I grew up on Turtle Island. I was an unwilling player during the revolutionary birth ot the 60's and the Summer ot Love. Some ot it had to do with age, or lack ot it on my part. I was 14 and uptight. Half of my friends ran away to the Haight Ashbury and the other half practiced making their necks as red as the necks of their blue-collar parents'.
My mother turned me on with green oatmeal cookies. Actually, it was an accident. We were at her gay friend's house in Larkspur having dinner. A friend, Sue Williams and I helped ourselves to the big cookie jar. We couldn't understand why they made such a fuss, and wouldn't let us have any more health food chocolate chip cookies loaded with that weird green shit. Ugh!
Why were they watching us so oddly as we corn-braided and beaded each other's long hair, danced, and wove peace symbols on the shoebox we converted to a finger loom? My mother went along with my frenzied creative urges before I fell into a narcoticised dreamstate while Janis wailed and crooned on the stereo:
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart
now baby
you know you got it
if it makes you feel good
A life size poster of Grace Slick wrapped in an American flag sung to me from the wall and the air filled with visual debris.
Micaela and I crashed parties on The Charles Van Dam ferry boat stuck in the Sausalito mud at an angle that almost rivaled that of the Spreckles House. Jean Varda's geometric blue and red paintings nailed to the curved ferryboat wall, defied horizon and plum-line logic.
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart
now baby
you know you got it
if it makes you feel good
A life size poster of Grace Slick wrapped in an American flag sung to me from the wall and the air filled with visual debris.
Micaela and I crashed parties on The Charles Van Dam ferry boat stuck in the Sausalito mud at an angle that almost rivaled that of the Spreckles House. Jean Varda's geometric blue and red paintings nailed to the curved ferryboat wall, defied horizon and plum-line logic.
We sneaked into the captain's brig that served as a loft and watched the party below us carry on. While our parents were turning on and dropping out, we ran wild in the streets. Sneaking off to the Avalon. Fillmore. Winterland. Sometimes finding our parents there before us. My mother was very hip and my reverse rebellion kept me straighter than most of my friends.
The drug experimentation blossomed in kalidascopic exponentials. Crazy people got crazier. My mother checked out all Ken Kesey's acid tests. Took me to the Panhandle. Parties and concerts in Golden Gate Park. The Be-in. Magic Mountain of Marin. Clouds of incense roiling out of the Psychedelic Shop. People sleeping in doorways. Crash pads with wal-to-wall bare mattresses, sinks filled with putrid dishes, mountains of rotting garbage, incense and patchouli oil made me wary of acid and hard drugs.
Various rock groups divided up the San Geronimo Valley like musical mafias. Jefferson Starship hung a model bi-plane from a bay tree in Woodacre. The Grateful Dead were mostly encamped in Forest Knolls, while Big Brother and the Holding Company took over the barracks at Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo Road. Mrs. Barbano rented the dorms to them, but after her daughter was killed by a car in Mexico— something to do with dope; Mr. Barbano shot himself in the head. Walking home from school, I remember him all white and red as if asleep on the gurney as they wheeled him into the ambulance.
Most afternoons, when the shadows grew long and chill settled into the gulch, the hills reverbrated with the distorted screaming of electric guitars. My friend Micaela quit coming home from school, dropped acid with the musicians at Barbano's instead, and I felt betrayed by this.
We ran from one end of the San Geronimo Valley to the other searching for dope. And the rock stars were our best bet. Most of the musicians never got out of bed until afternoon—that was the time to score, and hang out for a jam session. Bill Bowan, the drummer for the Sons of Champlain, always had grass and there was even an abandoned van parked at Dead Man's Curve in Lagunitas for lovers in search of a bed. John McBride often took advantage of that pad on wheels.
It wasn't just the rock stars who moved into the San Geronimo Valley. Those fleeing from the Haight. From LA, or New York, everybody began to migrate westward like lemmings to the sea.
The drug experimentation blossomed in kalidascopic exponentials. Crazy people got crazier. My mother checked out all Ken Kesey's acid tests. Took me to the Panhandle. Parties and concerts in Golden Gate Park. The Be-in. Magic Mountain of Marin. Clouds of incense roiling out of the Psychedelic Shop. People sleeping in doorways. Crash pads with wal-to-wall bare mattresses, sinks filled with putrid dishes, mountains of rotting garbage, incense and patchouli oil made me wary of acid and hard drugs.
Various rock groups divided up the San Geronimo Valley like musical mafias. Jefferson Starship hung a model bi-plane from a bay tree in Woodacre. The Grateful Dead were mostly encamped in Forest Knolls, while Big Brother and the Holding Company took over the barracks at Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo Road. Mrs. Barbano rented the dorms to them, but after her daughter was killed by a car in Mexico— something to do with dope; Mr. Barbano shot himself in the head. Walking home from school, I remember him all white and red as if asleep on the gurney as they wheeled him into the ambulance.
Most afternoons, when the shadows grew long and chill settled into the gulch, the hills reverbrated with the distorted screaming of electric guitars. My friend Micaela quit coming home from school, dropped acid with the musicians at Barbano's instead, and I felt betrayed by this.
We ran from one end of the San Geronimo Valley to the other searching for dope. And the rock stars were our best bet. Most of the musicians never got out of bed until afternoon—that was the time to score, and hang out for a jam session. Bill Bowan, the drummer for the Sons of Champlain, always had grass and there was even an abandoned van parked at Dead Man's Curve in Lagunitas for lovers in search of a bed. John McBride often took advantage of that pad on wheels.
It wasn't just the rock stars who moved into the San Geronimo Valley. Those fleeing from the Haight. From LA, or New York, everybody began to migrate westward like lemmings to the sea.
House of Richard took over the old dance hall in Forest Knolls. I sold my first chain crocheted caps there, and in exchange, bought hay for my horse. Richard told me how the border police, looking far dope, tore apart their VW van after a textile buying trip in Mexico. Even the tires were removed from the rims. The disciples of the Summer of Love moved to the Valley enmasse.
Hitching to and from high school, I got rides from the rock stars—only they weren't all stars yet. Jesse Colin Young's funky white van was filled with debris and hay. I didn't like Carlos Santana. Fawn leather seats in his Mercedes and the "holier than thou" attitude he had — attainable only when one is wearing white drawstring pants spelled out the beginninq of the end for the San Geronimo Valley. Money raised its ugly head, and the land boom was on.
Kerouac On the Road. Cassidy at the wheel. Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass floated into town. Alan Watts hanging out at the Heart Sutra House. The names of the famous rolled off the tongue like a Who's Who compendium of the counter culture. There was no time for recording history. Besides, we were too cool. The search for dope was more important, quest than scoring. I developed smoker's cough from smoking too much weed.
My English teacher wore John Lennon glasses, talked real calm & slow, and lived in the Haight. We knew she was cool. We studied the lyrics on the Revolver album during poetry class. School was a good place to score dope. Those 10 and 15 dollar baggie lids loaded with seeds that exploded like small bombs in our cigar joints—were our mainstay. It took a whole package of Zig Zags glued together to make one cigar bomb.
We read a warning that morning glory seeds were coated with poison. Heavenly Blues turned deadly. Someone out there was playing for keeps. A friend in the slammer for dealing. Rumor of another friend turning up dead in an oil barrel in the San Rafael canal for doublecrossing a dope dealer. Hendrix dead. Joplin dead. Bobby dead. The vets. All those dead coming home in boxes.
We were the following generation. Older brothers and sisters showed us the way. Some at Berkeley, and others in the Haight. We got kicked out of Grace Slick's pad on Fell Street with the black Corinthian columns. And the strung-out hangers-on were constantly looking for the action.
At the Kent Lake Peter's Dam spillway near the Inkwell on Lagunitas Creel someone hands me some grape Koolaid. It's a hot day. Thirsty, I drink and ask for more. I don't see the winks and when I come onto it, I'm out of control. I learn about mind control because if you checked into the acid wards you were busted, man. It takes me days to come down. Mirrors and tiled floors were a real drag. Like a lying Pinnochio, my nose grows every time I look into the mirror. It takes me years before I can look into a mirror, touch grass, or drink alcohol without hallucinating. I don't know whether I've passed or failed the Koolaid Acid Test.
It's not like that was my first time with hard drugs. We tried everything at least once. On peyote, the spirits of the land came forth into air like patterned fog. I saw multiple stills of the mescaline night flicker past me in slow-mo. Time slowed down enough to enter another dimension. Rocking in a legless wicker chair, my arms like Shiva. Crack in the world and cosmic eggs.
Growing up in the valley during the 60's lessened the cultural blow. We were called Valley Rats because we grew up in an impoverished area of Marin—not like Sleepy Hollow or San Anselmo. White's Hill was the poverty dividing line. Some kids in Woodacre who thought they were hot shit didn't escape the stigma of being a Valley Rat but we had all the dope, so territorial boundaries dissolved somewhat.
The group I hung out with prided themselves on keeping my virginity intact. I was practically the last virgin left in the county. I finally had to take matters into my own hands and get it on with someone I had a crush on all through high school. He was an asshole and it cured me of him quick. His teeth glowed like neon in the moonlight.
There were two distinct groups at school; the hippies and the jocks. Even so, that line grew pretty mellow. We were all tuning in and dropping out. High school proms and football games were so uncool. We traded Zap Comix for dope.
We were the following generation. Older brothers and sisters showed us the way. Some at Berkeley, and others in the Haight. We got kicked out of Grace Slick's pad on Fell Street with the black Corinthian columns. And the strung-out hangers-on were constantly looking for the action.
At the Kent Lake Peter's Dam spillway near the Inkwell on Lagunitas Creel someone hands me some grape Koolaid. It's a hot day. Thirsty, I drink and ask for more. I don't see the winks and when I come onto it, I'm out of control. I learn about mind control because if you checked into the acid wards you were busted, man. It takes me days to come down. Mirrors and tiled floors were a real drag. Like a lying Pinnochio, my nose grows every time I look into the mirror. It takes me years before I can look into a mirror, touch grass, or drink alcohol without hallucinating. I don't know whether I've passed or failed the Koolaid Acid Test.
It's not like that was my first time with hard drugs. We tried everything at least once. On peyote, the spirits of the land came forth into air like patterned fog. I saw multiple stills of the mescaline night flicker past me in slow-mo. Time slowed down enough to enter another dimension. Rocking in a legless wicker chair, my arms like Shiva. Crack in the world and cosmic eggs.
Growing up in the valley during the 60's lessened the cultural blow. We were called Valley Rats because we grew up in an impoverished area of Marin—not like Sleepy Hollow or San Anselmo. White's Hill was the poverty dividing line. Some kids in Woodacre who thought they were hot shit didn't escape the stigma of being a Valley Rat but we had all the dope, so territorial boundaries dissolved somewhat.
The group I hung out with prided themselves on keeping my virginity intact. I was practically the last virgin left in the county. I finally had to take matters into my own hands and get it on with someone I had a crush on all through high school. He was an asshole and it cured me of him quick. His teeth glowed like neon in the moonlight.
There were two distinct groups at school; the hippies and the jocks. Even so, that line grew pretty mellow. We were all tuning in and dropping out. High school proms and football games were so uncool. We traded Zap Comix for dope.
The school narc married a friend of mine. My art teacher, Warren Fairbanks (who went to high school with my mom), later married another classmate of mine. Rachel sat next to Claudia and Claudia would roll her eyes whenever Rachel would simper at Warren. We knew what was going down. In class, she had to share about how the tie dyed sheets stained her body when she was making love. Warren flushed red, and looked like the cat who swallowed the canary. Ravi Shankar was playing live on KPFA.
We watched light shows at concerts at the Fairfax Pavillian. The Ali Akbar College of Music, where we could find Ravi behind the sitar, was right down the road from Everybody's health food store, and the Beatles sang "All you need is love." Everybody's made Time Magazine as the first health food store in the US. We made the six o'clock news for shutting down the Marin draft board.
Things got hopping on the Bolinas Mesa. Lots of writers climbed aboard Turtle Island. My boyfriend dragged me to hear Gary Snyder at College of Marin. Gary talked about my place as if he owned it; had some sort of prior right to it; and who was he— a newcomer like the rest. I thought I could write like him. What's the big deal? So I began my apprenticeship.
The Valley vigilantes erupted when the rock bands decided to throw a free concert in downtown Forest Knolls. Now that Moulton's store had burned down there wasn't much to downtown except the Valley Tavern and the old train platform. The same was true about Lagunitas. Some say the boy who set his own house on fire, killing two younger brothers, torched that building too.
The vigilantes were successful in stopping the concert but the Hell's Angels were in town. Old Man Bevan stuck a rake through one Hell's Angel's spokes. When the Angel got done with him there wasn't much left to hospitalize. Everyone started selling out. Land was subdivided. Dairies went under. One could feel the change in the wind.
Gurus and TM came to Marin. Then EST graduates and the escapees from New York and LA began massive takeover procedures. Marin never recovered from the occupation. Most of us moved on and became ex-patriots. Little did Lew Welch know when he wrote "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings" that there was nowhere else left for us to go. It was no longer a question of need. Janice Ian sang, "pave paradise and put up a parking lot;" an unofficial dirge for Marin County. Houses desecrate the sides of the goddess, Mt. Tam-Fujisan.
Ken Kesey, the Merry Prankster moves north. Sends me a couple of autographed copies of his anthology, Spit in the Ocean in trade for A New Age Aquarian Tarot deck where I work for a small press. Micaela's mother and John Cook designed the deck. We nearly got busted stealing turquoise rings for John's birthday
Gurus and TM came to Marin. Then EST graduates and the escapees from New York and LA began massive takeover procedures. Marin never recovered from the occupation. Most of us moved on and became ex-patriots. Little did Lew Welch know when he wrote "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings" that there was nowhere else left for us to go. It was no longer a question of need. Janice Ian sang, "pave paradise and put up a parking lot;" an unofficial dirge for Marin County. Houses desecrate the sides of the goddess, Mt. Tam-Fujisan.
Ken Kesey, the Merry Prankster moves north. Sends me a couple of autographed copies of his anthology, Spit in the Ocean in trade for A New Age Aquarian Tarot deck where I work for a small press. Micaela's mother and John Cook designed the deck. We nearly got busted stealing turquoise rings for John's birthday
from the Trade Fair ferryboat in Sausalito. When John Cook tried to leave the Sufis, they stopped him at the airport, placing a hand on his shoulder and said he'd die for it. His shoulder burned, an x-ray imprint of a hand, and later, the cancer.
Life magazine ran pictures of the war in full color. I could barely turn the pages. They are still etched in my mind like Hiroshima shadows. Our graduation song was The Age of Aquarius. We wore black armbands with peace symbols on them and blew soap bubbles at the spectators and sang "Let the sun shine in." After the Summer of love darkness descended.
My mother checked in and out of mental wards. She wanted me to read One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest so I could understand. MacMurphy takes on the system. Us vs. them. Shock therapy. I wait in green hospital wards for my mother dressed in a blue gown; she shuffles across the floor in paper slippers. I am fixated on the yellowed waxed white and green tiled floor with curved corners. The medication they gave her made her worse and worse. Alice and the White Rabbit were institutionalized.
One pill makes you lighter
And one pill makes you small
The ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
On the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love, I'm working with the crazies at Napa State hospital as a poet in residence. The inmates have their poems memorized. I can't remember any of my poems all the way through. I meet a friend of my mother's, an inmate, Sally Lacy, who raises an eyebrow, and wants to know what I'm doing in a place like this. I tell her I've just met several inmates I went to high school with for Christ's sake! It's like a 60's time capsule here. So, this is where they all wound up. The wounded. Do I tell them that of all the artists, poets are the most often institutionalized? Depending upon how one looks at it— maybe it's those who are locked up who are saner, closer to poetry. The nuthouses are breeding poets. The trickster Coyote has holes in his pockets.
The Summer of Love wore down like a bad pregnancy and spawned a revolution. Viet Nam. Governor Reagan brought out the National Guard at People's Park. Brothers and sisters fell. When we high school students marched on the San Rafael draft board they brought out the Guard and arrested us. We shielded our faces from the glint of the FBI's telephoto lens who took aim from the top of the Zim's Drive-in tower. Zim Boy grinning down at us. We were confused by the sudden violence. We burned draft cards and most of the boyfriends fled to Canada. Micaela, too. Phil Ochs and Country Joe singing for us, for our lovers, for us all.
And it's one, two, three, four
On the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love, I'm working with the crazies at Napa State hospital as a poet in residence. The inmates have their poems memorized. I can't remember any of my poems all the way through. I meet a friend of my mother's, an inmate, Sally Lacy, who raises an eyebrow, and wants to know what I'm doing in a place like this. I tell her I've just met several inmates I went to high school with for Christ's sake! It's like a 60's time capsule here. So, this is where they all wound up. The wounded. Do I tell them that of all the artists, poets are the most often institutionalized? Depending upon how one looks at it— maybe it's those who are locked up who are saner, closer to poetry. The nuthouses are breeding poets. The trickster Coyote has holes in his pockets.
The Summer of Love wore down like a bad pregnancy and spawned a revolution. Viet Nam. Governor Reagan brought out the National Guard at People's Park. Brothers and sisters fell. When we high school students marched on the San Rafael draft board they brought out the Guard and arrested us. We shielded our faces from the glint of the FBI's telephoto lens who took aim from the top of the Zim's Drive-in tower. Zim Boy grinning down at us. We were confused by the sudden violence. We burned draft cards and most of the boyfriends fled to Canada. Micaela, too. Phil Ochs and Country Joe singing for us, for our lovers, for us all.
And it's one, two, three, four
What are we fighting for
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn
Next stop is Viet Nam.
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
People moved to the country and joined communes like Lou Gottleib's Morning Star Ranch in Occidental, or moved farther north to the Eel River. Some moved back to the land and raised families. Grew dope. Most lost their land to taxes and government-sanctioned CAMP raids. Some eventually got tired of it. Cut off their hair. Bought suits. Joined the rat race and it is hard to remember what it was like. Jerry Rubin. Yuppies. From baby boom to baby carrots and raduccio.
People moved to the country and joined communes like Lou Gottleib's Morning Star Ranch in Occidental, or moved farther north to the Eel River. Some moved back to the land and raised families. Grew dope. Most lost their land to taxes and government-sanctioned CAMP raids. Some eventually got tired of it. Cut off their hair. Bought suits. Joined the rat race and it is hard to remember what it was like. Jerry Rubin. Yuppies. From baby boom to baby carrots and raduccio.
Bitter vets returned home like aliens from another planet. It was another planet. We all changed without them. Didn't send a forwarding address. Lennon, the last revolutionary, gunned down in New York by some crazy wanting fame and 20 years later, we like to think a revolution is brewing. Punk rock. The children conceived during that Summer of Love have come of age in an era of violence and apathy. Nicaragua. Chernobyl. Irangate. And Lew Welch, with a gun to his head, walking off into the wilderness for the last time because there was no way left to remind the planet of its smoky gentleness. Turtle Island was shaking again.
You know it's gonna be all right.
Love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
Love is all you need.
In what form will the revolution take this time around?
In what form will the revolution take this time around?
June 1987
(Pleasant Hill Ore.)
added 6/17
notes on back of hard copy
add light shows Fairfax Pavilion, what was the guy's name, shows there? Moby Grape, who else?
What happened to Steve Tristano, Scott Huntsman, JOhnny Kaufman, Mike Frank, Scott Weaver—burned out.
More S o L
A related blog post: Ken Kesey
notes on back of hard copy
add light shows Fairfax Pavilion, what was the guy's name, shows there? Moby Grape, who else?
What happened to Steve Tristano, Scott Huntsman, JOhnny Kaufman, Mike Frank, Scott Weaver—burned out.
1 comment:
Scott Huntsman died after an argument with a big rig in 2018, June 22nd. Mike Frank of a massive heart attack in the 70ties. 1994, Johnny Kaufman was still in Forest Knolls sitting in the dirt across from the old bus stop. I remember when it, the bus stop had 3 full walls before Mr. Bevens convinced people that orgies were happening there. Forest Knolls was a great place to grow up. I left in 1968 and rarely ever went back.
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