Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

by William Hjortsberg

  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.”

  The Nambu remained one of Christopher Rand’s favorite possessions. He kept it into adulthood, wrapped in plastic and safely stored. In the summer of 1984, he was living in Bolinas and working over at Lucasfilm. One night, he ran into Brautigan at Smiley’s. “I tapped him on the shoulder, and he was on his way to being drunk and sort of reeled around and said, ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t know who you are. It’s really rude to touch people you don’t know.’”

  Christopher backed off and hung out with some friends, shooting pool. After last call, Richard started to leave and Christopher followed him outside, introducing himself as Ken Rand’s son. It’s not surprising that Brautigan hadn’t recognized the boy. Chris stood six foot one and weighed over two hundred pounds. After a “cheerful embrace,” they bought a six-pack and walked down Wharf Road to the beach “and just rapped for a couple of hours.”

  “And, of course, the machine gun came up in our conversation, and he goes, ‘What do you want now for it? I’ll still buy you the rockets. What do you want?’ It was very funny.”

  It had been a dozen years since they had last seen each other, and the boy had become a man. They killed the six-pack, trading stories. Richard started tossing the empties out into the ocean. Christopher objected. “I said, ‘Hey, that’s not cool. What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’ve picked up so many beer cans I deserve to throw some back if I want.’ Strange man.”

  Richard Brautigan fishing a riffle on the Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana, ca. 1980. Acrylic painting by Greg Keeler.

  Lincoln Elementary School, Eugene, Oregon. Sixth grade class photo, 1947. Richard Brautigan is seated behind a desk at the far right. Always marching to a different drummer, Richard is one of only two students not wearing a Native American headband.

  Senior class photo, The Eugenean, Eugene High School Yearbook, 1953. Perhaps the only photo ever taken of Richard Brautigan wearing a necktie.

  Shack built by Harry Taylor, ca. 1930. Richard Brautigan lived here for five months in 1956 in the care of the Barton family after his release from the mental ward of the Oregon State Hospital. It was his last residence in Eugene. Photo by Quintin Barton.

  Richard Brautigan reading from The Octopus Frontier at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach (San Francisco), August 8, 1960. Photo by “Edgren.” Courtesy: Greg Miller.

  January, 1965: Richard Brautigan and Janice Meissner in their apartment above Boegerhausen Hardware at 2830 California Street, San Francisco. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  January, 1965: Richard Brautigan posing by the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square Park, San Francisco. First cover shoot for Trout Fishing in America. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  Richard Brautigan reading Michael McClure’s play, The Beard, aloud after dinner at Erik and Loie Weber’s Geary Boulevard apartment, March, 1965.

  Richard Brautigan taking notes in the military pet cemetery at the Presidio, San Francisco, for his short story, “Homage to Rudi Gernreich / 1965.” May 23, 1965. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  Price Dunn, “the confederate general from Big Sur” (bottom) and Richard Brautigan (top of ladder), on a trip Richard made with Janice and the Webers to escape a tidal wave which never materialized. Mouth of the Carmel River, Carmel, California. May, 1965. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  San Francisco, March 24, 1967. Outtake from the cover shoot for Trout Fishing in America. Richard Brautigan and Michaela Blake-Grand cracking up while posing in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square Park.

  Making music in the McGuanes’ kitchen, Deep Creek, Montana, August, 1972. Clockwise from Lower Left: Jimmy Buffett (with guitar), Bob Junsch, Marian Hjortsberg, unknown woman in doorway, Mary Chatham, Richard Brautigan, Gatz Hjortsberg (partly concealed by wall) and Tom McGuane (on mandolin). Photograph © Erik Weber.

  Photo shoot for Willard and his Bowling Trophies at Brautigan’s apartment on Geary in San Francisco, September, 1975. Richard has his hands folded into a finger steeple familiar to all his friends. Unhappy with how he looked in these pictures, Brautigan used an earlier portrait by Jill Krementz on the back of the Willard dust jacket. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  Michael McClure (seated on chopper) and Richard Brautigan, standing on Haight Street across from Benedetti’s Liquors, 1968. Photograph © Rhyder McClure.

  Richard Brautigan at Muir Beach, Marin County, California, February, 1969. Photograph © Dr. John Doss.

  Richard Brautigan seated on the rim of his bathtub at The Museum in 1969 wearing the “number 13” medallion he favored at the time. Photograph courtesy Michael Ochs Archives.

  Helen Brann’s office at the Sterling Lord Agency, 660 Madison Avenue, New York City, April, 1970. Seated in the foreground, flush with his new success, Richard Brautigan looks like the proverbial cat that swallowed the golden canary. In the background, Brann wheels and deals on the phone. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  The Museum. Richard Brautigan’s funky apartment at 2546 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco,occupied the entire first floor of this decrepit building. Richard lived here for nearly a decade, from 1966 to 1975. Photograph © Erik Weber.

  Marcia Clay, age 17, (1970). Marcia and Richard used this photograph on an invitation to their mutual January 31, 1980 party at Brautigan’s 2110 Green Street apartment. Photographer unknown.

  Snack time at McGuanes’ kitchen, Deep Creek, Montana, August, 1972. L to R: Jim Harrison, Becky McGuane and Richard Brautigan. Photo © Erik Weber.

  On the terrace at Enrico’s Sidewalk Café, March, 1981. L. To R.: Curt Gentry, Don Carpenter, Richard Brautigan and Enrico Banducci. When word went out that People magazine was organizing a party at Enrico’s to celebrate Brautigan, only Don and Curt showed up. Photograph © Roger Ressmeyer.

  Richard Brautigan at “The Great Buddha of Kamakura,” a 45-foot-high bronze sculpture dating from 1252 AD. Kôtoku-in Temple, Kamakura, Japan, Spring, 1977. Photographer unknown.

  Richard in love, Pine Creek, Montana. Summer. 1980. Photograph © Masako Kano.

  The Montana Gang (plus some folks from the bars in Livingston), upper Deep Creek, October, 1980. L. To R. (top row): Dr. Dennis Noteboom, Terry McDonell, Rosalyn “Roz” Mina, unknown, Thomas McGuane IV, Max Hjortsberg, Terry de la Valdène, Becky Fonda, Peter Fonda, Justin Fonda, Pete Stein, Ursula “Ushi” Butler, Guy de la Valdène and Michael Butler. (Middle row): Marian Hjortsberg, “Willie Boy” Walker, Benjamin “Dink” Bruce, Russell Chatham, Sandi Lee, Heather Hume, Jeff Bridges, Lorca Hjortsberg, Susan Cahill, unknown woman, lawyer from Hawaii and Dana Atchley. (Bottom row, seated): John Fryer. Laurie McGuane (baby Maggie on lap), Tom McGuane, Richard Brautigan (Teddy Head on lap), Phil Caputo and Tim Cahill. Photograph © Michael Abramson.

  Richard Brautigan in Oahu, Hawaii (December, 1981) holding a puzzled barnyard rooster while wearing his new “Fighting Chickens” tee-shirt. Photograph © George Bennett.

  Greg Keeler and Richard Brautigan, Bozeman, Montana, Spring, 1982. Greg helped Richard secure a part-time appointment as a visiting writer at Montana State University. Having recently broken his leg, Brautigan is still using a cane. Photograph © Linda Best.

  Amsterdam, January, 1984. Brautigan’s Japanese visa application photo. “Yes, Europe has been good
to me.”

  Richard Brautigan’s mailbox, Pine Creek, Montana, November, 1984. An anonymous admirer left a bunch of flowers shortly after news of Brautigan’s suicide was released by the press. Photographer unknown.

  twenty-eight: bread and circuses

  THE HELLS ANGELS threw a big free party in the Panhandle on New Year’s Day, 1967, to thank the Haight’s doper community for bailing Chocolate George out of jail. Dubbed the “New Year’s Wail,” and the “New Year’s Whale,” by the Diggers, who put out a flyer encouraging participants to bring along whale meat, the festivities began at 2:00 PM. Music at the “Wail,” performed on an eighteen-foot flatbed truck, featured Janis Joplin and Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, John Handy’s jazz ensemble, and the Orkustra, an odd collection of musicians known as the Diggers’ house band. (Bobby Beausoleil, the group’s top-hatted bouzouki player, later became associated with Charles Manson and was himself jailed for murder.)

  Emmett Grogan took credit for planning the whole thing with Pete Knell, but the effort was clearly the work of many Angels and Diggers. The motorcycle club provided a public address system to amplify the rock and roll, along with copious amounts of free beer. “The parks belong to the people!” the crowd chanted when the police cruised by to check things out. Given Richard Brautigan’s prominence at the forefront of the march to Park Station, it is impossible to imagine him not grooving among the happy throng at this Digger-publicized event.

  The Diggers found a new home for their giveaway emporium at 520 Frederick Street, a storefront with a large basement. They opened for “business” the first week of January, soon after Emmett Grogan stenciled the name, the Free Frame of Reference, above the front window. Among the first visitors were the police, on the lookout for underage runaways and drugs. After being denied entry three times, the cops returned in force around six in the evening with three patrol cars and a Black Maria. Ninety people had gathered within to watch Ben Van Meter’s film Poon Tang Trilogy on a bedsheet screen. The police ushered them all out, citing fire regulations. Their search trashed the place, causing a disturbance leading to the arrest of four Diggers, including Grogan.

  Four days into the New Year, Brautigan took part in a reading at the I/Thou Coffee Shop (1736 Haight Street) along with David Sandberg and young Jeff Sheppard. Another poet, Joe Stroud, had been scratched from the lineup. Sandberg, insecure about his work, referred to his writing simply as “pages.” Richard, the featured reader, stepped to the front of the room carrying a large bucket of clams. The minimal advertising for the event, a narrow printed strip of pale green paper, referred to the bivalves as Brautigan’s artistic contribution.

  About the same time, Richard Brautigan began a brief, intense relationship with a woman whom most of his friends, even those who met her, could not remember years later. Keith Abbott recalled, “She always remained for me just a face. Even after people told me her name, I forgot it just as fast. Her face was an eraser for names.” For Loie Weber, “she was like a disappeared person. She was there in image.” Her name was Michaela Blake-Grand. She was known as “Mickey.” David Schaff thought her “genuinely crazy.” Very soft-spoken with dark red hair, tiny hands, prominent buck teeth, and abundant freckles, Mickey was not a conventionally attractive woman. Creating a distinctive thrift shop style all her own, she wore oval wire-framed granny glasses and dressed in a quaint Victorian manner. Richard called her his muse.

  Michaela had been the girlfriend of Andy Cole, Brautigan’s old pal and roommate. Richard was fascinated with her in part because Blake-Grand had a degree in textiles and supposedly had submitted a piece of knitting as her thesis. The notion of someone knitting a thesis was a concept right up Brautigan’s alley. Contemporary photographs of Michaela show her looking prim and straitlaced like a stern old-fashioned schoolmarm, but in essence she was a deeply passionate woman. Loie Weber remembered Blake-Grand as eccentric and very inverted, possessed with “that kind of quiet, indrawn intensity.” Richard’s erotic poem “I’ve Never Had It Done So Gently Before” was dedicated to “M” for Michaela. “The sweet juices of your mouth,” he wrote, “are like castles bathed in honey.” One evening, she unexpectedly showed up at Jack Thibeau’s place and spent the night with him. When Jack awoke the next morning, Michaela was gone, leaving behind a note addressed to “Jick.” Thibeau never knew what she meant by that.

  Early in January, Brautigan struck up a friendship with Lou Marcelli, a blue-collar guy in North Beach. After working as a letter carrier for the post office and as a fisherman in Alaska, Lou and a bunch of buddies opened a little beer and wine bar called Deno & Carlo at 728 Vallejo Street, next to the police station. “Just five North Beachers,” Lou recalled, “didn’t know shit about business or how to run a place.” At first, the joint didn’t do very well. Richard started stopping by when Lou was behind the bar. Most of the time, it was deserted.

  Brautigan walked in one mid-January day and asked, “What’s going on here?” Marcelli admitted he didn’t really know. He said he was just trying to start something up, “with entertainment or whatever.” Richard told Lou he’d fill the place for him. “I said, ‘Yeah, sure you will,’” Marcelli remembered. “He says, ‘You ever hear of Allen Ginsberg?’ I don’t know Allen Ginsberg from a tub of beans. He says, ‘I’m gonna get him here tomorrow night, and there’ll be people lined up around the block.’”

  This was no idle promise. Ginsberg had flown to Frisco earlier in the month with his longtime boyfriend, Peter Orlovsky, and his sometime girlfriend, Maretta Greer, who’d returned from four years wandering the Himalayas. They came to take part in a Gathering of the Tribes, the great Human Be-In organized by Michael Bowen and Allen Cohen. Allen Ginsberg proved open to Brautigan’s solicitations. Richard’s friendship with Emmett Grogan helped pull things together. Grogan admitted to being “knocked out” when Richard told him of his idea for the reading.

  Brautigan drew a mimeographed poster in the scrawled offhand manner of his recent flier for the reprint of Galilee Hitch-hiker. He wrote “San Francisco Poets Benefit for the Diggers” at the top, dotting the page with little cartoon flowers and centering an all-seeing eye in a circle surrounded by the words, “!Free! We love you !Free! We love you.” Scattered about this image, along with Brautigan’s own moniker, were the names of his friends: Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Lenore Kandel, William Fritsch, Ron Loewinsohn, David Meltzer, and George Stanley.

  Allen Ginsberg’s name did not appear on Brautigan’s poster, but Richard held true to his word, and the famed beat poet was there at Deno & Carlo on the promised night, January 12, 1967. Aside from the crude flyer, the only publicity for the event were mentions in the Oracle and in Ralph Gleason’s Chronicle column. Even so, more than a hundred people showed up. “The place was mobbed,” Lou Marcelli recalled. The occasion launched the North Beach nightspot, which quickly became a popular music venue. Blue Cheer and the Cleveland Wrecking Company played there. Creedence Clearwater Revival got their start at Deno and Carlo.

  Because the reading had been called a “benefit,” Ginsberg and Gary Snyder dutifully passed the hat for donations. By the time Emmett Grogan and Peter Coyote arrived a considerable sum had been collected. Ginsberg gave Grogan the hat full of money. Emmett announced the only possible Digger benefit was “one where everything was free!” and handed the hat over to the bartender, telling him to count out the bread and buy drinks for the house until it was gone. “That’s a Digger benefit,” Coyote shouted to much applause. Gary Snyder marveled at the gesture, telling Allen Ginsberg they’d given the money “back to the people!”

  The next evening, Andrew Hoyem threw a party he called “Meet My Television Set” at his Fell Street flat. The guest list ranged from fellow poets to Hells Angels and society people. Among the hundred or more who “came and went” were Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, James Broughton, Thomas Parkinson, and Richard Brautigan, who took off all his clothes “except for bead necklaces and tall hat.” Regarding Brautigan’s tendency to strip
naked at social events, Hoyem observed, “I was always astonished how successful he would be with the girls after he’d taken his clothes off.”

  Antiquarian booksellers David and Dorothy Magee brought the front of a busted TV as a present for Hoyem’s machine. Poet/artist Albert Saijo, now working as a Yellow Cab driver, came wearing his cabbie’s cap “and obligingly took two guests home.” At one point in the evening, Richard Brautigan found himself standing next to Gary Snyder, who sat in an armchair drinking a glass of bourbon on ice. Hoyem recounted the episode: “Richard’s dong was in close proximity, so Gary raised his glass and used Richard’s dick as a swizzle stick, sending the naked author skyward.”

  A couple days later, Hoyem received a note from Brautigan: “Thank you for the party. I’m sure I had a wonderful time.”

  Saturday, January 14, turned out to be a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, fulfilling the prophesies of Gavin Arthur, who along with fellow astrologer Ambrose Hollingsworth (once the manager of Quicksilver Messenger Service) had selected the date as auspicious for the big planned Be-In. The Parks Department granted a permit for the use of the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park, an area large enough to encompass six city blocks, and by midmorning swarms of young people streamed in under the trees, heading for the “powwow.” They had been alerted by constant hype on the Bay Area’s radio stations, a cover story in the Oracle, five eye-catching posters (including work by Michael Bowen, Mouse, and newly arrived cartoonist Rick Griffin), and a press conference two days before at the Print Mint, featuring Gary Snyder and aspiring revolutionary Jerry Rubin.