Chapter 8. Taos (& The Free-Land Movement)

The Rio Grande Gorge West of Taos

I awoke on the couch. My clothes were dry and folded. After dressing I stepped out on the porch as quietly as I could, hoping not to awaken anyone. When I got out to the highway the decision was already made which way I was to take. Santa Barbara could wait… I had to go back and find Miriam, but I didn't know why I had to find her any more than I had any idea what I'd do if I did. After all, Miriam had moved on. There was nothing in Hollywood for me but I found myself back at Franklin and Taft. At the house, Sarah and Felix didn’t want a single bed partner, so I set up a cozy little den in a closet under the stairs. I went back to work at the car wash to bring in a few bucks at minimum wage.

The house had become a metaphor for what had happened to the so-called counter-culture of the sixties. What might have started out as a wonderful experiment with communal living turned into little more than a crash-pad for addicts. The creativity that began the idea had moved on. Most evenings found me in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, disillusioned and waiting for something to happen out of the ordinary… something that might hold some promise for me. Norm convinced me that I could do better panhandling for Green Power, or selling the Free Press at stop lights, than the minimum wage I was pulling in at the car wash.

Green power was a scheme to support ventures like the Free Clinic, free meals, and shelter by utilizing the street peoples’ talent for panhandling.

In the spirit of the day, the deal was that you got an official Green Power can and split the take 50/50 with Green Power on the honor system.

Of course, Norm and his ilk never parted with any of his take but that was the concept.

When I objected, “Ain’t what you’re doing called stealing?”

Norm said, "Stealing, Fuck no. You ever hear of a place to crash or any place to eat, sponsored by green power?"

I had no answer. I laughed, “Do cans of Sego at the free church count?”

“Okay then, it ain’t stealing if you scam a con.”

There it was as clear as day. Anyone stupid enough to scam people using Norm was in for some payback.

On one of those days Norm and I were at Fairfax and Sunset hitching a ride when a white German Sheppard ambled up to me with a crushed coke can in its mouth. The dog dropped the can at my feet and looked up at me with a pair of “Do you wanna play?” eyes that were hard to refuse. I tossed the can down the sidewalk and the dog happily returned it, dropping the can at my feet dutifully. This went on for a while and people began making kind gestures and dropping coin in the Green Power can I held in my hand.

“What’s the dog’s name?” asked a nicely dressed woman who would not have ever stopped to give a dime to a hippy otherwise.

I responded immediately saying, “Jude,” I loved the Beatles tune ‘Hey Jude’, “Yah… that’s his name… could you donate for some dog food?”

Jude turned out to be a boon until Norm and I got home and opened a can of dog food. Norm had lifted a couple of steaks from the grocery store on the way back to the pad. Jude must have known... he would have nothing to do with dog food out of a can as long as there was a chance of getting his teeth into one of those steaks.

Jude stayed with us for about a week and helped us out with panhandling. I had learned to tuck a steak or two into my pants on the way home every evening for Jude and was saddened when he took off one day and never returned.

It was the day after Jude didn’t return to the house I ran into Miriam at the market. She was friendly enough as she explained, “Max, I went to a Tony and Sue get-together. I’m moving up to their ranch.”

“Oh, see you later then,” my heart broke. I’d accepted losing her to another man but this cult seemed too weird for me. I was surprised and disappointed that a street-smart girl like her would fall for it. Damn, I thought, I lost a girl, gained a dog in her place and lost a dog and her all in a couple of weeks!

One place Norm and I found profitable for panhandling was the Aquarian Theater where “Hair” was playing. It was while we were there that conversation turned to New Mexico. I was burned out with L.A. but had nowhere else to go. The word on the street was that there were rural Free Land communes in New Mexico that welcomed refugees from Urbania. My ears perked as one freaky looking hippy told of the mountains and untouched land there free to anyone who wanted to settle it.

“What do you mean?” I queried, “There’s no such thing as free land unless you are talking about homesteading… do they still do that?”

The guy toned down his claim of free land a notch, “I don’t know what you’re talking about but I do know that there are communes there that welcome people like us.”

I then asked him, “Have you been there?”

“Naw, but a friend of mine knows someone who…”

Norm came running up to me excited and gesturing, “Hey, you wouldn’t believe what just happened.”

A little annoyed at the interruption I sniped, “What happened Norm?”

“See, this limo pulls up to the curb where I was standing and this dude with a bald head gets out of the back seat and asks me if I have any change for the phone… I’m lookin’ at him and wondering why this guy needs change from me when he probably has some kind of radio thing in the limo… just then… like he was reading my mind he says, ‘Some calls gotta be made by payphone and I don’t carry change’.”

Sounds bizarre…but interesting enough, I thought that was the whole story and turned to hear more about New Mexico.

“But that ain’t the end of it. I give him a quarter and, while he makes his phone call the driver comes up to me and says; ‘Do you know who that is?’ and I say no… who is he?”

There was a pause… I was getting annoyed… New Mexico was waiting.

“The driver tells me the guy is Otto Preminger. Yah … Otto-fuckin’-Preminger!”

“Really?” I countered sarcastically. Man, I wasn’t impressed with celebrities and, besides, everyone pretended to be one in Hollyweird. I was surprised to hear Norm talking like this.

“But this is the good part…” Norm was excited and Norm wasn’t the type to get excited over nothing, “The good part is that this guy, Otto Preminger… you’ve heard of him, haven’t you?”

“Yah, I’ve heard of him.”

“Well he comes up to me and thanks me for helping him out and then he gives me this card…” He flashed the card in my face so that I could see clearly the name, Otto Preminger, printed on the front with an address scribbled on the back. “So, he says to get a few friends and show up at this lot and we’ll be guaranteed parts as extras in a movie he is making… a Western or something.”

“Yes, sounds good…”

“They pay extras good too… Union scale!”

The hippy guy added, “Count me in. Union scale is five hundred a day for extras.”

I scratched my chin, “I didn’t know Otto Preminger was still alive… did he ever make a Western?”

Norm had gotten hold of three hits of acid so we dropped it to celebrate our luck.

I had, on several occasions, wondered what would have happened had I followed through with the Otto Preminger shoot instead of dropping that tab of acid that night. You just never know where acid is going to take you. Sometimes it would be just another trip like the several before it. Other times, an acid trip would have you making decisions that would turn your life inside out and upside down.

Norm and I ended up at the Taft House tripping through the night. Sarah was drinking wine, doing reds and ranting on about how Charlie Manson and his family were “set-up by the PIGS”. She’d finally taken one too many reds and pulls off the gallon jug of Red Mountain. Then she needed to be walked all night to keep her conscious. Felix took her before dawn to the hospital emergency room and dropped her off. In those days, most people who died from overdoses did so because their friends were afraid of the repercussions with the law for just being with someone who’d OD’d. Of course, ya just didn’t want emergency vehicles or police at your house.

That was the last bit of drama I could take in ole Hollyweird. As the sun rose we headed out to the freeway onramp on Sunset & 101 and put out our thumbs. There wasn’t any discussion about it but we both knew it was New Mexico, Taos. Otto Preminger would have to do without Norm and me. Once we got past San Berdoo it was easier to see the wisdom of our choice as the desert opened-up before us. I had never been in the Southwest desert and Interstate 10 took us right smack dab through the most magnificent parts of the desert landscape. I felt a growing peace the further the highway took us from L.A. The sunset spread a crimson glow across the sky highlighting the Saguaro’s. They seemed to raise arms greeting us… welcoming us home like the prodigal sons. Conversely, they could just as well have been saying, “Halt! Stop before it’s too late.”

We rode through the night and dawn found us in Las Cruces, New Mexico, hitching a ride north on Interstate-25.

We stood at that onramp that morning for a couple hours until a canvas topped, twenty-one window, Volkswagen van pulled over, driven by a forty or fifty something, weathered skinned, blond woman (with gray roots) wearing a ton of silver and turquoise jewelry… necklaces, rings and wrist bands.

“So, where you kids goin’?’” she called out, opening the sliding side door to the back of the bus.

“Taos!” I called back.

“Well, get in. I’m goin’ beyond Taos but I have friends there and planned-on stoppin’ overnight anyway.”

The van roared off and she introduced herself. “I’m Maggie… what do they call you?”

“Hi, Maggie, I’m Norman and this is my friend, Max.”

“Do you know anyone in Taos?”

“No, never been there.” I liked the idea that she knew people in Taos.

“Do you know anything about Taos?” she had this air of knowing about her.

“What do you mean?” I tried to figure her line of questioning. I felt tense in anticipation.

“Yah, well, whew! Taos…. It’s God’s Country!”

The tension in my gut rose as I said, “I heard something about free-land and communes.”

“Free land? Hah! Yah, there are communes… New Buffalo of Easy Rider fame, Hog Farm, Rising Star, and a couple of others that amount to nothing more than communal crash-pads around town.” She named them off with a familiarity I found soothing but the tension was still there.

“What do you mean Easy Rider fame?” It was one of those movies I saw back in Waikiki.

“Yah… you know that commune they ended up at. Peter Fonda had to make a decision to stay or go?”

“Yah, it was the turning point in the flick.”

“Well, it was shot there at New Buffalo and that nude scene in the hot spring was shot at the old stage coach crossing on the Rio Grande.” She wanted to say more but I interrupted.

“No free-land then?” I really didn’t care who or what was in a movie.

“None that I know of. But a couple of the communes I mentioned are open to newcomers.”

There was something homey about Maggie. She seemed the kind of good-natured and strong women I’d grown up with in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. They were different from L.A. or San Francisco people, men or women. Completely absent from her attitude was any pretension towards snobbery that I found refreshing. The tension was gone now and I could relax once I heard a more realistic appraisal of the situation.

“What’s with that?” I asked, pointing to a cross with colored yarn wound or woven around it, dangling from the rear-view mirror.

“Oh, that’s a God’s Eye.” She was grinning.

“You religious?” I was comfortable asking what I would have considered an all-too-personal question otherwise.

“You mean a church or something?” Her face lit up.

Norm butted in, “Yah, like… do you smoke pot or anything? Or do you have a church you go to?’

I could tell she loved where the conversation was going and she seemed so warm and genuine with Norm… maternal.

She gestured broadly; her whole arm jangling with turquoise and silver, “This, my dear friends, is my church. We are driving through to the high altar of the most sacred country… the church of my religion.” She then let out a, “Whoopee!” that caught me off-guard.

Laughing I said, “I want what you are on lady!”

“No,” she directed her answer to Norm. “I smoked plenty up ‘til a few years ago.”

“You don’t get high?” Norm was authentically puzzled.

“I didn’t say I don’t get high… I just don’t smoke pot.” It was getting warm so she wiggled out of the fringed vest as she was driving. I noticed she had some pretty substantial boobs hanging bra-less under a tank top. I paused a moment and wondered if this were going to be one of those great rides where everybody gets laid and so on.

“…Acid, then?” Norm probed further.

She gave him a sweet smile as she answered, “No, dear… I got tired of taking the same trip over and over again.”

Norm was like a puppy tugging on a sock he couldn’t let go of, “Did you have a bad trip, a bummer, or something?”

Her gaze was off to the horizon as she spoke, “I was a black-jack dealer in Vegas. I drank after work but never on the job. It got to be a problem… Smoked pot a lot too.”

“But you quit?”

I let Norm do all the questioning but I was listening and paying attention as the open, broad, vista of the Rio Grande cutting its way through basalt cliffs spread out before the plane, back-dropped by purple-ish mountains far beyond.

“You quit just like that?”

“No… not just like that. I got my ass away from Vegas… for one thing.” I realized I was appraising her body: Firm, lithe and energetic for her age. Hell, she could even be sixty but she looked more like forty. Under the arms of her tank top I saw the fleshy white underside orb of her right breast and decided it wouldn’t be so bad to do her even though she was old enough to be my gramma.

“I got some money from an insurance settlement and bought forty acres up by Questa… north of Taos. Man, if you guys haven’t been to Taos you are in for a treat.” I heard her saying. My thoughts turned back from the perpetual horny I’d been feeling since we got in the van back in Las Cruces.

“This is the country settled by Kit Carson and over the hills that way is Lincoln County where Pat garret and Billy the Kid…” She waved her hand toward the east as we were entering Truth or Consequences.

“Was this town named after the TV show or was the TV show named after it?” I was only kidding.

“You got it. It was a spa town called Hot Springs before 1950. Ralph Edwards visited the place so they named the town after his radio show.”

“I thought it might have a more ominous meaning… like, ‘This is your last chance to water your camel.’” Norman laughed.

She pulled the van over to a drive-in burger joint on Broadway, “Speaking of watering the camel… You guys must be hungry.”

I was lost in thought, thinking how every town has a street called Broadway or Main Street and this one had both. The streets were all broad and dusty looking in a semi-arid landscape that took some getting used to for me. Still, I could see in the older buildings the images I’d grown up with from Western movies. I started singing… “Gettie-up, gettie-up… hum-boppa-hum-boppa… mao-mao… My baby loves those Western movies…”

Hamburgers dripping with grease and fries hit the spot. Norm dove into his greasy brown-paper-bag only to come up for air to ask, “I figured you for a vegetarian or something.”

“Naw, I like red meat too much to give it up.” She said, as I felt a strong stirring in my groin with her mentioning red meat. Norm was grinning too.

Seeing New Mexico and being reminded that this was the Wild West I’d imagined with my childhood heroes, Billy the Kid and Kit Carson, stirred me. So much of what it was in reality, and is today, was unknown to me except for the fact that I was born a Westerner myself and I’d come from folks who were part of that history. This thought brought me back to the God’s Eye hanging on Maggie’s rear-view mirror.

I asked as soon as we got back in the van, “What about the God’s Eye, is that an Indian thing?”

“Yes… easy enough to make, eh?”

“What about the Indians? I saw some in San Francisco when I was there…. Y’know, Alcatraz and all that? Still goin’ on as far as I know.”

“What about ‘em?”

“I mean, what I know of Indians is from what I grew up with in Spokane: Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce, Generals Howard, General Miles and so on. I had an Indian friend who was a boxer, Danny Broncho. But really, I don’t know much and Indian stuff is all over this place.” My curiosity was authentic and ran deep. I realized that I had neglected or dismissed a whole people and that the very place I’d been raised was once the land of a tribe, a people, a nation shoved aside and forgotten in the tide of history.

“Well, you know, the Taos Pueblo people have lived on the same land for centuries before Europeans got here. They consider themselves stewards of the land.” There was nothing preachy about the way she said it and I wanted to know more.

“Max and I were going to be extras in a Western by Otto Preminger but we came out here to play cowboys and Indians instead.” Norm chimed in.

I told her about Otto Preminger… or the guy who said he was. She listened to it all, how we ended up heading for New Mexico, and then said, “Well, kiddos, you came to the right place. This here place is for those who have nowhere else to go from Billy the Kid, Kit Carson to the Spaniards who came up here looking for El Dorado. You might not stay and you might not ever come back, but your heart will never leave this place if the Spirit sent you.” When she said Spirit, she waved her arm over the landscape of sage and sand spliced through by a magical hand with hills and mountains… letting go of the steering wheel as the van barreled along the highway. Crossing over and back across white lines like the way the highway crossed the Rio Grande along the way… she drove seemingly unaware that the machine had any need for her guidance.

We got to Albuquerque as the sun was setting. Maggie stopped at a motel and rented a room. I had my hopes up but she told us we could stay in the van. The three of us sat in the room, ate some piñón nuts and so on but I could see that she was more interested in Norm than me: she and Norm were touching, gently fondling and squeezing each other there on the bed. I was glad for Norm because I hadn’t seen Norm get laid through all our travels so far. I wasn’t sure whether she was in for a threesome but I knew that I wasn’t. Everything was okay with me as it was. I retired to the van and let the children play.

That morning found us traveling further north and the further north we went the more mystical the landscape became. Approaching Santa Fe, the Sangre de Cristo range hovered in the background as sacred as the blood of Christ. Being raised Catholic, the transformative power and meaning of the blood of Christ was not foreign to me.

Maggie and Norm hit it off so well the night before that Maggie wanted to spring for a lunch in Santa Fe at The Pink; an, other-era real sit-down, restaurant. The setting was old adobe and rich with atmosphere that had me transfixed; I was home at last. It warmed me as much as my companions and the anticipation of what was to come.