A Morningstar East Memoir

As I wrote my first novel: A Time Ago and Then; found at, https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80267, I used a part of that fictional story based on my actual experience at the Morningstar East commune north of Taos. Risingstar was a thinly veiled name but I felt that the time I spent on the high chaparral above Arroyo Hondo was so magical it warranted it own telling. I contacted one of the original members of Morningstar East and West, Pam Hanna who helped me to fill in some of the glitches in my memory. This short memoir of 17,700 words is my best recollection of those people and this powerful vortex of my life that is Taos New Mexico:https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/368088.

Born Dropped Out: 12 Questions For Hippie Kids - A Documentary

Chapter Two: On to the Mesa

We awoke with sunrise and headed eleven miles north to Arroyo Hondo. Maggie knew the history of the town and how the Mexican and native rebellion shed blood in this little town a hundred years before: how mountain-men… so-called heroes like Kit Carson and others were part of battles in Arroyo Hondo and Taos: how the rebel leaders, Mexicans and natives from the local tribes, were all hanged after the army defeated them. She briefly told us about it all as the Volkswagen passed the general store, church and homes on the only street that headed towards a series of mesas stretching out like fingers from the mountains beyond the town. A dirt road led us up a winding path that held to the sides of an arroyo; switching from one side to the other; passing a geodesic dome and climbing up a series of S-curves to the top where a parking lot with a few vehicles sat incongruously. This was as far on the mesa as any motor vehicles were allowed.

At the parking lot was a fire pit where a few scrubby looking men sat passing a jug of wine. One of the fireside fellows hit us up for spare change towards another jug. I had a few quarters and dimes on me and gave them a couple. I took a hit off the jug but I can’t remember much other than what some of these guys looked like: no names come to mind. Maggie led us across the field to a newly constructed pueblo.

The buildings were arranged in a triangle and each held three or four living spaces. We went to the first that was occupied by a couple named Joe and Kathie. Joe was a trimly built native with long black braids and Kathie was a petite reddish-blond haired woman with bright blue green eyes. They knew Maggie and greeted us warmly. After a few friendly minutes Joe showed us the Kiva; a circular hogan building with adobe bricks a couple feet up from the ground around a pit with two tiers stepping up from the floor. A fifty-gallon drum burned wood to heat it. Though there were portholes of light from windows made of wine bottles set into the adobe, it was dark and only shadows of people could be seen until my eyes adjusted to it. This was where visitors or transients were able to have shelter temporarily as a kiva is traditionally a ceremonial communal meeting place and not meant to be used as a dwelling.

I put my gear down and, after getting to know some of the folks, I climbed out the hole in the center of the roof on a pole with steps carved into it for a ladder. I could see that the pole wasn’t a support for the timbers that radiated over the space below. The ends of timbers around the hole we climbed out of were notched; one was placed on top of the other so that the simplicity and strength of it was contributed to via their mutual support. I had never seen anything like it. To me it symbolized what communal living there would be all about. I was anxious to see how true this was.Then I was told by Jason how they had all worked together to put those timbers in place; standing under them in faith that they wouldn’t be crushed if it failed as each let go of their end… what a wonder!

My travelling partner, Norm, said he was going to keep going with Maggie and I understood. We’d had some adventures together and I had grown fond of him but I was glad he’d found a companion in Maggie. The Volkswagen left down the grade and that was the last I’d seen of either of them. So there I was, alone and on the plateau of another adventure that would positively affect my outlook on life from that day on. I've gone through my life in awe of the few moments decisions are made… most serendipitously… that are imprinted for a lifetime. 

A Morningstar Romance

Introduction

My time at Morningstar East in New Mexico was as well-spent as it was a short and powerful one. I was young, in my early twenties, and so were the others on the mesa. I don’t recall anyone there over thirty but there might have been. The prism of time distorts the memory but I was trying to sort out the memory of that period when I was writing the novel, A Time Ago and Then. As I wrote I became curious about the people and the place that was so crucial to my spiritual evolution. The vision I have retained and the compassion of that remarkable group of young people, whose creative vision put together such a remarkably courageous attempt at an altruistic and free-form communal living, is still with me today even though I have moved on.

     I didn’t even consider going to the internet when I wrote this novel as a fiction. I was recalling that experience as I’d seen it without any outside input. I have no regrets about that because most of what I had written was true with only a few adventures exaggerated in the interest of telling a story over a factual exposition. After I had written it, piqued by curiosity, I searched for pictures on the internet of the adobe pueblo and fantastic kiva to no avail. I wanted so badly to refresh my memory of the buildings these people had put together and to see pictures of the people that I had once been so fond of. I assumed, because I am getting older, that some of these people were getting on in years too; my chance of making contact with any of them was getting shorter as time takes its toll. I hoped a picture, or a name mentioned, would refresh my memory and that I might recognize someone I knew from those days so very long ago.

     I did find a website, the Morningstar Scrapbook, which had much of the history of the commune’s battles with Sonoma County and some of the people who’d founded Morningstar East in Taos New Mexico. After leaving a comment on Ramon’s site (one of Morningstar West’s original members), he passed it on to Pam Hanna because I’d mentioned the amazing roof of the pueblo’s kiva. Pam was the mate of Larry Read who’d come up with the design and made it happen. It was she who contacted me via e-mail correspondence. I let Pam know that my fictionalized, albeit thinly veiled, version of Risingstar was based on my experience at Morningstar.  But, that since it (A Time Ago and Then; published as an E-book at Smashwords.com.), is fiction, some of it, while truthful, was not factual. Pam expressed to me that her reticence about fictionalized versions of Morningstar was caused by T.C. Boyle’s use of “narrative skill to malign, characterize & misrepresent us”. I am happy to have her blessing and this inspires me further to call this memoir a Morningstar Romance. It will have insights about the place and the people I met on that plateau of my own experience in Taos. I hope to be as honest and clear about my own experience there and little more. 

Chapter 1:

The Adventure

I had just gotten out of the US Navy in the fall of 1969 and wanted badly to rejoin the San Francisco scene that I had left four years before. My experience in the Navy was mild compared to those who’d been sent to the front in Viet Nam but it was four years of a moral compromise on my part nonetheless. My first psychedelic “trip” had been taken while attached to the Medical Holding Company on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor while recovering from surgery on three crushed vertebrae. It was on the beach in Waikiki that I had gone through a powerful eye-opening spiritual transformation. Every lie I had ever told…lived… or otherwise convinced myself of, was revealed in stark detail. This was not a disturbing revelation because, after ceding to this spiritual void I had been living in, I was able to transcend guilt and shame to actually see a harmony and sense to it all… whatever “it all” was. It was one of those mountain-top experiences that so many people had undergone via the vehicle of LSD, peyote or psilocybin. I saw my alcoholism as a silly obsession… a diversion… a clouding… that kept me from living fully in the light of what I understood to be God… the creative energy… the Heart of Compassion… that was The Reality. It was like being able to see music… every note of an orchestra in the rhythms and harmony… colors and forms… patterns really… than it was a vision of God. But I saw God in “it all”.

     Having had that mountain-top experience, I hungered to find people to share it with. After I was discharged, I hung out in North Beach selling underground rags (the Berkeley Barb, Good Times, Berkeley Tribe and so on) at the hub of Columbus, Grant and Broadway, down the street in front of the topless bars. It gave me enough money to eat and enough contact with others, but the scene in San Francisco was going to the dogs: street dogs, runaways, heroine addicts, speed freaks, and those who preyed on them. The psychedelic revolution I’d hoped to become a part of had moved elsewhere and I had almost given up that hope when the Rolling Stones came to Altamont Speedway. That gathering turned out to be a fiasco almost directly opposite of Woodstock, even though it was touted as Woodstock West by the “underground” press. I saw the whole thing through the lens of LSD and it was not anything I wanted to have anything to do with. I stayed on there with a rag-tag group that had been foraging for whatever was left in the field… at first it was sandwiches and pot… later we were the clean-up crew and lived in the race-track tower. My experience there is covered with detail in A Time Ago and Then and I see no purpose in describing again those ugly details of that eye-opener here.

     I left there for Hollywood to see what that scene was about but it was decaying faster than San Francisco. It was depressing and, when word got out that there was a Free Land movement in Taos New Mexico, my road-dog buddy, Norman, and I put our thumbs-out. I was introduced to the magic of New Mexico on a ride that picked us up at a corner in Las Cruses we stood at for hours. A woman in her forties (which was an ancient age to us then) told us of the mystery and power of the landscape. She had been a Black-Jack dealer in Vegas who one day packed up and moved to Questa. She was familiar with the communes in Taos and encouraged us to find one we liked and explained the history and philosophy of each that she knew of.

I wish I could remember that wonder woman’s name; I think it was Maggie, but time has clouded the old muscle between my ears. I do remember being dazzled by her spiritual awareness as she drove that Volkswagen bus, weaving back and forth over the center line, gesturing with abandon and shouting over the rattle of the engine so affectionately, the sights and history we passed through.

We came to Taos where she had friends that were mostly musicians. I have no idea where it was or whose house it belonged to but we sat and talked, played music into the night as a pipe was passed around to the light of a small kerosene lantern common everywhere. There was no electricity and a sort of flatbread chapatti was, almost universally, cooked on the top of a fifty-gallon drum made into a wood-burning stove. Those drums too would be common everywhere.

One of these folks explained that New Buffalo and Morningstar were the closest and most open communes. However, New Buffalo, being the first commune in the region, was pretty much full-up and harder to get into. It was explained that Morningstar and the Reality Construction Company were on the same property owned by Michael Duncan and close by. Of the two, Morningstar was friendliest to newcomers and allowed anyone to join… if join is the right word… it was more like welcomed in. There was no visible leadership and the only rule was Love. It sounded like the kind of place I needed to air out in because I had enough of authority in the Navy… and seen street corner gurus of wild enthusiasm and conviction, cultish Christian preachers, and manipulators of every sort in Hollywood. The whole bit about Charlie Manson had gone down already by then and the wild chaos and disappointment at Altamont had sucked my soul dry of what little hope I still desperately held on to. I had to check it out. It sounded like the vision I had for the future on the beach in Waikiki. I wasn't at all sure but, if there was hope, perhaps I might find it at Morningstar.

Kiva Beams

Progress on Kiva model from Morningstar Arroyo Hondo

Kiva, Clay Model

I've lately been obsessed with the Morningstar adventure that was fictionalized as the Risingstar, New Mexico, commune  in my novel (the title of this blog)... having made contact with one of the founding members, Pam Hanna (Read), who was the wife of the Kiva's roof designer, Larry Read, I decided to make a clay model of it from memory. I'm just assuming that there were eight timbers, as eight was the mystical number of the eight pointed Morningstar. I could be wrong.  These are pictures of the progress so far as I am now cutting the timbers now for placement on the roof.

The story goes that when the timber's were all put in place, (I heard about it back then and Pam reminded me of how it was done in an email pasted here): "Hey George - Larry was an admirer of Buckminister Fuller & a student of Paolo Soleri for a time.  Hippies built a lot of domes everywhere - Drop City, Placitas, all over Hawaii.  That Kiva was a  sort of Tinker Toy Tech conception.  Was quite a scene when we put it together - no nails.  Big poles held by man at each pole; on signal, they eased the poles into place.  You can do it on a table with toothpicks.  They hold each other up."

All of that took place before I got there. She also wrote: "M*, NM now looks like ancient ruins and only David Pratt's house is still standing.  A guy named Army Joe came thru like gangbusters & tore a lot of stuff down, including the Kiva," 

I was only there for about five months but what I experienced there was a vision of how life can be... haven't quite figured out the how of it but it is a vision of people working together for the common good that stays with me today.

Okies from Muskogee

PASSAGE

We rolled down east through Angel Fire, south to Guadalupita and on to Las Vegas, New Mexico. From there we headed to I-40. No one was talking much. Everyone was hung-over but Dennis; and he was busy driving with Wanda asking why she couldn’t go with us all the way to Jamaica. Dennis tried to explain that it wasn’t going to be easy and that she might end up stranded in Miami. I was concerned that Wanda might get belligerent when she started off with the business of racism.

Stan tried to cut her bitching off, “Hey, I had to leave Debby and Leah behind.”

Wanda was quiet for a few miles before she began putting down Debby and Leah, “What, Debby wasn’t your woman… neither was Leah. They were fucking everyone last night.”

Stan wasn’t going to let her get by with slurring Debby and Leah. “Look, what we did last night was a going away party. We will probably never see each other again. I thought it was damned cool that they put out for everyone.”

“Yeh,” Dennis added, “Lighten up Wanda. We can’t take you with us and we really can’t all stay crammed in this car any further than Amarillo. You agreed a week ago that you wanted to go back there where you have family.”

That was how it went all the way to Amarillo. I did get some rest, nursed a raging hangover and had sort of slept most of the way to Amarillo.There would be silence for a while and then she’d start in again. I figured that Dennis could handle her but it seemed touch and go at times. Finally, when we arrived in Amarillo, I gave her twenty bucks for bus fare or whatever and she had Dennis drop her off at a bar. That made a little more room in the car and a rotation system was developed. Jamie didn’t know how to drive a stick shift… or probably any car at all, so he was exempt from driving.  But I did look forward to getting behind the wheel just for the sake of stretching my legs a bit. Besides, I loved long distance driving.

 I hadn’t paid much attention to the landscape after passing Las Vegas, because I was sleeping or pretending to sleep most of the time. But once I got behind the wheel I loved the rolling hills and arid prairie along the way. I pictured buffalo covering the landscape from horizon to horizon and horsemen following the herds for the hunt; a way of life that came to an abrupt end a mere century before. Comanche, Kiowa, and Sioux… all across these plains: the majesty of the land dictated a humility and even pride in being a part of the drama of the wide open spaces.

I drove on through the panhandle of Texas onto and through the prairies of Oklahoma. A sea of grass and winter wheat as far as the eye could see stretched out, interrupted only by an occasional gully or wash. I envisioned the dust bowl era of Okies packing their belongings on their trucks and cars heading for greener pastures in California a mere generation before. The land had a sadness about its quiet dignity and the tragedies played out on these plains.

Stan took the wheel before Oklahoma City; I moved back to the rear seat and slept some more sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jamie and Steve. Dennis rode shotgun when he wasn’t driving… it was a tacit agreement as it was, after all, his car. I didn’t mind sleeping sitting up, drifting in and out of consciousness. Dust devils seemed to follow along side of the road as we made our way eastward on route I-40. Then, by a spontaneous and unanimous decision, we made a turn north at Checotah to Muskogee. After all, the song was an anthem enjoyed by both rednecks and hippies alike for completely opposite reasons.

Muskogee had the look of Everytown, USA. It could have been in Springfield Illinois or Grand Island Nebraska, Topeka Kansas or any other plains town. It too had a street called Broadway and a Main Street. It had hardware stores, drug stores, used-car dealers and diagonal parking along the streets in front of the shops. We stopped at a greasy spoon to sit at a booth and order a cheeseburger and shake. No one gave us any trouble. In fact, I figured, it was a friendly place where people treated everyone civil until proven unworthy. The middle aged waitress even called us honey.

“Sure, Honey. Would you like French fries or country fries?”

I had no idea what a country fry was so I answered, “Oh yes, country fries.”

A couple of older men in coveralls in the next booth watched us order and one of them asked, “Where you boys from?”

Oh, oh, I thought, here goes… “We’re from New Mexico… we just had to see Muskogee. We’re on our way to Florida.”

“Was it because of Merle Haggard’s song?”

“Yeh, ya gotta love that song.” Dennis acknowledged.

“I’m Hank and this here is my brother Jimbo…”

So they went around the table introducing themselves and feeling welcomed. It was no big deal. These people were authentically friendly. Here were the town folks of the most anti-hippy anthem of the era sitting next to us swapping friendly noises like old friends… Just goes to show ya how wrong popular images can be, I was thinking as I enjoyed the setting and the whole scene.

Muskogee sits in the middle of the country where three rivers; The Arkansas, the Grand and the Verdigris meander and converge. Something about all that water energized me. Id missed the green of the Northwest where I’d grown up although I’d learned to love the high chaparral of New Mexico. I felt as though Muskogee wasn’t such a bad place to settle down. We fondly bid the old-timers in the café adieu as our motley little group piled into the Hillman and headed back down south to the I-40.