Many of The Great Speckled Bird’s founders met at Emory. The gathering place of Emory’s counter culture, and a center of life around Emory was the MorningStar Inn, formerly Ed Greene’s . Many Anti-War protests gathered here before or after actions.

Beneath it was Downstairs, a small head shop run by Elaine and Drew, friends from Oxford. Drew and Elaine were high school lovers from different sides of the tracks. Drew followed her to Oxford and freak students gave him places to stay and let him eat on unused meal tickets. The administration took a while to figure out Drew was a working man who just spent the evenings at Oxford. By that time we had all moved on.