05.20.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 8:02 am by Deb
Very quickly I met the “collector”. He was, at that time, one of only a very few people in San Francisco with a license to dumpster dive. For those of you who don’t understand the term, it is a form of recycling, which involves going through other peoples’ trash. He went out every night and stored what he found in this space in the basement. It was packed full of cabinets, shelves, drawers, trunks, you name it. We were introduced, and he asked if I had ever collected anything as a child. As an older child and teen, I had collected matchbooks. He opened a drawer with thousands of unusual matchbooks. He had buttons, coins, hair clips, stamps, postcards; I can’t even begin to name the array of “stuff” he had stored there. It was like a museum full of treasure. He was a very strange character, unliked by many, but I found him fascinating and entertaining. He liked X and I, too. Most of the people there liked us. We were young and still very naive. I think there was something about our freshness that intrigued them. Anyway, the second time I ran into Collector, he asked me if he could buy my baby. I just looked at him, shocked. I explained that I didn’t have a baby, but if I did, I certainly wasn’t going to sell it. He said that he could tell by looking at me that I was pregnant, that there was an aura around pregnant women. He insisted that he was never wrong, and then begged me to sell one of them if I had twins. He had always hoped to find a live baby in one of the dumpsters, but so far had only found dead ones. He was too “eccentric” to adopt one and didn’t want to deal with the hassles of a relationship. I explained that I had a test done in Pittsburgh that came out negative. He suggested I have another one done, which I did the next day, and sure enough - I was pregnant. No wonder I was so exhausted all the time… Fyre was on the way.
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05.16.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 2:02 pm by Deb
We did gain entry to the most bizarre place I had been in up to that point. The warehouse had been gutted, and “space” was rented by the square foot. You were then responsible for building your own walls and whatever else you wanted or needed. The only requirements for acceptance to the project were that you had to be an artist of some kind and had to be accepted by everyone who already lived there. There were weekly meetings in which all business would be conducted, including acceptance of new members. Being visitors, we didn’t need to go through that process, yet. Every floor had a set of bathrooms, but people also built their own private ones if they wanted. We ended up on the 3rd floor in a communal space within the larger communal building. As we got off the elevator onto the 3rd floor, we noticed a big gray blob in the middle of the hallway. Now remember, this was a building full of artists - 65 residents at that time. The big gray blob was a bath house. Inside, it was all mosaic, tile and murals. The first area had three sinks with mirrors. Across from that was a dressing area. Next was a shower room with three shower heads, then a huge tub. The rule about the tub was that you couldn’t fill it unless you had at least five people to bath with. Everything was hand crafted and beautiful! I was young and naive at that time, and as badly as I needed a shower, the thought of showering with a stranger was more than I could handle. Forget about a bath… Finally days later, I waited until about 3am and jumped into the shower. A few minutes later, someone came in to join me. I was horrified, but where could I go? I was actually surprised at how quickly I got over my modesty. In minutes, we were chatting and getting to know each other as we each washed. I felt like I washed away years of repression as well as days and days of dirt and sweat. It was like being reborn.
The building and it’s residents were fascinating! There were three levels of rooftops. At the very top was an organic garden. The top floor of the building was a dining room where there were communal dinners once a week that everyone took turns cooking. I think they charged $1.00/meal to cover the cost of the food. It was a good way to meet people. There were also great parties thrown there and other spaces in the building. There was an alternative high school, my first introduction to alternative education, and a preschool run by an older hippie with very long hair and long beard. It was heartwarming to see this large man walking around the big city with these little preschoolers. There were numerous art studios and even a recording studio/rehearsal space. The recording studio was not allowed by zoning regulations, so it was behind a secret hidden door. It was very cleverly done. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never find it. The inspectors certainly never did. It belonged to “The Phantom Band.” There were communes within the larger commune for people who wanted a smaller community. I also continued my political education there. Remember my introduction to Marxism in Pittsburg, PA? Wow! That was just the beginning, and barely scratched the surface. I heard about all kinds of events and issues, and mostly listened at that time. I had so much to learn. In the basement lived a “collector,” who was scavenging parts for an airplane that was being built by someone else in the building - also in the basement. He hadn’t yet figured out what he would do with it once it was built. There were more eccentrics in one place than I thought possible. I felt right at home. I was a little puzzled, though. I had caught up on plenty of sleep, ate some good meals, and was still completely exhausted all the time. Was I sick? I was starting to worry…
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05.12.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 11:43 pm by Deb
We were finally in California! Whew. X decided to leave his winter coat on the side of the road. Boy was he sorry a little later on. Northern California is not like Florida. It was cold, damp and windy. We managed to get to Walnut Creek, which is not very far from San Francisco, our immediate destination, though who knew how long we would stay. We stood there with our thumbs out, getting excited and anxious. After an hour, that turned to annoyance and aggravation. So close yet so very far. We were starting to feel desperate. We had come 3000 miles, more or less, and couldn’t get a ride a few more miles. It took us 8 hours and most of the money we had left to finally bribe someone to drive us across the bridge into the city. We knew X’s sister was staying in some kind of commune and we could at least crash there temporarily - if we could ever get there. We walked the last miles, X freezing and shivering without his coat, me dragging my duffel bag behind me with barely enough strength to drag my feet forward. Finally we found Howard St., in the warehouse district of Frisco. We were standing in front of some kind of old factory or warehouse - it turned out to be an old canning factory - but there was no sign of life. It sure didn’t look like anyone lived there. It was just an old run-down building in an industrial section of town. We checked the address again, shrugged and looked for a way in. She lived in a place called “Project One”. There were three of these “projects”, Project One, Project Two and Project Artaud. Project Artaud is the only one that has survived. Once we figured out how to gain entry, it was like entering another world…
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Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 11:40 pm by Deb
So there we were on the road walking toward the airport, when a car pulled over and asked if we needed a ride and where we were going? We told the man inside we were on our way into the airport to try to catch a ride with a small plane and that we were heading for California. He said he would give us a ride all the way to Sacramento and pay all the expenses. He had been working on the Alaskan Pipeline for months, had lots of money saved up and was looking for company - someone to listen to his stories. I love stories. We were also pretty broke by now and wondering how we would make it all the way to San Francisco, where we had found out X’s other sister was staying. This fellow had a good safe vibe, we were very good at vibing people out by now, and was an older guy that looked pretty lonely. We jumped in the back and off we went. This guy was fascinating! As tired as I was, I stayed awake listening to his stories about working on the pipeline and of being a welder in the Navy, working underwater in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. He had grown children and grandchildren that he was out of touch with and no other relationships. He was very sad and alone. After many hours, we pulled into a small town in Nevada. He bought all our meals, paid for a motel room for us, and gave us money to gamble with. He kept telling us he was just very happy and relieved to have people to spend time with and share his life stories. Sadly, I can’t remember his name. I don’t remember much about his stories either, but was completely entranced at the time. I remember feeling a little like a prostitute, taking money to hang out with him. I even said something to him about it. He kept saying that he had more money than he could ever spend and wanted to share it. He didn’t look at it as buying us. He liked us, too. He was aware that we could have tried to rob him at any time. It was unbelievable how much money this guy was carrying around with him, but he could tell that we were just good-hearted kids who wouldn’t hurt anyone. It’s always amazed me how life takes you where you need to go just at the right time. If we had gotten a ride to Wyoming, or figured out earlier that we needed to go to Denver, we never would have met him. When he dropped us off in Sacramento, we all felt sad to leave. This was more than 30 years ago, and I can still see his face. I sure wish I could remember his name…
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05.07.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 9:59 pm by Deb
We arrived at the Greyhound Bus station in Denver, Colorado after an uncomfortable but otherwise very pleasant ride. Hitchhiking was illegal in Colorado, so we had decided to take a bus to Salt Lake City, Utah. Our plan was to go to the airport in Salt Lake and try to “air hitchhike.” We had read about this in a great book I had gotten the year before called The Great Escape: A Source Book of Delights and Pleasures for the Mind and Body, (edited by Min S. Yee Bantam Press). This book is now out of print. I couldn’t even find it when I googled it. It was published in 1974 and was and is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever owned. It’s similar to the Whole Earth Catalog only much more bizarre and more travel related. Sometimes I miss those days when everyone was trying to share all kinds of new information, or at least new to us. That’s when Rolling Stone magazine, Mother Earth News, Well Being magazine (which later merged with The Vegetarian Times), Relix magazine (first published as Dead Relix) and so many other publications were starting. If I’ve forgotten any, as I’m sure I have, please leave them here and I’ll add a special post. Anyway, here we were at the bus station with hours to kill, so X pulled out his guitar and we started singing. Next thing we knew people were dancing around, stomping their feet and clapping their hands. One elderly woman asked X if he was “Johnny Denver” and kept following us around asking for his autograph even though he insisted he wasn’t John Denver. She was almost in tears as we were getting ready to board the bus, so X obliged her and signed “John Denver” on a slip of paper. We were a little concerned we would get thrown out for causing such a ruckus, but no one seemed to mind. Older couples were swinging each other around. It was like an old fashioned hoedown. It seemed like it was the most fun they’d had in years. The place sure was rocking. We were almost disappointed to leave - almost, but not quite. The ride to Salt Lake was breathtaking - through the Rocky Mountains with snow capped mountain peaks and steep cliffs and ridges all around. We arrived in Utah in daylight and found our way to the airport easily. Finally, we could try this new form of travel. We met someone earlier in our trip who had done it and recommended it highly. We couldn’t wait.
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05.05.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 11:58 pm by Deb
In my haste to tell of our near freezing experience in Big Springs, I realized I had forgotten to tell about our stay in Lincoln, Nebraska. We had breezed into town and asked a local where we could find a cheap place to stay. He directed us to a very cheap, very run-down hotel in the center of town. This hotel was straight out of every sleazy hotel scene in movies and novels. We checked in and were handed clean linens (towels and sheets) and a room key. The room was only a few dollars a night. We were up on the third floor. We stepped over a sleeping (we hoped) body in the hall and wrestled with the lock to our room. There was a double bed that sagged dreadfully in the middle, a dresser and a lamp. I had led a sheltered life, and this was the first time I had ever seen cockroaches. My experiences in the Mid-West since then have often included roaches. We were a little leery, especially because we weren’t at all sure of the lock, but also dead tired with no other prospects. We made the bed and lay down, hoping that the creaking springs would actually hold us up for the night, and closed our eyes, anticipating a long awaited sleep. That’s when we heard the harmonica player in the hallway. No, I am not making this up. There was really a blues harmonica playing in the hallway just outside our door all night long. He sometimes stopped long enough for us to fall asleep, then would start up again. I think he passed out momentarily, then came to again. Sometimes he sang the blues. It wasn’t a terrible thing. He was a pretty good player, and I consoled myself with the thought that I was joining many other artists who had slept in similar circumstances. I was still young and romantic. Now I would just be annoyed as hell. We did make it through the night, finding needles and lots of empty bottles in the communal bathroom in the morning, then headed back on the road on our way to Big Springs. A few years later, while living in Oregon, we turned on the news just in time to see this flea bag hotel, once a great landmark, imploded while a huge crowd of people in town and on national news looked on. Apparently many artists had stayed there over the years, but would no longer. It was a strange feeling watching that very brief part of my life imploded on television.
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05.02.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 10:08 pm by Deb
Our travels were fairly uneventful until hitting Big Springs, Nebraska - except for a minor incident involving large men who didn’t like hippies and a tire iron. Good thing we were fast talkers and even faster runners.Big Springs is self-described as a “small community with a big heart.”Boy, you could have fooled us. I guess things have changed in the last 30 years. It is located10 miles east of the Nebraska-Colorado border, close to where I-80 towards Wyoming and I-76 towards Colorado split off. We did not want to go to Colorado because of the hitchhiking laws there, so we figured we’d breeze through Wyoming then on through Utah and Nevada to California. What we didn’t expect was the big blizzard that shut down I-80 going into Wyoming. We also didn’t expect that none of the people who stopped and talked to us wouldn’t give us that important piece of information. Car after car stopped and offered to take us to Denver, Colorado, but no one told us why they weren’t going to Wyoming. Meanwhile the wind had picked up and the temperature had dramatically dropped. Also, the truckers started playing their favorite game of speeding up in the left hand lane and swerving over to the right just before reaching us so the force of their wind would tumble us through the snow and scatter our packs. They usually blew their horns as they passed - kind of like an evil laugh. After many hours, we trudged to the truck stop for a meal and some nice hot coffee. The next few hours we rotated between standing out by the road and going inside for coffee and to warm up. Finally the manager of the truck stop told us that unless we were buying a full meal, we would have to drink our coffee outside. Remember when I said we had been given gifts when we left Connecticut that would come in handy later on? Well, someone had given us a “space blanket.” It was a very thin sheet of mylar with plastic on one side specially designed for use in outer space to protect the astronauts against the elements. We sat outside the restaurant huddled in our space blanket asking everyone who came by for a ride. It was actually tolerable inside our little cocoon. When the manager came out and threatened to call the police if we didn’t get away from his restaurant, we asked him to please do that, thinking that we could have a nice warm place to stay the night, but he just walked away muttering. Finally, after 46 hours of being stuck in that “small community with a big heart”, a young woman told usabout the blizzard and the closed roads. She offered to take us to Denver. We could have gotten a ride to Denver many, many hours earlier had we known. Oh well, things happen for a reason. She made riding crops for a living and had her small car packed full of them. We wedged ourselves into her back seat on top of these boxes of crops and slept all the way to Denver where we planned to take a bus to Salt Lake City.
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04.30.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 9:21 pm by Deb
X liked to call himself a “road scholar”, as opposed to a Rhodes Scholar. I guess after this journey, I’d have to say the same thing. The next morning we left bright and early wandering the streets of Pittsburg waiting to meet up with X’s sister. We arrived at our meeting place and were met by her friend, a Marxist. “A what?”, I thought to myself. Having been brought up in a very conservative Republican family, if I’d ever even heard of Karl Marx, I’m sure I would have thought he was pure evil. After about a half an hour, I realized why I had fought so often with my family over politics. I was fascinated and starved for more. The only class I’d actually heard a name for was the Middle Class, though we lived in a mostly Working Class neighborhood. I’d always been very confused about where we fit in. We were much poorer than most of my parent’s friends but were trying to live in that world. We had to keep up appearances at all cost. I learned very early on that appearances can be very deceiving.
This man was only the first of many incredible characters who would entertain, educate me, and radically change my life. Unfortunately, we had very little time with him. Meanwhile, I was concerned about how tired I was all the time and other body issues that were going on. The next day I went for a pregnancy test, which came out negative. Whew! Being relatively close to home, I would have felt pressured to go back there if I was having a baby. My spirits perked up a bit more, and I was ready to go back on the road.
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04.28.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 10:32 pm by Deb
I consider myself very lucky to have made it through those early years alive and relatively intact. Many of our friends either died or got locked up in some kind of facility. One friend escaped from a Halfway House to hide out with us only to be locked up in a Mental Institution months later. He is another story, but I’m feeling anxious to get on the road. There are actually many stories to be told from that year, but most are drug related and I don’t want people to think it was all one big happy party. It was always hard, sometimes dangerous, and often ugly. It got so ugly that we decided the only way out was to go on the road. New Year’s Eve of 1974 we threw a big party in our empty apartment and, without sleeping, left the next morning for parts unknown. We not only left the apartment, but left it full of people crashed all over the floor. Some friends drove us from Connecticut to just outside of New York City, about an hour away. I hope you’re thinking, “They must’ve been crazy to try hitchhiking from the Northeast across I-80 in the middle of winter.” For those of you reading this who are not from the US, it is verrrrrry COLD that time of year. We had full packs, though no tent. We were counting on being able to stay with people along the way and had been given gifts that came in very handy later on. We also didn’t have a whole lot of money, but had faith that we would figure it all out as we went along. X had been on the road ever since he ran away from home at 14 years old. He knew all the tricks like sleeping in the clothing donation boxes to stay warm and dry. Our first ride was a couple of young men who were traveling aimlessly with the goal of making it to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I have still never made it to Louisiana, one of only 5 states I haven’t yet visited. We were invited to come along but decided at some point to stop off in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to visit X’s family. We got dropped off in the late afternoon, managed to call one of his sisters who didn’t want us to stay with her but was willing to squeeze us in for a short visit the next day, couldn’t find the other sister, but finally found a friend of his who said we could stay if we split very early in the morning so her husband didn’t get upset. By now it was late at night; our packs were feeling very heavy; we were cold and hungry, and it started snowing gray snow as we trudged our way to her apartment. (Pittsburg is the only place where I’ve experienced that phenomena. They have done a lot more to clean up the pollution since then.) I didn’t think I could walk another step when X stopped at a set of very steep stairs that went up the side of a small mountain. They had to be 7 or 8 flights, and to me it looked like Mount Everest. “She lives just a little beyond the top of those stairs,” he said. I collapsed on the bottom step and cried…
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04.27.06
Posted in Uncategorized, life's stories at 10:37 pm by Deb
I want to caution anyone stumbling upon this blog that these are stories from my very colorful past. I do not suggest that anyone make these same mistakes or take similar chances. I consider myself very lucky to have survived some of my adventures. Not all of my friends were so lucky.
Once X moved in, things really got crazy. My mom always thought he was a bad influence, but he actually straightened me out in some ways. He got me to give up the really bad drugs and got me back into music. He also got me to stop hanging out in the neighborhood bar taking bets with the macho older men that I could do more shots of tequila than them. I was, and still am, rather petit and innocent looking. I also look younger than I am. I could pound down those shots though and usually made a lot of money in a night. Anyway, our drugs of choice at that time were pot and acid. We found a dealer who had the best prices and the best stuff in town. He was also very generous. None of our other friends wanted to buy from him though. He had a reputation for being unpredictable and violent. Rumor had it he had shot his wife. X and I weren’t afraid of much at that time, so we arranged a meeting. He showed us around his apartment, showed us where he kept his guns and where his escape route was - just in case we were ever there when he got busted. Once he found out we were musicians, he handed X a guitar and had us play “Down By the River” and “Hey Joe”. He could listen to those two songs over and over again. We always left with much more than we had paid for. I told you he was generous. Well, one day X called to make an appointment but got delayed and showed up about 10 or 15 min. late. When Dealer’s girlfriend opened the door, there were many guns pointed at X from the staircase above. We realized that this guy would have blown his girlfriend away in an instant to protect himself. He was very upset that X was late and cautioned him to never be late again or call before just showing up. We never showed up there again. Calls or no calls, that was enough to scare us off. Anyway, we had an entire freezer full of acid, and pot was easy to find. Who needed Dealer anymore.
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