The Forest Knolls Free Store

The oddest things trigger memory. Proust was right. An advert for a reading & book party for Peter Coyote, a note on the Diggers triggered an avalanche of memory...with no purpose or storyline. A fragment, at best.

In the late 1960s, a friend of my mother's, Lynn Dutra, who was a landed/flighted Haight-Ashbury Digger, who manned the Free Store in Forest Knolls, at the top of Resaca Ave; or was it Rosario? Ron Thelin’s cabin? There really wasn't a store, just fleamarket stuff stored in boxes under the house. Not even a basement, but a crawl space under the open scaffolding of the summer cottage. So it was a store in name only.

Despite his girlish name, Lynn was anything but—he was one of these big burly brawny Viking types, reminded me of Ebbe Borregaard and was a very cool cat. I used to ride up the hill on horseback, he'd invite me to crawl around in the boxes of junk in the basement.

I still have treasures gleaned from his basement store. An etched sterling comb case and tortoise shell comp. Alas, I didn't realize this was the real deal and destroyed the tortoise shell comb. I've no idea where it's from, but it looks like an English pastoral scene on the cover of the comb. I don't remember what else I got from the Free Store, but I thought the comb was absolutely marvelous.

I remember being puzzled by the notion of Free Store, but the Bolinas Free Box (sometimes there's another one in Point Reyes) are permutation of the Free Store. I like to think that Freecycle too is a modern permutation as well.

Peter Coyote
Reading and book signing for Sleeping Where I Fall
Thursday, August 20 at 7:30 pmOut of the 60's counterculture explosion came a radical street group called the Diggers, who became the heart and soul of the Haight-Ashbury experience. Named after a group of 17th century free-thinkers in England, the Diggers dedicated themselves to building a new morality in place of the money-hungry capitalistic society, cutting through the cultural propaganda via the medium of both street theater and "free" programs. They began to distribute free food, provide free medical care and sponsor free rock concerts in Golden Gate Park featuring musicians like the Grateful Dead. They burned money, left its ashes and set out to create the condition they described. Peter Coyote's memoir, first published in 1998, recounts his time as one of the group's founders and beyond. He weaves his experiences into a collection of stories from his life in San Francisco to communes and gypsy years on the road becoming part of the Free Family.
Ordained practitioner of Zen Buddhism, activist, and actor, Peter Coyote began his work in street theater and political organizing in San Francisco. In addition to acting in 120 films, Coyote has won an Emmy for narrating the award-winning documentary Pacific Century, and he has cowritten, directed, and performed in the play Olive Pits, which won The Mime Troupe an Obie Award. He lives in Mill Valley, California.