Remembering Chicken Bill, aka William Muller

Chicken Bill Mueller at the Rancho Nicasio

William “Chicken Bill” Mueller was born in 1946, a Chicago native, he said is background was of Polish heritage, his mother’s maiden name was Irlowski. He said he got out of the Windy City by running off to join the military—probably Vietnam. Something about his draft card number coming up.

When he first came to Marin in the 1970s, he worked in construction with his friend Mike Vinceleone who owned a construction business in Larkspur. Both he and Mike were very fond of LSD. Bill also worked on the Escalle Estate Vineyards, mending fences, and running the backhoe. He said that he built many of the houseboats along the Corte Madera Creek. He also worked at a YMCA camp, and for Gort Jewelers in San Rafael. Bill was a diamond duster and dated the jeweler’s daughter.

He said something about a pimp and a pink Cadillac, and it sounds like at one point he was pretty flush, as he had credit card with $23,000 on it. I don’t know if that was debt, or value.

He got his moniker when he worked on a chicken ranch. Packs of dogs would go after his chickens. He said at one point, he killed 77 dogs, and was arrested, sent to Atascadero, and while there, he was found mentally unstable, and was drugged.

While in the asylum, he said that he learned law, fought his case to get out of prison, and won. But circumstances had drastically changed for him. The world he knew no longer existed. He lost his place on Juarez (when?) due to back taxes, etc., when he was sent to prison.

While in Santa Rosa, in 2017, he was in the Tubbs fire zone and lost everything. He said, “They made me leave in the middle of the night and I lost all my possessions. I had no papers. Nothing. I had a small trust fund, about 15k but lost it all in a bad investment.” I think what he was trying to tell me what is this when you lose all your papers you can’t prove who you are

It sounds like he lived in Forest Knolls on Juarez or Montezuma off and on during the 1970s onward. In 1977, he had a pet pig named Francis he said that the sheriff came and confiscated him…. He said that he lost most of his investment money, and any money from the sale of his property, was long gone. He was a veteran, and lived on a small VA stipend and SSI. Sometimes he stayed in Barb’s back bedroom to dry out, and take a shower, but most of the time he lived in a little camp he had created deep in the woods.

It was not easy interviewing Bill because he would never finish the story and then jump into another story, and if I tried to get him to backtrack, he would get cranky, so I just let it flow.

Trying to get Barbara Scott, who knew him best, to clarify the story was equally challenging, if not downright impossible. When Covid came along, Chicken Bill was looking in on her, taking care of her most basic needs during her year+ of isolation. If she needed heavy, lifting done or soil moved, Chicken Bill was there. He built a solar panel array for her little shed on the side of the trailer, and helped her in the community garden. Barbara left us in July of 2021.

I lost touch with Chicken Bill after that. Barbara was our only connection. Sometimes I would see him on his bicycle headed towards the San Geronimo foodbank, and we would stop and say hello, but then it was as if he just disappeared, evaporated into thin air. I didn’t see him anymore. And now I fear that they are both gone.

Fragments: Don Yurian, shooting dogs, the Weavers. I always meant to write up the story, but somehow I got distracted and now I can’t remember the thread, or the bits that I did not write down. I’ve been too far and too long from it. I would love to collect any stories you have of him and see if we can wave together a piece. Perhaps Angel? In May of 1997, according to my blog, I was at the Rancho Nicasio bar and a drunk asked me if I knew Chicken Bill, so it sounds like he was still living in Forest Knolls at the time.

This was fleshed out from my Feb 19, 2021 notes, on March 19, 2023.

Journal, Mayday memorials

5/1 May Day. Beltaine. Odd to think I walked over the bones of Campbell of Glendyon—responsible for the massacre of Glencoe—in Brugge last summer with my cousin Dave. History lives beneath the shadows of our feet. I read about Scotland because of Neil, but have given up hope of consummating the relationship I was so sure would happen. All the false signals. But my dreams are rarely wrong. What goes here? I’m tired of waiting for the dance to begin. He hasn’t time for me, this fickle Scotsman who is to return home to Johnstone within the month. I’m disappointed, I thought he had more integrity. Did I read him wrong?

I read about the highland sheep shed their winter crop for the wool mills of Flanders. The unwinding of the thread that began in the highlands to Philip of Spain and the death of Charles V that set the turmoil of boundaries, nationhood and religion into action. The Jacobites. Bonnie Prince Charlie. The blood-soaked fields. It’s been nearly 25 yeas since I saw the fields of Colloden Mór. One summer I stood in front of the statue of Willem of Orange in Leiden. This was the man my ancestral country still sheds blood over. The Orange Men. Dutch Willem (King Billy) became defacto king of Scotland. I read about the other William—Wallace, Braveheart. What has it to do with my life—other than my first boyfriend was a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce, and carried his name, plus Hamilton to the end of the 20th century. Neil was very nearly born beneath Wallace’s statue in Paisley. And Neil’s family from Tyrone were clansmen to my own family.

I awoke singing “Come Back Paddy Reilly to Balley James Duff,” only to realize my grandfather was born near Baille Sheámus Dubh, at the crossroads of Moyne, our farm: Fiora. Philip of Spain sent a relation (my uncle’s namesake), John Alexander Reilly to build a fortress in Cuba. Many of my family married back into their own Irish clans: Walsh, Reilly, Sullivan. And into Irish and Scottish clans here in San Francisco: Ward, McCarthy, O’Neill, Driscoll, Dinsmore. A distant cousin of mine, Maureen O’Neill, could pass for Neil’s sister. I like the ring of that name.

5/7 How frustrated I am by distance and bad timing. True, my phone’s been out of order for a week, but I left messages for Neil to call me at a neighbor’s. I know I can be hard to reach, but it seems I have to call him three times for his every one call, playing phone tag for weeks on end. By the time he did call, I was too distraught to pick up the phone. He’d picked up on a line of mine, repeating my message: “I’m beginning to take this personally.” I wailed for an hour, grief bubbling up, drowning me. I was so desolate I had to call someone. Verona wasn’t home. Ann Erickson was very good about listening to an inarticulate friend crying over spilt milk. I returned his call when I was more composed, it was another two days before he returned my call. His sense of timing, very different than mine. Has he any idea of the grief he’s caused me with all this waiting? Or broken dates? (Or how hard it is for me to call him once—let alone, three times—I’m weirdly old-fashioned.) I retrace the whole gambit of emotions from hope, expectation, to anger and despair, so by the time he actually calls, I’m flattened from my roller coaster emotions.

Geraldine says, “You’re blaming Neil for not calling you. You want someone to blame.” True. This is it. He’s outa my life for good. I’ve had it! I channeled my anger into cleaning my truck, inside and out, even under the hood. It took me three days. I was so savagely thorough, the truck wouldn’t start. In my cabin, I attacked piles of clutter, spring cleaning had begun. Verona called about Herman’s birthday; Neil called her wanting to know if I’d be there (I told him no), she said “Yes,” twisting my arm to come. I said I had no idea how I’d act; angry, cool. She advised, “No, no! Just be yourself. You have so much power and magnetism. Draw on it.”