Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit

by Catherine James

  Bob and I talked for hours in front of the glowing fireplace. He was impervious to the looming, amorous folk chicks and record executives who wanted their moment with him. We talked about forgiveness, which was something I’d never even thought about, or believed I could accomplish. He told me about strength of spirit, which I knew I possessed, and the freedom of having nothing to lose. He was so right. I’d never had anything to lose. At the end of the night Bob wrote his phone number and address in Woodstock on a little piece of paper and told me I could call him collect.

  I bought Bob’s first album and played it till the grooves wore thin. My unenlightened fellow inmates at the orphanage did not share my enthusiasm. It was 1963, I was thirteen years old, and the Beatles had just arrived on the scene with “She Loves You.” They actually scorned Bob’s music and hated his voice. They all laughed at me when I played his album. I defended Bob.

  “You’ll see, one day he’s going to be a famous poet.”

  I was in love with the sweet gruff sound of “Corrina, Corrina,” “Pretty Peggy-O,” and “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” I wondered who Rich Von Schmidt was, and dreamed of going to Greenwich Village. Mimi bought me a guitar, and I taught myself the chords to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Blowin’ In The Wind.” My head was full of Bob Dylan’s words, and of running away to New York City.

  The next time Bob came to town he picked me up outside the gate of the orphanage. He was waiting in a white Mustang convertible. Bob didn’t drive, but he had his friend Victor Maymudes behind the wheel, and we took the backseat. Of course, I didn’t have permission to leave the grounds, but barbed razor wire wouldn’t have stopped me.

  Victor drove us to the beach, dropping us off at the Santa Monica pier. We played games on the boardwalk, and Bob popped enough balloons at the dart gallery to win me a furry stuffed Tweety Bird. There was a funky little beach café next to the merry-go-round. We fed a couple of quarters into the jukebox and took a seat in the corner. Bob played “She Loves You” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by the new group, the Beatles. He said he liked their chord changes, and played them a few times in a row. Sipping my root beer to the Fab Four, and talking with Bob Dylan. I couldn’t have been in better company. We discussed my precarious situation. I described how I ended up in the institution and my malevolence toward my mother. Bob said I wouldn’t be able to see it now, but one day she’d be friendless and alone. I tried hard to imagine his words, but I couldn’t picture my almighty, invincible mother deflated and without audience. He said this was my life, my gift, that I had choices and didn’t need to follow anyone’s rules. “It’s only life,” he said.

  For a thirteen-year-old it was a bit cryptic, but I understood the essence. I was free.

  It was dusk when we got back to the orphanage, and we drove right onto the grounds in the Mustang. Besides the Beatles, I don’t think any of my cohorts at Vista Del Mar had even seen anyone with long hair, and Bob was causing a bit of a stir. Some of the kids gathered around the convertible, jeering, “Is it a boy or is it a girl?” I was mortally embarrassed, and later promised the infidels, “One day you’re going to remember this, and you’ll all be sorry.”

  I knew that by bringing Bob and Victor onto the property, I’d forfeited my weekend visit with my grandparents, and would be restricted to my room for the next month. I didn’t care. It was well worth the price of admission.

  Another time I slipped out and went with Bob to visit the revolutionary comic Lenny Bruce. I remembered my mother used to go to see his shows at the Unicorn, but I had little idea that I was in the presence of another legend. Lenny lived at the top of a hill above Sunset. His home wasn’t stately or flash. It was a simple sixties stucco structure with modern décor and a large picture window that overlooked the Sunset Strip. Bob and I only spent a few hours at his home, but I remember Lenny as looking damp and behaving somewhat frantically. He had a high-powered telescope poised at his window, aimed at the famed Schwab’s pharmacy. I remember Bob playing Lenny a few of his new songs, and Lenny spending most of the time spying on unsuspecting pedestrians in front of the drugstore.

  When Bob went back to Woodstock I wrote him lengthy girlish letters and called him collect for more words of enlightenment and wisdom. There were never any romantic overtones, at least on his part. I believe he favored me because of my extraordinary history and situation. In 1963 it was still uncommon to hear about child abuse and abandonment. Kids weren’t taking drugs or running away. It was a more gentle time. I also think he liked my innocent enthusiasm and the fact that I got it. I understood what he was saying.

  By age fourteen I’d begun to blossom into my slender frame. I had loose blond locks and lofty ideas. I started sneaking out of the dormitory at night and taking the bus….from Venice to West Hollywood. With my guitar in tow, I’d head straight for the Troubadour. The Troubadour was a hot little folk club on Santa Monica Boulevard that dripped with intrigue and a new kind of music. It was a rustic little hole-in-the-wall with theater seats in the back and parlor tables right up to the stage. It was a place where all of the up-to-the-minute folk heroes came to play music and hang out, where pretty young waitresses served apple cider with cinnamon sticks. I finally had a budding direction, a dream of my own. I wanted to be a writer, a poet, to sing and play music.

  I wasn’t really old enough to be hanging out at the Troubadour, but because it was known that my stepfather was a famous folk singer, I got special treatment. Mondays were Hoot Nights, when anyone could get up and perform. You could usually find Jim, a.k.a. Roger McGuinn, in the dark adjoining lounge doing his version of Beatles songs, and cherub-faced David Crosby performing with his band, the Balladeers. I also had a giant teen crush on young Crosby, which helped to motivate my weekly escape from the institution. David would sometimes accompany me on guitar, and sweetly flirted, saying, “Ah, if you were just five years older.” I made a splash singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” One night a music scout from Liberty Records approached me, but I had to decline, as I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.

  One Friday night Mimi picked me up with a bit of bad news. The courts had ruled against us. I wouldn’t be allowed to live with her or anyone else. My rambling religious debates, rendezvous with Bob Dylan, and late-night excursions to the Troubadour hadn’t helped my position either. Because I hadn’t gone along with the program at the orphanage, the chances were good I’d be going back to Los Padrinos until I turned eighteen, or maybe even twenty-one. I had a sick feeling in my stomach, like trying to avoid an imminent car crash. I couldn’t stand another four years of being locked up. I thought about what Bob had said: “It’s your life.”

  On Sunday night Mimi drove me back to Vista del Mar, promising she’d figure something out. She pleaded, “Love, please try to get along here.”

  “Okay Mimi, I will.”

  I kissed her soft powdery cheek good-bye, told her I loved her, then bounded up the stairs to my dormitory to pack for the road. I stuffed a Mexican straw bag with a faded pair of Levi’s, the loose olive green pullover Mimi had knitted for me, my handmade leather beatnik sandals, and most important, my Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album. I grabbed one last thing: a full bottle of Bayer aspirin. I’d heard that swallowing a whole jar was as lethal as heart failure. If I got caught, I’d kill myself.

  It was dark when I slipped out the back door. I didn’t have a clue how I was going to get there, but I was on my way to Greenwich Village, New York City. My real adventure was about to begin.

  6

  With a sense of terror and excitement, and without a penny in my pocket, I was on my way. I hoofed it for two long hours, and eventually reached my first stop. Where else? The Troubadour. Holy Mary, my poor heart! The cops were already on my trail. When I walked through the door I saw two police officers passing my school picture around in the adjacent lounge. I wondered how they had found me so fast. Fortunately, the club was packed to
the rafters, and I was able to squeeze past the crowd and into the darkness of the showroom. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was taking his final bow when I spotted the only vacant seat in the back row. As my belly leaped with adrenaline, I slid down low and whispered to the unknowing stranger in the seat next to me, “Pretend like you know me.”

  He slid his arm around my shoulder as if we were a couple, and over Ramblin’ Jack’s applause and accolades I whispered again, “The police are chasing me; can you help me get out of here?”

  The stranger motioned that he was parked in the back, and when the audience cheered for a last encore, we casually slipped out of the rear exit. With no concern at all I jumped into the car and put my head down out of sight. My gallant savior covered me with his coat, and we sped away into the night. Once we were on the Hollywood Freeway he relaxed.

  “It’s all clear, you can sit up now.”

  I popped out from under his coat and got a closer look at my emancipator.

  Michael Stewart was a lanky young man in his early twenties. He had longish brown, wispy hair, huge blue eyes, and a gentle, almost modest demeanor. I told him of my wild state of affairs, and he was eager to help. He said he had some art student friends who lived in the mountains near Claremont; perhaps I could hide out there.

  After an hour of winding country roads, we arrived at an old, secluded clapboard house nestled high in the hills, surrounded by grand old pines and lush-smelling firs. The air had a crisp chill and the moon was full with a smile. I leaped up the fifty steep steps to the front door, where I met Frank and Will.

  Michael introduced me as his fourteen-year-old runaway.

  “Can she hide out here for a few days?”

  Will, exhaling a cloud of pot smoke, said, “Yeah, that’s cool; she can sleep in the spare room.”

  The spare room had the feeling of an abandoned house, furnished with just a lumpy old iron bed and yellowed pull-down shades. Later that night I stared out at the stars and listened to the comforting chorus of crickets. I wasn’t the least bit afraid. I said my prayers, thanking God, and fell asleep thinking, “Wow, I really did it.”

  Michael showed up the next day to check on his ward, and treated me to a hamburger at the local diner. It turned out he was a guitar player and had his own little group called We Five. Each night he’d pick me up for a bit of dinner and I’d tag along to his band practice. Rehearsals were held at the singer Beverly’s parents’ house just a few miles away. I must have heard “You Were On My Mind” a hundred times and never got tired of it.

  Michael had some encouraging new for me. He’d spoken with his brother, who was in the market for a nanny; if it worked out, I might be going to live in San Francisco.

  His brother was John Stewart, lead singer of the Kingston Trio. He lived up north in Mill Valley with his wife and two blond toddlers, but the Trio was in Los Angeles recording a new album at Capitol. Michael picked me up and drove me to the album-shaped Capitol Records recording studio on Franklin and Vine. The next thing I knew I was on a flight to San Francisco.

  I never did see Michael again, but often thought about how differently things might have turned out. What if someone else had been sitting next to that empty seat at the Troubadour?

  Mill Valley was a quiet little artsy community just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. I had really lucked out. John’s wife treated me like her own daughter. She decorated a room for me, took me shopping for stylish new clothes, and bought me my first pair of pumps with petite high heels. I was paid ten dollars a week to help with chores and look after their children. It felt so legitimate. I’d become part of a real family, but deep down I knew it couldn’t last, it couldn’t be that easy. I felt like Richard Kimble, the TV fugitive, always expecting a tap on the shoulder or a platoon of cops to nab me off the street and send me back to Hollywood.

  I’d been happily living with the Stewarts for three months when John thought it would be a good idea to enroll me in the local junior high school. That was my cue to scram. He said we would get a good attorney; maybe they would even adopt me. I knew that could never happen. He had never come up against anyone like my mother, and didn’t have a clue of what she was capable of. There was no doubt she’d rather see me locked away than living with a nice family. I envisioned myself back in steely handcuffs, back in the dispirited, medicinal halls of Los Padrinos. The Stewarts tried to reassure me, but I couldn’t chance it. I left a letter of gratitude, then headed back on course, toward my original destination: New York City.

  I met some hippie kids at Sausalito Park and hitched a ride with them over the Oakland Bay Bridge to Berkeley. Our target was the renowned Telegraph Avenue.

  It was 1964, the early days of peace, love, and psychedelic euphoria, the onset of the teenage revolution. The street had a magical atmosphere, alive with a kaleidoscope of colorfully dressed minstrels, beggars, poets, pretty young girls, and handsome boys with mutinous long hair. Enchanting fragrances of frankincense, patchouli, and burning hashish permeated the air like a mysterious mist. I’d never seen anything like this in Hollywood.

  I met a boy on Telegraph Avenue who was wearing the coolest pair of sunglasses. They were vintage with tan Lucite frames, and forest green lenses. I commented, “Great shades.”

  He peered out over the top of them. “I bet they’d look better on you,” he said, then placed them over my eyes.

  “Do you live around here?”

  “No, I just got here. I don’t have a place to stay yet.”

  “Don’t worry,” he beamed, “I’ll look after you.”

  Nicky had the most soulful, resplendent hazel-green eyes and a boyish, infectious smile. His tousled brown hair just brushed the shoulders of his vintage suede jacket, and his stature was artistically slender. He walked with a cool, easy swagger, like a boy trying to a man. He wrote poetry, chain-smoked, drove an old red Chevy pickup, and rocked on the guitar. Nicky had the spirit of a rebel, but possessed a young hero’s heart; he was just fifteen.

  His parents were blues singer Barbara Dane and guitar master

  Rolf Cahn. They’d been divorced since he was a kid, and he’d been kicking around the city on his own, playing folk clubs since he was twelve. Not only had I found a like spirit, Nicky would be indirectly responsible for seeing me safely to New York.

  As promised, he found me a place to stay with some political science students near the Berkeley campus. At night he’s pick me up in the Chevy truck and we made the rounds to all the local music scenes, then home to Telegraph Avenue for some late-night blues. We were a pair of adolescent kids, the runaway and the rebel, just living in the moment.

  Nicky wrote me an extraordinary piece of blues that he’d composed on the guitar, called “Train Song.” There was something about the simplicity, the nomadic, sad sound, like a train departing with hopeful dreams, taking you on life’s journey, that always made me laugh. The gentle refrain would reduce me to tears, but the end of the melody I’d be laughing again. “Train Song” had the unsatisfied tones of sweet sorrow, and youthful reverie. When he played it I could envision my life unfolding, tripping, recklessly dancing, crashing toward my shaky destination. I could never get enough of the impassioned refrain. Even today, it still sends me.

  One late night Nicky screeched up to the sorority house where I was staying and shouted up, “Hurry up, get in the truck, the cops are on the way!”

  I had been in Berkeley for only a few weeks, but someone said there was an all-points bulletin out on me. It seemed someone had squealed. I’d heard the police were fast on my trail, and had been showing my picture around the coffeehouses on Telegraph Avenue.

  Nicky was taking me to his father’s house two hours north in a small rural town called Inverness.

  “No one will find you way out here,” he assured me.

  Inverness was a picturesque pastureland dotted with aging farmhouses, and with a quaint river running through the middle of town. Nicky’s dad, Rolf, looked like a bohemian Johnny Cash, all dre
ssed in black with a handsome mane of raven hair and wise dark eyes. He gave his rebel son the suspicious eyebrow but graciously invited us to stay.

  Up until now, sexual intimacy hadn’t been on the program, but this night would be something special. I made myself comfortable on Nicky’s childhood bed as he serenaded me on is guitar. I knew what was about to happen, and it would be perfect.

  We made passionate, ethereal love for hours in the dark. Kissing him was like tasting cool water in a parched desert. It felt like the room and everything in it had faded away. It was just us and the universe. The innocent passion between us was like a religious revival when the music reaches a fervor releasing your spirit to the heavens. In the morning I watched as Nicky pulled on his Levi’s with a crisp swoosh. The sexy jangle of his loose belt buckle, the sight of his smooth boyish chest made me feel almost faint. I wanted to climb inside, pass through him, be a part of him.

  Nicky hadn’t mentioned this to me earlier, but before we met he’d been living with an older woman of twenty-two, an airline hostess, who was back in Berkeley. He said he was going to break the news and tell her that it was over. He kissed me hard with his sweet teenage breath. “I’ll be back soon, you’ll be safe here.” And he was gone.

  The next day Rolf was busy packing his bags. He told me he was off to New York for a spell, but that I was welcome to stay. I couldn’t believe he’d just leave me in this big old house in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a telephone.

  I spent the week exploring the countryside, composing love sonnets and wondering when my sweet Nicky would return. Late in the afternoon I heard a light tap at the door. Instead of my young beau, there stood a jovial stout chap who said he’d come all the way from Boston just to visit with Rolf.