Chapter Zero - Love is All You Need

The Zero - the Fool - the un-numbered card in the tarot, representing the un-anchored point of view, the un-limited range of possibility, the un-classifiable one who - while lightly clutching a small bundle of possessions - is teetering merrily on the brink of a precipice.

Gliding across the dark Mojave bedrock of prickly earth full of rattlesnakes and horned-toads, cactus flowers and tumbleweeds - our windows are down, its the middle of night, the glow from the sign atop a forty-foot pole that says simply and irresistibly 'EAT' looms in the distance. We slow and pull into the giant graveled truck-stop parking field off the two lane highway which is the old Route 66, roll up to a pump. “Thirty-six cents for regular! Damn, it's expensive out here!” Brad says as the attendant approaches. “Fill 'er up,” says Brad, who's driving. As the gas is pumping, the filling-station guy checks the oil and water, washes the windshield. “Could you check the tires too?” Three-eighty fills it up and he pays the attendant out of the kitty. We park, get out and stretch, feeling the excitement of being way out here in the California desert and breathing in this balmy scent-laden air. We sit down in a booth and look for something on the jukebox besides this cowboy music they're playing. “Ain't nothin'.” We glance around and all we see are truck drivers who look like cowboys.

Full of hamburgers and French fries and flying high on coffee, we're back on the open road, just through Barstow - there's nothing in between us and LA now but sagebrush and prairie dogs. We'd been fishing for KRLA on the radio for the last hundred miles, it's just coming in and they're spinning out tunes that hadn't even reached us yet back in Kansas. It's three in the morning, my '56 Chev is rolling along, happy as we are – hasn't given us a minute's problem all the way, not bad for a ten year old car.

Not too much traffic, just the occasional monster semi tractor-trailer truck who roar up on your tail blinking their headlights as a sign they want to pass – you return the signal by blinking your head and taillights off and on, which tells them the road is clear of oncoming traffic, and you're ready for 'im. You blink again when they're past far enough to return to the right lane. This little ritual of courtesy and comradeship is completed with a flurry of flashes from their bank of orange running lights after they get safely by. If you hadn't done your part they might rudely blare their air horn at you as they roar past, but we knew the code of the road. When those big ones blast by coming from the other direction - only a few feet away - they send a shock wave that rocks your car with a sudden jolt.

Cutting across the black soft night with its pungent wind blowing through the car, singing along with 'Wild Thing', and 'Paperback Writer' and 'California Dreamin' at the top of our lungs, we're all exuberance at the approach of our destination. After awhile we settled down, to listen to and inhale the magic desert air, to watch the shadows and silhouettes of the cactus, the yucca, the distant craggy bluffs in the faint moonlight. A pack of coyotes skirted across the ribbon of asphalt in the far reach of our beams, to go skipping and yelping into the night.

We whooped a victory cry as we came over a rise, just another of a thousand hill crests but at the bottom of this one a ten-thousand square mile carpet of diamond lights lie stretched out across the immense valley that is Los Angeles. Mick Jagger is singing a song about 'goin' home' that doesn't end and we're shouting and honking our horn to the sky. We drive and drive, down into the LA basin and onto the Santa Monica Freeway – the first of the fabled freeways in the US, which runs out of the desert through Pasadena, skirts Hollywood and empties out on the coast. Corvettes and Limousines flash by in the fast lanes and we imagine that Clint Eastwood or Angie Dickinson or Paul Newman are inside them. A pair of girls in a shiny new cobalt blue Mustang slow beside us, they crane their necks to look over at us, make faces, laugh then gun it up to 85. We know it's about our Kansas plates. “Snobby bitches,” one of us said, but never mind, like the Stone's song, we're goin' home! I'll get rid of these hokey tags soon enough. The freeway takes us finally through the tunnel at Santa Monica which transforms the freeway into the Pacific Coast Highway - I get my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean; it stills my breath, lying vast and mighty in the graying dawn.

Brad slows to a comfortable 35 so we can take it all in. We switch off the radio and glide quietly alongside the walls of the plunging palisades which capture and amplify the roaring hush of the sea. The briny air intoxicated me with a love at first sight and as love will do, it filled me with a melancholy for somehow finding a way to claim it – to make this spellbinding coastline my own.

Highway One winds lazily past the golden shore, obscured by the Malibu seaside homes until it breaks out again at Zuma, the broad beach where the big breakers roll in, rumbling like freight cars. We turn into the parking lot and switch off the engine. The waves look ominous because I know that our plan is to jump into the ocean, not just sit and look at it.

Brad is a veteran surfer from a previous trip and is eager to be my mentor for my virgin christening by the pounding surf. We leave our shoes in the car and trudge across the beach to the water's edge. The sunless sky is big and gray, the sand is cold – not fitting my image of California at all. We've already got our swim shorts on since changing into them at the truck-stop. My reluctance is great as the first frigid rills wash over my feet. “Let's go!” Brad says as he zips by me and dives in. He turns around to me with a grin. 'Come on...” he coaxes. I wade out and now I'm thigh-deep in the surging current, it's pulling me out, then pushing me back, I'm struggling to keep my feet planted. “Go ahead, get wet!” Brad shouts over the din, his hair plastered to his head. “You gotta get used to it right away!” So I did and he was right, after the initial shock your body-temperature evens out. But now to face down the giants who were pawing and thundering before me, summoning me to battle. I was looking up rooftop high to their frothing curdling crests, feeling completely cowed, but knew I had to... I knew instinctively I had to surrender to it. I felt it was my first rite of passage, that this was not a dragon to slay but a primal god to offer myself up to. I moved implacably forward, to the point of no return -

“Dive under! Dive under the wave!” Brad shouted, but too late, I'd already lost my leverage, my legs had been sucked out from under me and I was being catapulted in a vertical waterfall going up – tons of water shooting straight to the sky with me in it. When I reached the top, half my body was suspended for a still moment in space like a carved bowsprit riding high, heading into the wind. Below me was a straight drop to the thinly cushioned sea floor where I was standing only moments before. I went over the falls. “Take a breath!” I faintly heard Brad shout from below, probably saving me from drowning because the next thing I knew, after the crash, I was on the bottom with tons of force pummeling me with cascading fury, holding me down, spinning me round like dough under a rolling pin for what seemed like a long, long time, but next moment I was mercifully in the open air again. I pulled myself onto shaky legs, and tried to outrun the next wave which was pursuing me like a linebacker intent on smashing me flat – which it did, then delivered me limp and defeated in a frothy wash to shore. I collapsed on the dry beach like a wet towel. The titanic beast had consumed me, chewed me up and spit me out. I lay panting as the world spun around me. Gradually the exhilaration of it seeped into me, bringing me back to life – I felt baptized. I was now a slightly different person than I was a very short while ago.

“It was so powerful!” I told Brad over a big breakfast on the patio of a Malibu seashore café. “And the size! It just – I had no idea waves were so big and so powerful.”

He chuckled, “And these are small ones – well, not small, but medium-sized.”

“How big?” I wanted to know, “How big was the one that got me?”

“Oh, maybe twelve, fifteen feet – probably too big for your first time out, sorry 'bout that. Next time we'll hit it when the surf is smaller.”

“And also,” I went on, “I didn't realize the ocean was really salty.” I'd regarded that as a poetic figure of speech, but startled to find it to be intensely seasoned. I could feel it – slightly viscous, my hair was full of sand and salt and untold organic elements, minerals and vegetation, a kind of seafood salad dressing – I could still taste it on my skin.

We lingered over coffee, perusing the classifieds for work and an apartment. California accepted us - inside of one week, we had landed both an apartment and jobs. I was hired for doing odd chores at the Santa Monica small-craft Airport, and Brad worked as a crew member on the beach maintenance team.

Brad bought a board and began surfing regularly, he had a natural grace with it but I – well, on my first foray out with his board, I fell off and was clobbered on the side of the head by the nose of the nine-foot plank. This sort of put me off the whole thing, and I settled for what's called 'body surfing,' just swimming, riding in the waves, not on them - and let it go at that.

We settled into our tiny apartment on a narrow lot with a well-trimmed lawn. The difference between the fastidious southern California suburbs as opposed to their Kansan counterparts is stucco-siding and its mixture of desert and subtropical flora. Succulents and cactus lined the perimeters of things, some with delicate, others with leathery blooms throwing splashes of jungle color against the domesticated greens. Palms mingled with deciduous trees along the curbs of the quiet streets of Santa Monica.

We got a TV, and soon the Joe Pyne Show became one of our favorites. He was the founding granddaddy of a format that would someday sweep the nation. He came on late, and we looked forward to his confrontational interviews. We'd mix up gin-and- tonics and sit down for the evening's entertainment. Through his guests we started learning about all kinds of things we'd never heard of before, hippies, LSD, and spiritual ideas that were extreme departures from ingrained Christian views. Pyne would debase and humiliate his guests, especially these radicals, as best he could, gaining applause when he'd goad someone into a shouting match. We drove up to the Sunset Strip one night just to go to some of the clubs where these new breed were hanging out. I watched with a rather appalled fascination at this demented looking lot, even mocking one long-haired guy with the ultimate corny cliché of the day, “Are you a boy or a girl?” – he spun around with a loaded look on his face that would have shot me dead if it were a gun. But these weird looking people seemed to be springing up everywhere, in rapidly growing numbers. My job at the airport was short-lived, I had a new one at the Everest and Jennings wheelchair factory, on the assembly line. Anyone at the plant who even remotely showed signs of bending toward the hippie look was marginalized, but there was a lot of discussion about it, mostly antagonistic. Whether pro or con, interest and dialogue ran high. I wasn't hostile but wasn't going for it either, I thought it was all just plain silly. I was still unaware of even the slight possibility that everything in my own world was about to transfigure into something unrecognizable from the life I had known while growing up...

I spent countless hours on that assembly line, dreaming of what I really wanted out here in California. I felt there was a larger life that was passing me by, one that had less structure, more girls, people drifting in and out, more day-to-day action. My reveries always centered around a little house on or near the beach, a funky little place that belonged to me, with a flimsy screen door and a squeaky spring which made it slam shut, like an old Kansas farmhouse. The ground is unpaved natural earth, the air is still with scents of California sage and saltwater, honey bees and hummingbirds flitted... “Hey Brady, here ya go!” The jangling clatter of a fresh rack of newly chromed hand-rails rolled up beside me, ready to rivet into place, rudely rustling me out of my nice dream. Ah, well. We were moving soon into another, larger apartment, but it was nothing like my dream.

Bit by bit, elements would filter in and add to the way I thought about things. There were a couple of guys downstairs, Steve and Phil, in our new more modern apartment and the four of us had ongoing discussions about what was going on in the world around us, but we were still firmly ensconced in the established order, with jobs, school, career plans. All of that nagged at me as I didn't really have any burning career ideas, no place in the established order of things to fit myself into. I had another new job, a real possibility as a life-long thing, I was a milling-machine operator now making jet airplane parts for McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft. But I didn't really think of it as a career, I was going for a more white-collar thing - I'd been a car salesman for awhile back in Kansas so maybe I'd look into becoming an insurance salesman but my heart was in the new stereo I'd bought and rigged with speakers at either end of the living room. We were listening to the new rock music, which was all consuming, hypnotic. Articles from the LA Free Press were fomenting ideas, about how wrong the Viet Nam war was, about the shams and double-standards of society. Steve came in one day all red-faced. “Sit down,” he said with a bead of sweat across his forehead, and out of his pocket he pulled a joint – a reefer, a real marijuana cigarette. This was the very thing which our mothers had spent years warning us against - but we knew we had to do this. We were feeling increasingly out of it, and had to initiate ourselves. And besides, everyone we knew who was getting high was not becoming a heroin addict. We waited till dark and with great trepidation we lit up and passed it around. Pretty soon we were inside the music, no longer listening to, but adrift and aboard Morrison's crystal ship, lying with our heads cushioned on the surrealistic pillow of the Jefferson Airplane, flying in the diamond sky silhouetted by the sea... no doubt about it, I was beginning to wake up from the American Dream.

Ray, my boss, my comedic milling-machine instructor at the factory was about to retire. We were having a beer after work one Friday afternoon and I asked him if he knew of any houses I might rent up where he lived. Topanga was a name that had recently lit up my imagination – I first heard of it on the radio when the DJ passed on a rumor that Bob Dylan had been seen walking alongside the road in 'Topanga Canyon' after his mysterious accident and disappearance – the furtive scenario had stuck in my mind and aroused my interest. Ray was my buddy and he lived right in the canyon.

“You can have our place – If my wife likes you - we're moving out next month, buying another place up the coast.”

Our neat and trim upper deck apartment had suited me and my Kansan sensibilities for a time, but after my year of perspective twists and turns - this suburban living was becoming way too tidy for me - I was ready for the country.

So on the following Sunday I took a drive up the coastline to meet with them and see the house. I kept a sharp lookout for the obscure turnoff from the Coast Highway - “nothing more than a dirt driveway,” he'd cautioned me, “You'll miss it if you're going more than five miles an hour” I found it marked with a hand painted sign, 'S Topanga Lane,' adorned with hearts and flowers. I turned off the wide pavement of Route 1 and bumped along a rutted corridor which descended to a subtropical enclave lying hidden to the world. It was enchantment from the first moments, situated as it was at the mouth of the canyon, where its creek broadens and spills its waters into the Malibu sea. Busy noise of the highway having faded away, my open windows welcomed gentle gusts of perfumed and salty air, small birds chirped wistful greetings. The roadway made a gentle turn and widened – a row of gaudily painted mailboxes heralded the nature of the residents of this lazy gulch - a country cul-de-sac where life had slowed to the pace of the hands on a clock and dead-ended a couple of hundred feet down the way into the quietly flowing Topanga creek. Fruit bearing trees, vines bursting with blossom, thickets of broad-leafed undergrowth, tall stands of swaying bamboo fluttering their slender fingers as hovering hummingbirds homed in on nectar-bearing blooms. Buried in and amongst this tropical flora was an eclectic array of gloriously cobbled together dwellings wreathed in morning glories with painted shutters and planter boxes, like an illustration in a book of fairy tales. Reclining like lazy lions on an old overstuffed sofa sitting by the road, a couple of maned and shirtless men and a nubile young woman watched as I drove slowly past.

These were not like the sullen, rather vacuous souls who populated the Sunset Strip. Here was a quite different subset: muscled, curvaceous, tanned and with a steady gaze through narrow eyes – they seemed to know something... tentatively they waved. I waved back, but it sent my heart pounding. If these were to be my new neighbors, would I fit in here? Already I wanted this badly and knew I had to have it. But first I had to meet the wife.

I spotted the house number, turned off the engine and breathed in the pungently scented air, silently thrilled by what I saw. Letting the image of the little cottage sink in - elevated slightly from the road and nestled into the hillside, retaining walls and stone walkways defined its three levels of yard, patio and the cute little cabin perched above. It was old and weather-beaten, but sturdily built. It proved even more charming than the place that hovered in my daydreams and made me all the more anxious - it wasn't yet mine.

I made my first footprint into the finely ground delta silt, and in a few steps was treading lightly up the side stairs to the trellised porch. I ventured through the shaded archway between the house to the back retaining wall - where I met Ray's wife, Fabiola.

I found her on her knees painting fake pastel cobblestones on the cement path around the rear of the main house. Startled at my sudden appearance, “Oh!” - she exclaimed as she got to her feet, tucked a fallen strand of long bleached hair back into her cascading topknot, and greeted me warmly; at the same moment Ray appeared from around the back wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, and took his place by her side. Before me stood two seasoned yet elegant caricatures: Zsa Zsa Gabor and her stout little man, Mr. Magoo. That is exactly the image that appeared in my mind, and I had to stifle a laugh.

We went inside where Ray took his sun seat by the sectioned picture window that perfectly framed the sage covered mountain that rose up from the other side of the creek with a white corner of the Moonfire Temple – built by a local mad artist and architect - peeking out from behind the top of the ridge. It was such a cute little living room, with a bar-top counter and stools that separated it from the kitchen. It was old with lots of nooks, and a flimsy screen door on a squeaky spring. The little back bedroom off the kitchen had a dutch door that led to a small patio. I knew this house was mine, if only, if only... we had a beer and some talk about this and that, nothing about the house, and I was squirming. After awhile, Ray turned to Fabiola, “Fabby, whad'ya think?”

She squinted, sizing me up, toying with me, “Yeah, I think he’ll do.”

“OK, give 'im the keys.”

All the blood poured back into my veins. They handed it over to me as easy as that – no contract, security deposit or last month’s rent. I felt like I was at last a true California resident.

They moved up the coast to the beach, and I moved into the little dream house that would remain in my dreams for the rest of my life.

In time Raymond and Fabiola Parker would become more to me as surrogate grandparents than as landlords.

Moving day unfolded memorably with so many things coming to me all at once. I could take it at a leisurely pace; I’d already hauled all my stuff to my new garage a couple of days before. I’d been staying at my friend Annie’s; she fixed us a nice breakfast, I then took my last ride in the old Chev to trade it in for an Austin-Healy 3000, silver with wire spoke wheels and red leather seats - I’d been working on this deal for two weeks. And now that I was out of that apartment I could have a dog; my next stop was at the pound to pick up Claude, the skinny mixed breed pooch I’d chosen the day before and already named. So here's Claude riding proudly next to me, freshly sprung from jail and ecstatically hanging his head over the side of my new little convertible, his ears blown back, he was so happy. I talked to him and patted him all the way, and by the end of that five-mile drive, we'd bonded. Together we sailed up that beautiful stretch of coastline from Santa Monica to the turn-off. When we drove in on that first morning I was feeling on top of the world and I wished Annie had skipped work that day to be with me.

The only blemish was knowing that there would be another person moving in as well – I was going to have a new roommate. Jim was not a guy I would have chosen to share the house with me, he was a friend of Brad's, who'd invited him. I’d met him a couple of times and consented, but only the week before moving day, Brad suddenly informed me that he was going back to Kansas - permanently - and vanished the next day! A gifted artist, he had a chance to go back to school, and couldn't pass it up. This meant that it would be just the two of us – near complete strangers, without the buffer of our mutual friend. I didn't feel much camaraderie with him - he wasn't a bad guy, just in the mold of the beer-drinking suburbanite frat boy. I was already a hippie at heart, so right away we didn't have a lot in common.

I had another problem though, I didn't look like a hippie. I was stuck with an all too clean-cut look, a situation I couldn't change because of my awkward affiliation with the United States Marine Corp Reserves. My once-a-month meetings demanded that my hair be clipped very short. I hated that more than anything, I wanted a lot of hair – it was the badge of belonging, besides, girls almost automatically went for guys with long hair. So Jim compounded my own situation – together we both looked very establishment – very straight. The straggly Claude-dog was about the only thing that didn’t fit our projected image of a couple of not-so-undercover narcotics agents.
That’s why early visits from the neighbors were tinged with suspicion and in the nature of reconnaissance missions – we were being politely but warily sized up - and no one offered us a joint. I drove a sleek sports car parked in front of the most solidly built house in the lane - I wore knit shirts and desert boots, wheat jeans and polo jackets with close-cropped hair sheared closely up the back and sides with a little Kennedy tuft up front. Moving into this neighborhood sporting this appearance - well, no one thought that I wasn’t a narc. And Jim was even more button-down than I – he maintained a class-president look with JC Penney shirts tucked into tan slacks with brown leather shoes, and drove a family-type car. So here we were - two guys living together, probably gay, to all appearances FBI agents planted to observe. We had "you’d better keep yourselves in line, and your marijuana well hidden! - written all over us.

“Oh yes, that’s what we thought.” Eva laughed as she passed me a fresh joint. It had only taken Jim a couple of months to bow out and return to his element in the suburbs; we both breathed sighs of relief as we bade an affable farewell, and I could now fully occupy my home without having to compromise. By that time I'd gotten rid of my 'straight' image, still short haired but funky now in patched bell-bottom jeans, cowboy boots and a tan leather vest over a black t-shirt. Eva was one of my neighbors and she was over for tea one afternoon. She was filling me in on the impressions we’d made on her and the rest of the neighbors on the day we drove up. “Everybody thought you were FBI.
They knew by now that the reason for my short hair was due to my being in the Marines– something I’d gotten myself into some years before. I'd also explained that being in the service was actually keeping me away from Viet Nam, and that if my unit were to be called up to fight, I would disappear into Mexico rather than to participate in that immoral war. If there were any shreds of doubt left over, I was completely absolved when another of my high-school buddies, Larry, turned up at my front door with hair down to his shoulders and beads draped around his neck. He'd been a lieutenant in the army but had resigned his commission to join the new movement. He quickly endeared himself to my neighbors, thus by association validated me once and for all as not being a poser. I became a solid and respected member of the community.

One bright morning a cheery girl with a wide grin spread across her face appeared at my doorstep. Looking for a place to live, she’d heard of the little cabin up behind the house. I invited her in and while talking with her, assessed her on behalf of the landlords - Ray and Fabby regarded me as a kind of on-site property manager, and trusted me to make the decisions as to whom should rent the place. I was also covertly assessing her on behalf of myself.
“What do you do? Do you have a job?”
“Yes”, she beamed. “I’m a dancer on Sunset Strip. Nude!” she added with a laugh.

Tina had excellent qualifications and moved right in.
With Tina came change. Until she arrived my place had been a bachelor pad – a kind of psychedelic fraternity house. Tina brought friends - one by one another girl would show up hoping to get out of the city, hoping there would be room for one more. Julie took the front bedroom, Chloe and Martha moved into the cabin – it was already vacant, as Tina had moved in with me. All of them were dancers on the Strip, which kept them quite affluent meaning the bills got paid. The nature of the household was altered significantly, it became - a kind of psychedelic sorority house. The fridge was stuffed to overflowing and there was always something simmering on the stove. As wild as they were they kept it all together - no one had a consuming drug problem and alcohol was non-existent. Gradually the living room became beautiful: Someone brought in an overstuffed couch and chair, I found an old front door in the creek with a weather beaten patina and a beveled glass panel – it became our coffee table. We had a thirties’ vintage mahogany floor model RCA radio, a red Persian rug, our pick of music from rows of record albums neatly arranged on the stereo shelves – the TV sat unwatched in a dark corner of the front bedroom, no reception, no interest - in fact I would never see another TV show for the next fifteen years. The girls kept flower vases full and plants tended, bread baked, we all kept the dishes washed, the tub clean, the floors swept and the place neat. I never locked my doors, and nothing was ever stolen. I don't remember any arguments or fights over anything, everyone voluntarily kicked in their shares of expenses. Utopia.

Since I worked the night shift I'd sleep till three or four in the afternoon, never knowing what I'd wake up to. The girls brought the real freaks out of the woods and through my front door.

There was a happy lunacy in the air – everyone was trying on personas. The girls loved to dress up in velvets and lace with flower braided hair, or in Victorian outfits, or their standby favorite, nothing at all. The men had a thing for the old wild-west, sporting wide-brimmed hats and denim jackets mixed with flowered shirts and brightly embroidered jeans. Renaissance period costumes were also popular. Everybody wanted to be a poet or prophet, a minstrel and bard; through my doors wandered astrologers, clairvoyants, druids, fortunetellers, mediums, palmists, predictors, prognosticators, prophesiers, seers, soothsayers, sorcerers, tea-leaf readers, witches, warlocks and wizards. Many a late night was spent sitting in a circle on my living room rug, passing joints, listening to music and philosophizing. Most were dilettantes; some were actually, quite astonishingly gifted. One such genius appeared one day who was to permanently alter the course of my life.

The call of the wild
When Gypsy Jerry made the scene he brought the whole world with him. He’d just returned from a six-year rambling expedition to every remote corner he could find in the Asian world. He might have looked a bit incongruous in his Moroccan robes and curly tipped shoes, being a stocky Texan, but with him it fit. He had the face of a nomad from the Sahara or Gobi Desert – eyes like laser blue slits in a weather toughened face framed with rumpled blond hair and a thin wispy beard; he looked more Tibetan than Texan. His smile was genuine, warm but full of mischief and infused with a very definite satyr-like quality – his laughter was frequent, real, infectious, never at someone's expense, but always because something was truly funny and often he'd said or done it himself. When he walked into the room everything would instantly spring to life, because he carried life around with him so vividly.

I met him this way: After dinner one evening Tina said she had someone she wanted me to meet and walked me across the lane to John and Eva’s. I caught my first glimpse of him - he was squatting on a low bench, working on something in his lap. I asked him about what he was making - a small cabinet. It was nearly finished and I stared at it in wonder; it already looked like an antique from centuries past, but he told me, “It won't be finished until I dig it up.”Huh...?” I said, succinctly. “Oh – I'll bury it for a month or so, then it'll be a genuine antique!” Studded with brass nails around all the edges, it had little drawers with pulls made from hammered brass rings. The insides of the drawers were tightly lined with crimson velvet and the whole box was stained a deep dark brown. “I got the wood from an orange crate – before I got ahold of it you could actually use it for something – now I don’t know what I’ll do with it!” he joked. “But I know where I’m fixin' to put it, wanna see?” He led Tina and I back out to the lane and into a gray step-van; he lit two lanterns which were fastened to knurled bed posts and illumined a wondrous cavern – it was Ali Baba’s tent come to life. The sumptuous bed-chamber floated two feet above the Moroccan-carpeted floor and lined with mirrored tapestries, which surrounded the bed with little sparkles of light. “This’ll go here,” as he slid the jeweled cabinet into a special mounting he’d built for it, beside the bed. Draped crimson velvet theater curtains, held open by beaded camel halter-straps at the sides, would provide privacy in bed. The walls and ceiling were upholstered with printed and hand-woven fabrics, professionally tucked and finished off with corded piping, everything fashioned by his hand. An old wooden wine cask fed water into a little basin in the corner. He turned to us and his face mirrored the delight we felt at his creation. I'd never met a craftsman of this caliber in the flesh. “Show him your sitar, Jerry,” Tina said as we were starting to leave.

“Yeah?” Jerry said, pausing to decide whether or not he would. “When I start playing ...” I could see it was something he took very seriously.

“Can you just show it to him?” she coaxed.

Reluctantly conceding, he climbed across the bed to a shelf piled with mirrored and embroidered tapestries. From under this plush protective cover he pulled an enormous musical instrument, I'd never seen anything like it and had only heard of the sitar because of the Beatles, but hadn't ever seen a picture. It had two pumpkin sized gourds at either end for acoustic amplification and a flat board with curved metal frets positioned to arc over the string board. There are perhaps two dozen strings, stretched over and under the floating frets. The ones underneath resonate with the melody strings on top, Jerry explained. He held it reverently, strummed it a few times and played through a scale, his thick fingers surprisingly nimble, a trance-inducing melody made little indigo-violet curly-cues in the air - but he put it down abruptly saying, “I'll play when we're all settled down some night.”
It was a promise of more to come and indeed it was the beginning of much more to come - of a life-long friendship in fact.

Jerry and I became instant confidants. My house became his - we’d talk at length about anything and everything; he possessed a naturally benevolent wisdom and a killer sense of humor. Sometimes we’d just sit on a park bench and laugh at the passing comedy of life, recognizing the same oddities in people, ludicrous advertising slogans, like “Coke – it's the real thing!” A Coke was so far from anything real, it was a ridiculous thing to say, but they were saying it. It became a perfect metaphor to us, we who were on a serious quest to break down the real from the unreal, and that phrase humorously – and accurately - symbolized our society's many mis-perceptions of reality.

Anything could be poignantly funny. Once at Venice beach we saw a seagull drop dead from a still, standing position – simply keeled over. Both of us happened to be absent-mindedly focused on the same bird – a bit of performance art just for us – no one else on the crowded beach had noticed. It was the ongoing play of these simple little subtleties that most people missed – and we simultaneously caught - that amused and amazed us.

I tried once to get him to take some LSD with me; he refused – as he absolutely abstained from any and all drugs, including tobacco or alcohol. But he stayed up with me all night under the moon while I tripped, and led me on a profound and hilarious odyssey. “After you’ve crossed the Sahara on a camel, you won’t need any drugs,” he once told me. Larger than life, he became my window to the world in a way I’d never known; he’d seen it and done it at ground level, had developed many skills of music, tent-making, wood-crafting, leather-working, mold-making, extemporaneous song-writing and story-telling - and no woman could or would resist him. Easy to see why, he was a real magician and he cast brilliant spells. As for myself, seeds were being deeply planted and I began to ruminate over the possibilities of making a similar journey such as his. I drank in and absorbed his tales, gradually acquiring the lust for the open road that would eventually lead me to the far-off lands told of in these pages to come.

Tina shared her love between the two of us, not wanting to make me jealous but even better than that, she loved us both. We were a happy threesome and would make all-night forays in his gypsy van to Sunset Strip to pick her up after she finished her torrid dancing on the stage. We'd sit in the front row and watch guys drool over her and laugh – we had her any night. She’d come out with wads of cash and ready to spend it; we'd have big meals at Barney’s then park at the top of Mulholland Drive, or climb on the Hollywood sign, or drive down to Norms' in Santa Monica to eat then go skinny-dipping at Venice Beach, getting back to Topanga at sunrise. Jerry had several circles of friends between LA and San Diego; he’d turn up and disappear with little or no notice, but when he arrived everything would spring to life; he was the master of having fun.

One night Tina got into the van and was laughing about a new law that forbade totally nude dancing. “So now we have to wear a 'snatch patch!' They gave me one, you wanna see it?” Of course, so she pulled up her skirt, and was absolutely naked underneath. “Oh no, I'm not!” and she proceeded to untie a flesh-colored thread behind her back, then she pulled off the tiniest and most invisible bikini bottom ever invented - a triangular shard of a nylon stocking, with actual pubic hair glued to it. “When I put this on, I'm decent!” It was the funniest thing we'd ever seen and we couldn't quit laughing about it. Jerry called it her 'pussy wig'. We made all kinds of jokes about the law checking for snatch patches backstage, and the labor force it took to make them for all the girls. A new cottage industry? Could you make extra cash by growing and selling your pubic hair?

So, you see, we had good, clean fun, and I had it all going on, in a short time, through no planning of my own - just good luck. From my little home, I had all the action, all the ethos, pathos and Eros that makes for great drama. In two years I rarely went out for entertainment because it all turned up right there under my roof.

On the periphery was another guy who, like myself, had a commune of sorts – in his converted school bus. His name was Charlie; we called him “Bus Charlie.” He’d pull into the lane every now and then with several women on board, not necessarily the same ones each time. I remember the first time I met him, he was sitting on the doorstep of his bus playing a guitar. I brought my out guitar - and sat down on the ground and began to play along with him. 'Jamming' is what lots of us did frequently in those days. He was singing songs he said he wrote, I’d add little fill-in runs. He was a strong singer and player, hitting it in full voice, with nothing of the timid folk-singer about him. His songs were kind of a rant against society with lyrics like:

“In their cardboard houses…

And their tin-can cars…

Do they know that they’re losers?

Do they know who they are...?”

He stopped and looked at me. “You need a better guitar, man, like this one,” indicating his own. “You’d play better, too.” It didn’t look very impressive to me; no inlays or fancy scroll-work. But I liked the idea of a better guitar - I’d inherited this one from Bradford, had learned what I knew on it and had gotten good enough to upgrade.
“How much can I get a good one for?” This one was worth about $25, so I figured for $100 I could get something at least as good as Charlie’s.
“Don’t spend anything less than 600 bucks!” I was stunned. I didn’t know anything about guitars, and asked him what his cost. “More than 600 bucks,” he said evasively with a sly grin.
“Why would it be so much?” I half-retorted, implying that I couldn’t believe that something so plain could be so costly.
“Listen man, listen to it. It’s about the sound, not about all that fancy shit. Play it.” He handed it to me, I strummed it and was struck at the way it resonated and the way the notes just leaped off its steel strings. “If you’re gonna play a guitar, learn about guitars.” He held the top of the neck up to my eyes. “Remember that name.” ‘C Martin & Co.’ was humbly inlaid in gold cursive across the top of the tuning board. “See ya later.” He said, and disappeared into the big black bus.
“Who is that guy?” Tina asked me, rolling out some bread dough. She always had dough rising under a tea towel on the counter, or already in the oven. “I’ve seen his bus down here a couple of times,” she mused. I’d like to see inside.
“Yeah, just some guy, I don’t know. His name’s Charlie. He’s got this ordinary looking guitar that he said cost six hundred bucks. I didn't believe it, but it sounded great. He writes songs.”
A while later Charlie appeared at the door. He sat down in the big chair and pulled my guitar to his lap - beat out a tune he said he’d just written. “Hey, come on down to the bus later on,” he said. “Have some tea.” He got up to leave. “You come too,” he said, tossing his head toward Tina as he went out the door.
“Just ask, you shall receive,” I said to her.

We peered in at around sundown, and there were a few people sitting around a low table which ran the length of the front half of the bus, lavishly covered with a thick white ‘ermine’ tablecloth. There were some girls we hadn’t met and some friends from the lane, Eva and John, and Dennis from across the way. Eva, sun-burnished and genial, buxom earth-mother flower-child with thick strawberry blond hair. John, her mate - heavily black bearded, shy, always with a big smile, seldom with something to say. Dennis was a clean shaven cheery guy with a young family and a huge shock of hair. I felt comfortable around them but the bus girls presented a rather reserved reception to us as we picked our way to a spot at the middle of the table. One of the girls handed over a joint as we settled into the overripe environs; the hanging tapestries and velvets seemed to evoke a feeling of a dark medieval castle. I contrasted it in my mind with the atmosphere imbued into Jerry's bus, of a luminous Arabian tent.

Feeling a bit ill at ease we awkwardly bobbled our heads, taking in the decor and saying ‘nice, nice.’ Incense smoke curled hypnotically, casting a purple haze through the candle-lit air. The sight of Charlie emerging from the green door that led to the mysterious room that occupied the back half of the thirty-five foot bus - his inner sanctum - was a welcoming possibility of an icebreaker. He energized the terse atmosphere - “Glad you made it, man,” he said, squatting in the corner. “These people making you feel at home?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, not quite a lie - they did offer us a joint.
“How do ya like my little pad?” he said, motioning around the room.
“Yeah, great. Did you make it?”
“We all made it. You made it.”

Lost at that, I nodded, “Hm.”

“Nobody owns anything man, nobody owns nothin’. Do you want it? The keys are in it. You can drive it away right now.”
“No, no, man I don’t want it,” I laughed, getting real humor from this strange offer, and happy to be able to laugh at something. Just then a girl appeared from behind the green door, wrapped only in a sheet, and sat down next to Charlie, nestling into his side. She looked disheveled, with a preoccupied, self-conscious sheepishness. Very stoned, she was. Charlie let the ownership issue of the bus go.
“What do you do?” he queried. “You got a big house. Fancy car.” He notices things, I thought.
“I run a milling machine at Douglas – work the graveyard shift.”
“You like that?”
“It’s OK.”
“OK? Is ‘OK’ OK?”
Tina came to my rescue, laying a hand on my arm, “He works hard to provide us with a nice place to live.”
He seemed to study me for a moment.

“That’s good, man, that’s good,” letting up the pressure. He looked down and stroked his lady’s hair, ran the tips of his fingers down her arm very gently. “You all right?” he said to her quietly, intimately.
“Yeah, alright,” she said, barely audibly.
I was used to odd conversations, many people at that time were floating in dreams, questioning and challenging everything. Radical ideas blew in the air like dandelion seeds, and I was as good as the next guy at sprouting weeds of wisdom, but I was not about to offer the keys to my Healy to anyone.

“Hey Charlie, we got something cookin’ on the stove,” I lied, “see you later, nice place, man.”
“Yeah really nice,” Tina added cheerily over her shoulder, glad for the out. We clambered over laps toward the door.
"Alright,” he said with a grin that lacked a smile.

“See you later,” I ineptly repeated before stepping outside.

Charlie dismissed us with a backward nod.
Breathing in the air of the clear night, the sea breeze felt like indigo velvet.

“Wow, what a trip he’s got going,” Tina pondered. “What do you suppose goes on behind that door?” she laughed, both of us easily guessing the answer to that one. The patiently waiting Claude-Dog was exuberant as we turned back into the tropical undergrowth and headed toward the creek, which ran under the highway bridge and out to sea.
“Whenever I've seen him he’s always got women with him, they look so stoned. They don’t say anything at all,” Tina said as we entered the musky gloom of the overpass.

We drug our bare feet through the silky sand of the creek bed and waded through the stream to the spaciousness of the open beach. The new crescent was hovering above the northern point of the distant Malibu coastline as it curled toward the horizon. We felt caressed by freedom and good fortune as we reflected on the direction our young lives were taking. We were very high from Charlie’s pot.
“Did you notice he was just talking to me?” I said. “He didn’t say anything to John or Eva, or you or Dennis.”

Tina said simply, “He’s checking you out. He thinks you are on a power trip with women, like he is.”
That startled me. “He's checking me out? You think he thinks I'm on a power trip?”
“Yeah, look - there’s women all over the place at your house – and it is your house. Why wouldn’t he think that?”

This idea had never occurred to me, and the thought that it might look that way knocked me out. “Yeah, you know what he told me the other day?” I said. “We were talking out in my driveway and he motioned toward my house, and the car. ‘You don’t need any of this. Why don’t you come with us? Nobody needs any possessions man, just give it all up.’ Just like that thing he was saying tonight, about giving me the bus - weird shit.”

'”Yep. He's trying to get to you.” Tina concluded then waved us off the topic. “What do you think is really going on?”
“With Charlie?” I asked, a little puzzled by what she meant. “No, no. with everything,” she said. Everything’s changing, things are getting so strange…

We talked often about the strange days of our times - how great the new music was and the mass communication it was bringing; music was more than just music in those days. We talked about the changes of consciousness marijuana and LSD were bringing about, verses the consciousness of alcohol – about how dedicated we were to ending, not just this war but the idea of war itself - about how the whole ‘straight’ society supports war tacitly or openly – about the absurdity of war being accepted and sex being taboo... it was an ongoing commentary with all of us.
“A year ago, I was thinking about getting married to this guy - that would have been such a mistake, he was a lawyer. Can you imagine me married to a lawyer?” She laughed out loud. She went skipping down to the water's edge and twirled about with her arms held out like wings. Claude made mad circles at her heels, kicking up phosphorescent splashes. “We’re freeeeee of all that bullshit that we grew up with! Isn’t it great!” She grabbed me and hugged me and jumped up and down. I was happy, too, but not so unrestrained. I was still ensnared in the system, with job and Marine Corps; not so 'free of the bullshit' as all my new friends seemed to be, and was a bit self conscious about it. I was inwardly happy, loving this place and my place in it; but not exuberant. I was the cogitating philosopher, working things out in the mental realm. I was the silent observer, somewhat intimidated by the wildly creative and virile personalities all around me that romped through life without holding anything back. I was not yet at the point of being able to throw it all away as they had, to speak in present tenses with no thought of the morrow. I wished at that moment to grab her and go screaming down the beach in glee, but it wasn’t to be, I wasn’t there yet. Maybe I should say I wasn’t here yet. One must construct a 'model' for being free if one is not simply free. I fancied myself as the oarsman, keeping steady the course, and now, ‘the provider,’ as Tina had bestowed upon me moments before, back in Charlie's bus. I liked that.
“Tina, don’t you ever worry about the future?”
“No.” She said flatly and without any follow-up rationale. I envied and resented her certainty.
“OK.” I said. “If it’s true that the world is going to crash down and none of our endeavors will mean anything anymore, then no problem, we’re all in the same boat. But what if that doesn’t happen? What then?” I was wrestling with conventional fears of failure, disenfranchisement - a dead-end life. I was in-between. I had no direction - nothing in mainstream America had captured my desire to dedicate all to, but I had not yet been completely captured by our ‘counter culture’ either. I rambled on in terms that divorced me from the moment, and made me fearful – paranoia - helped along I'm sure by Charlie's strong marijuana. Tina wasn’t disagreeing with me, she just wanted to drag her bare feet through the brine, to shake me loose from my brooding, to breathe the air, look at the stars and shout for joy. Failing to get the proper responses from me, she grabbed me again, this time pulling me down to the sand, and under her skirts.
One day months later Eva walked solemnly into my living room. She spotted me sitting at my bar having some lunch. Without a word she laid the latest issue of Life magazine down next to my plate. On the cover was a picture of our friend, Bus Charlie. Now at last he had a proper surname: Manson.

Aftermath

In the wake of this news and after studying Life Magazine's reportage of that 'family's' horrendous acts we came to learn that we all had acquaintances who had become victims – and realized just how vulnerable we ourselves had been. We held a candlelight vigil in a circle on the floor of my living room - a memorial to any and all who had been wrenched by this horror. It was also a giving of thanks that none of us had formed any kind of link with that wayward throng, either to be in collusion with, or having come into collision with their evil purposes. We sit in silent sorrow and appreciation, a moment of deepening and of recognition of the poignancy of living on this sacred and crazy earth. Jerry ended the evening by playing the most entrancing music on his sitar that any of us had ever heard.

Perhaps it was on that night that I came into a profound realization of the importance and magnitude of our movement toward a higher consciousness. The seeds of a movement away from violence had been sewn with our peace and love ethos, and the bumper-sticker cliché was now well known, but seeds will die if not cultivated. I had that night as fuel for my fire of inspiration the Manson murderers and the murderous Vietnam War on the one side, and a sprouting of a new code of ethics that was already a million strong, on the other. Our peace movement envisioned a world where violence and war is not only not the answer – in our world it would not even be the question. Our dreams could be realized, we reasoned, if enough people would dedicate to cultivating a peaceful soul, and a loving heart. My Marine Corps officers and sergeants tried to beat into me the conviction that there is an enemy out there, and that is true, but then we are also the enemy to them. It's a never ending cycle of violence that's perpetuated by this false notion of us and them. That cycle must be broken somehow. We must stop creating enemies. It's a mean, wicked and low-down form of consciousness that allows us to smash, gut and burn people. Our higher more enlightened consciousness tells us that the enemies to be conquered live right inside us in the forms of fear, greed, hatred, jealously. We project our own dark side onto others, meaning that the enemy lives within and must be subdued. We are all 'us' – all of life is alive and should be protected.

I realized I could marry my desires of traveling the world, together with my longing to dedicate myself completely to a pursuance – of these deeper layers of truth. I wanted to go out and meet people, learn about the ways of the world, and have a good time doing it.

Fast forward

My two years in Topanga Canyon Lane, from Gypsy Jerry and all the friends and crazy loons who passed through my doors, had inspired me to a life heretofore undreamed of. Ray and Fabby sold the house, I got my honorable discharge from the Marine Corps. I quit my job, gave all my belongings away, got a VW bus, made it into a little house and drove it north. I spent the summer living in the pine forest and helped to build a big house in a commune in Oregon, and another few months with a girlfriend back down in LA. During these times of intensive learning and experience gathering, I'd gradually become free and fearless enough… to get on with the journey…