The Goat Pasture & First Storm

            …The mesa was divided by a barbed wire fence that held a herd of goats. In the middle of the fenced area was a small A-frame a little bigger than a pup-tent. I asked around to find out who lived there and it was presently vacant. There were a few temporary structures from the previous year around the property that were lived in until the more permanent pueblo or hogans were built (the wickiup I mentioned was one such place). I liked the idea of living among the goats and moved into the A-frame after sharing the wickiup with a half dozen other young men for a week or two. The A-frame was comfortable, having a door on one end and a small hooded fire-pit with an adobe chimney at the other. It could comfortably sleep two people and had a larger fire-pit outside in front of the place.

            My first night sleeping in the A-frame was one of tremendous relief. At last I had a place of my own. I sat by the open fire pit and, as the coals burned down. I retired inside the A-frame, taking some of the live coals and starting a fire in the small adobe hearth at the far end of the frame. I wrote in my journal: First night… at home, high above the plain and deep inside my fortress, I will sleep well tonight. I snuffed the flame in the kerosene lamp and drifted off to sleep. I awoke just before sunrise to the sound of hooves on the roof. As I came out of the A-frame to see what was on the roof, Charley-goat, the alpha-male greeted me with a, “eh-eh-eh-a-a-ah!” It was the beginning of a testy but sweet relationship. Charley made sure that I knew exactly who was in charge of things in his pasture by sneaking up and gently butting me from behind as I walked across from the A-frame to the gate. The trick was to never react one way or another. If I were to make a break and run for it I would be run down and run down rather violently. To stand my ground and push back was an even bigger mistake because goats love the push-back. It isn’t enough to push a little and walk away. Once the push-back has been initiated you are committed until a Huey comes and med-evacs your ass.

            I was pleased with my digs and enjoyed the solitude of living in the goat pasture. There was something that felt biblical about it. One afternoon I was sitting by my fire pit and enjoying a pot of rice and beans. I looked out across the mesa and saw a very dark cloud approaching. It was at eye level and looked apocalyptic as it neared. The sky was clear otherwise but soon the thunderhead took up the whole horizon. It was ominous enough that I was struck with fear for a moment and, as a bolt of lightening burst through fifty feet from where I was sitting, I felt naked and exposed. It exploded with such force I found myself flat on the ground. The storm wasn’t done with me yet, however; bolts of lightening thundered, booming barrages like a cannonade, striking all around my spot on the mesa. Awe replaced the fear as I surrendered to the fact that there was absolutely nothing I could do… there was nowhere to run or hide. My little A-frame was the most prominent thing to cower in on the entire mesa. I saw the goats huddled, huddled down together under the piñón trees for protection from the hail stones and rain. Charlie bravely stood his ground and watched over his girls and kids. Even goats heed the call of leadership and its attendant responsibilities in the face of horror. Charlie had earned his stripes as Alpha Goat on this and countless other occasions.

            The storm passed almost as fast as it arrived. I crawled out from the cover of the A-frame; the odor of argon-electricity and fresh rainfall had wakened my senses. About that time an old bread-truck rumbled up into the parking lot between the goat pasture and the pueblo. A middle-aged man in a fringed jacket that was driving jumped out as soon as the bread-truck stopped. I walked over to check out the new arrivals. The winos at the parking lot fire pit had headed for shelter when the storm dumped its load so I was there before they could pan-handle the newcomers. I offered a greeting, “Hello…”

Sunrise in Taos

THE SUNRISE COMMUNE

            Crossing the landscape toward evening the van pulled into Taos with Maggie steering it to a house in town where her friend Magic Maya lived. The house was full of musicians that night and Magic Maya was nowhere to be found. However, we were welcome guests anyway, as a party had been going on for more than a day. There was talk of how the communes in the area were faring, enduring their first winter in the high country around Taos. Some communes seemed to be thriving while others tended to be nothing more than crash pads for dopers: there was even one house in Taos where everyone called themselves Lords and Ladies. Every fantasy was lived out in this place. The Hog Farm and The Sunrise Commune were the most open to newcomers. The Lama Buddhist Foundation in San Cristobel was even more interesting but I was told that there was no tolerance for drugs, even mind-expanding ones such as LSD or Peyote, so I figured I’d be better off at the Hog Farm or the Sunrise. It was a choice that seemed right at the time. It would be another time I’d often wondered which way my life might have gone had I chosen Lama over The Sunrise Commune.

            We crashed there at the house as bottles of Red Mountain wine laced with acid and bowls of pot, were passed around. The accompaniment of acoustic guitars and homemade flutes played wordless rhythms to the vibe of the night. It was sweet and exotic to me to lay there and listen, getting a good night’s sleep, before embarking on my adventure the next day.

            That morning Maggie drove up the hill from Arroyo Honda, about eleven miles north of Taos, to the mesa that was accessed by a one lane winding washboard and gravel road. An even narrower dirt road that was recently cut branched off past a geodesic dome to several switchbacks towards the top. A makeshift parking lot was graded out at the end of the road where all trucks and autos were parked; as none were allowed past that point. At the end of the mesa, a hundred feet from there, I could see a small complex of newly constructed adobes in a triangle formed around a small courtyard. The top of a teepee peeked out of a ravine beyond the mesa. Apparently, these people had been busy before winter set in.

            There was a group of half a dozen men sitting at a fire pit by the parking lot smoking pot and drinking wine. I thought it odd to be drinking wine that early in the morning and was put off when a scraggly, red-bearded, hippy in a buckskin fringed jacket, partially concealing a bowie knife on his belt, approached Maggie for spare change. Norm told him to fuck off. I was pleasantly surprised when Bowie so readily obliged. Norm was even shorter than this character but his boldness got him through where superior size and a huge knife didn’t count for much.

            I noticed Norm wasn’t unpacking his own stuff. I knew before Norm spoke, “I’m not staying here, we're goin’ to Questa.” He was going with Maggie.

            “Great, I kinda thought so,” I was authentically happy for this odd Spring and Autumn coupling.

            We gave each other a warm parting and Norm and Maggie drove away. The characters around the fire pit told me that I could stow my stuff in the Kiva just past the adobe. A kiva is a circular building where native ceremonial rites are performed in the Pueblo culture of the region.    I climbed down a pole, with notches hewed into it for rungs. I adjusted my eyes to the dark. A kerosene lamp lit the interior but it still took a moment to adapt my eyes to the darkness. The forms of a handful of people in the dark began taking shape. I sat and opened my pack for a bag of Bugler and rolled one for myself, offering the pouch of tobacco to one of the forms. I didn’t speak but waited for someone to start off the conversation. A fifty-gallon drum situated on the opposite side of the center circle from the ladder pole had a stove pipe joined to it providing more than adequate heat for a fairly large space.

From behind the stove a shadow spoke, “What do you call yourself?”

I peered into the dark and made out a kind face of a blond, braided-haired, man with also a braided beard. Woven into the beard braids were turquoise beads. I hadn’t considered it but I figured I could call myself anything at this point; however, I stuck to my nickname, “Max.”

“I’m Mason. Pick a spot and roll out your bag.”

Mason did most of the talking. I wanted to know more about the place. I asked about the pueblo and Mason told me about how the local Taos Pueblo Indians came up and taught the basics of making adobe and that they’d put it up last summer. “I’ll show you the forms and where we make the mud bricks when you’re ready.”

“Who designed the kiva?” I was curious about the roof.

“It is mostly a traditional Hogan style built into the ground. Are you interested in building?”

I was looking up at the roof. Twelve inch diameter logs that tapered only slightly towards the center with notches cut out to lock each one crossing over the other. “Yeh, I want to know about that roof. Is that a traditional roof?”

“Naw, the way those logs are positioned was Barry and Brian’s idea. I mean, we were all sittin’ around trying to figure out how to make a roof for this place. Brian took some six-inch nails and laid ‘em out the way you see those logs. He set them up and challenged anyone to put enough weight on ‘em to collapse them. Barry knew it would work without bolts or nails.”

“So that ladder doesn’t support the roof?” I liked this Mason guy and I suspected that he was probably the brain in the outfit. I wanted to meet more of these characters.

“You’ve got a good eye, Max.”

 The pueblo consisted of three wings in a triangle open at two ends with about three to five small rooms in each wing. It sat at the end of the mesa pointing outwards over the kiva to the land beyond. Piñón pines and prickly-pear cacti along the edges of the mesa accented the mostly cleared grassy plane. It extended miles toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains crowned by Wheeler Peak against a wild sky of swirling clouds.

Mason explained the property (about 800 acres) that The Sunrise Commune was on. It consisted of three or four mesas stretched out like fingers from the mountains to the plane below towards the Rio Grande. The Sunrise Commune had one mesa and shared another with a commune called The Cosmic Construction Company. The owner of the property was Michael Dragon and his house was on the last finger above the Rio Honda. Mason, or the others in the commune, never told me much about Michael Dragon but, from what I’d heard… picked up from here or there, the guy inherited some cash and used it to purchase the land for the purpose of opening it up to experimental communities.

The Sunrise was begun by folks around a character named Lenny Goldberg. They’d left the Mahayana Ranch, The Sunrise, in California to try again in New Mexico after city freaks, and eventually the authorities, began to move in on them. I was curious about who it was that was “the leader” in New Mexico. It didn’t seem possible that there was no single leader or authority amongst the group.

“So, how does all this get organized?” I asked.

Mason laughed, “You’ll see.” Then after a long pause he offered, “Most of our decisions affecting the group are made by the group.”

I sensed that this was bullshit. I knew, from experience, that there is always somebody that comes up with a plan and then organizes people around that plan; that the chaos I’d witnessed at Altamont happened because there was no plan or leadership. The Hell’s Angels had a plan and leadership. A handful of assholes were able to cow three-hundred-thousand disorganized and dazed hippies.

“There are no Charlie Mansons calling the shots here… if that’s what you mean. We only have one rule and that rule is love.” Mason explained.

“So, no one gets ‘vibed”’ on or off the mesa… like Zardoz?” I worried about the way the most egalitarian societies exert power and control. I could live with it if there was such a structure but wondered how it would work if there wasn’t.

Mason grinned, “You are either ‘On the Bus or Off the Bus’, you stay or leave of your own volition.” Then Mason paused a moment and added as an aside, “Look, the guys at the parking lot contribute nothing and bum enough for a jug of wine whenever a vehicle arrives. They won’t be told to leave either. They’ll get bored and move on. You don’t look like a wino. You’ll be okay here.”

I was familiar with the Ken Kesey bus ride across America but I had misgivings nonetheless about how far one could go with this philosophy for any real results.

Mason was looking me in the eye to point out, as sternly as Mason gets, “Cosmic Construction Company … on that mesa,” waving his hand north… “They have an elected council. They are trying it that way and we’re trying it this way.”

… 

Dawn... New Mexico

.... 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 on-ramp 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.
    “Yeh, well, whew! Taos…. It’s God’s Country!”
    “I heard something about free land and communes.” The tension in my gut rose as I said it.
    “Free land? Hah! Yeh, 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.
    “Yeh… you know that commune they ended up in and Peter Fonda had to make a decision to stay or go?”
    “Yeh, 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 was homesick for and 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.
    “Yeh, like… do you smoke pot or anything? Or do you have a church you go to?’ Norm piped in.
    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.”
    “Did you have a bad trip, a bummer, or something?” Norm was like a puppy tugging on a sock he couldn’t let go of.
    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 mother.
“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 before TV.”
    “I thought it might have a more ominous meaning… like, ‘This is your last chance to water your camel.’”
“Speaking of watering the camel… You guys must be hungry.” She pulled the van over to a drive-in burger joint on Broadway.
I was lost in thought, thinking how every town has a street called Broadway or Main 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-bob-hum 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 really was, and is today, was unknown to me except for the fact that I was a 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.
    “What about the God’s Eye, is that an Indian thing?” I asked as soon as we got back in the van.
    “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 white folks 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 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. She 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 actually glad for Norm because I hadn’t really seen Norm get laid through all our travels so far. I wasn’t sure whether or not 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.

The Aquarius Theater

....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 at all times.
“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’, “Yeh… 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 but Jude 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 Jude 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 another Tony and Sue get-together. I’m moving up to their ranch.”
“Oh, see you later then.” I was crushed. I didn’t mind 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 and lost a dog 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 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?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about but I do know that there are communes there that welcome people like us.” The guy toned down his claim of free land a notch.
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 limo pulled 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. Yeh … 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?”
“Yeh, I’ve heard of him.”
“Well he came up to me and thanked 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. She then 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 the 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 Bernardino 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.”

A Rainy Day

...Back at the house Sarah, Felix, Miriam and I slept together in the same bed for about a week. There was very little fooling around considering we were all in the same bed. One night, still half asleep, I felt Felix reaching over my waist from behind. I came full awake when I heard Miriam sternly insist Sarah take her hand from her breast.

The next day Miriam didn’t show up for one of her shoots and didn’t come back to the house until the afternoon after that. I had taken a job at a car wash on La Brea and thought nothing of her absence until after I got home from work. She came in the door, head hanging, with a gnarly-bearded-tall-longhaired-hippy dude.
“We have to talk,” she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the kitchen.
“Talk about what?” I felt a stabbing pain in my gut, “You with that guy?”
“I can’t hang here…” She started to explain.
“Are you with that guy?” I drilled her.
About then “That Guy” came in the kitchen.
“It’s not what you think, Max?” She began to explain.
“You gotta let go, man…” that Guy piped in.
“Let go of what? And what is it to you” I glared upward at the lanky hippy towering above me.
“We just talked…” the voice of a guilty little girl was so unlike Miriam’s.
“All night?” I was still glaring at the giant in front of him.
“Um… yes.” She offered hesitantly.
“Oh, I see.” I turned and walked out into the rain that was lightly coming down. I felt like going somewhere… anywhere but … I thought of Santa Barbara and how much I’d liked it there. I might head there.

I’d gotten as far on the Pacific Coast Highway as Topanga Canyon Blvd. before it started to get dark and the clouds thickened to let loose with a torrential downpour. I had been standing there with my thumb out for over an hour when a man in full rain-gear walking past me stopped.
“You want to get out of the rain… I have a place down over on the other side of the creek.” He pointed out the direction from where he’d come.
I was so enjoying the Bluesieness of standing in the rain in my sorrow, that I automatically responded with, “No thanks, I’m okay with the rain.”
The Rain Gear man walked to the corner of Topanga to a store and when he came back it was dumping twice as hard.
“Really, it’s okay. I’m not queer.” He stopped and gestured once more in the direction past the creek. “My wife and kid are all warm, dry and cozy with hot soup on the stove… You are welcome to it.” He gave me directions, described the house and slogged on in the rain towards home.
I stood there for another hour as the rain just kept coming. It was completely dark by this time. I stopped thinking for a minute about Miriam and the cold damp place I was standing in. I walked up to the door and knocked.
One of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen opened the door. She stood there angelically with her long ringlets of golden brown hair in a full length plain cotton dress. It was a small one-room cabin with an open loft built above for a bedroom. The daughter was a precocious girl of about four or five who immediately wanted to sit on my lap as soon as I sat down after discarding my drenched coat. I put on a robe offered in place of the soaking clothes that I’d been invited to hang high above a pot-bellied wood-burning stove. A pipe was passed and I was soon after handed a bowl of soup thick enough to be a stew. The rain pounding down above it all and the soft conversation along with the warmth of the stove was comforting.
“Where are you going?” asked the wife.
“I was thinking of Santa Barbara.”
“Are you from there?” Hubby busied himself with his bowl of soup but turned to show a gentle face as he queried.
“Santa Barbara! They have a Zoo!” the girl chimed in.
“No, I’m not from there. I just want to check it out.”
“We went to the Zoo and daddy let me pet some goats.”
“Honey, let Max eat his soup.”
“Oh, I don’t mind… really.” It was so warm and kind and nice in that room I felt as though I’d died and gone to heaven.
“What made you want to leave where you were?”
“Uh, Hollywood?”
“Yeah, if that’s where you were coming from?”
So, it went like that and we talked past the time the girl fell asleep on my lap and we talked about Altamont, Miriam, broken hearts, sorrow, crushed dreams, the military, the Navy, and hope and more smoke… lots of hope for the future and hope for the little girl. I would see some very dark days in the future but I could always point to this interlude on a rainy night in a cabin at the side of the road with a bowl of warm soup…God surely lives in these moments.

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 for me which way I was to take. Santa Barbara could wait… I had to go back and find Miriam, but I had no idea why I had to find her any more than I had any idea where I was to end up. After all, Miriam had moved on. There really 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 set 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 drug users or 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.

Hollyweird!

....Going down Sunset Blvd., Miriam and I were handed a flyer promising a free spaghetti dinner at such and such place. We decide it might be better than the Sego we’d tried to stomach the last few days and showed up at the designated time. The place was a big two-story house with a huge living room. The dining room had the wall between them knocked out and folding chairs lined up in rows, converting the space into a makeshift church. Miriam and I felt we had been deceived because the flyer said nothing about sitting through a sermon. Regardless, we took a seat and wondered how long we’d have to endure the sermon before the food was served.
A tall, slender, blond woman in her late thirties or early forties took to the podium after some hallelujahs and a few songs. She introduced herself as Sue A…; and then went into her pitch about Jesus, how there were demons out there in the streets conniving to take these souls made vulnerable by drugs to their enticements. The enticements the demons used were nothing like the ordinary admonishments against sexual misconduct and so on, but rather, her sermon focused on suicide. This was somewhat unique to me because I’d heard most of the sermons against drugs and alcohol leading towards all sorts of unsavory behaviors but I hadn’t heard this slant before.
She railed on: “These demons are around us all the time waiting. When you drop LSD a demon enters your body: the sacred Temple of God. It takes over and lets you feel powerful and wise. Just like Eve in the Garden you become Gods; until LSD’s master, Satan, decides to call you in. That is when the demon whispers in your ear; ‘you might as well not live, to die is the best answer, take your life and go to Heaven!’” then she got very serious… “And then you commit suicide. Instead of Heaven you go straight to Hell! Don’t be fooled, children!”  It, her harangue, went on and on for the better part of an hour. This woman’s husband, Tony, was the founder of a cult and a ranch outside of town somewhere. They’d entice young and vulnerable white, middle-class runaway teens or plain ole “street people”, up to the ranch to be brainwashed and sent back into town to recruit more like themselves. I was hungry but we left before dinner was served… if it was served at all. There were folks at the door, more like waifs, trying to keep us from leaving. They all had this look in their eyes of forced glee and it also looked as though they hadn’t eaten much themselves. I plowed through them like a knife through butter to a chorus of protestations leading Miriam by the hand. We had to find Norm.

We eventually ran into Norm at the free clinic on Fairfax. He had found the house he’d been talking about at Franklin and Taft. The house had been one of the early communal family houses in Hollywood. It was owned by an older gay couple whose idea was to have a sort of tribal, open-ended, place where people could live together in an experimental communal fashion. I could see that it was probably a pretty nice old Victorian place once and, as Norm promised, it had several high-ceiling rooms. The living room was large enough but was half filled with a huge, four-poster, canopied bed. The dining room had a long table that easily seated a dozen people. The kitchen was small but comfortable and all the cupboards were sloppily painted by trippers with even sloppier psychedelic themes such as rainbows and unicorns. Miriam I were offered a bedroom upstairs, shared with another couple, that had its own bath. It seemed too good to be true to be inside, with running water and all, in a bed big enough for two couples and two cots on the side.
First thing Miriam did was to run the bath water and got in the tub. The couple, Sarah and Felix, came in the bathroom and sat around her. Miriam didn’t like being watched as she bathed but let herself be appraised regardless as Sarah noted, “You have a cute body.”
“Thanks…” Miriam answered almost shyly.
I was curious… what were these two up to?
Felix added, “Your breasts are small but perfect.”
Miriam opened her mouth like she was in a dentist chair, “You wanna see my teeth too.”
They laughed. I was going to say something about wanting some privacy at this juncture but Felix continued, “… have you two ever thought about posing.”
“Posing for what?” I asked.
Sarah picked up where Felix left off, “Skin magazines…” I knew where it was going but played dumb and looked at her incredulously, “You know, magazines... nudies… X rated.”
Miriam was enthused, “How much?”
Sarah continued, “Thirty bucks an hour for women and ten bucks for men.”
Back then X rated meant what soft-core porn is now. I was interested but had some concerns, “What about a hard-on?”
Felix smirked, “You don’t have to worry about that. As long as there is no penetration it is legal to have a semi-hard-on.”
“How about my physique? I’m no Adonis.”
Sarah retorted, “It doesn’t matter. These jerk-off rags don’t even want an Adonis… except for the gay ones.”
“Yeh,” Felix added, “but you look good enough for that even.”
“How long can it last,” Miriam asked, “I mean how many times can I be in a magazine without being seen over and over?”
“Oh, you just wear wigs and change it up,” Sarah continued, “I’ve been doing it for over a year now and I still get two or three calls a week.”

So that was how Miriam got introduced to the soft-core porn industry, I opted not to do it. It wasn’t so much that I had moral scruples but I just didn’t like the idea of posing up-close and nude without getting a hard-on. It just didn’t seem natural to me. I decided to just take whatever job I could find and leave the porn business alone.
While I was on Sunset, a nice looking black girl handed a pamphlet to me promising another free dinner.
“This ain’t like that Tony and Sue deal is it?” I plead.
She laughed, “No, have you ever heard of Nicheren Buddhism?”
“No, I mean, I’ve heard some about Buddhism but what is this?”
“We meet and have a service where we just chant. No preaching.”
“Oh, I get it. I had a friend in the Navy who was into chanting something like Nam-yo-ho-renge-kyo.”
“Yes, that’s it. You’re welcome to join us for fellowship and dinner.”
She was an attractive girl… reminded me of Glenda and I was intrigued anyway because of the brief discussions I’d had with Dan and Linda back at Altamont. I showed up hoping I’d meet with the black girl but the chanting had already begun. I was handed a printout of the chant so I went along with it. I had no idea what the words meant but it didn’t seem to matter. The power of the whole group chanting was amazing to me and I found myself, not only enjoying it but, sensing a deeper reality going on. After the chanting it got what I considered somewhat silly as individuals stood to “testify” about what chanting had done for them. There was very little talk about inner-peace, clarity of mind, union with whatever, or any such nonsense. One by one, young starlets and used-car dealers, stood to tell about how they got an audition for a role in a movie or sold a high-end auto after chanting for it only a few days or weeks. They did serve a dinner too. It was spaghetti with soy meatballs.

The Wild Dog Hunter

A couple chapters down the road from Altamont, Max and one of his pals from the Speedway, Norm, are picked up by the Wild Dog Hunter:

... The further north we hitch-hiked the colder it got. Although the Bay area wasn’t exactly a tropical zone, I was no longer adapted to anything below forty degrees. The ride we got from Portland dropped us off in the middle of nowhere up the grade from the Umatilla Bridge over the Columbia River. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and we made camp among the sage finding only a stick here or there in the dark to light a campfire. Curled up in our bags we drifted off to sleep. An hour or so later the sound of dogs yapping woke me up. At first I wasn’t concerned but the sound of yapping seemed to be getting closer. Then Norm woke up.

            “What’s that?”

            “Coyotes, I guess.”

            “Shit, really?” Norm sat up looking around.

            “Nothing to be afraid of...” I tried to be reassuring. The sound of yapping seemed to be circling us. I envisioned being found in the spring… our bones scattered and sleeping bags torn up. Then I thought of the old western movies, where the “greenhorn” would get spooked by the howl of coyotes in the desert, and tried not to panic.

            “They’re getting closer.” Norm was nervous and I was getting edgy myself. I knew how sound can fool you in this semi-arid desert but the yapping did seem to be getting closer. I had never heard of anyone being harmed by coyotes but I had heard of packs of wild dogs in the desert pulling down mule deer and attacking children.

            “What do you want to do… break camp?”

            “Nothing is open in Umatilla… not even a gas station.” There was a gas station our last ride stopped at west of Umatilla on I-80.

            So Norm and I left our bags at the camp and headed down the road back towards Umatilla. A traveler spotted us and gave us a lift to Boardman hearing all about a vicious pack of wild dogs or whatever back there. We hung out at the gas station in Boardman keeping the attendant company until dawn. Making our way back in the morning and expecting to see our bags torn up within a circle of dog tracks we found no tracks besides our own. I walked out hundreds of yards from our camp finding nothing. Slightly embarrassed we stuck to the wild-dog story. “They were getting closer, eh?”

“Yeah, they sounded real close” Norm answered. “They probably gave up when we left.”

            The next ride from there was from a wild, long-haired and bearded man in an old green International pick-up truck that lived outside of Spokane before Cheney. And, as another coincidence, hunted wild dogs where the rolling wheat fields make way for pine trees and arid ground with little or no growth in between. He had us in for a dinner and a smoke or two. He told of how folks from Spokane drop off their unwanted pups in the woods around his place. “Of course, the pups grow into dogs that can do nothing less than follow their instincts, packing-up, and posing a very real danger to humans and animals alike.” He had a quad stereo hooked up to strobe lights playing, of all things, Steppenwolf. “Born to be Wi-i-i-l-lld!” blasting at us, he wanted to know what happened at Altamont.

            I explained the chaos, starting with the early dawn cue stick beatings of the folks in front of the stage, to the school buses plowing into the crowd; the rapes, the carnage on the stage and so on.

            The fellow sat there and listened, hardly saying a thing until I’d finished relating it all. Then he spoke; “So, there were three hundred thousand people at the concert?” He paused a moment as I nodded, “… and how many Hells Angels?”

            “Maybe fifty or sixty… I didn’t count.” I answered but I hadn’t anticipated what was to come next from the wild-dog hunter.

            “Why didn’t three hundred thousand people crush the mother fuckers?”

            I had no answer. I could have explained how impossible it would be to motivate that many people to do anything in synch.

            “So, all those musicians had the mikes and the amps and they calmed everybody down and let a handful of thugs run roughshod over three hundred thousand freaked out hippies!”

            “Yes.” I was beginning to get his point.

            “There was only one man with any courage out of three-hundred thousand people and he’s dead…”

            The implication was clear. Anyone still alive that didn’t try to crush those wearing Hells Angels colors after that man died on the stage was a coward. The Wild-dog Hunter didn’t have to say it. All this talk about smashing the state and revolution and three-hundred-thousand couldn't stand up to fifty or sixty... I just hung my head.

            Then I understood how the Nazis did it; how the Stalin did it and how every tyrant from before and after Genghis Khan did it.

            “Sacred off by a few wild dogs," he spat on the floor, "Give a little candy to the babies and they are jelly in your hands.” The Wild-Dog Hunter said.