81 Been drinking Jake

There was a little bit of a routine. Some days we went on excursions in the area, but if LBJ had stuff to do I went off to my Free Clinic gig. Man alive, Zac was a good cat. He wanted to hang with me. I had a little spot out front of the food co-op that became home. I must say everyone loved Zac and it seems as though I really started raking it in when they stopped to give him a pet. I didn't have to worry. I had a shady spot and he always had food and water.

Not my place but co-ops were revolutionary

Luckily I love being an observer of humanity because there was plenty of it to do. Walking. Talking. Smiling. I only remember one (well maybe more, but later) not happy encounter. I don't remember what I was doing... ok I think I was doing the truckin' walk. I used to do it with my friends. Sorry if the visual hurts your head. Anyway, that's what I think I was doing. I don't know what this older lady was doing walking the streets of Berkeley if she was disturbed by any of this. I like to describe her as looking like the nice old lady with Tweety bird, but with a very sour disposition, so I'll describe her as the mom in Psycho. She stopped in her tracks and gave me a tongue lashing. "You should be ashamed of yourself, young lady." Perhaps in a different setting, like a funeral or something, she would be right. But not on these streets. I don't think I was very respectful in return. Sorry old lady, I wasn't awful... maybe I said go to hell, but I still feel bad. Just not me. You have to try to relax and be happy when you have happy people in your vicinity. The beauty of taking a walk like that was that R. Crumb was walking those very streets at that very time.

I was polite. You really didn't have to ask, people would stop and put money in the tin that was clearly marked Berkeley Free Clinic. Sometimes there would be some weirdo that wanted to look at the license hanging from my neck. Ok. Thank you. One day a fella that looked like Omar Sharif stopped and looked at my license and asked how the panhandling deal worked. Then he asked if I would please help him at his store. "I'll pay you." Alright. I was up to it. People were more trusting. I suppose the lack of 24/7 news and shows about serial killers may have had something to do with that. I ran into so many cool people, I would say in general people got along pretty good.

Let's see. Up until then I had worked as a dishwasher and waitress at Charlotte's and I also had a summer job cleaning bathrooms for a rich kid day camp. We walked a block or two, not real far. He unlocked the door to a tobacco shop. This wasn't just plain American cigarettes, the place was filled with exotic blends from all over the world. I never worked in a store before but I was pretty smart about numbers. I could handle giving change. I did notice a little booze on his breath but he seemed alright. Ok. How can I help? He quickly showed me the cash register and said "I'll be back later." "But I don't know what anything costs?" He left.

Not the actual store. I can't remember the name.

I didn't freak out. Why would I? But maybe I did a little when people started coming in and saying they wanted blah blah blah. Huh? Blah Blah Blah? These people were a little different than the folks lounging around on the street. Some of them were in a hurry. My guess is that a lot of them worked at UC Berkeley which wasn't far. But I found the stuff and if I didn't see a price the customer told me a price. Pretty much everybody told me the price.That place was busy. Luckily I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me.

Jeez. I'm doing good. Lots of sales. I didn't steal out of the cash register and there was a pretty good amount in there as the day went on. Thank God nobody paid with credit cards back then.

The dude left without telling me when he would be back. It was getting very late in the afternoon and I was starting to wonder what the hell I was going to do if he didn't come back? I didn't have a key to lock up and I wasn't going to stay there all night. I also felt responsible for his stuff. For some reason the guy trusted me.

I still had to bring my tin over to the Free Clinic office too. It's around 5:00 pm and he opens the door. He was completely three sheets to the wind. He could barely stand and he's eating a damn hamburger. There's food all over his moustache. I don't know how he held himself together to remember to come back. I guess that was his last thread of awareness. I try to tell him about the day but he was out of it. He opens his wallet and hands me like two or three dollars. Yeah, minimum wage was $1.65 back then so he could have at least brought me a hamburger.

That wasn't a very good lesson, was it? I behaved myself and took care of the store. It worked out with me and I have no bad thoughts, I had an unusual experience. Just hope that if you did that with others it didn't come back to bite you. Oh well. One day of experience in the day to day workaday world. "See ya, I have to go."

Addendum: I'm no goody two shoes. The thought of grabbing what was in the cash register occurred to me more than once. But I thought that I would be rewarded well, or at least reasonably, for helping him out. I believed that's what would happen. Must have been the nuns. On his part, maybe he didn't trust me as much as I thought. He did look at my license. Got my name. It would be easy to find me on the street or at the clinic. Even if I split town with cash in hand the cops were all too ready to hunt down a hippie panhandler.

80 Feed me

It wasn't just me... when LBJ used the mummy sleeping bag there were snails in it the next morning too. We shook it out, said yucch and walked up the hill to the International House. We got a huge breakfast for super cheap. I went back to give the bathroom at the dorm a quick clean. It got a good clean on Saturday. I'd get to laugh with the folks at the front desk. For some reason I'll never forget the funny asian girl, Wendy. Sometimes they'd even get me to play frisbee out front, which is something I don't normally do. My only explanation for why we had such a good time is that we found humor in that we had almost nothing in common.

When I went to panhandle I pretty much just ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. LBJ same thing. But we hit the cafés on occasion. Little did you know that Berkeley was a forerunner of the "radical food" movement too. Health food stores everywhere. Lots of healthy organic restaurants and radical minded coffee shops too. The food co-op I stood near at 3000 Telegraph Ave (I think) was part of the longest lasting group of co-ops in the country. It would be nice if we got back to that and took big corporations out of the equation. They had health food stores in New York too, just not on this scale. These places weren't mainstream like they are now. Oddballs ate organic.

I remember a gal stopped to talk to me about yogurt outside the co-op. Yeah, I like yogurt. "No, not Dannon. We make it like the Turkish." Stop by and try some. Well, even Dannon yogurt was better then, not a long list of solids and ingredients.

There was a place pretty close to People's Park called Caffè Mediterraneum that was a hep place for beatniks, intellectuals, artists and political radicals. Moe's Books was across the street. We didn't hang in this one very much. I was around people all day and didn't need to have "cool" all the time. It's closed now though and that's sad. There were a number of small coffee shops that had shelves of books that you could read while relaxing, just buy some coffee.

Somewhere on our route there was an old storefront that was converted into a theater. People were settling in to see a movie. We had a little money. Let's go! I loved old movies, watched them with my mom all the time. I especially loved monster movies. I was glued to WPIX New York on Saturday. Monster movies all afternoon. But I had never heard of this movie. Weird. I guess it didn't fit the normal rerun fare or the pure science fiction and horror on Saturdays. Little Shop of Horrors. (1960)

We sat on steel folding chairs. I was grooving on the differences in people. There were people from all over crowded into this empty store. A lot of the people had seen the movie before and came back for more fun. It's good to laugh and laughing together is even better. How could you not love that strangeness? Jack Nicholson's lunacy freaked me out. 

But the best part of the day happened when we were filing out. A young couple out front asking "Do you want a kitten?" People kept walking by. I love cats and I had to take a look. An adorable gray kitten with an extra toe on each paw. My heart melted. I missed having a cat. Oh. How am I going to do this? How can I keep a cat with me all day long? But I had to hold this kitty. Adorable. They told me he was trained to sit on your shoulder and that he would stay there. I tried it. He did. I walked a little and he stayed sitting on top of my shoulder. Yes. I would take him. I love him.

Zac looked exactly like this

They gave us a bread bag with some dry cat food and off we went. When we got back to the dorms I went inside and my friends at the desk found a little bowl that I could use for water. I named him Zac, probably because of Zacherley.

I had the mummy sleeping bag that night and Zac crawled right in with me. A great discovery! Zac ate the snails that congregated in the smelly sleeping bag. I heard some weird chewing and there he was eating away. A wonderful friend!

79 In love with one of the guests

It was morning after the third night and we headed on out of the free hostel. While I was thinking about this part of the story, I found a photo of railroad tracks in Berkeley. I'm sure that the hostel was near tracks. I knew it was on the boundaries, thought there was a train.

We walked with the Chicken Lady and her man. I loved to hear stories and thoughts from all different kinds of people, especially those on the edges. They were making the rounds in Berkeley before us and knew a bit more about survival techniques. They were headed over to the dorms at the University of Berkeley. It was close to People's Park. That was the whole beginning.

Moe's Books and People's Park were on Telegraph Ave. It was all situated pretty close. Honest to God I'm not sure which building it was, but it seemed modern in 1972. I know it wasn't the International House, we would walk up the hill on occasion to go to the cafeteria there. Anyway, I read a number of the dorms have been demolished since that time.

The International House

Chicken Lady led the way. We had our backpacks and sleeping bags. Geez..when was the last time we used those sleeping bags? So our Texas friends checked into the hostel that they had going on in that building. People weren't looking on the internet to see who was running from the law back then. I wonder about it. Maybe the Hearsts funded some of these operations? They had a street named after them running right next to the grounds. Just a thought. It was all weird.

Oh. It costs money? The people at the desk looked like they were in college and they couldn't have been friendlier. We just met and we were having some laughs. I don't remember the amount or our mindset, but we opted out. We had an idea. Our thought was to save a little money and get an apartment instead. So we were going to find a place, hidden away, to sleep.There were hedges all throughout the vicinity and little patches of grass. Secret patches.

There was a square within a square past a square of hedges. We were pretty wise as to what was cool and found a spot. So we shoved our stuff inside a hidden bush and took off for our days work. LBJ walked up by the International House to the Hillel Streetwork Project for some manly labor and I went off to pick up my tin for the Berkeley Free Clinic. Got a full day in of watching the action on the street and collecting some funds. I was the friendliest, cleanest panhandler you could ever meet. I did pretty well but I usually went into a public restroom to turn the tin upside and skim a little bit off the top. It was pretty much expected. Compared to what some people were doing, I was pretty innocent.

Back to the bushes after food and more walking. We were in our home for the next while. We unfurled the sleeping bags. Oh no. That mummy bag that got wet in Ohio! That smell. Somehow I ended up in it. It was the smell of mold and mildew. Rotting blubber and old cheese left under the front doorstep. I was going to beg LBJ to switch with me, but he was knocked out. He was tearing a house apart all day. I made it through the night. We didn't have a watch or a clock but the light of day and the sound of the early morning birds woke us up. Laying there for a second and something caught my eye. What the hell? A friggin snail in the sleeping bag. I jumped the hell out of that thing. I might have yelled yucch. There wasn't just one friggin snail in there, there was at least six of those slimy things swimming around in there. Not huge or I would think I would have felt them. Sneaky bastards sliming around in there.

We were close to the hostel front desk and asked if I could use the restroom. Yeah. Can I take a shower? Got along really well with the front desk people. Yeah. LBJ and I got cleaned up. He went off and I delayed my panhandling for a while. They had a little laundry and I decided to shove the sleeping bag in the washing machine. Problem is that the smell was soaked in there so bad it never came out. We worked out a deal that I would clean the main bathroom and shower in exchange for using them, since we weren't paying. Jesus. I had belly laughs with those people.