenitwasinanold gas station,” Campbell tells me. “The front room was something like a radiator shop. In the back Mama had set up a couple of tables and a counter with four or five stools. There was a big old floor fan to cool things off and a jukebox full of Clarence Carter and Wilson Pickett songs. That was about it, but man, it was a beautiful place to be, just beautiful.” Mama Louise did more than feed and nurture a ragtag group of musicians, saysthekeyboardplayerChuckLeavell.“Shefeltthespiritofthetime.Blacksand 208 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 208 whites were working together, playing music together. It was almost like a religion . And Louise’s cooking was a sort of soul-food sacrament.” Years before, while still living in Daytona Beach, Florida, Gregg Allman had made visits to a similar restaurant part of his pre-performance ritual. “It was just what you’d expect, an aqua green, one-story building with red, white,andbluesignsinthewindows,withascreendoorthatwouldn’tquiteshut andabigfanontheceiling,”formerbandmateTommyTuckertoldareporterback in1973.“We’dalwaysorderaboutsixoreightbarbecuesandwiches.Greggthought that eating this soul food would give his voice an extra edge. It was sort of like a superstitionwithhim.Ifhedidn’teatsoulfood,hewouldn’thavehimselftogether that night.” This spring I went back to Macon in search of the ghosts of the Allman Brothers and the scents of Mama Louise’s good home cooking. I was on familiar ground. I had attended grammar school a couple of blocks from the College Street flophouse that the band first called home. I remember standing on the playground, myfingershookedinachain-linkfence,watchingtheparadeofhippiesthatalways seemed to be shuffling by. I remember the motorcycles that roared by late in the afternoon, trailing a plume of patchouli and petroleum. Inthecompanyofmyfather,Iatemyyouthfulfillofmeatloafandfriedokra, ropy collard greens and candied yams at the newer H&H, the one on the ground floor of a squat bunker of a building, just across the street from the original location .Theupstairswashometothelocalbricklayers’union;nextdoorwasabeauty shop.Inmymind’seye,IcanseeMamaLouisebustlingabouttheorangeandyellow dining room, her soft, brown face framed by a puff of coarse, black hair. I remember the sadness in her eyes, that devilish sidelong smile she flashed when you said something that tickled her. I remember the incessant boom of the jukebox , the rattle of the speakers as the first few chords of my favorite Allman Brotherssong,“StatesboroBlues,”filledtheroom.Tothisday,thebrighttasteof her sweet potato pie dances on the tip of my tongue. I found her where I left her: at the stove, an oversized, misshapen serving spooninonehand,athickchinaplatterintheother.“Youwantgravyonthatrice, honey?” she asks a stoop-shouldered man perched at the counter. “Yeah,Mama,gravy,awholebunchofit,”comesthereply.Shedrenchesthe rice, hands the plate over to a...

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