MOST Newsletters Table of Contents

The MOST Newsletter Autumn 1999 Volume VI #3
i - ii - iii

 Lou in chair in Nashville at Pam and Findley's Lou Gottlieb visiting Pam & Findley in TN

Pam Hanna 9/3/99: I wrote what's below many days ago right after Tuck died. I'm so delighted that Suzi wrote & thanks, Tomas, for the wonderful dedication website, loved Sandi's whole story (printed it out) & Jodi's last contribution was great! Jodi, I'll bet your experience is written up somewhere by those college boys & we may discover it in a book one of these days. I have several books with references to New Buffalo & M* NM written by anthropology-types who for the most part didn't understand what they were talking about. And Bishop -- I think I remember you. Remember the name. Thanks for your story.
I called Don & Sandy right after Tuck's death (they didn't know). They'd been very close to him & knew Suzi & the girls. They have a new granddaughter (from Breeze & Wendy) named Treya. OK -
here's what I wrote several days ago.
Hope it goes thru this time.
The nite after Tuck died, Sandi called & told me & we held each other up a little - same as we did when Lou died. I wrote a long response to that MOST with Sandi's stuff & when I got ready to send it - it said ERROR - can't send. I was so pissed & discouraged that I haven't tried since. I know you have much less time what with your new job, but if you get this, please forward it to the next MOST.

About Tuck: I can't tell you about Tuck's M* years cuz I only vaguely remember this large man wearing a blanket with a rope belt & thot he looked cool -- fit right in at M* -- but I don't remember his 3 daughters or his wife. Met all 3 daughters and Tuck again online & that's where I got to know him - and love him. I only got to know him in his online M* diaspora years. Ya know, when people die, I think of that Kubler-Ross thingy about the stages of grief - first disbelief, then anger, then - I forget - bargaining, remorse, acceptance - I dunno. I seem to be stuck in anger - just like I was when Lou checked out. I was so pissed off at his doctors for not picking up on the cancer thing (am STILL pissed off - but Lou would
have just waved his hand & said oh darlin - it doesn't MATTER! Let it GO!) I know that. But I was screaming at Tuck like a fishwife online on the old hippies chat room to take better care of himself or he'd for sure shuffle off this mortal coil - AND I WASN'T GODDAM DONE ASKING HIM STUFF YET SO HE'D BETTER NOT CHECK OUT!!!  But did he listen? Naw. He told me he didn't think he'd be around much longer. He kept having seizures & heart attacks. He KNEW he didn't have much time & I agree with Sandi that his website is his great artistic triumph & legacy & all like that. But that's what I want to tell you about - the old_hippies website on MIRC, that Tuck patiently talked me thru downloading & I was on it both at home & at work. At work I had all these pop-ups - some of them pretty pornographic - & we used to have these little hilarious online orgies - i.e. talking dirty with pictures. Such fun. And FUNNY. We cracked ourselves up. Leaf still has some of the last conversation we had the day before he died - but that was pretty political. We were all trashing George W. Bush. You can still see some of the participants on his website under the pics of regulars. All this computer stuff comes hard to me. I've decided it's because it doesn't have any referents that I know - history, literature, science even - it has its own set of references in cyberspace & that's what Tuck did for me Ü with INFINITE patience with my stupidity. He talked me thru SO much stuff about handling the goddam computer & where my system files were & how to change the properties & how to DO stuff - & now I can't ask him shit.
Which reminds me - when my Dad died, I was stuck in anger too. My dad was a walking encyclopedia & I couldn't ask him questions anymore. Sandi said her dad had died August 20, so did my dad, & so did Tuck. What's this thing about August 20? Leo? Beats me.
We didn't really get off the ground with the M* potluck thingy cuz we couldn't make it as interactive as the old hippies MIRC chatroom, but there was some good stuff on it all the same. David H. gave it a lot of juice. Anyway, what I'm saying is that I got to know Tuck really well online and he's a good sweet man & I miss him terribly (I REFUSE to WAS him). I hope that he & Lou have their own chatroom going right now. But here WE all are holding the bag. My vote, for what it's worth, is to keep his website going AS IS at least (we can do that much) if we all have to pitch in & contribute $25 a month (or whatever it is). We could each take a month. Tomas said he'd look into it. So OK, shot my load. Tuck, we love you (& BTW, Tomas, his name is Steven Stine).

For Tuck:
May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on.
Love & BADABA to all,
Pam

Sandi Stein, 9/28/99: Well, I am feeling moved to write something more than my postings to Pam and David regarding Tuck. Tuck and I met in 1968, began living together in 1969, and were married in 1970. I was 16 and he was 21 when we were married. We had many adventures together, including living at
M*, traveling with the Rainbow family (before they were the Rainbow tribe), and various other wayfaring escapades. We parted company in 1975, when I went off to Alaska, and Tuck went to L.A. We didn't see each other again until he and his wife Suzie, and daughters appeared at the Ranch in 1994. I spent a good amount of time with them all prior to their return to Maryland the following year. I e-mailed him the day before he died to say I had great pictures from the picnic. He didn't respond. So here's a little inside info about living with my first husband, friend and spirit brother, Friar Tuck.

From Haight Street to Morningstar
Click to see photo of  Flash and Sandi standing in front of Tuck's
and her tipi in the apple orchard - Morningstar, 1969
As I had spent a good deal of time in the Haight through 1967-68, I knew most of the Street folk circulating at the time. I first met Superman on Haight Street, and then later at Wheeler's in the late summer of 68' ( I had come to M* in 67' and 68', but had been freaked out both times by the scene there). I knew Friar Tuck only by sight, as he frequented Brother Juniper's (which became the I and Thou), and seemed to be in the 'in crowd' up at All Saints Church on Tuesdays, when we baked Digger Bread. I didn't actually meet Tuck until we shared one of those serendipitous moments on Haight Street (I think it was 1968). I had been living at the Third Eye Commune (Some of you may remember that
this was Roland Dupres' communist manifesto, until they buried him under the corner of a Turkish jail in 1969 for passing bad traveler's checks in Istanbul.), and working in the bookstore on the corner of Haight and Clayton, I also worked at the tobacco store at Masonic and Haight, which were the legitimate businesses of the Third Eye (along with smuggling Levi's to Europe, and the traveler check scam thingy).
Anyway, the bookstore was right smack in the middle of things, and our doorway saw a lot of action. One particular August afternoon not too long after the water balloon riots (which by the way, Tuck would later lay claim to starting by allegedly dropping a water balloon from a Cole Street rooftop onto Billy Morrow's (the most ruthless and notorious nark in the Haight) car), a group of us were standing in the doorway, listening to a young man newly arrived from the mid-lands (Nebraska, I think) describe his
travels to San Francisco. There must have been ten or twelve people gathered in the doorway and sitting on the parked cars. Someone lit up a joint, and we were passing it around. Nebraska really was marveling at how "laid back" California was, you know, being able to smoke dope right out on the street and all. He was right in the middle of extolling the virtues of the West when the joint reached him. He paused in his soliloquy, took a healthy toke, and turned to pass it on to his neighbor -- who just happened to be "Buttons" one of the local beat cops making his rounds with his partner Rick (who was a friend and confidant to almost every runaway on the street, myself included). Button's smiled, Nebraska shit, and the rest of us swallowed our glee as the big man in blue nonchalantly said "Thanks" accepted the offering and passed it on to the next person in the circle (No, he did not take a toke -- after all, he was on duty!).
He and Rick were weaving their way through all the "hey's" and "hello's", when Buttons' turned and took a couple of steps back toward Nebraska, who was still staring saucer-eyed at him. Button's got a mischievous look on his face and leaned over flipping up his lapel to reveal twenty or so buttons with various slogan's and sayings (my favorite was "Frodo lives"). He pointed to one large red-lettered one, that read "I live on Luv Street". He winked at Nebraska "These are good heads you're hangin with. Don't
worry, they'll take care of you." It just so happened that Tuck was one of the folks standing on the other side of that joint. We all had a good laugh at Nebraska's expense, and explained that Buttons' and Rick were the last freak-friendly cops on Haight street, and not to blow their cover since they were so cool.
Tuck and I would not get together until early the following year, when we would run into each other again. This time he would offer me a backrub, which I accepted and moved in to live with him, Louie Kuntz, and a strange oriental guy named Roy, on Waller street. Roy was a fantastic cartoonist, but had the bizarre habit of slitting his wrists to watch the inner workings of his veins whenever he took acid. Anyway, Waller Street is a story unto itself. It was the arrival and departure point of Louie in "the grab a loaf of good bread" saga, where John Butler was heading the night he was murdered on Haight street, and where I would meet my current love Arthur delivering the Kaliflower intercommunal news to our kitchen. Oh. yes it was also the site of the infamous fruit beer incident, which was the first time I really got to see the bonifide results of a Tuck and Louie collaboration.
I arrived home one evening to find Tuck and Louie industriously at work in the kitchen cutting up all kinds of fruit and throwing it into a humungus pot of boiling brown goo on the stove. On the table was a row of freshly washed green Gallo gallon jugs (try saying that seven times fast). I asked what they were doing, which was the cue for Louie to don his most professional scientific persona, and began initiating me into the deeply mystical alchemical process of making fruit beer while Tuck merrily planned a party based on his calculations of when the goo would transform into something drinkable. They were so pleased with their labor as they filled the bottles and tightened down the caps. I was duly impressed with their knowledge and adeptness, hell I didn't even know you could make beer from fruit, let alone anyone else that knew how! We stored the warm bottles on the bottom shelf in the pantry (which still had it's working screen door, latch and all). We then cleaned up all the remaining wayward goo from the stove, floor and walls, and began waiting out the six weeks of brewing time. Louie left on one of his multifarious trips a couple of days later, and things being what they were, we pretty much forgot about that beer altogether -- until of course the evening of the explosion. There had been a moment when I was watching Tuck and Louie tighten down the tops on those Gallo bottles that I thought of my grandma Dottie who was famous for staining the cellar ceiling with root beer that wasn't capped properly. I thought perhaps they were doing a little too good of a job in reefing those caps down on that green beer, but I didn't really know, and besides they were the Digger Guys, so who was I to question their wisdom.
Apparently in the wee hours of a morning a couple of weeks down the road that beer decided it needed more brewing room and made itself some by exploding those green bottles and taking the screen door off the pantry in the process! Now I have never heard live mortar shells up close and personal, but that exploded beer in the next room is as close an experience as I care to imagine, OK? It scared the hell out of me and Tuck. It also woke Roy, who immediately found his hundred hits of purple barrel acid and
flushed them down the toilet as those bottles were going off like a twenty-one gun salute. It was the sound of the door being blown off its hinges that finally convinced the speed freaks upstairs that the cops were staging a major bust on the premises, and that they too should get rid of their large quantities
of speed and other assorted illicit powders. So for a while it sounded like the toilet sonata, as all the commodes in the building seemed to be flushing in syncopation. After everything quieted down, we ventured out and crept into the kitchen. I turned on the light and there we stood, barefoot in a sea of green chards (some which had embedded themselves in the cupboards and walls!) and stinky brown ooze. It didn't take much to figure out what had happened. Tuck laughed till he cried, while the neighbors peeked in the door, tweaked about and fumed. Those folks moved out shortly after this incident. It seems that they got it in their heads that we were the Heat (ha-ha-he-he-haw-snork!). Must have
been some mean marching powder that they were sprinkling their brains with (or a really good tale?) to think that Tuck, Louie, Roy and I were the cops!!! Anyway, that apartment was never the same. We never got the smell of dead beer out of there, and we never tried that recipe again.
A few months later we moved up the hill on Belvedere Street. David Hatch came to live with us, along with my childhood friend Jane, who got pregnant and ran away from Boston, and of course Louie, who had talked our plump German widow landlady on the first floor into letting him use the garage to start a neighborhood recycling program. He was clearly thinking to make the most comprehensive recycling program center on the planet, and she was unprepared for the daily stockpile of garbage growing in the driveway. I think that had something to do with our stay there being short-lived. David moved to North Beach, Janey went to an unwed mothers' home, and we went down to Kaplan's to buy supplies and a tent so we could move to the Ranch. We didn't have packs, so we hauled cardboard boxes of stuff out to 19th Avenue, and began hitchhiking. We got a ride up to Graton, and another all the way to the back gate. We came in the back gate by the well and had no more put our stuff down, when Tuck proclaimed happily "Hey, there's Lou." I turned to see a tall, bearded bespeckled man pacing furiously back and forth over freshly turned dirt fifty or so yards from the small cabin we were facing. We walked toward him and Tuck called out "Hi, Lou." The man stopped in his tracks and wheeled around, waving his arm
passionately in the air. "Don't talk to me today, -- I'm psychotic!" He immediately looked back down and returned to his pacing. Suddenly the raw sound of a motorcycle engine tore up the afternoon calm. We looked around startled, and there under the window of the solitary cabin was a large biker sporting stringy hair and dirty colors. He was perched on the back of an enormous hog, revving the engine, and smiling demonically in our direction. "There, you see!" Lou erupted. "How is one expected to play piano when all day long they do this!" (He pointed emphatically at the creature on the bike). I was looking from Lou to the biker and back again, wondering if this was a common occurrence, and that I had minimized my initial assessment of Morningstar being weird. Lou emitted an exasperated snort and walked off,
beginning to pace once again. Tuck acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, as we left Lou muttering to himself in between engine blasts. We picked up our stuff and walked down the road. "He seemed pretty pissed off" I ventured, as we turned a corner and climbed up a short dusty hill. "Oh, that's just Lou." Tuck replied, apparently unruffled by Lou's dissonance. "He's very cool. You'll love him once you get to know him." We settled on a campsite in the far corner of the orchard, close to a beautiful tye-dyed parachute full of drums and African fabrics ( I would later find out that this abode was Jimmy Small's who I also knew from Haight Street. Just about the time we'd finished setting up our tent, a small well built guy began hailing us from across the orchard. "Hey Steve!" Tuck called out, "C'mon," he motioned to me. "I'll introduce you to another Morningstar regular." "O.K.," I replied hopefully. "At least this guy looks a lot more friendly than the last." Sandi Stein: Let me clarify about Tuck's family. Suzie is his wife, (they were married sometime in the late eighties I believe) Suzie had two daughters from a previous marriage (Lisa is the oldest, Julie the second) both are married and mothers now (I think they are 22 and 19 yrs young at present). Tuck and Suzie had one child, a girl, her name is Barbara and she is fifteen years old. Tuck brought the whole family out to Sonoma County some five years ago, and stayed about a year. Barbara really loved Vivian, Lou, myself, and her other tribal relatives. She was very upset that she had to leave California to return east. I have invited her to come and visit any time she likes.
---
Suzi Stine, 8/31/99: Ramon, This is Suzi, Tuck's wife. Thank you for the bush that the tribe sent. I hope that you get this. I really don't know the computer that well. This is the first time that I have checked his mail. I will keep in touch. Suzi My home address is Sheila Stine 8461 Tusings Way
Boonsboro Md. 21713
Suzi Stine, 9/25/99: Dear Sandi, It has been a month now and I really miss him. Barbara is doing good. I want to send some things about Tuck's death that was in the paper, and memos so people can write things down about him. Could you hand them around and have them send them back to me? I would like
if someone had pictures to send also. Well I will close for now will write soon. Suzi

 Group photo with Tuck center on blanket  L to R: Tibor Baukal, Suzie's eldest daughter Lisa, Friar Tuck (Steve Stine), Julie (Suzie's middle daughter, Sandi Stein, Suzi Stine - Napa Music Festival, Oct '93

Ramon Sender, 9/15/99: Thinking about Tuck, who lived with me and Omaha Wildrose for a major portion of 1976, I should mention that during Tuck's time with me, he helped give birth to The Morning Star Scrapbook. He aso built almost single-handedly 'the studio' out of 2-by-10s "recycled" from a
local trucking company. He also taught Omaha Wildrose to drive Queen Proserpine, the 3/4-ton International and who then blew the universal backing it uphill. Here's a recent upload by Tuck from a M Star alum. The event described is also reported in "Home Free Home," I believe.

Morning Star Episode by Leaf (erologo@fone.net)

It all began when I was standing on the corner next to One World Family Restaurant watching this brother paint the dove on the Spiritual Reformation sign the one with all the rays coming out of it. When he finished, he jumped down and suggested that I go too Morning Star Ranch for a while to get away from the city, and he told me how to get there. So the next day I packed up my army sack-like pack. I packed some clothes my mt. regular army sleeping bag, my green poncho for water proofness, and
some books, the Bible, the I Ching , and I think a green book about Rama Maharishi which I was reading. Also the tarot cards, my hair brush, some string and a candle. I hichedhiked up toward Sebastopol, and the person I got a ride with knew right where M Star was, so he took me all the way to the parking lot -- which was pretty bare-bones. So I walked past that and came to some buildings. It took me a while to figure out where to stay. Anyhow I settled into the Lower House, and about 5:00 in the morning the police came thru checking everyone's ID, looking for runaways I must of checked out because they went away.
We had to go to the Upper House, which at this time had no porch, to eat and bathe. I remember bathing in that bathroom with no door and everybody there looking at you while you bathed. I remember we use to sit around and eat out in front or sitting on a long couch. All these dishes would pile up over a long period of time so no one would do them. I remember I started to do them once and the girls, Doris and this dark curly-haired girl, would not let me do them so they did them all. An all-day-long job. The girls
also did the cooking.
I was into a real peaceful meditation, vegie-type life-style and did not seem to need anybody in anyway, real independent. I used to go off into the woods to be alone and meditate and just be by myself. I remember this tree with two trunks one with Peace painted on the other with Love painted on it. I always remembered that tree thru all my journeys. One day I decided I needed a new name, so I put on my green poncho and went out in the rain and was sitting there meditating looking up at this tree, a different tree, when I decided in a flash that my name was 'Leaf' and I thought a lot about respect for life and how I was essentially life, so if I must have a name, why not Leaf? At this time in the scheme of things John Butler was still alive, because I remember a black man named John who was walking with a white dog. I had a black dog walking beside me and was going out, away from the camp, and he was coming in. I said, "Hi John," and I remember flashing on the black-and-white relations, so I know this had to be before he was stabed to death in the Haight Ashbury. The next time I hitchhiked up to M*, someone was talking about John being stabbed in the city so I assumed it was he, although I hoped somehow it was not because he seemed like a really good type person.
I only remember seeing Lou once the whole time I was there. I remember he came down to the fence and saw me. He was far away but I remember the glasses. and I was trying to look as unobtrusive as I could since we were staying on his land. I am sure he thought "Oh no, another one!" so this must have been post-bust. Anyway the second time I came back too M* from S.F., I remember getting a ride in a purple XKE which dropped me off right at the turn-off to M*. I got a ride from there to the parking lot. This time there was a lot more people. Also my hearing was out, so I could not hear anything . There was Doris and the girl with the dark hair and a guy with THINK written on his jacket and the OWF guy. The girls were doing yoga naked out in front of the upper house in the morning and everyone was watching them. I had been out in the orchard (this is after we had all settled into a routine) meditating. I was always trying to get real peaceful, and I remember I thru an I Ching and it said something about "It does not further one to cross the great waters" -- or something like that. Anyway some rock band (Blue Cheer) had donated a whole barrel of blue cheer acid and everyone was going to take some and all get high together, but I decided to stay down because of the I Ching. and because my hearing had gone out. I was sitting in the Lower House by the fireplace, when all of a sudden this alarm bell went off inside my head. I went runnng outside and this girl was running across the field toward something I could not see .
She stopped and took hold of this tree. At first I thought it was real beautiful, she look so wild and everything. Then I saw what she was looking at the guy who I still call THINK. He had taken great handfuls of acid and was freaking out, thrashing around on the ground trying to destroy himself.
I thought I could not live with myself if I let this go down, so I began to walk out there to try and do something -- I did not know what. He was trying to tear out his tongue and eyes and kicking the cement with his feet and was bleeding all over the place. Everyone was just sort of standing there watching, freaked, not knowing what to do because they were all stoned too. So I start to walk there. I couldn't hear anything, and people just start getting real mad, saying things like "Yes, Jesus " and " Go on" and "Boo" -- "Hiss," like they wanted to stone me for interfering, even real advanced people. The whole satanic reaction -- 'the humiliation,' I think it is called. I did not kow what to do, so I got down right near THINK and began to pray to ask God to bring THINK down. I prayed and really meant it, and
after a while a still small voice said "Sometimes God must have a human face or hand to act."
I went and grabbed THINK and I asked him why he was trying to distroy himself and he said "I AM GOD, YOU BASTARD!" and I said, "No you are not. He would not be trying to destroy himself." But he was demon-possesed and I could not hold him down. So about this time, three other brothers got it
together enough to come and each of us got a hold of an arm or leg and we tried to carry him to the Cross [in the meadow] but he was too heavy and kicking a lot, so we put him down in the upper meadow. I wanted to call the people with the white coats and load him into the ambulence, but someone, the OWF brother who had experience with thrashing and freak-outs, said, "No, we should try OOOOOOOMMMMMMing." So we sat there all the rest of the day on THINK, oming until he came down about sunset. -- a much better outcome then the one I had envisioned.
The next day he was all right again, all sore and bruised but alive. I asked him what he saw. He said he was way off in some other galaxy and was not even conscious of his body at all. I remember Doris walking back to the house with a head of lettuce to prepare dinner and she touched me on the head -- dubbed me 'all right.'
I remember we use to stare at the lights from the town of Sebastopol in the Upper House with all the lights out. That was kind of like our entertainment. And I remember the news media came by and interviewed Doris. She was twanging away on an old guitar.

Section 3 ÊRoots and Fruits Ongoing stories of Wheeler's & M*

Jodi Mitchell, 7/99: First off I want to thank Ramon for the great summer issue, thanks for printing my story and photos...it's exciting and inspiring to see myself in print although I'm starting to bore myself a
bit... waiting to hear from Coyote (so many of us came into contact with him some where along the line!), I am so curious about his life and what led him down this path, also Sandi and now Bea and maybe even Garbage Mike some day...I knew him at the Ranch and Bruce used to help him out with his
garbage. Pam is right, our story is important...this is our mythology,our folklore, history. Thanks Pam for your enlightening NM M* story, the adobe and oven were truly magnificent, and you so sweet and beautiful with those glowing hippie kids. I'm looking forward to future installments. I loved Jason's stories as well, it's funny, he and I both wrote about mansions on Page Street with rock stars living above us! I laughed my ass off about Willie B. 'getting over' on Ramon during the Trips fest. So,somebody please send that boy some stamps so we can hear more from the two Hippest Black Cats! And Rena,I'm with you a 'forever reunion' would be nice. I haven't yet found a better way; or at least a combined 2000 Mayday at both Ranches.
Mitch and I are saving up vacation time and pennies to do so. Any ideas? Or, should we just all show up at Pam and Findleys with our teepee poles? Thanks to David's mom for the can pener advice, I've been there..a can of tuna and no opener is maddening! Moms wisdom is always the best. To Rena's list I add a hand cranked coffee grinder, that's my main concern at this point...during last winters ice storm i about went crazy, didn't mind freezing, didn't mind not bathing,didn't mind sitting in the dark...but those dang coffee beans, rolling them up in newsspaper and smashing with a hammer just doesn't cut it!
I've been working very hard at the library doing children's programming for the summer, I had to beg, borrow and steal for everything...no money here, but it was a great success. I put on 3 puppet shows, brought in a theater group from Durham, wrote a grant and got money from the Arts Council, hired
a teacher,bought supplies and had kids art classes all summer, brought in a classical pianist who introduced a rapt audience of 80 country kids to classical music, had a 3'rs recycling program, brought in local storytellers and much more. i was written about in the local paper for all my efforts! Anyway, I'm exhausted...can't wait until they go back to school, but now I want to create adult programs and make this sort of a community center and on and on. I do it all and don't even have a degree, nor do I have an actual librarian here! I also purchase the collection, so, read any good books lately? I can use your suggestions. I'm exhausted, but hope to begin writing the next segment of my wheeler story this weekend, much more to come on that.
Thanks Denise and Coyote for your courage to come forward. I send you my love! Ahimsa and peace,
Jodi
Jason Orr, 7/28/99: I thought you would want to know that WIllie B. is now in the care of a residential care home [because of his MS condition].
Shields Residential Care Home 1919 Cutting Blvd Richmond, CA 94804 Private phone: 510 235 4047
I'm sure Willie would appreciate continuing to receive the MOST, at least until his sons are able to hook up his computer and bring him on-line to the MOST website. I called him Friday and he seems to be in good spirits. And I'm sure he'd love to hear from "some folks!" Peace and much Love to
all of us, and us...

Part 9 ¥ The Final Thesis by Jodi Mitchell
Click to see photo of Jodi Mitchell and son Mitch with
Mitch's college graduation art show - 1997

While still living in my little green pup tent in the back of The Knoll, 3 guys just magically appeared one day. They were called: Crash, Peter and Paul but it was said like one word:CrashPeterPaul, and indeed they appeared to be glued at the hip. They looked like nice, cleancut, well fed suburban boys and I assumed they were some boyhood New Jersey chums of Bruces, for he had many guests come visit him from his hometown.
I was used to having little entourages of folks latch on to me, especially men/boys, so I paid their evergrowing constant attention towards me no mind as I went about my business.
I especially appreciated the fact that they possessed that rare commodity, an automobile, and freely offered to chauffeur me about at the drop of a hat! Yippee!! No more overly crowded, white-knuckled, hair-raising Community Bus rides for me, no more hitchhiking and "Ooh, baby, can I eat your pussy?" no door handles on the inside asshole drivers for me! CrashPeterPaul had wheels! Off we would go, my wish was their command. I still had my beautiful dog, Maggie at this time, she and I had discovered Sonoma State College in Cotati, which had a nice gym with stall showers and plenty of hot water! Faculty and students grew to recognize us and welcomed us to use the showers freely. Their kindness towards us left me feeling confused and a bit forlorn, as did the actual campus setting. I was beginning to feel further and further estranged from the "Real World", like I was receding behind a wall, that I was becoming an burned out 18 yr. old that would never find her way back if she ever chose to reenter the mainstream. I met a silver haired professor that taught poetry and literature, I never before knew that such classes even existed, and I felt a bit ashamed that I had a desire to be in a classroom like that, like I was somehow being disloyal to my Wheeler Roots by having such feelings. Anyway, CrashPeterPaul would drive me here and sit out and wait by the duck pond until I finished showering. They would then drive to downtown Cotati and go out to eat in a restaurant, they always seemed to have plenty of cash, and in hindsight I see now how "unbadaba-like" their behavior actually was, but I never thought anything of it at the time. They never invited me to join them for a meal, in fact they left me and Maggie sitting out on the curb in the hot Cotati sun while they wolfed down some grub inside! I even sometimes did their laundry for them while they dined!
Another peculiar incident was the night that Peter's girlfriend came to visit. She was flying(!?) into SF airport from New York and Peter went to pick her up. The plane was delayed and they got in very late. It was a pitch black, moonless, overcast night, and this chickie was so traumatized by the Zen Trail, she practically crawled the whole way down crying, that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by time they reached The Knoll! Peter had absolutely no idea what to do, so he decided in the middle of the
night, to bring this hysterical woman to me. She was a law student in New York and Wheelers Ranch (darkness, bugs, no potty) was definately out of her realm of experience. I realized after talking to her that she was sincere in her hysteria, that daylight would not wait, we had to get her the hell out of Dodge! So in the middle of a pitch black night, I led Peter and his girl back up The Zen Trail, to his car, and all the way to Berkeley where I showed up unannounced to some friends house who asked no questions and let us crash in their living room. She flew back out the next day. CrashPeterPaul continued to hang around me for a month or two, they ate meals with me, followed me to the sauna, in fact, followed me everywhere I went! Oddly enough, not once did anyone of them make sexual advances towards me, nor towards any women at the Ranch, truly a peculiar phenomena for 3 normal, hot blooded young males.
One day Peter came down alone to see me. "We need to talk." He said. "I have something I really need to tell you. I was elected as spokesman by Paul and Crash, they're waiting up in the car. We're getting ready to leave. We're from New Haven, we're college students there and our semester is about to begin so we have to get back. Our professor forbade us to do this, we weren't supposed to tell you anything, but we all feel so bad about it, we've all grown to care for you so much, that we need to let you know the truth. This was our final thesis project, we were to spend the summer at a hippie commune, find one person who would be a good example, and follow them around recording data...like an anthropological study I guess you can say. Anyway we feel really lousy about the whole thing, and wish to offer our apology to you for being so dishonest to someone who gave us complete trust and love. Please forgive us." All I felt was sorrow that my brothers were leaving me. I hugged that college boy goodbye and watched him disappear into his future. I hope they got an "A".
Ahimsa Free Church over and out. Badaba.

Delia Moon, 1/20/99: I've been going to the opera with Joanie. I love going to the opera with Joanie. She weeps, she sighs, she clutches her bosom. We dress to the nines. We have coffee with a little whiskey in it at intermission.We used to sit on the front porch at Star Mountain together. Once there was a ruckus up by the gate. Some cops were on the scene. Moses went up to investigate.I hastily pulled on some clothes. "No, no, that's not what you do," said Joanie. "When the cops come, you take OFF your clothes!"
 
 

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