Chapter 4. The Pillow Shack

I had to Photoshop it the way it was back then.

A more recent photo of Altamont.
The Pillow Shack is still there!

The pillow shack was a concession stand at the top of the bleachers where cushions were rented out to make the wooden benches more comfortable for the spectators at the races. It had a plywood front that opened-up above a counter and the pillows were stacked against the walls. While the others took refuge in the race track tower, Miriam and I set-up shop in the pillow shack. We threw all the pillows on the floor, making for quite a nice bed among the hundreds of them. We had tried staying in the tower but there was no privacy.

The tower had a large reception room below it, and above the bleachers, where the members of the press were entertained and mingled with the drivers after the races: after all, Altamont Speedway was a race track. The room had a refrigerator, grill and wet bar, with a stereo system along with a view of the whole track. It became a shelter for those we referred to as the Clean-up Crew: a collection of street people who spent their days with us wandering around the property looking for drugs.  Surprisingly, the month I was there, the drugs found on the grounds surrounding the track never abated. So, being called a Clean-up Crew pertained mostly to the diligence with which we went out to restore our stash from the day before.

Many of the fences, alongside and in the area, were demolished by the hordes of concert goers in the mad-rush the hours preceding the concert. The neighboring ranchers were understandably peeved, to say the least, at the damages incurred. Dick Carter, who was wise enough to know the PR advantages of holding the concert in the first place, was undermined and destroyed along with his neighbor’s fences. He volunteered the services of the Clean-up Crew to help-out wherever we could. It was because of one such attempt that the Crew was invited to dinner with one of the neighbors.

We showed up at the rancher’s house in a pick-up truck provided by Mr. Carter. Once inside the house, I was pleasantly surprised at how polite and kind that he, and his family, treated this scraggly bunch of hippies. We were seated at a long table with the patriarch at the head of the table. A leather-bound Book of Mormon and a Bible were on the sideboard next to the table. The rancher had seven kids ranging in age from about six years to seventeen. The oldest among them were two squeaky-clean girls and their brother, around sixteen or so. Under the boy’s shirt I could tell that the kid was built as well or better than anyone that could be seen at Muscle Beach. The Crew was all seated around the table between the seven siblings and their father, who sat at the head of the table.

Dan and Linda were considered our leaders. They sat on each side of the patriarch while mom served us all and sat at the other end of the table. There was roast beef and apple pie right out of Norman Rockwell. I was charmed by how polite and well-mannered the kids were but, most of all, how gentle and gracious the ole man and his wife were. He was not at all the stereotypical redneck or self-righteous Mormon I might have expected him to be.

This whole affair was orchestrated so that the rancher could explain why he could not accept Dick Carter’s offer to help with the fences. Still, he wanted to get to know the Crew… perhaps to evaluate what we could offer and to size up our character. He told us how impressed he had been when he’d seen us on TV the day after the concert and was touched by the volunteer spirit that we displayed. I felt more than a little shame that picking up trash that was secondary to finding drugs for me, and most of the others, except for Linda and Dan. Furthermore, that I had been tripping so heavily from the night before I needed to occupy myself doing something that day, anything, or go nuts. Still, I was touched by what I perceived as an attempt by the rancher to get to know his new neighbors.

Before the meal started the Rancher asked everyone to introduce themselves, going around the table clockwise. Nodding to me he asked, “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”

“Eh, yes… yes sir, I do…” I wanted to explain that I didn’t believe in Jesus and was certainly not Christian but I was caught off-guard by the rancher’s courteous request.

“Then, we would be honored if you would lead us in prayer.”

I felt an oddly familiar warmth as I recited the prayer. I hadn’t said that prayer out loud since I was sixteen. I felt, in the deepest part of my soul, that it no longer mattered what I believed or didn’t believe. I sat at a table where people were bound by a spirit of generosity and peace that had been missing amid of the chaos of the previous week.

The meal went very well. The hospitality offered by this straighter than straight Mormon family to this motley crew of hippies and iconoclasts of every sort, was accepted with the same grace and spirit in which it was offered.

Back at the racetrack tower awaiting us were a couple of electrical engineers and friends from Livermore who had heard of the clean-up crew. They brought up; electric heaters, hooked up strobe lights to the stereo system, food and a couple of five-gallon water bottles along with several gallons of Red Mountain wine (the tap water was unpalatable… came out the spigot black, smelling of sulfur). It was party time… several tabs of acid were put in the wine jugs and, as was the custom for some in those days, the wine jugs were passed around communally. I hadn’t had any sort of alcohol since before the acid trip on the beach in Waikiki but figured, since the sacramental acid was in the wine, it would be rude if I passed on it and accepted it as almost a religious offering. I’d also hadn’t smoked tobacco since Tripler Hospital either and, since I was drinking wine, it felt okay having a smoke also… just one… or two… mind you.

The night wore on and the sunset from the tower was as glorious as any I had seen. We had sat, drank wine, passed joints, jumped up, danced all through the night, and one by one, dropped off to curl up in sleeping bags around the electric heaters as the next evening approached.

I fell asleep dreaming of pastures and sky and visions of wide open spaces. At some point my dreaming became filled with the acrid smell of smoke. I recognized it but wanted my dreaming to go back to more the pleasant visions. The acrid smell of smoke became heavier… so heavy I tried to wake up but it was as though the weight of a smoke daemon sat on my chest… weighing me down as I struggled for each breath as much as with waking. Finally, I was able to open my eyes and register what was happening.

It was dark but I could tell somehow that the darkness was from smoke… I realized this and then started to fall back asleep a few times before the shock of it hit me. I tried shouting out… “Smoke!” but my voice constricted as though hands were at my throat…. “Fire!” … “Fire!” I crawled out of my bag… made it to a light switch… a thick, gray, acrid layer of smoke filled the room from ceiling to floor.

I made out the cause of the smoke. One of the revelers had curled up next to a space heater and his sleeping bag was smoldering. I pulled the plugs on all the heaters and shook the occupant in the bag who awoke groggily annoyed and awaking angry as I repeated over and over, “Get up! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

It was some doing to rouse everyone. I was struck by how that one sleeping bag could smolder like that without waking the guy that was in the bag. It was slightly amusing at how pissed everyone was at being awakened. Once they realized the disaster that had been averted, I was grudgingly forgiven, but no one ever ceded to me hero status because of the incident.

Miriam and I retreated from the tower back to the pillow shack afterwards. It was a cozy place on rainy days. There was no need for space heaters for us as we sank down under a sea of pillows. Miriam was a curious girl. I had a hard time figuring her age or very much more than that about her. There were times she looked to be in her early teens but her experience told me she had to be much older. She didn’t reveal much about herself in conversations that were, up to this point, minimal.

Rising up from under the pillows I looked into her dark brown eyes beneath heavy eyebrows framed by short curly golden-brown hair. Her guarded stoicism caused me to suspect she had done time of one sort or another

I asked, “Have you ever been in jail?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, locked up… click, click … keys and bars.”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Fair question… I just sense it about you… it intrigues me. We have been in this pillow shack for some time and I know next to nothing about you.”

“How am I supposed to get a word in… All you do is talk about yourself… eh?” she tickled me under my ribs and laughed but something about her laugh was heavy … not bitter … sort of sad, I thought.

“Yah… well… you’re right. I do talk about myself but I am curious about you now.”

“A cat… you are a curious cat… hey, cat in the hat… What you wanna know about me?” She plopped a pillow on my head for a hat and laughed from her heart.

“Well… were you?”

“In jail? No.”

“In prison?”

“No.” She scrunched up her face and made her eyes cross under her thick lenses… “But I have been in a nut house.”

“How did that happen?”

“My dad committed me… Napa State.”

“Horrible… How? … Your dad? … What for? … Why?”

“It is a long story but it wasn’t so bad. I needed it and, yes, sometimes I miss it.”

“Really? I don’t get it.”

“I found God there…”

“Oh no… I didn’t mind you being a nut… a macadamia, a cashew, a walnut, f’chrissakes, but not a religious nut.”

“Oh yes, I am a holy rollin’ religious nut… what you gonna do about it… convert me to hedonistic despair?”

“So, you believe in God. No big deal. I believe sort of… not in a sky-bound Grandfather holding a good cloud for me when I die… but maybe… why not?”

“It isn’t idle speculation for me. I would still be locked up if it weren’t for God.”

“How did that happen?”

“They had me so fucked up on Thorazine… You ever see one of those Russian Dolls… One doll inside the other… on down to the tiniest they can go?”

“Yah…”

“Well I was down to that with a shell over a shell over a shell and I couldn’t get out. They kept me on that damned Thorazine … I could hardly move.”

I hadn’t heard her talk this passionately about anything. Still, I couldn’t let her off that easily… “How did God get you out of there?”

She crossed her eyes again and scrunched up her face, “One day He just walked in the door and handed me the keys, Max.”

I stepped out the door to the shack watching “the kid”, Norman, coming towards the shack.

Norman was no more than sixteen and looked it with his unkempt shoulder length blondish hair framed an almost angelic face. Later, I would appreciate Norman’s street smarts and, while I was older and could have been a mentor for the kid, it was obvious to me to determine who was mentoring whom.

“Hey Max, I’m going to Portland in the morning… you and Miriam wanna go with me?”

“How are you getting there?”

Norm held up his thumb and smirked a, “Duh!” gesture.

I glanced at Miriam… she smiled at Norm and saying “No, I’d rather stay here a few more weeks with the gang… Big Mama and Linda need some female energy around this place.”

It was true. Popular media often promotes the impression that the sixties were about free love and free love meant one big orgy. Perhaps this was the case on college campuses but the usual situation for street people was that the streets were populated mostly by young males… convicts, draft dodgers, and runaways from middle class suburban homes or mental institutions. Young women were generally not out there hitch-hiking around the country. In discussing the phenomena Miriam pointed out, “Men don’t have to find a place every month to do something about panhandling up a box of Tampons. Men aren’t the ones who get knocked up and have kids that need to be tended to.”

“Oh, hadn’t thought of that.”

The clean-up crew consisted of a dozen young men and three women. I found it peculiar that there was always a woman in any hippy group referred to as “Big Mama”. In this case Big Mama wasn’t all that big but she was very maternal and she helped make sure that there was always at least a pot of beans or spuds on the stove. Big Mama was also gay and so none of the young males were getting any action from her. Dan had Linda and I had Mariam… the rest had to pound one out or forget about sex entirely.

I wasn’t ever very sure exactly how this counter-culture deal went down for sexual relations. My observations did not agree with anything that was put out there by the media… alternative or mainstream. The impression I got from afar, when I was overseas, was that everyone States-side was hopping around like crazy sex-bunnies but I simply had not seen any of that sort of thing happening very much at all. On the surface, I didn’t want to be possessive of Miriam and take on the traditional role of a monogamous relationship but, in my heart, I wasn’t so sure I could cope with it if Miriam wasn’t my girl… my girl exclusively. Still, I tried to be open to her making her own choices and, hell, I’d only known her a few weeks anyway.