by Randy Mixter
“It seems that Jezebel has taken a liking to you. That is a good sign. She is very finicky in choosing her friends.”
Alex rubbed his hand over Jezebel’s head and immediately heard her purr. He looked at Sarah and smiled at his successful bonding with such a choosy cat.
“I’m going to the park for a while,” Sarah said. “You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”
“Sure” he said, and stood up so quickly that Jezebel jumped in alarm.
“You might want to bring a jacket. It gets chilly in the park at night.”
“Stay right there,” he said. Then, as an afterthought, “Can I get you anything?”
She wore the same thin white dress from earlier. The flowers were still in her hair. Her arms and shoulders were bare and she had only sandals on her feet.
“I’m okay,” Sarah said, but when Alex arrived back on the porch less that a minute later, he wore a sweatshirt and carried a jacket for her.
During the walk, Sarah asked him about his background, and he told her everything. He was amazed when she did not pursue his father’s military mindset. She seemed more concerned with his own state of mind, which Alex honestly told her was a bit muddled due to the radical differences in lifestyles between Haight-Ashbury and Baltimore.
By the time they reached the park, she knew quite a bit about him while he still knew little about her. Whenever he asked a question concerning her past, she would change the subject.
Now they were on Hippie Hill, near the spot where he first saw her. Many young men and women congregated on the hill, but most were near the base where a handful of guitar players drew large crowds.
Sarah drew stares as they climbed the hill, but no one approached her. They were near the spot where he and Chick rested earlier when she turned to him.
“Wait here, I won’t be long,” she said, as she handed him back his jacket.
She took off her shoes and walked to the flat ground by the tree. She stood facing the hill with her arms outstretched, and her head tilted to the moonlit sky. For several minutes, she remained in that position. After a time, she began to sway and move her feet. More time passed while Sarah slow danced to the sound of the wind brushing the grass.
He could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he watched her and he knew he was falling in love. He realized it the first time he saw her. It frightened him in a way he had never felt before. He did not expect to find romance in this place and yet here he was, on the day of his arrival, on the verge of losing his heart to a girl he barely knew.
Alex had lost all perception of time when Sarah walked back to him. His watch was still in his pants pocket, and he was beginning to like it there. Sarah sat next to him, put on her sandals, and wrapped the jacket around her shoulders. For a time, words went unspoken. Alex was fine with that. He could have asked her why she danced alone at the top of a hill, or why she was so secretive of her past, but for now, he was content to let her remain a mystery. Her presence next to him was more than enough.
“We’ll leave now,” Sarah said.
She stood up and, before Alex could react, began the walk back to the house. He jumped up and moved beside her, vowing not to speak unless asked. He wasn’t.
Sarah stopped when they were on the porch.
“Thank you so much for the jacket,” she said as she took it off and handed it to him. She entered the house and disappeared in the shadows before he could speak. Alex stood there for a minute hoping that she would return to the front door and smile at him, or throw him a kiss. He refused to believe this wonderful evening would have such an abrupt end.
He sat back down on the front stoop and was surprised to feel Jezebel again rubbing against him. He scratched her head and heard her soft purring. For the longest time he sat like that, scratching the cat’s head and holding his jacket still warm from Sarah’s shoulders. When the temptation became too strong, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch. It was almost midnight. Ashbury Street was quiet and so was the house. Alex suddenly felt tired. He stood and quietly walked into the foyer, up the dangerous stairs, past the storytelling room, where Sarah might be sleeping, down the corridor, and through the beads, to his room. Four of the six mattresses held blanket covered sleepers. He saw a blanket on his mattress also, with a pillow to boot.
He quietly stripped down to his underwear and pulled the cover away from his bed. There on a freshly cleaned sheet, directly below his pillow was a flower. He picked it up by the stem and examined it closely and then put it up to his nose and smelled it, smiling the entire time.
Later that night as he lay sleeping, a jacket pressed to his chest and a flower on his pillow, a half-blind, oh so finicky black cat curled up next to him, purring contentedly.
THE KINGDOM OF ALWAYS
The Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco is a relatively small parcel of land as one might see it by air. It is enclosed by Fulton Street at its uppermost end, with the Golden Gate Park and Stanyan Street on its left. Divisadero Street, which becomes Castro Street, is on its right and is blocked in at the bottom by 17th Street. Inside its perimeters are three small parks, Buena Vista, Corona Heights, and the Panhandle.
At one time, it was a melting pot of blue and white-collar workers, Blacks, and Orientals. In 1965, things began to change. Perhaps a historian could determine the exact date a new culture was born, but it is unlikely. At some point, the wind shifted ever so slightly and the streets of Haight-Ashbury began to fill with the disenchanted, the hopeful, and the visionaries.
Some might say that the lure of drugs and sex brought many there, and that is likely true, but many were in search of a place where others shared their beliefs and convictions.
They became known as hippies, flower children, and peaceniks, and by the summer of 1967, in the Haight-Ashbury district, they numbered nearly 50,000 strong.
Alex Conley’s first full day in Haight-Ashbury was a flurry of activity. He had awakened early, dressed, and quickly used the upstairs bathroom before, as Chick had put it, the mid-morning rush. He vowed, while washing up, to have a leisurely shower later in the day when the house had emptied.
He found that early in the morning the house was his alone. Its occupants were still sleeping when he took to one of the three porch chairs, pen and paper in hand, and started writing his first article for the Baltimore Sun. He was soon joined by Jezebel who, with a mighty effort, jumped onto his lap.
Alex had nearly finished his writing when he heard commotion from inside the house. It was nearly ten o’clock and the place was beginning to stir. A female voice called Jezebel’s name and the cat looked up at Alex apologetically before hopping off his lap and making for the door, leaving him to assume that Jezebel’s stomach trumped her affection.
The Hope sisters, at about the time that Alex would normally be sitting down for lunch, served a nutritious breakfast of hot oatmeal and fruit. The breakfast meal lacked the formal air of supper. Most of the male houseguests ate their breakfast while standing about sleepily. The women of the house gathered in the kitchen, in high spirits, discussing their plans for the day.
He looked for Sarah but could not find her in the crowd. Chick, drowsy and disheveled, approached him, once again reading his mind.
“She’s probably at the free clinic. She assists the staff when bad trips are involved.”
Soon the oatmeal vanished and joints were lit up and passed around. Alex politely refused when one would come his way. Though he enjoyed his first taste of marijuana yesterday, he thought it too early in the day to lose his perspective on things. Besides, he did not want Sarah to think of him as a pothead, since he had yet to see her indulge in any manner of manufactured or natural narcotic.
Suddenly, the question of her sobriety became a topic of utmost importance to him. He cornered Chick in the foyer.
“Never saw her partake of the weed or acid. A select few don’t need outside stimulants for a high.” Chick took a long hit off his nearly smoked out reefer and exh
aled a great plume of smoke.
“I’m not one of them,” he said with a grin.
As it turned out, Chick was not a morning person either. He had told Alex to wait for him while he went upstairs to freshen up. It was close to an hour later when he reappeared in the foyer. By then most of the houseguests had vacated the premises, and Chick did not look any fresher than an hour before.
Alex had used the time wisely. Sitting on the floor by the front door with his Woolworth’s binder in hand, he had finished writing five pages of rough draft for his first article. At some point during the day or evening, he would fine tune it then send it to the paper by one of the two nearby Western Union offices. Upon receipt, the unlucky worker, assigned to decipher Alex’s admittedly sloppy handwriting, would type up the pages and relay them to Maxwell Bestwick. There, if not lost on his desk’s paper mountain, Bestwick would use one of his many red-inked pens and edit the composition to his satisfaction for publishing in the paper’s Sunday edition.
As Chick and Alex were leaving the house, they ran into Skip and Benny hanging out on the porch. The two free spirits, who bunked in the same bedroom as Alex and had lived at the house for over a year, were debating the merits of walking Haight Street in search of drugs or loitering at the park in search of women. They decided to let Chick make the call.
“As I’ve told you many times before, guys outnumber the girls here two to one, not that it would make much difference to the two of you.”
Rather than take offense at Chick’s subtle dig, they both nodded their heads in agreement and joined the two on the trek to Haight Street.
“We’ll stop at In Gear first. Sometimes they accept clothing donations which they discount considerably.” Chick looked at Alex. “You got cash on you?”
“Yes,” he said, although he was not excited about a grooming by Chick, whose tattered attire would have elicited shrieks of horror from most anyone he knew.
“I need to find a pay phone too,” Alex added. “I have to call home and the paper.”
“Finding a phone booth is not a problem, finding a working phone is,” Chick replied.
By the time they reached Haight Street, Skip and Benny had worked out a strategy for obtaining marijuana and, after some heartfelt words of good luck from Chick, the two headed off into the sea of carefree humanity.
Chick thought this would be a good time to explain the behavior of his two friends and the free spirit culture in general.
“Many of the regulars here, like Skip and Benny, get money sent to them by parents and relatives. The loved ones mean well, but most of the mailed cash goes to pot and acid. Almost everything else here can be found for free if you look hard enough.”
They had entered Haight Street and the throngs of multi-colored, carefree humanity.
“Although I prefer the term nonconformists, many here consider themselves hippies. Most are not. The true believers feel they can change the mindset of the establishment. We believe in the possibility of a utopian existence, a lifestyle free of hate and bias. Drugs are incidental to that philosophy, as is free love.”
Alex and Chick pushed through the sidewalks, crowded almost exclusively by young people. A transistor radio in an open shop door appropriately played a song about wearing flowers in your hair if going to San Francisco.
“Another faction you’ll find here are the pretenders, the weekend hippies,” Chick continued. “They are almost entirely males who think this a nirvana for drugs and free love. They usually do not last long. The girls are in short supply and, despite the assumptions, most are quite choosy of their male companions. Even with the abundance of drugs, the pretenders usually bore quickly and head out for greener pastures, like the Sunset Strip, where the pickings are easier.”
They had arrived at the In Gear shop, but Chick, who was on a roll, stopped at the door.
“You also have the locals, workers, and college students, who put on their beads and peace signs and join us here on the weekends. The college students, in particular, are of a radical state of mind and cause much friction with the cops and the establishment in general. You will not find any pretenders in our house. We are all believers.”
Alex started for the door, thinking he was finished, but Chick stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“You might think that is a stop-off point between adolescence and maturity, but its not. This is a kingdom for the righteous, and those who believe in their cause. It will always be a place of optimism for the future. It may not be Camelot, but it’s the best we’ve got right now.” Then Chick led the way into the store.
When they left the shop an hour or so later, Alex had a backpack containing his binder, two pairs of pants, three shirts, a black vest, and a pair of lightweight black boots that zipped up a couple of inches above the ankle. He was thirty-two dollars and change lighter in the wallet.
Chick had at first pleaded with him to purchase some billowy, multi-colored shirts and slacks, but Alex had politely refused. It was finally decided that he slowly transition himself into a flower child by emulating the dress seen on a shop poster of a Los Angeles rock group called The Byrds. He did compromise a bit when he was persuaded to buy a pair of small maroon colored sunglasses that the store clerk promised were identical to the pair worn by the leader of the group, Roger McGuinn.
The next stop was a shop call Xanadu, a couple of blocks away, a place Chick swore sold the best sandals in the area. The trip between stores was a long one. Chick was constantly meeting and greeting his friends and admirers while Alex searched in vain for a working phone. They were almost at their destination when he found a phone that produced a dial tone.
While Chick held court outside, Alex closed the door to the hot musty booth and dialed the operator.
His first collect call was to his home, where his mother’s sharp yes to the operator’s question of accepting a collect call spelled trouble. He was right. She let him have it for not calling earlier. She did not want to hear that the house phone no longer worked, nor that the walk was four blocks to the nearest functional one. Eventually she calmed down and actually seemed to sniffle when asking if he was taking care of himself. After finding out that his father was currently in team competition at a local bowling alley, he promised her he would call at least three times a week, though he doubted that schedule would last past his old man’s first phone bill.
Next, he placed a call to his workplace. An operator quickly transferred him to an assistant editor, who, in an annoyed tone, went down the list of what was required of him during his two-month stay. He was still going over some details when Chick pounded on the outside glass loud enough to break his train of thought.
“Tell Uncle Max I said hi!” he yelled into the booth.
The assistant editor sighed loudly when Alex told him the noisemaker was Bestwick’s nephew.
“I’ll pass that on to him immediately after I hang up,” he said in a sarcastic manner.
After making the Western Union mailing arrangements, in delivering the copy and obtaining his paychecks, Alex gave both his and Chick’s regards to the editor and hung up the receiver.
“So how’s Uncle Max doing?” Chick asked the minute Alex exited the phone booth.
“I didn’t talk to him,” Alex replied, and was surprised when Chick looked a little disappointed. He was about to ask why the concern when Chick beat him to the punch.
“I knew him before he became an asshole.”
They once again navigated Haight Street. Chick, the consummate tour guide, pointed out places and shops of interest along the way. Young men, and occasionally women, asking for money, stopped them many times along the route. Chick brushed them off with a gentle “sorry, man,” and walked on.
“The true believers,” Chick pointed out, “don’t ask for money. They know how to get by without it.”
Alex had been thinking about Sarah since they left the house. He did not want to rush his tour guide, but he thought it time to toss out a reminder.
/> “You said something about checking out a couple of places where Sarah might be.”
Chick glanced at him and smiled.
“Alright, we’ll skip Xanadu for now and head to the Free Clinic. But first, I need to look up a couple of friends at the Diggers Store.”
They turned right, walked a block, turned right again, and were on Page Street. Alex saw a wooden sign on the sidewalk, leaning against a lamppost, it read: FREE FOOD AND STUFF.
“It was a multi-car garage at one time,” Chick said as they crossed the store’s threshold.
People rushed about the building. Men and women rummaged through the tables of free food, clothing, books, and other various merchandise. Most of the clientele were young, but Alex noticed some older shabbily dressed men wandering around with bags of free food. It was apparent that the Diggers did not discriminate with their handouts, which he found honorable.
Artwork, and empty frames, hung from the walls. A young couple blissfully occupied a two-person swing, suspended from the ceiling. Their laughter echoed throughout the building as the pair arced into the sky, seemingly on a mission to touch the exposed roof beams of the place.
Chick had wandered off, meeting and greeting old friends. Alex moved about the room, looking for Sarah. A painting on the far wall drew his attention. The girl pictured there bore a remarkable resemblance to Sarah. He was approaching it, when a hand grabbed his arm, stopping him. The swing creased the air in front of him.
“You need to be mindful of the swing,” a voice said softly from behind him.
He turned to face a girl with bright red hair and a smile on her freckled face.
“You must be new here. The regulars know to avoid the swing. My name is Sherry, but I get called Freckles a lot,” she said, pointing to her face.
“I’m Alex.” He shook her hand. “I thank you for saving my life.”
Sherry’s smile grew wider. “I doubt the collision would have killed you, but I have seen people lose limbs.”