***Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion-Or When Owsley Turned The World Upside Down   

 

The Byrds performing their classic wa-wa song So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star to give a flavor of the times to this piece.

 

Introduction to the series by Bart Webber   

My old friend and corner boy the late Peter Paul Markin got as caught up in what he called the jailbreak of the 1960s counter-cultural movement as any man I knew from that time. Peter Paul, who we always called Markin and never that WASP-ish three name thing like his forbears had come over on the Mayflower or something rather than he to the housing projects born, or once Frankie Riley our leader anointed him we began calling him to get under his skin “the Scribe” since he was basically Frankie’s flak, always writing stuff about Frankie like it was scripture and Frankie did nothing to dissuade anybody about its worthiness as such. You could always depend on the Scribe with his infernal two thousand facts to make anything Frankie did seem like the Second Coming, and maybe with his frenzied pen Markin actually believed that.

Markin, Frankie, me  and a bunch of other guys basically came of age together in the early 1960s when we po’ boys used to hang around the corner in high school, the corner right next to Jack Slack’s bowling alley on Thornton Street where sometimes we would cadge a few free games if Jack’s son, our fellow classmate in the North Adamsville Class of 1962, was working and if not then just hanging, Frankie talking a mile a minute, Markin taking notes at two miles a minute, maybe gathering in some girls if we had money to head to Salducci’s Pizza Parlor near-by where Red Riley held forth with his corner boys. Pretty early on Markin caught this fresh breeze idea, influenced a little by some “beat” stuff he read which was just winding down as a cool movement and was then being commercialized to hell, a fresh breeze he said that was going put all our talking points dreams about schools, jobs, marriage, kids, everything in the shade. We laughed at him, although as the decade moved on the laughter subsided.

Markin was the bell-weather, the first guy to head west to check out what was happening after high school and while he was in college before he got drafted which clipped his wings for a couple of years. Got caught up in the acid-etched music from the Dead, the Airplane and a million other minute niche rock bands (that acid being not “throw in your face” acid but LSD okay), the drugs from ganja to peyote although not LSD he always claimed but with some of the stuff he did toward the end I don’t know, the sex in about seventeen different variations once he got the hang of the Kama Sutra and a couple of adventurous West Coast women to indulge him, the madcap adventure of hitchhiking west, the bummer of riding freight when he tired of the hitchhike road and which he often said was not for the faint-hearted , not for those who didn’t breathe train smoke and dreams the way he put it to me one time when he was in high dudgeon.

Markin not only got caught up in all the commotion of the counter-culture that kids today scratch their heads about the minute some old geezer like Josh Breslin, Jack Dawson, Sam Lowell, or, hell, me starts going on about “wasn’t that a time” but brought me, Frankie Riley, Jack, Jimmy Jenkins, Josh, Sam, Phil Ballard and a few other guys from around our way (except Josh who was from Olde Saco up in Maine although in the end he was as much a corner boy refugee as the rest of us from North Adamsville) into the action as well. All of us (again except Josh whom he had met out on Russian Hill in Frisco in the summer of love, 1968 version) at one time or another travelled west with the Scribe, and lived to tell about it, although it was a close thing, a very close thing a couple of times, drug times and wrong place at the wrong time times.

But as the 1960s decade closed, maybe a little into the early 1970s the luster faded, the ebb came crashing in, and most of the old corner boys like Frankie and Sam who took the lead back to the “normal” went back to the old grind (both of them to the law). Josh went to writing for a lot of what he called advanced publications (meaning low circulation, meaning no dough, meaning doing it for the glory to hear him tell it now, now that he is out of the grind). And Markin, well, Markin, as we all expected, once his Army time was up also took up the pen, for a while. Wrote according to Josh some pretty good stuff that big circulation publications were interested in publishing. Wrote lots of stuff in the early 1970s once he settled down in Oakland (Josh lived out there with him then and I know Sam and maybe Frankie visited him there) about his corner boys, his old working class neighborhood, about being a screwed-up teen filled with angst and alienation in the old days. Good stuff from what I read even if I was a little miffed when he constantly referred to me as a guy with two left feet, two left hands and too left out with the girls which wasn’t exactly true, well a little.

One big series that Markin did, did as homage to his fellow Vietnam veterans, although he never talked much about his own experiences, said he did what he did and that was that just like our father’s would say when we tried to asked about World War II with them, who had trouble getting back to the “real world” and wound up under bridges and along railroad tracks mainly in Southern California where he interviewed them and let them tell their stories their way called Going to the Jungle (a double-reference to the jungle in ‘Nam and the railroad “jungle” of hobo legend) was short-listed for some important award but I forget which one.                    

And then he stopped. Fell off the earth. No, not really, but the way I got the story mostly from Josh and Sam, with a little stuff from Frankie thrown in that is what the thing amounted to. Markin had always been a little volatile in his appetites, what he called in high school (and we started calling too) his “wanting habits” coming out of the wretched of the earth North Adamsville deep down working poor neighborhoods  (me and Sam too). At some point about 1976 or 1977 but probably the earlier date he started doing girl, snow, you know, cocaine that was no big thing in the 1960s (I had never tried it and has only heard about it from guys who went to Mexico for weed and would pick up a couple of ounces to level out with when the pot got weary). Cocaine then was pretty expensive and so if you got your “wanting habits” on with that stuff, if you liked running it constantly up your nose until you always sounded like you had a stuffed up nose then you had better have either started robbing banks, a dicey thing, a very dicey thing the one time me and a couple of guys tried to rob as little a thing as a variety store or start dealing the stuff to keep the demons away. He choose the latter.           

Once Markin moved up the drug dealer food chain that is where things got weird, got so weird that when I heard the story I thought he must have taken too much acid back in the day no matter what he claimed. He was “muling” a lot for the boys down south, meaning bringing the product over the border which was a lot easier then as long as you were not a Mexican or a “hippie,” or looked like either. From what Sam said things went okay for a while but see, and this I know from my own story, those kid “wanting habits” play funny tricks on you, make you go awry as Markin used to say. In the summer of 1977 (we are not sure which month) Markin went south (Mexico) to pick a big (for him) two kilogram batch of coke to bring back to the states. And that was the end of Markin, the end that we can believe part. They found his body in a back alley down in Sonora face down with two slugs in his head. Needless to say the Federales did next to nothing to find out who murdered him. Frankie then a budding lawyer, once the news got back to Boston, sent a private detective down there but all he was able to find out from a shaky source was that Markin had either stolen the two kilogram shipment and was going to go independent (not a good idea even then when the cartels were nothing like the strong-arm kill outfits they are today, Jesus) or the negotiations went bad, went off the track, and somebody got offended by the gringo marauder. Life is cheap in that league. To this day that is all we know, and old Markin is buried down there in some potter’s field unmarked grave still mourned and missed.        

That brings me back to my purpose here. I mentioned above that in the early 1970s Markin did a series of articles about the old days and his old corner boys in North Adamsville and we, Frankie, Josh, Sam and I agreed that a few of them were worth publishing if only for ourselves and the small circle of people whom Markin wrote about. So that is exactly what we are doing here. Since not all of us had everything that Markin wrote, what the hell they were newspaper or magazine articles to be used to wrap up the fish in or something after we were done reading them, we decided to print what was available. Since I was able to find a copy of the following sketch (and a couple of others too) up in the attic of my parents’ home I got “elected” to start things off.      

[I have added The Byrds Fillmore West-driven summer of love before the wave crested and it all turned to ashes classic wa-wa song, So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, from YouTube making this a multi-media experience not possible back then when he wrote the piece but something Markin would have jumped for joy to have included to set the mood. B.W.]

Just below is the introduction that Sam Lowell wrote for this article trying to put what Markin was about in content and the article itself The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion-Or When Owsley Turned The World Upside Down is below that:  

The late Peter Paul Markin, also known as “the Scribe, ” so anointed by Frankie Riley the unchallenged self-designated king hell king of the schoolboy night among the corner boys who hung around the pizza parlors, pool halls, and bowling alleys of the town, in telling somebody else’s story in his own voice about life in the old days in the working class neighborhoods of North Adamsville where he grew up, or when others, threating murder and mayhem,  wanted him to tell their stories usually gave each and every one of that crew enough rope to hang themselves without additional comment. He would take down, just like he would do later with the Going To The Jungle series that won a couple of awards and was short-listed for the Globe award, what they wanted the world to hear, spilled their guts out as he one time uncharitably termed their actions (not the veterans, not his fellows who had their troubles down in LA and needed to righteously get it out and he was the conduit, their voice, but the zanies from our old town), and then lightly, very lightly if the guy was bigger, stronger than him, or in the case of girls if they were foxy, mainly clean up the language for a candid world to read. Well I have said enough except I like Bart still miss and mourn the bastard. Here is what he had to say:  

 

 

The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion-Or When Owsley Turned The World Upside Down   

 

From The Pen Of [The Late] Peter Paul Markin   

 

Scene: A 1967 summer of love vignette complete with Day-Glo multi-colored graffiti decorative art ex-yellow brick road school bus converted to living space for the mind-travelling wayward youth, music, if you could hear it, blaring, “passengers” in various states of hunger, food hunger from three day drug “fasts,” those just starting out on their own three day from hunger trips and a few just “chilling.” In that latter category is one long-haired, long-bearded young guy dressed in bell-bottom blue jeans, tie-dye tee shirt, covered over by buckskin jacket against the colds, the colds of the morning uprising and of chilled heart, sandal-shodded who we will find out presently is my old corner boy Phil Ballard (formerly known on the corner and around town as “Foul-Mouth” Phil to be explained below) from the old high school days in our growing up poor working-class neighborhood of North Adamsville back in Massachusetts when we hung out together in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys waiting, well, waiting for the fresh breeze that was blowing through the land to come through our town. Or that is what I had everybody who would listen to me believing on those vacant Friday nights no dough in pockets, not girls for dates in sight, and no hope without switching up on that no dough situation, I hammered home my lines learned from hanging out in Harvard Square when I wasn’t holding up the wall at the bowling alleys. Frankie our leader at the time didn’t buy into the idea, though I was half “commie,” or just ranting and let it go a that then but Phil, Sam Lowell, Jack Dawson, Jimmy Jenkins and I don’t know who else were in thrall to the idea. They all, including Frankie, at one time or another would wind up joining me out in the West Coast night being washed over by the new dispensation and right now this is about Phil’s time.  

Sitting alongside Phil, now known as “Far-Out” Phil ever since the night a few weeks before when sitting down in Jack Kerouac-drenched Big Sur beach he and Be-Bop Benny a fellow-traveler on the magical mystery tour highway, stoned on about seven different drugs, but mainly deep into ritualistic high heaven medicine peyote buttons started dancing individually like some old-time whirling dervishes who elicited the words” far-out” from an admiring also stoned crowd and the moniker stuck to him, on one side is one slender blue-eyed blonde young woman, known as Butterfly Swirl named by me as such when she had come “on the bus” a few weeks before from down in surfer country Southern California to find out what was what up here in Frisco after ditching her perfect wave surfer boy who probably was still searching for that perfect wave off of La Jolla, Mission Beach or Carlsbad and does not even know that she is gone, poor sap, dressed in a long diaphanous multi-colored (not tie-dyed) granny dress, a heavy sweater against those twin colds Phil also faced, the required open-toed sandals, and huge heart-shaped sunglasses and on the other side a voluptuous black-haired young woman, then going under the moniker Lilly Rose who had been on the road and bus long before I arrived to catch up with it, dressed in blue jeans, an embroidered peasant blouse, bare-footed looking forlornly into her knitted pocketbook. All three looking from a short distance away for all the world like they had just closed out one of those three day fasts. And they had.

That scene had been brought to my mind recently by one of the songs in a commercially-driven greatest hits record compilation, the Jefferson Airplane’s  Someone To Love, reviewed by me a year or two ago for the East Bay Eye. That newspaper folded up in late 1975 like a lot of alternative newspapers and journals over the past several years as the big boom jail break-out of the 1960s has ebb for lots of reason that I do not want to go here but is worthy of some consideration on another day. The editor, Owen Anderson, knowing that I had been “on the bus” with Captain Crunch for a few years, and who later after the Captain had abandoned the psychedelic bus life Owen had met at some pow-wow party or other and both were friends with the legendary Owsley the mad-hatter wizard of the synthetic drug world (okay, okay the acid, LSD world), wanted me to do a sketch based on that scene described above that I had mentioned to him one night at the Eye office when he was looking for ideas for a Whatever Happened to the 1960s? series of articles. Wanted to give the current Eye readership an idea of what the “on the bus” drug scene was like when only a few years before everything seemed possible and it looked like we had the night-takers on the run. Here goes:

Phil Larkin, now road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty with his constant stream of expletives, swear words (and, occasionally, secret delight, secret delight of one of our classmates, Minnie Callahan, damn him since she had been my girl before he got his dirty mouth on her, and of some other girl classmates that I did not care two figs about), to full-fledged merry prankster now sits on a 1967 be-bop night San Francisco hill with his new flame blue-eyed blonde Butterfly Swirl, and his old flame, raven-haired Luscious Lois, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. (Lily Rose or whatever her name will be by the time this piece hits the streets was not alone in this name-change game although she was unusual in the frequency of such changes. Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic as not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Yes, do remind me.) 

All three sitting on a large woven blanket very near to their “home” the Day-Glo-infested ex-school bus of their wandering, that bus sitting some nameless hill in hill laden San Francisco, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman who long ago had been delighted to see our homeland the sea out in the bay working its way to far-off Japans. Or latter to some ruthless Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.         

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois about three days before this scene in case you forgot, or were not paying attention) are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters (small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay) who had just yesterday hit ‘Frisco and have planted their de rigueur Day-Glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park  after many months on the road west, and some time down south in La Jolla. After hearing the siren call they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless).

Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town, North Adamsville he lammed out from (according to his told story embellished a little, as we all did, all the corner boys that is, to play on the wandering poor boy persona that he was trying to project then and which after his transformation to Far-Out Phil got perfected so that even I began to believe his far-fetched story when I was not on a high myself, Jesus) just about a year before.     

Or has he? Well, sure Phil’s hair is quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight is way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escapes, and fearful barely eaten four in the morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sits on that nameless hill with his “ladies” he no longer had the expectation in front of him of just trying LSD for the hell of it, having already licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla, watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music that had filled the night air now spilled over into the breaking sullen day. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf),  but moog, boog, foog-filled music. The three obviously exhausted by their previous endeavors. But maybe I had better go back a few days and explain how these three wound up so depleted since I was instrumental in fixing up their conditions. See I was the boy that had “married” them, married Far-Out and Butterfly a few nights before. And the Lilly Rose part well maybe I had better get to the story and then the pieces will fall into shape:       

It had not been my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married my old corner boy from in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alley Far-Out Phil (a.k.a. Phillip Ballard, late of North Adamsville High School Class of 1965, that’s over in Massachusetts) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had “adopted” Far-Out (having spent more time on the bus gave me some kind of fatherly seniority over those whom I brought on board here on Russian Hill one day when after he had told me he was coming west to see me, to see what the hubbub, his word, was all about and getting out from under the familiar mother and father disputes at home, a dead-end job at a clothing store and a dead-ass relationship with hometown Julie Bow who desperately wanted marriage, kids, a white picket-fenced house and the usual just to show that not everybody in our generation was caught up in that breeze that I had heralded since high school he finally arrived, finally arrived with the first words out “give me some dope.” Before that fateful reunion I had traveled all through the “great western blue-pink night,” as my old North Adamsville corner boyfriend, Jack Dawson the writer, would say from Ames, Iowa where  I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus. The bus then had stopped to pick up a couple of the Captain’s friends from the university and that was where I had landed when I began my hitchhike road adventure from old North Adamsville after a friendly truck-driver, Denver Slim (who was neither from Denver nor by any means was he slim so figure that out) left me off there as he headed up to Butte in the Montanas. That is where I had met (and mated) Lupe Matin (Lilly Rose’s Ames “road” name then although more recently before the change to Lilly Rose she had been going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, gone dyke, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it.  It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high-end New York college for women, one of the seven sisters, Ivy League, okay).   

I had brought Butterfly and Lilly Rose up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Blackie Saint James (a. k. a. Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay moniker created under the influence of too many childhood Saturday afternoon matinee double features in the Strand Theater balcony watching retro- 1940s black and white gangster and savvy private detective films). Then Phil entered the picture and after they connected I had married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with the Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown the coop on me, had been taken in by Far-Out’s pitter-patter (and from what he told me some rough language that he said “turned her on” which might be true and worth investigating about sometime about how certain well-brought up young women these days are turned on by crazy-ass talking corners boys but it might also be Far-Out pushing the envelope of the truth).  

The next part, the “wedding reception” part was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackson) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the “they” being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Far-Out Phil and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of Blackie Saint James and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.    

Here is the “skinny.”  The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid via mad man wizard Owsley whom he had known from one of Ken Kesey’s big bash parties back in the early 1960s, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs. So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric Kool-Aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception.   And, see, Far-Out Phil and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay) together, her for the first time. And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.     

Saturday night came, and everybody was “dressed to the nines.” (Yeah, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say cool, edgy, be-bop.)  Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what the “nines” looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject,  it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so.  She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing shapeless colors of the rainbow dresses  were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total  effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.                  

And the “groom”? Going back to North Adamsville roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy impressed gangs times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Far-Out had no idea of making a statement, and being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around, he had just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left on the merry prankster yellow bus to make the maybe two mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of Kool-Aid. Far-Out and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use Kool-Aid for the toast. Well, we shall see.  And they shall see.         

And they “saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or less, just in time for the concert to rev them up. Now what you “see” on an acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description, literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their “wedding night.”  So what is left? Well, some observations by “father” Blackie Saint James, now a veteran acid-eater, as I hovered over my new-found “family” to insure that they made a safe landing. 

The first thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie “leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another couple of hours or so). Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown into the mix. I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental notes of one kind or another. It is only when Butterfly started to “believe” that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the Columbia Red that I had just coped from some freak.       

And where was Far-Out Phil during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none other than Lilly Rose, who some of you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other names, by who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. But don’t call her Lilly Rose this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her congratulations Kool-Aid cup earlier) she is now Laura Opal in her constant name-game change run through the alphabet. Far-Out had finally “seen” the virtues of being with older women like I had learned back in Ames, Iowa time, an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous blouse Far-Out felt, said he could see, electricity running through his veins as they encircled each other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn.  Then to find shelter in some magic bus they thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon” tribe’s bus.

No hassle, no problem, guests always welcome. Yeah that is the way it was then. When I cornered, although cornered may be too strong a word,  Far-Out later all that he would commit to was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh yah, and had seen the now de rigueur stairway to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around to Phil when the deal went down, no question.  

And how did the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Far-Out and Laura (you know Lilly), a pissed off search for me,  we went over into a corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about ten times.  Butterfly though that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a joint filled with some of that same Columbia Red that settled her down earlier. I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way “home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when the point was to slow the circles down.)  Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.  

And what of Butterfly and Far-Out’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds as they, all three, a few minute previously joined by Lilly, sat on that woven blanket depleted? They pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night.

[Far-Out and Butterfly then went off for what was supposed to be a few days down to Big Sur where Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a “real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Far-Out, now a solo, came back to the bus. It seemed that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,” although she told Far-Out to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy and his search for the perfect wave.    

Well, we all knew not everybody was built for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story, I thought that Far-Out had better keep his old North Adamsville eyes off Lannie Space (yes she has changed her name again) or I might just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet brother, be forewarned.   

A few months later Far-Out sitting with a young girl named Moon-Glow on that same nameless hill that flashed through this scene, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the Pacific night and that just maybe this scene that he, we, had gotten ourselves into would not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, kept expecting any day. Worse, now that he knew he couldn’t, no way, go back to some department  clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what is to happen to him when Moon-Glow, future Butterflies, Lilly Roses, and even Captain Crunches “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. Heavy, man, heavy.