Jubilee Hitchhiker

by William Hjortsberg

  For Thanksgiving, the Diggers hustled up twenty donated turkeys (getting them all roasted in kitchen ovens located across the Haight-Ashbury). They threw a big free feed with all the trimmings (the “Meatfeast”) at the garage on Page Street. The next Monday, Grogan and his pals (identified neither as Diggers nor Mime Troupers) made the front page of the Chronicle.

  On the last day of November, Ken Kesey went on trial for his January pot bust and for violating the terms of his probation. He faced an imposition of his full three-year sentence for the first charge and an automatic nickel with no parole added on for the second offense. It looked like the Captain would be spending his next several Thanksgivings in the slammer.

  Rain canceled the Diggers’ Death of Money and Rebirth of the Haight Parade on December 3 and again when it was rescheduled for a week later. When they finally got their show on the road the next Friday, it turned out to be a bright, clear day. Around five in the afternoon, the Diggers started handing out party favors along Haight Street: flowers, candles, penny whistles, two hundred car mirrors liberated from the junkyard, lollipops, incense, and a thousand posters the size of bumper stickers with the word “NOW!” printed in red letters six inches high.

  Young women clad in bedsheet togas gave away hundreds of white lilies. A crowd of about a thousand gathered for the parade. Richard Brautigan stood tall among them, conspicuous in his high-crowned felt hat and peacoat. Michael McClure was in the crowd, wearing shades and strumming his autoharp, accompanied by his Hells Angel buddy, Freewheelin’ Frank, on tambourine. The obscenity charges against The Beard had been dropped the previous week.

  Three hooded figures carrying a silver-painted dollar sign led the unofficial procession, followed by a black-robed surrogate priest waving a glowing Coleman lantern. Behind them marched four Mime Trouper pallbearers draped in black and wearing huge helmet-like animal head masks designed by La Mortadella. They bore a coffin covered with black cloth and filled with large symbolic coins. The crowd, grown to almost four thousand, spilled off the sidewalk and into the street, blocking traffic. The driver of a stalled Muni bus stepped out and danced with a young girl to much applause. Avoiding the throng and the traffic jam, the masked coffin-bearers at times were compelled to parade along the sidewalk.

  Emmett Grogan had invited the Frisco Hells Angels, and they rode their choppers down the white line dividing opposing lanes of gridlocked traffic. At the head of the pack, a “NOW!” placard attached to the handlebars of his Harley, Angel “Hairy Henry” Kot, recently paroled after a nine-year bit in San Quentin for armed robbery, grinned beneath his sweeping mustache like a hirsute kid on Christmas morning. Phyllis Willner, a sixteen-year-old runaway who arrived in the Haight a few months before with nothing but the clothes on her back, adopting the Diggers as her new family the same day, stood on Kot’s buddy seat wearing a homemade Supergirl costume and holding a “NOW!” sign high above her head. “Freeeee!” she wailed.

  Right about this time the cops arrived. No permit had been applied for by the Diggers, and their demonstration was technically against the law. Those on the street were in no mood to end the celebration. “We will continue until the Diggers feel it beautiful to stop,” one of the manifestos pledged. Six members of the tactical police force arrived in two black-and-whites and a paddy wagon. Two more motorcycle officers cruised down Haight Street on their three-wheelers, admonishing the crowd to break it up and go home. In response, the crowd chanted: “The streets belong to the people! The streets belong to the people!”

  The police turned their attentions on Hairy Henry, citing him for a traffic violation for allowing Phyllis to stand on his machine while it was in motion. A routine check of his driver’s license revealed Kot’s parolee status, and he was immediately arrested. An argument ensued. As the officers attempted to force Kot into their paddy wagon, another gang member, “Chocolate George” Hendricks, came to the assistance of his beleaguered Angel brother. Soon, both men were locked behind the Black Maria’s wire-mesh doors, charged with resisting arrest.

  Ever since Kesey invited the Angels to his La Honda blast, an unspoken alliance had existed between the acidheads and the outlaw motorcycle riders. George, who gained his nickname from a fondness for chocolate milk, was particularly popular with the local street people. Peter Coyote recalled him as “a big, easygoing guy who liked to hold court in front of Tracy’s Donut Shop.” When word of Chocolate George’s detention spread among the crowd, the Diggers redirected their march toward the Park Station, several blocks away. Chanting, “Free the Angels! We want Hairy Henry! We want Chocolate George!” a thousand people paraded down Stanyan Street and into Golden Gate Park.

  Michael McClure marched at the head of the procession, clawing at his autoharp in the company of a young woman blowing a bugle and some guy in a clear plastic raincoat making noise on his harmonica. Richard Brautigan, a head taller than most of the crowd, trooped along with all the rest, several ranks back from his pal McClure. At the police station, the demonstrators encountered “scores of patrolmen” surrounding the building. The crowd lit candles and continued their enthusiastic chanting. Brautigan moved closer, behind Freewheelin’ Frank, who sternly confronted a uniformed police officer.

  When word came from the station house that bail had been set at $2,500, with 10 percent required to secure the men’s release, a new chant went up among the hippie congregation: “Angels in jail, money for bail!” The masked pallbearers passed around the black-draped Death of Money coffin, and everyone gave what he or she could, tossing bills and coins inside. Even the cops chipped in, and bail was quickly raised.

  Pete Knell, Frisco chapter president, was pleasantly surprised when the money was handed over. Emmett Grogan observed, “The people had never stood up for the Hells Angels before.” Knell shouted his thanks to the crowd and headed downtown to post bond, accompanied by his ragtag brotherhood and many of the marchers. Chocolate George was released that night. Because of his parole status, Hairy Henry was detained in the city prison without bail until his case was heard weeks later.

  In the second week of December, Brautigan heard from Bob Mills in New York. The agent had read The Abortion and liked it “very much indeed.” He agreed to represent the book and proposed sending it on to Dan Wickenden, Don Carpenter’s editor at Harcourt, Brace. Richard was very pleased to have this news. Another pleasurable moment in December came with the publication of the second edition of The Galilee Hitch-hiker, out of print for eight years. Described as “an or book published by David Sandberg,” the slim volume was actually the work of Clifford Burke, called “one of the finest, and arguably the most influential, Bay Area printers of the ’60s.” Burke ran his Cranium Press out of a garage at 642 Shrader Street in the outer Fillmore. He set Brautigan’s nine-part poem in letterpress and printed it as a folio on fine watermarked paper.

  The red cover reproduced the Kenn Davis illustration from the first edition. All in all, the book was a simple affair, the signatures stitched together by hand. It sold for seventy-five cents a copy. Sixteen copies were numbered and signed by Brautigan in blue pencil on the verso of the title page, accompanied by his primitive drawing of a fish. A number of unbound sheets were left over after the book’s production, and Brautigan gave these away on the streets of San Francisco.

  David Sandberg’s mimeo-magazine, O’er #2, also made its appearance in December of 1966. It was printed on pages of different-colored construction paper and contained three of Richard Brautigan’s poems. The one worrying about his nose growing older expressed a genuine concern. When an editor from TriQuarterly wrote asking for his help on a projected issue featuring writers and artists under the age of thirty, Richard wistfully replied, “Gee, it’s kind of sad to realize that I ain’t under 30 any more.” He supplied the names of several friends: Ron Loewinsohn (twenty-nine), Erik Weber (twenty-six), Keith Abbott (twenty-two), Steve Carey (twenty-one), and Jeffrey Sheppard, a seventeen-year-old poet to whom Brautigan had recently dedicated “Hey! This Is W
hat It’s All About,” a bitterly ironic poem about his lack of fame, fortune, and a love life.

  Four days before Christmas, Richard Brautigan gave two poetry readings (at 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM) at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach. There was no admission charge. William “Tumbleweed” Fritsch, Allen Dienstag, and Andrew Hoyem also shared the bill. Brautigan and Hoyem had both been invited to be poets-in-residence at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena for part of the coming month.

  The invitation came by way of John F. Crawford, an instructor in the English department, who was collaborating with Hoyem on a new translation of the Middle English poem Pearl, which Grabhorn-Hoyem planned to publish as a limited edition in 1967. With this recognition and the planned publication of two novels, the fast-approaching New Year should have shone bright with promise. On Christmas Day, Richard Brautigan wrote, “I am desolate in dimension / circling the sky / like a rainy bird, / wet from toe to crown / wet from bill to wing.”

  The Diggers supplied enough turkeys to feed five hundred people at the Hamilton Methodist Church on Christmas Eve. This produced the first mention of the Diggers in the establishment press. Ralph Gleason advertised the event (“Christmas Eve for Hippies”) in his Chronicle column. Perhaps this was unwanted publicity. On December 27, city building inspectors cited the garage on Page Street for two violations of the Health and Safety Code. The Diggers quickly stripped the place, and the next day the officials broke the huge Frame of Reference apart and used the lumber to board up the free store.

  twenty-six: rx: dr. leary

  “TUNE IN! TURN on! Drop out!” By 1966, Timothy Leary’s slacker slogan had resonated out of Harvard Square, sending psychedelic shock waves across American campuses as it amplified into a national mantra for disenchanted youth. Media hype elevated the former professor from discredited crackpot to pop guru. In December of 1966, Leary paid a visit to San Francisco. He was on the road with Death of the Mind, his LSD-influenced stage adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Around this same time, Dr. Leary encountered Richard Brautigan at a social gathering in Berkeley.

  Brautigan had no interest in LSD and had never dropped acid. “I figure I’m crazy enough,” he said. “I don’t need to test it.” His conspicuous involvement with the Diggers made him an honorary counterculture celebrity and allowed entrée to the inner sanctum of a world where Tim Leary reigned as one of the principal proselytizing prophets. Always a curious bystander, Richard possessed a keen interest in observing the charismatic few who marched at the head of the parade. Drawn into Leary’s orbit, Brautigan fell under the spell of the eternal missionary.

  One afternoon the following week, Richard and Price Dunn shared a bottle of red wine at the Geary Street apartment. Slyly and without comment, Brautigan “pulls out this little pouch and pulls out these papers.”

  “I’ll be Goddamned,” Price Dunn said. “What in hell are you doing?” He had not seen Richard with marijuana since the time he turned him on in Big Sur a decade earlier.

  “I met Tim Leary,” Brautigan replied, adroitly dramatizing the moment, “and he gave it to me.”

  Price looked on in amazement. “Richard is rolling a joint,” he recalled, “and I couldn’t believe this, and I said, ‘God, a disciple of the guru.’”

  Richard Brautigan fired up the reefer, doing his best not to cough. He passed the joint to Price, telling him how he planned to see Timothy Leary again soon. Price roared with laughter. Another convert. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “I can’t believe this.”

  At the same time, word went out on the street that the heat was on. The police were arresting people for pot possession. Brautigan’s paranoia got the best of him. He feared his public involvement with the Haight-Ashbury scene might point a finger his way. He didn’t want any dope lying around his apartment, so he went next door to visit Erik Weber. “He came downstairs with his stash,” Erik recalled, “and told me he wanted me to hide it because he was afraid that the cops were going to bust him.” A few days later, Richard retrieved his celebrity contraband.

  Price Dunn recollected his friend’s temporary conversion. “We went down on the North Beach and went to a few places, and Richard had that little pouch, and that lasted about a week, and then finally one day he walked in and pulled it out, and I started laughing, and he says, ‘Oh, shit.’” Richard joined his friend’s laughter, tossing down what was left of Tim Leary’s lid onto the kitchen table. “That’s more like it,” Price shouted. “What are you pretending?”

  “You’re right,” Richard said. “Whiskey is my drink.” As a reaffirmation, he poured himself a big glass of Laphroaig, the smoky single malt from the Isle of Skye. The bottle had been a gift from Price. Brautigan savored a potent swallow. It was his farewell to pot. He never smoked the stuff again.

  twenty-seven: banzai

  THE NAMBU 6.5 mm light machine gun weighed twenty pounds and in working condition fired 550 rounds per minute. It was Japan’s main light weapon for use in jungle warfare and had a distinctive look with a steel bipod supporting the long thin ribbed barrel and a knurled wooden grip (dainty as the handle of a teakettle) mounted in front of the up-curving thirty-round magazine. The grip, curiously old-fashioned in appearance, allowed the Japanese soldier to pick up the Nambu like a suitcase. It was handy under fire when it came time to hustle, and the weapon smoldered in the hell-furnace of combat. A suitcase looks as incongruous on the battlefield as a machine gun does in a living room. Precisely why Richard Brautigan chose the Nambu as his interior decorating centerpiece. It took a visitor by surprise, like one of his metaphors.

  This particular piece of war surplus first turned up sometime in 1967 in the basement of an old industrial building south of Market. Kendrick Rand came with his friend Alvin Duskin, who was looking for a space to locate his garment business. The building had been vacant for years. They poked around, checking things out. Duskin had an option to lease the place. Down in the basement, they found the Japanese machine gun just “sitting there” in the middle of “a whole bunch of stuff” like some prehistoric creature crouching alone in the darkness. “So strange,” Kendrick Rand remembered.

  The antique weapon had languished in the cellar for a long, long time. Rendered inoperable by molten lead poured down the barrel, the valiant old Nambu had become just another bit of abandoned rusting junk. Nobody wanted it. A pacifist at heart, Alvin Duskin expressed little interest in the machine gun but, sensing his friend’s excitement, said: “Why don’t you take it?” Kendrick picked it up by the curious handle and carried the disabled machine gun away.

  What happened to the Nambu next remains uncertain. Kendrick never brought it home. His son, Christopher, was “enamored with such things” but had no memory of ever seeing it back then. Rand probably hauled the gun over to the Minimum Daily Requirement, his place in North Beach. From there, it disappeared into the Frisco poetry scene for a couple of months. Ginsberg was said to have owned the Nambu for a time. Also Lew Welch. Michael McClure denied the rumor that he had once possessed the machine gun. Eventually, it turned up in the hands of Richard Brautigan, who placed it dead center in his front room and painted the outline of a fish on the floor around it.

  The Nambu sat there gathering dust and comments for another year or so. It provided ample opportunity for Brautigan to repeat his story of how he learned to read as a small child when he spotted a newspaper headline announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The machine gun also illustrated Richard’s theory of why the Japanese lost World War II. Because the Nambu’s barrel tended to heat up and warp after a couple thousand rapid rounds had been shot through it, the design allowed for it to be removed and replaced. With the handle welded to the barrel, only six or so fitted into a box one man could carry. The machine guns used by American and Australian troops had removable screw-on handles, allowing twenty barrels to be packed into each wooden crate, giving the Allies a tactical advantage. According to Brautigan, this cost the Japanese the war.

  Michael McClure
later wrote that the first thing he remembered connecting Richard to guns was “when he was beginning to get goofy with drinking and success and he gave Gary Snyder a broken, vintage Japanese machine gun for his son Kai. ‘So he won’t lose his Japanese heritage,’ said Richard.”

  Christopher Rand was nine or ten at the time. “Gary was living just outside of Muir Woods,” he remembered, “and also was putting together his place up in the Sierras. I was with my mother over visiting him one afternoon and he was just loading up, getting ready to go to the Sierras, loading a bunch of tools into the back of his truck, and lo and behold, he brings out of his shop this machine gun and loads it in.”

  Not knowing the amazing exotic weapon had ever belonged to his father, Christopher asked Gary Snyder what he planned to do with it. The poet explained he was taking the Nambu up to “Kitkitdizze” in the mountains for a burial ceremony under the pines. The tools of war laid to rest in a Zen peace ritual. Hearing this, Chris grew frantic. He couldn’t imagine such a wondrous treasure stuck away forever under the ground. “So, I pestered him and finally he gave it to me.”

  The Rands had an apartment on Telegraph Hill, and Christopher brought the machine gun back to the city. One day, Richard Brautigan paid a visit and spotted the Nambu. He badly wanted it back. Knowing Christopher was completely into building rockets, “incredible rockets,” Richard offered a bribe. Two hundred bucks’ worth of rocket gear for the gun. Chris held his ground. Over time it became something of an ongoing gag. Richard forever upping the ante and the stoic little boy refusing temptation. When the Rand family quit the city and moved out to their summer place in Stinson Beach around 1970 or 1971, the Nambu went along with them. “My friends and I would play war games,” Christopher recalled, “dig a big foxhole and have the machine gun, and tourists would go by on the beach and see us playing and be kind of . . . dismayed.”