99 The house of ruin ain't mine no more

I went to bed. I climbed the bunk. I had tears but I had the mad flowing too. And Zac was there. The only thing I had to hold onto anymore. I was pretty damn alone. I couldn't give up what was left of me. Maybe these people weren't as fucked as I thought, but I really think they were. It's nice to want tranquility but their idea included giving up everything that made you an individual. Do what you want but let me go.

I'll change if I want to

I woke up the next morning. The cooking women were gone and I let the others go to their oatmeal. I walked up on out of there with Zac and started along the road to town. Need hypnosis to know the distance but my mind was filled with confusion. I stuck my thumb out and made it to Forest Grove.

I don't feel like spending a bunch of time looking for photos of Forest Grove in the 70's. For some reason I get nothing. There was a cafe. Perfect. Coffee and food with what money I had. Yeah. Just like they all were. A counter. Cheap decent food. A place for the town to sit and talk. Eat and read the newspaper.

Not much different in the early 70s, except for the cars.

I was shook up. What the hell? Am I really going to do this? I was tired. If this had happened in the beginning I would have just kept going by myself. But it was a long trip and I needed to just come down now. Three months of hitchhiking, drug doing, good people, bad stuff, tempting death, fooling around and a little broken heart. I was strong but not immortal. Maybe I need to admit that even though I could hold myself like a warrior, my heart was vulnerable.

The waitress and some old dude next to me could see I was messed up. "You okay, hon?" Who knows. Maybe that was a regular occurrence in this town, these times. I got up and went to the back. Pay phone on the wall. Did you ever hear Patty Hearst say "Mom, Dad." Well this was the first time in three months. Don't think I was the only one. Lots of Long Island hippies, malcontents, punks and criminals needed to go places. Sometimes you'd hear about them and sometimes you wouldn't. "I wonder what ever happened to..." I called collect.

"Mom." "Can I come home?" My mom and dad were always cool as hell. They lived their young life wild and almost encouraged it in me. The Sophie factor. Grandma Sophie was a hell of a woman. My mom loved her. Learned a lot of superstitions from her, too. Yes. Of course I could.

But we hung up because she was going to call my seemingly money bags sister. My parents had never taken a plane. I don't want to go off into other stories, I just want to finish this. But my mom didn't know how to get a plane ticket and they didn't have as much money as you think. The big gap in wage earners wasn't as wide as it is now and my dad kept having heart attacks that took up the money. My sister was paying.

I waited and called. My sister, K, was there now. They had a couple more things to figure out so I sat back down and drank more coffee. The waitress didn't mind. Oh yeah. Mom asked me if LBJ wanted a ticket too. I didn't tell her how hard I was already trying to get him to go, or anything else. Nothing else. Ok. They were going to get him a ticket too.

My sister answered the phone this time. "The flight is tomorrow. It's all arranged. go to the police station. They'll help you." "The police station?" I sunk. I didn't want to do that. Cops and free livin', free thinkers didn't exactly have a camaraderie at that time. But we didn't have the internet, cell phones, ubers or credit cards. People had to make connection, of some sort, whether they wanted to or not.

In a self induced haze I started walking over there. This is what happened... my sisters husband was a cop. They have that fraternity thing and he made the call over to their cop shop. They were waiting for me. I walked in there, a small place I remember. Nicer than New York cops.

Well, I went back to the farm. Eeew, the cops dropped me at the gate and said they'd be back tomorrow to take us to the airport. Eeew. But right now I wanted my pants for Christs sake and I'll ask one last time. And I needed to tell LBJ that I got the tickets.

I was seething, but even then sometimes I still appear laid back. Am I a stereotype? I think not. But this time I'm sure it showed. Almost immediately walked into that jerk that wouldn't give me my pants back. Gritting my damn teeth. "Where are my pants?!!!" "They're not ready." Same as he always said. Yeah. Mad. "Well, forget it." 🙄

It was after they came back from the field and I didn't dawdle and found LBJ. "Got plane tickets for tomorrow. Don't you want to get out of here?" He just paused and said "Yeah." Maybe he was tired too. But he said "The cops?" Yeah. It was a horror. Put my eyes down. "Yup. The cops."

I walked back to the place where they kept the women separate and just laid down on the bunk. Staring, crying and sleeping. Luckily Zac had food but I didn't eat again.  I didn't want to go back to New York. That filthy, dark, dirty, bleak, depressing, corrupt ramshackle of a shithole. Ugggh. I was sick. I'm honestly having chest pains thinking about it now. It was fucked.

Next morning the cops were up at the outside gate just like they said they'd be. Not a happy thing really. We walked the small dirt hill with the bags we came with. I'm pretty sure the both of us were wilder looking, lots of hair growth. But I was wearing a pair of brown corduroy pants instead of my beautiful jeans.  I'll never forget those brown pants either. I like earth colors and sometimes go with that theme. They looked good but they made a lot of noise. Funny noise.

Pretty quiet sitting in the back of the car. I don't remember how we got the ticket. You went up to the counter then, I guess, but I didn't have any ID. Did you not need it or did the cops give me a sheet of paper? I remember a friggin piece of paper flying around in front of my face. Doesn't matter.

I still had Zac. First time either of us were ever on a plane. Huh? I can't bring Zac? 😢 I loved him. This is sucking in every way. Perk that bravery up. I stood outside and saw a nice couple, the older bohemian type. Zac was the coolest cat and people loved him because he was strange and different with that extra toe. And animals don't care if you're a little weird.

I asked "Hi. Would you please take my cat?" 😔 The gal was especially nice. She pet him and said of course. I didn't look when I handed him over and gave them his food.

We walked back to the gate. Looked around one last time before we hit New York again. So that's pretty much the end of that. When we landed it was a different story... dirtier, more jaded, less hopeful. I don't want to summarize or put a moral to the trip. It's not like there are actual lessons in my story, just the only one I've got down pat. Take it all in and turn it into that movie in your head. I want to say something corny and that's holding me back. Stuff like the more scenes you film, the better the story after the final edit. 🙄 Dork.

 

82 Sunny days

I need to get a couple more typical days out of the way before I start on some of the more memorable. Every morning we made our way to the International House for breakfast. It was so cheap and we got a lot of food to start the day. Sunny Jim recommended it. Sunny Jim did some kind of work at the Hillel Street work Project... or was it the Berkeley Free Church? Both of them had deals where you could be sent out on jobs. The Free Church also had a crash pad deal. We had a thing going with our hidden spot on campus and the hostel, so we didn't pay attention.

We didn't do any of the free food things either. I guess we were kind of loners and didn't like standing on line for that kind of crap. Plus there was always trouble one way or another. Someone freaking out or criminal types wreaking havoc with good stuff going on. So it was big breakfast in the morning, peanut butter and jelly during the day and maybe a burger or whatever we came across at night. Sometimes I bought stuff at the store and shared with the workers at the hostel.

International House

I didn't hit either of those job places cause I was sticking with the Free Clinic. I mentioned before that it was mostly manly labor stuff. I did go to one job at a house remodel, but I'll talk about that later. I do remember going in one day to the office to see if I could find LBJ for some reason. I'm thinking it was the Free Church. I'll never forget a family I ran into there. I thought "Wow. California." Two parents totally blonde. Three little kids totally blonde. All tan, all barefoot. They were needing help with one thing or another. I don't think I ever saw such a blonde family in New York.

LBJ was working with some other guy on a new remodel. Back then they didn't completely change the character of the old houses. They cleaned them up, fixed electrical and plumbing, and painted. Lots of painting. The other guy had a vehicle and was going to give LBJ a ride back to the center of town. Just as they were getting in the vehicle a couple of Berkeley cops jumped out of their cars, rifles pointed. Threw them against the car, spread their legs. Pushed them to the ground and handcuffed them. Rifles pointed. I guess the car was stolen, or wasn't, never got the outcome. If it was at least the guy was trying to work. Right? But there were definitely other forces at work in Berkeley. Hippies got the knee to the groin every so often for a while. Ok if there's a reason, people weren't crying, but just for having hair it's not cool.

Seems like a lot of people knew Sunny Jim though. He was one of those degreed hippies but he lived pretty hard. He also dealt a lot of pot. We'd end up over his place. It was just a mattress on the floor and posters on the wall. You'd pile in there and find a spot on the bed to sit. Listen to some music. Quicksilver Messenger Service was a favorite. The stereo going back and forth, back and forth in the ears. Someone was always sifting the seeds and stems from the pot in a shoebox lid. Cool. Pot was half the price in California. I think we paid $10 an ounce. And it was good, but nice. Not the crazy strong hybrids they have now. Just a much softer edge to the high.

We'd sit and talk about music or how messed up society is. You'd think we'd all be rolling all over the bed having sex, but life wasn't completely like that. There was actually a lot more conversation than sex, drugs or rock n' roll. People spoke about how they were going to live differently than what was expected. Some of them did. They disappeared one way or another from the mainstream. Took working class jobs to survive or maybe worked a trade. Nothing powerful. Just not all about money. So people that did it, got away, sometimes had good lives, sometimes hard lives. Some of the humans were just hanging as a trend. They're the ones that went for the money.

 

But Sunny Jim was pretty cool. He wanted to help people out and gave advice on how to stay out of trouble. If you could get by unharmed and find a place to go that was a good thing. He told LBJ about jobs at the Oakland work center, or whatever it was, that sounded pretty good. Some of the jobs paid over $4.00 an hour. Minimum wage was $1.65 in California, $1.60 nationwide. So good. It wasn't highfalutin, but we could live on it. We'd take a trip to Oakland to check it out. I was just going to go along for the ride.