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

The Rio Grande Gorge West of Taos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yah, I’ve heard of him.”

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

“Yes, sounds good…”

“They pay extras good too… Union scale!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Taos!” I called back.

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

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

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

“Do you know anyone in Taos?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…Acid, then?” Norm probed further.

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

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

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

“But you quit?”

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

“You quit just like that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes… easy enough to make, eh?”

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

“What about ‘em?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 7. Hollyweird! (pt. 2)

We ran into Norm at the free clinic on Fairfax. He found the house he’d been talking about before. It was on the east-side of the freeway. The Taft 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 place where people could live together in an experimental communal fashion. It was a nice old Victorian home though the sitting room was half filled with a large canopied bed where people tripped. 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, which 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 get 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 didn’t and was going to say something about wanting some privacy when Felix asked, “… 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, “What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s magazines... nudies… X rated, you see?”

Miriam was curious… 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 laughed, “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 laughed, “It doesn’t matter. These jerk-off rags don’t want an Adonis… except for the gay ones.”

“Yah,” Felix added, “but you look good enough for that.”

“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 assured her, “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 didn’t like the idea of posing up-close and nude without getting a hard-on. It didn’t seem natural to me. I decided to take whatever job I could find and leave the porn business alone.

While I was taking an evening walk 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 pled.

She chuckled, “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 didn’t know 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 no talk about inner-peace, clarity of mind, union with whatever, or any of what Dan and Linda spoke of. 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.

Back at the house Sarah, Felix, Miriam and I, slept together in the big bed for about a week. There was very little fooling around considering we were all in the same bed because all of us had been busy working to make ends meet and were too tired. One night, still half asleep, I felt Sarah reaching over my waist from behind. I came full awake when I heard Miriam sternly insist, “Felix! Get your hand off my tits!”

Felix moaned, “Okay… I’m cool… it’s okay.”

“No. It’s not okay!”

I was ready to have some fun but I ceded my libido to Mariam’s discomfort. I think I might have loved her that much.

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. Norm and I had taken a job at a carwash on La Brea and thought nothing of her absence until after we 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 into the kitchen.

“It’s not what you think, Max?” She began to explain.

The guy chided. “You gotta let go, man…”

“Don’t fuckin’ give me that guru-jive. Let go of what?” I glared upward at the lanky hippy towering above me and challenged, “What’s it to you if I don’t!”

“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 me.

“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.

He pointed out the direction from where he’d come, “You want to get out of the rain… I have a place down over on the other side of the creek.”

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’re welcome to it.” He gave me directions, described the house and slogged on in the rain towards his 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. 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 along with my drenched coat. 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.

A pipe was passed and I was soon after handed a bowl of soup thick enough to be a stew. The rain pounded down above it all as the evening progressed with the soft conversation, the warmth of the stove, the soothing stew of a soup, and homemade bread.

 “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.

The girl chimed in, “Santa Barbara! They have a Zoo!”

“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. We talked and 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 PCH with a bowl of warm soup…

I thought, if there ever was one, God surely lives in these moments.

Chapter 7. Hollyweird!

The trip started off strange enough. A camper truck gave us our first ride. We piled into the cab that opened into the camper. Norm passed the packs and bags to me in back and sat next to the driver. Miriam rode shotgun. I felt uncomfortable and, after gassing up in Gilroy, the driver slowed down reaching across to the glove-box, Miriam let out a scream and bailed out of the moving truck. Norm pulled the emergency break and grabbed the drivers arm before he could open the glove-box. It happened so fast I had no idea what was happening but I tossed out our bags and packs from the back door and jumped out going after Miriam.

Miriam was rolled up on the side of the road. I was relieved that the truck finally came to a complete stop. Norm came out grinning like the Cheshire cat. The truck sped off like a bat out of hell.

“What happened?” I shouted to Norm. I tried to comfort Miriam who was shaking uncontrollably on the ground, curled up in the fetal position.

He was still grinning, “He was just going to get a bottle out of the glove box. I took it from him. He oughtn’t drink-n’-drive.” Adding, “Sometimes street smarts work against you and they become paranoia.”

I wondered how I could comfort Miriam. She had been shaken up quite a bit but not from her roll. This was enough adventure for me for now. What if there had been a gun in the glove-box? What would the guy think he was going to get from three obviously thread-worn hitch-hikers?

“Miriam? Why did you bail?” I asked.

“It has happened before,” the words were barely audible from her quivering lips.

“What do you mean?”

“When I was fifteen I was raped… it happened just like that.”

“But there are two of us with you.”

“Can’t count on that....” She said with a determination that defined her road spirit. “You can’t count on that… I’m not ever going to be raped again.”

The next ride from Gilroy was to Santa Barbara and we got out on the section of the freeway that ended at a strip with grass along sides of four lanes with traffic lights. This break allowed a pleasant place to hitch a ride and take a nap if needed. I felt a premonition about that town. I thought it might be a little rich for my blood but I was able to see a future there and it was love at first sight for me. I wanted to stay but Miriam and Norm were impatient to get to L.A.

Getting off at Sunset on the Hollywood Freeway in the middle of the night, we walked down a couple miles to the West Hollywood Presbyterian Church on Martel and Sunset. We heard it called the Free Church. Anything free had to be good. Transients slept in the courtyard, the idea being that the church would feed and shelter the poor. “The poor” turned out to be hippies, street people, and runaway teens. A few South-Central L.A. hustlers, I called X, Y, and Z, were trusted with the keys to the place and saw an opportunity to muster up the resources of the church for themselves. running it like it was an Orwellian prison yard. Staff, stayed inside of the church and let whoever was part of their posse stay tenuously there too.

Young runaway hippy-chicks were always welcome inside. The rest of the riff-raff had to stay outside after ten p.m. when the church employees and ministers left. The place was to be hosted by the self-appointed Alphabet Staff until six A M. As for feeding the poor, food was donated and then distributed by the Alphabet Staff. It was mostly day-old sandwiches, canned food, or whatever could be scraped up. One regular donation, by the case in cans, was Sego diet meals. You had to gulp down about six of these cans to feel like you had anything at all in your stomach.

Miriam and I curled up together in our bag next to a solitary pole by some bushes. We fell asleep immediately did not awake until dawn. When we awoke we rolled around a bit in our sleeping bag and ended up with Miriam on top. Looking up I saw that the pole we made our bed next to was a tall white cross hovering above us… “Holy fuck,” I groaned. She moaned back and we collapsed together there.

We got out of the bag awhile later. Norm was inside the church Sunday school classroom where he was selling his stolen twenty-two to one of the so-called staff. I would find out later the guy was called X.  I saw X slip Norm a few bills and Norm passed the piece to him as though it was nothing more than a lid of pot. When I found out the guy called himself X, I wondered if the other two called themselves “Y” and “Z”? And where did the rest of the alphabet keep themselves?

The guy I dubbed Y played the part of the Guru. He was a tall, well-built man with a Fu Manchu mustache and beard. He was coifed with an impressive Afro over a set of piercing, cynical looking eyes. He called himself Yogi too, so I felt somewhat vindicated by my alphabet sarcasm. Yogi was in charge. The others did his bidding. The third, I called Z at first, was Willy: it should have been W, X and Y. Willy was a good natured young man still in his teens. He was helpful to Miriam and made sure she got extra cans of Sego.

That night in the classroom, where various street people hung out, the Ghetto Triumvirate revealed the true hierarchy of the place in case there were any doubts. Willy came back all fucked up from turning tricks on Sunset and had been drinking wine and doing Reds.

I noticed a bit of a ruckus going down and people were sort of encircled around Yogi and Willy. Willy had apparently taken the twenty-two Norm had sold to X. Yogi had been talking quietly to Willy with X butting in… “Hey, that piece is fucking mine, nigga!”

Willy shouted at X, “Yogi runs this place… see… don’t fuck with Yogi!”

Willy stumbled back and broke away from the group around him.

X tried to sound calm but his voice quivered, “Listen brother, the gun is mine. I bought it.”

Everyone there made way for Willy as he pulled the pistol out of his waistband… “You ain’t my brother! You ain’t my mutha-fuckin’ mother! And I ain’t yo’ nigga, Nigga!” With that he spun around with the gun pointing first into the air. As he spun around he brought it down to eye level at the crowd that stood frozen in a circle around him. “Pang!” the twenty-two went off. Nobody moved. Willy dropped the gun… “I… I… I didn’t mean to…”

It was as though everyone there was waiting to see who was going to drop. No one dropped. I crossed the room and, picking up the piece and handing it butt-first to X, I said, “I suggest you keep better inventory on this.”

I turned and walked away. I did not miss the fact that a small twenty-two caliber size hole was in the wall behind where my head had been. Miriam and I left then to find Norm; leaving the confusion of the situation behind as best we could.

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.

She had a demon alright.

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 Alamos; 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. Leading Miriam by the hand, I plowed through them like a hot knife through butter to a chorus of their protestations. We had to find Norm.

PS. Yes, this is the same infamous Tony and Sue Alamo. His real name was Bernard Lazar Hoffman (aka Marcus Abad) and hers was Edith Opal Horn. He was a convicted child sexual abuser and she was an actress who'd found a calling and a new name.