Chapter 6. Spokane

The further North we went 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 took 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 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 yip-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, in which 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.

Norm and I, like brave outdoorsmen, left our bags at the camp and headed down the road back towards Umatilla. A midnight traveler gave us a lift to Boardman hearing all about a vicious pack of wild dogs, or whatever, back there. We hung out at the only 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 foot-prints in the snow besides our own. I walked out hundreds of yards from our camp finding nothing.

Slightly embarrassed, I stuck to the wild-dog story, saying, “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 animals and humans alike.” He had a quad stereo hooked up to strobe lights playing, of all things, Steppenwolf. “Born to be WI…ILD!” 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 mics 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 anyone wearing Hells Angels colors after that man died on the stage was a coward. The Wild-dog Hunter didn’t have to say it. 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.

“Give a little candy to the babies and they are jelly in your hands.” The Wild-Dog Hunter said.

The Wild-Dog Hunter dropped us off in downtown Spokane a block or two from the Greyhound station. It was the part of town where the railroads were elevated before what was to become Riverside Park after the 1972 Expo. It consisted of three blocks of skid row up from the elevated tracks by the river to First Avenue. There was slush on the ground and my feet were cold wet and numb having only a pair of boots made more for looks than hiking in the damp and cold to ward of the chill.  We hoofed it up to Sprague Avenue hoping to hitch a ride. Walking out as far as the Dishman Hills, I was pleased to see that the Two Swabbies’ Army Navy Surplus store was still in business. I bought a pair of surplus Army boots and some wool socks. Finding a Navy pea-coat, wool watch cap, and navy-blue wool sweater, my mood was lifted by the familiarity of the clothing and warm feet... at last, I believed in that things were going to be fine from then on. My happy feet were ready to go now.

Norm was accommodating. He never complained. He had shot-up all his smack and was going through mild withdrawals but hardly ever complained about that either. I was afraid my pal might be a junkie but it turned out, I noticed, that some people can turn away from hard-core addicting drugs just like that and hardly miss it at all. As for me, sure that had I shot-up or snorted heroine long enough, like one or two times more, I would be hooked and there would be no end to it. I was finding it so true with alcohol and more so because I never kidded myself about the recreational use of heroin.

 We showed up at the door of my family’s home in Veradale, road weary and ready for rest. My folks were congenial enough and they listened as I related the story of what went down at Altamont. They had vaguely heard of it on the evening news but had no idea how big the event was. Some newspapers reported as many 500,000 attended while others as little as 80,000. Some played it up as “Woodstock West Gone Wild” while others hardly gave it note at all. The conversation around the dinner table turned and it went like this:

“So, are you going to settle down in Spokane now?” Mom asked.

“No, we’re going back to California. I’ve got to get back to my people,” I explained. Dad sat there with the sort of disappointment etched on his face that only a dad can feel for a wayward son.

“You know,” Dad spoke up, “You can go to school on the G.I. Bill at Spokane Community College.”

“I might do that later but I’ve got to get this out of my blood now.” I started to go into a narrative about “seeing America” and how a lot was going on now that I wanted to be a part of. I made casual mention of “My People” as though the whole Hippy Generation of Peace & Love was one spiritual body moving towards the future and that; jobs, careers, family and such, were not only being redefined but damned near irrelevant. The fact that I had little or no interest in any kind of peace movement was beside the point.

Dad made this one last stab at reaching through to me, “There is a spot open at Kaisers and I can get you in the machine shop easy enough.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever do that, Dad.” I was almost sneering at this point and, if I could have seen the hurt I was causing my father, it would not have mattered.

Mom butted in at this point, “What are you going to do when you are old? What will ‘Your People’ do for you then?”

“We’ll help each other, Mom. It’s incredible out there. We’re changing the world and, besides, when my people’s backs are up against the wall… we’ll be together!”

How incredulous this had to have seemed to my Mom and Dad whose lives had been completely devoted to family through the Great Depression and WWII. I had no idea how deeply my comments cut at the time but my fervor for something new... a hidden alternative social reality… was driven by a passion that ignored compassion as much as reason and went straight for blood at any hint of an argument.

After that initial confrontation Norm and I were treated as welcome guests. Dad showed off his trophy moose antlers from a recent hunting trip in Canada. We sat at the bar in the rec-room, played pool and Dad played his harmonica. He gave me a harmonica that he wasn’t using and tried to teach me some tunes but I wanted to play it like Bob Dylan. He also gave us some sausages (made from the moose the antlers had once belonged to) for our journey (whose antlers hung over the fireplace in the basement rec-room). We affectionately referred to it as Minnesota Moose Mung while on the road.

Mom and Dad weren’t sure what Norm and I had in common. Norm was so young and effeminate looking that they might have figured something strange was going on between us. The subject was not breached but Mom was likely relieved that we slept on separate beds and in separate rooms. After a few days, they drove us downtown where we could hitch a ride south. I felt the chill of icy roads and wondered why I was ever leaving that home for this adventure.

Our first ride got us as far as Richland and we were stranded there for half a day. It was getting towards the afternoon when I started practicing on the harmonica. I wanted it to sound bluesy but all I could manage was noise. About that time a big-rig pulled up; “How far you goin’?”  Norm called out as the driver reached over opening the passenger door.

“Depends, can he play that thing?” He pointed to me.

Norm’s enthusiasm embarrassed me, “Sure! He damned-well can play it.”

“I’m going straight through to Stockton and I need to stay awake.”

Hell, I couldn’t do anything but make noise on that damned harmonica but the driver didn’t care at all.

“Can you play ‘Red River Valley’?” the driver shouted over the noise of the diesel as we climbed aboard.

“I know the tune but I got to tell you right off I’m just learning to use this thing.” I admitted.

“Make yourselves comfortable… we’ve got a-long-ways to go tonight.” He motioned to Norm to crawl through the curtains to the sleeper bed in back.

“You can sit up here.” He wanted me up front with him... “I don’t give a shit if you can play or not. I just need some noise to keep my eyes open.”

“Okay then, you’ve got yourself some noise.”

By the time the rig dropped us off in Stockton I had learned to play “Red River Valley”. The ride was as wild as the I-97 through central Oregon. The two-lane highway was icy and completely sheeted-over with ice or blanketed with packed snow. This didn’t slow down the trucker one bit. I’d never seen anyone drive like that and I likely never will either. The guy handled that rig on those roads like he was a formula-1 racer, yet, I rarely felt my life was in danger. Passing rigs and slowing only when he suspected a speed trap, the driver chain smoked and coached me with his song through the long night. Arriving at the race track I was pleased Miriam was still there for me. We made up for lost time in the pillow shack and life was indeed good once more.

Most of the cleanup-crew had drifted off but Dan and Linda were still in the trailer. The company it was rented from had either forgotten about it or been waiting for somebody to return it. There were activities for what was left of the clean-up crew at the race track. One of the most enjoyable tasks was the dirt-bike races held on a track that was tricked-out with jumps, puddles and mud-holes, inside the oval of the quarter-midget track. A few of us volunteered to be red-flagmen. It was dirty, muddy, noisy and sometimes dangerous work, pulling bikes and bikers, from mud-holes after spills and waving the red flags until all was clear. Other times there were parties with a catered full-bar at the tower with the drivers and their dates or wives.

Miriam and Norm got along so well that we talked of going to L.A. together. We agreed that the race track gig was winding down and there was increasingly less for us to do there. Norm and I had a bond that happens on the road; standing in rain or sleet at a freeway entrance with a sign and a common destination. Miriam and Norm possessed combined street smarts that was tempered so very slightly by my age. I was twenty-three but may as well have been a white haired old man compared to my companions. Anyone seeing us could have imagined that I might be their leader or guru. However, Norm and Miriam had no use for a leader or guru and, even at times when I felt paternal towards them, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t my wisdom or age that carried the day.

“Is it warmer in L.A.?” I was huddled with Miriam under a blanket… it was drizzling wet outside the shack.

“Gotta be drier than this.” Norm answered, shivering in a corner from the other side of the shack.

“I’m ready for a change,” Miriam threw in, “the food is getting scarcer here and things are getting back to normal at the track. I have a feeling that Mr. Carter will have us out of here soon anyway.”

“Anybody been in L.A. at all… is there anything there?” I looked at Norm who shot back with another one of his, Duh, smirks. People like Norm make a place for themselves no matter where they are.

“I know of a house in Hollywood… sort of a commune… a big place.” Norm offered.

“How many people are there?” Miriam asked.

“Last time I was there it was like a family… about twenty. It had several rooms… pretty nice place really.” 

Chapter 5. A Long and Winding Road

I’m addicted to hitch-hiking: at least I was back then. Hitch-hiking, standing at a freeway entrance waiting for a ride, became a Zen exercise of letting go of expectations and restraints of time. The next ride was it... never knowing where or how far it was going, who’s driving or what their motives were for picking up complete strangers. In the late sixties and early seventies, it had been easy to get around because our hair and clothes were a uniform that said, I’m cool and part of the alternative culture. It was an extension of the beat generation: On the Road or Dharma Bums (that very few had read), with everything, all one’s worldly possessions, in a bedroll and backpack.

Standing at a freeway entrance in Stockton, I couldn’t remember whether Norman had told me why he needed to go to Portland. I laughed when I thought of it….

“What’s so funny?” Norm asked.

“I was just thinkin’… what are we going to Portland for anyway?”

Kicking a rock across the pavement Norm was quiet… like he hadn’t given it any thought at all. “Uh, well… my folks live there… a little town south of Portland, Bethany. I have some stuff there I’d like to get.”

“Oh, okay… I was just wondering.” A few more cars went by, mostly workers… not going any distance. “My folks live in Spokane… figure maybe I’ll head up there after Portland… Are you planning on staying there?”

“Maybe, but they’re just foster parents. I don’t really care for them all that much.”

“Oh? Where are your real folks?”

“Don’t know… well, moms a bartender in Salem but… haven’t seen her since I was… oh, about eight.” He answered as though he were talking about somebody else’s life.

“Sorry, how about your dad?” before he could answer, an extended cab pick-up pulled up with a couple of characters in the front seat.

One opened the passenger side door, “Throw your bags in the back and jump in up here.”

I started to open the back door. 
Norm grabbed my arm… “Hold it Max.” And then, “Forget it dude!”

The wheels screeched as the wagon burned rubber on up the ramp.

“What happened there?” I hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

“I never just throw my bag in the back before I get my ass in a damned car. 'Sides, those guys looked queer anyway.”

I had to chalk that one up for Norm.

The trip to Portland was uneventful but Norman had us take a side trip to Bethany, just south of Portland. Bethany was such a small town… it had no center. It was a bedroom community of suburban houses a couple miles hike from the freeway mixed with older country, white-picket-fenced, cottages and much older farm houses. I felt uncomfortable, knowing that a couple of hippies on foot wouldn’t go unnoticed. Sure enough, within a half hour a patrol car pulled up to us and asked for I.D.’s. I had my  DD-214, separation papers, folded-up in my wallet but Norm had no I.D. at all. The officer wanted to know where we were going, Norm gave the address of his foster parents and a name that may or may not have been his. That satisfied the officer sufficiently to let us go.

We arrived at the address (Norm's foster parents home) but, instead of going to the front door, Norm went straight to a basement window at the side of the house. He picked up a rock, smashed it and started to crawl in.

I stopped him, whispering; “Hey, what are you doin'?”

“No one’s home,” Norm answered in a hushed voice.

I looked around, “Why didn’t you knock first and find out?”  We were behind some bushes and out of sight from the street but we could have been seen approaching the house.

He looked back at me with that familiar, Duh, smirk. “You stay here and keep watch for me… I’ll be right back.”

Damn, I thought, I’m standing watch while this kid burglarizes his own house… um, not his house… his foster parents house! A cop already knows we are in town and that this address is where we are headed! Shit! How do I get into these things? I pictured myself locked up for…

“Hey, grab this bag!” Norm called from another window on the main floor.

I took the pillow-case he handed down to me as Norm plopped down on the ground from the window. It felt like it might have had jewelry and something metal.

Norm led the way down a creek bed, “this is one of my old escape routes. The creek runs all the way to the freeway.”

 We stopped to rest as Norm went through the pillow-case stuffing its contents into his back pack. I saw a nice looking twenty-two revolver and realized that Norm was taking more than just his stuff from the house. I had no more questions.

“Shit, they must have found another hiding place for their petty cash somewhere else. I could only come up with this.” Scattering the contents of some envelopes he spread out a handful of twenties, tens, fives and some ones. It came to around a hundred fifty bucks. He gave half of it to me asking; “You think we have enough to get to Spokane and back now?”

“Yah, sure… what are you going to do with the other stuff?”

I had figured Norm was going to stay in Bethany but it was apparent now what the trip was about. Norm answered; “I know of a place down by the Union Station in Portland where I can fence this stuff. It ought to pull in another couple of hundred bucks.”

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do besides getting as far away from Norm as possible but I felt oddly committed to the whole process. It was a sort of resignation I didn’t like at all. It was as though I had no personal control over these kinds of minor incidents harboring extreme consequences. My heart was heavy with the burden of feeling it was not in my hands to make a choice in the matter. I wondered, how many times can I get by with these abdications before it catches up with me?

Early the next day we arrived in Portland, having made camp for the night in the woods next to the Sunset Highway overlooking the city. It had been drizzling all night and my boots were soaked through to my cheap thin socks from going through the woods. When we got into town Norm made straight for a pawn shop down a few blocks from the Union Station. The proprietor knew Norman and greeted him warmly… well, as warmly as a pawn shop owner can. Norm leaned in to the glass partition and spoke lowly through the grill. The owner nodded and said a few words looking over at me. 
Norm spoke louder saying, “He’s okay… he’s been traveling with me.”

I didn’t want to know what they were talking about. I knew more than I wanted to already. I went outside and waited on the curb. I watched a parade of winos and junkies pass by on the way to and from the liquor store on the corner. I began to feel a thirst and, with cash in my pocket, I figured I’d get something to eat and a pint for traveling.

There was an assortment of soggy bologna sandwiches in Saran wrap on a tray with hard boiled eggs next to the register at the liquor store. I wondered how long the sandwiches had been there but I was hungry and got one for myself anyway. I could have bought something better than the pint of Thunderbird… something like Jack Daniels, but I was drinking wine thinking it wasn’t as bad as whiskey. I hadn’t thought much about it but I’d figured I’d gone several months without drinking and had some control over it now, even though it had only been a couple of weeks since the party in the tower.

It must have been about an hour before Norman came back out from the pawn shop. He was grinning and there was a glint of light in his eyes, “Hey, I scored some China White, some cross-tops and some cocaine…” he said in hushed tones as he approached.

“You’re kidding. I didn’t know you did that shit.” I was strangely naïve when it came to drugs. I figured that pot smoking and hallucinogens were spiritual medicines but that heroine, Seconal (Reds), speed (meth tabs), and possibly cocaine, were hard drugs and entirely evil.

Norm gave me another one of those “Duh” smirks nudging me in the side, “Don’t worry, I got plenty for both of us.”

“I don’t want any of that crap…” But even as I was saying the words the idea… no, the warmth of the blood in my veins said otherwise.

“You sure, I got a couple rigs too. Hey, I rented a room from my friend above the pawn shop for the night. We can fix up… and there is a shower down the hall.” He dangled the plastic blue diamond with the hotel key in front of me.

I was going to walk away right there and then but the idea of a hot shower was more than I could resist. “Okay, but I don’t want to shoot dope with you.”

“That’s alright, more for me… tsk… tsk.” Norm was generous with his money and his drugs… it was a part of the hippy credo he hadn’t given up on yet.

Norm went up to the room but I went back to the liquor store and decided to get a pint of Jack Daniels after all. I got back up to the room, grabbed a towel and I headed for the shower. I scrubbed and stood under the nozzle for an eternity. There was only one shower in the tower of the race track back at Altamont. I did shower a few times there but found that the sulfur smell stuck and was worse than my own body odor. So, it was something special to have clean water and soap to wash off the road. I was mulling over the pros and cons of doing some heroin. I thought, “If I cook it up and snort it … that would be better than shooting it… or I can just drink and I still have a bag of pot to smoke…”

I was still wrestling with the idea when I got back to the room.

“Norm… Norm? Ah no, Norm! Shit!” Norman was knocked out on the bed, lips blue, with the rig still stuck in his arm… the cord he tied-off with was untied… still wrapped loose on his arm… he was out.

A tin with cocaine was next to his bag of H. I didn’t have time to fuss. I’d never done this before but I'd seen it once before... back at Tripler. I found the spoon that Norm had cooked up with and used it for the cocaine. I fixed it up and sucked it up through a cotton swab Norm had on the nightstand into the syringe. I tied him off and hit the vein next to where Norm had hit before and, within seconds after shooting it into the vein, Norm’s eyes opened.

It worked!

After that experience, I decided I needed some kind of reward and cooked a spoon of H for myself. I waited for it to cool down and snorted it instead of shooting up… like this made a difference. A warm glow coursed its way through my body and I no longer needed a drink. Life was good again and I could cope with the strangeness every turn life was taking on my wayward path back home.

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.

A Time Ago &... Chapter 3. San Francisco & Altamont Speedway (pt-2)

the nasty vitriol and hot-air from the “alternative
press” would have sent a thousand
balloons into the stratosphere.

While awaiting the day’s wonders, I struck up a conversation with a young couple sitting next to our spot. Dan and Linda had been part of the overnight set-up scene but escaped the reveille beatings. They had the sense, or intuition, to move back from the stage area before the disastrous call from the stage. This meeting was another coincidence that because it turned out that this couple came from my home town, Spokane Washington. Linda was petite and pretty in a gauzy, see-through, dress displaying her little apples of breasts and that dark triangle above her thighs that I found very attractive. I was disappointed to find that she and Dan were on their honeymoon. They had just gotten married a few days before at the Zen Center in San Francisco. Finding she was likely off-limits, I was willing to feign interest in every detail as she explained her Buddhist beliefs. However, I’d heard none of it except for the part where she explained that she had been on a bad acid trip in which she had stripped naked in front of a full-length mirror, examined her body, and accepted it as beautiful.

I understood because, as the acid came on, I too loved her body and was pleasantly surprised that this talk about spirituality so far had nothing to do with the usual crap about angels and demons I’d heard of in churches. There she was, almost nude in her gauzy dress talking about her body and Zen Buddhism to a strange horny man right in front of her newly-wed husband who just sat there listening knowingly. I was mesmerized.

She went on, “I stood there naked and followed the contours of my flesh. I saw my body as something beautiful reaching its prime but already going towards decay and death.”

I tried to lighten it up a bit by complimenting her on her form, “I don’t see any decay going on.”

She didn’t respond and continued, “I saw all that and stood there for what seemed an eternity and watched myself…, approved myself… and embraced myself.”

God, she was driving me nuts. My hormones were screaming and only abated because the crowd began pressing in. A hot air balloon hissed and drifted above, the music began and we had to stand. It was one of those, elbow to elbow, things… At one point the ground became muddy under my feet. I’d lost track of Randy and the sleeping bags we’d spread out.  We were down-hill from the dozen or so porta-potties that were entirely inadequate for the crowd they were to service. Perhaps there had been plans to service them but there was no way for the septic pump trucks to cut through the crowd. I looked around and saw that it was a sea of humanity completely filling that entire natural bowl with nowhere, no way, was there a route out of there to take a leak if one needed to. Besides the steady stream of urine running from each porta-potty, I saw people pissing where they stood: women simply hiked up their skirts and squatted on the spot.

At another juncture during that day, while I was still standing near Dan and Linda, a couple of school-busses were driven down into the crowd by the Hells Angels. There was nowhere, and no way, to get out of the path of the busses but that didn’t stop the buses. They simply plowed into the crowd. It was some kind of wonder that nobody was seriously injured by that Hell’s Angels display of humanity. This was only some of the stuff I witnessed and some more that I didn’t. It was said that women were being pulled out of the crowd onto the busses and raped but I hadn’t seen that happen. It was bad enough what I did see. The hot-air balloon hissed and climbed and hovered over the scene …this Woodstock West crap was getting old.

Well, everyone knows what happened on the stage with the Jefferson Airplane, Santana and so on: it is history. The evening ended after the Stones came out with Sympathy for the Devil… Mick Jagger strutted his usual stuff on the stage. “But what’s troubling you is the nature of my game… hoooh… hoo… hooo-ooh!” Then the Stones stopped playing. Jagger called out to the outa-control crowd, “C’mon people.... people, people...!” No one where I stood, crushed in the crowd, an anonymous sardine, could see what was happening.

After the music was over, the crowd was milling around in a daze. I had been tripping all day on the several hits of free acid I’d dropped by then and trying hard to understand what had happened. Camp fires here and there lit up little groups huddled around them. The medical Tripping Tent was full to capacity. I had hung out there for shelter, waiting for dawn. Some came in reporting a campfire overrun by a car driven frantically by someone paranoid; tripping; thinking the Hells Angels were after him. Three people were killed in that one. I had no idea what I was going to do next. I was in one of those here and now spaces.

Dawn finally arrived and the light of day revealed a scene after a battle. Sleeping bags abandoned were scattered throughout. Baggies with sandwiches… pot… some film cans with known and unknown pills were there too. I found a bag with a fresh ham n’ cheese sandwich, ate it, and also reclaimed another baggie with some joints already rolled and lit one up. I saw a young-looking girl in shorts with strong thighs, thick calves, wearing heavy wool socks and hiking boots doing the same… eating a sandwich. I approached her with the joint, “Have a hit.”

“I don’t smoke pot,” she answered in a non-judgmental tone that commanded respect.

“Oh, really, what is your name?” my curiosity was piqued.

“Miriam.”

She wore thick… very thick, coke-bottle eye-glasses but she reached down and picked up a joint by my feet. “You want it?”

“Sure, how did you see that?” I scratched my head. “I was looking right at it and didn’t see it.”

“You mean my eye-sight?” She adjusted her glasses on her perky little nose.

Despite her powerful legs she was a cute and pixie looking little thing, “How did you get here?” I ventured, thinking maybe she had a ride back to somewhere.

“I hitched.”

“Alone?” I probed. She picked up another joint I hadn’t seen and handed it to me.

“I was with some people from Sacramento but we went separate ways… how about you?”

“Yeah, I came in from San Francisco but my partner is nowhere… I lost contact with him by the time the music started.”

She was not only scavenging for sandwiches but she was putting trash in the cardboard barrels positioned everywhere around the area. I started doing so too. Dan and Linda were doing the same further down the hill. By this time the stage and amp towers had been broken down and the port-a-potties taken away but the tiny airflow-trailer the acts changed in was still there looking lonesome next to the race track. They waved and I followed their lead picking up trash but scavenging baggies for whatever was in them too.

News people showed up with a camera crew and interrupted us with a lot of questions. Dan and Linda refused to give their names and asked not to be filmed. Miriam and I followed suit. The woman reporter wanted to know why we didn’t want to be in the news. Were we wanted by the police or something like that? Dan responded, “Can you think of any other reason we might want anonymity?”

She looked at Miriam, “Are you a run-away?”

Miriam looked at her as though she been asked the most stupid question on earth… “Like, um, maybe we escaped from an insane asylum?”

The reporter wanted to know why we were picking up the trash. I wanted to tell her that we were scavenging sandwiches and dope but I let Dan do the talking:

Like the sage, he said, “Because the trash is here.”

“Were you hired and how long will it take?”

The owner of the race track, Dick Carter, showed up. He fielded all the questions and told the news crew we were volunteers helping out. I didn’t see the evening news but I had seen enough public interest stories to know that the evening news would have a bit about how wonderful it is that the dirty hippies, who’d made this mess, were also helping to clean it up. Dick Carter talked for some time with the reporters and told them all about the damages to the fences and so on hoping that people would join these volunteers to help-out. He offered us the race track tower as a place to live until the work was done after the news gang left.

The Berkeley Barb reported that some such politically connected group, The Environmental Action Committee, was in charge of the volunteer action. No one there... not one person having anything at all to do with the clean-up, saw any sign of such a group at the Speedway. A dozen or so like us, picking up trash and going through all the vials and baggies looking for drugs, were all that we saw. Dan and Linda moved into the abandoned trailer left and unpaid for by Sam Cutler or Bill Graham… whoever. Miriam and I moved into the pillow shack. The rest (a dozen or so in flux) stayed in the tower.

It was rumored that Bill Graham had offered a benefit concert at Fillmore West that next Saturday for the clean-up effort; inviting all of the clean-up committee free entry… oh boy. I was so sick of the whole rock-star bit by that time. I just knew it would never happen or the Environmental Action Committee would glom-in on it. A group of us piled in a pick-up and went all the way into the city anyway. No-one there knew anything at all about Mr. Graham’s offer. Our motley crew stood outside waiting for someone to let us in… Miriam and I hitched a ride back to the pillow shack where we made love, ate, slept, made love, and slept for about a month. I made up for all the lost time with four years of little or no poontang in the USN. Meanwhile, the hippy-press bad mouthed Dick Carter as a capitalist opportunist and everyone soon forgot about the concert and its aftermath.

It was expected of the Chronicle and the Examiner, but the nasty vitriol and hot-air from the “alternative press” would have sent a thousand balloons into the stratosphere.

A Time Ago... Chapter 3. San Francisco & Altamont Speedway (pt 1)

I was back in San Francisco… the City. As far as I was concerned there’s no other city. It was the first major metropolis I’d lived in or been to other than Seattle. I’d left my home in Eastern Washington to ride a Greyhound to San Francisco as a young and naïve boy and I came back after four-years overseas presumably a man. I sat in my room by the window looking across the street at the Saint Charles Hotel. The light filtered through the pulled shades over shut windows. I halfway regretted no longer being a “juicer” and, for a minute, I wanted to take a pull from a bottle of Jack Daniels. I hadn’t had a drink since my first acid trip back in Waikiki and had no desire to start that cycle once more. I rolled a fat doobie from my dwindling stash instead. The Plaza wasn’t exactly what I’d remembered or imagined it to be. There were no longer any bell hops or doormen. The night clerk showed me to the elevator. I was on my own getting to the room. Still, it was the Plaza Hotel and I would not have felt right about staying anywhere else my first night.

Later, I moved into the Sutter Hotel on Sutter near Polk. I paid my rent two months in advance and, every other day or so, I took a bus to the Haight to get a few bundles of “underground” papers to sell on the street. I brought my bundles back to Broadway, Columbus and Grant, at night. I spent my days walking around the city alone. Sometimes I would walk all the way through Golden Gate Park to the ocean and take a bus back as I did before joining the Navy four years before.

A buzz was going around town. Every day I hawked my bundle of “underground” papers (The Berkeley Barb, The Berkeley Tribe, The Good Times, The Oracle) for a quarter each. A Sexual Freedom League pamphlet also sold great at a buck each because of the graphic erotic illustration on its cover; similar-to the ones made popular in Alex Comfort’s, The Joy of Sex. I stood nightly at the corner where Broadway, Grant and Columbus crossed each other adorned with a mad display of “Topless” bars like Big Al’s. My Mecca, the City Lights bookstore, at the top and other end of China Town from the St Charles Hotel was down a half block across the alley from the Vesuvius bar. The buzz going around town was that the Rolling Stones were going to give a free concert like they did in Hyde Park when Brian Jones died. It was being touted as “Woodstock West”. All the West Coast, and some East Coast, bands would be playing; Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Crosby, Stills and Nash … and so on.

Rumors were thick. Some thought it would be out at Sears Point. Others had hoped it would be in Golden Gate Park. The freeways were clogged with traffic headed one-way towards where everyone thought it was going to be held at every change of venue. Finally, last minute, the spot was fixed at Altamont Speedway.

And, so it happened that, as I was vending my “underground” papers at Broadway and Grant, I agreed with an acquaintance, Randy … (a six foot-five, long-scraggly-haired, and bearded fellow vender with a cleft palette and breath so foul that it could stop a freight train) to head out to Altamont Speedway by way of the thumb. It was madness at every freeway entrance. Every hippie in San Francisco was cued-up and decked-out with thumbs out in the freak styles of the late Haight Ashbury. By late 1969 the Haight had become a sewer of runaways, junkies, and their constant consorts, those who preyed on them. The rest took up on the street fashion of the day. It was hippie-chic but chic took having a job and working for a living to pull it off. The lifestyle was the other part of chic that just plain didn’t make sense. I’d witnessed things like one hipster that parked his Corvette down on Union Street to panhandle on Broadway just to be part of “the scene”. I was sure of my own lies but these lies helped to betray my only hope for a generation… the generation that brought Woodstock to the world’s attention. What was it about these kinds of lies that was to insure Altamont was to crush that hope?

Speaking of lies: I had been sober for a few months (if one doesn’t count marijuana and an assortment of hallucinogenic drugs) before I caught myself in a lie once more. I’d been selling my rags and idly chatting with my fellow vender, Randy (who rented a room upstairs above Big Al’s at the Dante Hotel). The subject of cross-country running came up. It turned out that Randy had been cross-country running since high school and I had had a brief turn at it myself. However, what I caught myself doing was embellishing my record, thinking no one would know the difference. I did so to such a degree that I was, by my telling, second only to Olympic runner Gerry Lindgren (who was the first high school runner under the four-minute mile back in the day). I knew I was lying but thought that I would never be caught in the lie. However, I hadn’t counted on this friggin-hippy being such a fanatic about running. He had ‘cross-country-running magazines’ going back to the early fifties with every record and their times; second best as well as third and fourth up to that date.

Damn, I thought, what is this? What kind of coincidence would put me in front of a goddamned authority on cross-country running while I tell my first lie since sitting cross-legged on the beach in Waikiki and promising to never lie again? Furthermore: I had to ask myself, what in the hell did I think I was going to gain by this exaggeration? It just didn’t make sense to me but I suspected that oath I’d made on the beach was being honored by a mysterious power beyond my understanding. That suspicion guaranteed that I would hold back on dishonesty as long as I could… if only I could stop lying to myself.

Randy’s lanky form towered over me. I’m sure we resembled a hippy version of Mutt and Jeff as we put out our thumbs at the entrance to the freeway at the bottom of Broadway. There were several others at the entrance going the same way. The site of the concert was settled the day before it was to start. Everyone was headed towards the hills beyond Oakland to a site between Livermore and Tracy: A free concert just like Woodstock, only better because this was California and we know California is the birthplace of psychedelia.

We jumped into the bed of a pick-up among a half-dozen others. Things went smoothly enough until the truck passed Livermore and traffic started to back up. Cars were at first parked alongside of the freeway (smart ones, who knew the area, took the old Altamont Pass Rd. from Livermore). We neared the speedway, cars were abandoned on the freeway and all traffic came to a halt. Hiking the last two or three miles, Randy and I arrived at the top of the hill overlooking the mad scene below as the sun was setting. The crimson sky was highlighted by fires started in cardboard trash barrels burning. Those not being burned were used as improvised conga drums.

The conga rhythms pounded out anticipation that made way only for the calls of hawkers; “Acid! I have acid! Orange Sunshine! Barrel Acid! Two bucks a hit!” Dealers shouted through the din as we passed, calling out and competing with calls for, “Pot…. Maarrriiiijuana! … I got some Mary Jane for ya… a nickel a lid!”

Randy saw me craning my neck to the calls and pointed out, “Don’t buy anything; it’ll all be free by tomorrow.”

Down in the bowl of a valley was centered the stage between twin sentinels of amp towers. A chain link fence separated the new arrivals from the lucky ones (or unlucky ones as morning would tell) who had been there all day helping to set up the equipment and stage. There was also handful of Hells Angels down there too: it was rumored that they were serving as security for the event. Smoke from camp fires dotting the area set up an eerie blue haze contrasting the crimson sky. It was a hellish vision equal to any painting by Hieronymus Bosch, not unlike siege-fires burning… foreboding events to come the next day. No one tried to cross the chain-link fence into that arena as the night drew on until first morning light.

“Pleased to meet you… Hope you guessed my name!”

Rumors made it around saying the Grateful Dead dropped out of the performance… that the Rolling Stones were backing out too. Others said that The Airplane and Santana were already there and that the rumors were just that… rumors making room for more. I didn’t care… at last I was where it was happening. I’d joined the Navy and left San Francisco before the acid-tripping-hippy deal got going and when I returned after four years San Francisco had turned into just one more dirty city: Alioto’s city where you had to watch where you stepped for the dog shit on the sidewalks. The free love of the Haight Ashbury was gone; if it’d ever been there in the first place. I was beginning to think, and would soon find out, that all of this talk of peace, love and understanding was just that…. talk.

First thing in the morning an announcement (some say it was Sam Cutler, manager of the Stones) came from the stage area. The folks who were on the ground in front of the stage in their sleeping bags were kindly asked to wake up and make room for the mob waiting to get in. Most had been up all night setting up the amps and the equipment usually trusted to roadies.

I watched in horror from outside the chain-link fence on the hill above as Hells Angels went from bag to bag with cue sticks beating the crap out of any and all late risers. They came out of their bags with hands out-stretched, fending off the relentless thumps of the cues on their helpless bodies. The announcer’s pleas for peace met deaf ears from the Angels and the beatings only subsided when the last malingerer had escaped.

As the chain-link fence gates were opened I was swept along by the rush of the crown down into the bowl of the arena next to the race track. Randy and I made it past the stage area where Hells Angels warned people away and we settled on a spot halfway down between the speaker tower on the right and the stage. Disregarding the earlier melee as a fluke, we spread out our sleeping bags like picnic blankets eagerly awaiting the early beginnings of the concert. I dropped two or three hits of acid.