Authors: Randy Mixter
Skip and Benny often became misty eyed as they ran through the many fields of memories associated with those warm days passed.
“It wasn’t nearly as crowded as it is now,” Skip said while Benny nodded in agreement. “The cops didn’t hassle us because most of them were grooving with us. Everyone was mellow. Peace and love were in the air.”
“And the smell of pot,” Skip added.
It was usually around this time when the misty-eyed part kicked in, but overall, the consensus of the two seemed to agree with Chick. The true summer of love was in 1966. It seemed as though everyone on the outside looking in, or the newcomers to the area, had missed it by a year.
Alex’s cocoon of isolation in the Haight-Ashbury community was shattered whenever he phoned home. He was right in thinking the three collect calls a week would end after the first phone bill. They did. His mother however, still insisted on hearing from him weekly.
His father often picked up the phone during the course of those calls and invariably used the opportunity to vent his anger at his newfound companions. There still were no letters from the Selective Service and he sensed the frustration in his father’s voice. While talking to the old man, he made certain to downplay the humor and adventure of the place, He had not told either parent about Sarah, and did not plan to, at least not yet. On an upbeat note, both parents found his articles well written and interesting, although, as his mother delicately put it, the lifestyle was not their cup of tea.
Alex took his dirty clothes to the Laundromat every Wednesday. Usually Sarah went with him, sometimes with clothes of her own. He enjoyed the trips. It was a good excuse to have some time with Sarah not involving the activity of running. He also enjoyed the company and conversation of the many flower children wandering about the facility. He could readily pick the stoned individuals out of the crowd. They were the ones intently watching the clothes spin dry through the washing machine’s round glass portal.
His employer sent him a check every other week. It was a meager amount of money, but in Haight-Ashbury, it was a small fortune. Truth be told, there was simply little reason to spend money in the neighborhood. Faced with the alternative of stashing the cash under his mattress, he concluded his best option was to bank his excess earnings.
He opened a savings account at Monumental Savings and Loan on Haight Street, depositing fifty dollars every other Friday.
Early in the morning of July the 16th, a large group of San Francisco Police Officers and men in dark business suits raided the house three doors down from theirs. Alex, who watched the action go down from the relative safety of his porch, saw at least twenty young people escorted out of the house in handcuffs and pushed into two paddy wagons. The wagons and the officers pulled away quickly but the men in suits stuck around for a spell. Every so often, one would leave the house hauling a large full plastic bag behind them. After several trips back and forth, the men left in three cars with a good portion of the house’s contents in the trunks.
Alex decided, against his better judgment, to wake Chick with the news.
The house was beginning to stir as he approached Chick’s bedroom. He heard voices from the room where Sarah slept. One of the voices sounded like Sarah. He did not doubt it. She was usually the second in the house to rise, right behind him. Sometimes she even beat him to the bathroom in the morning.
Chick, however, was another story. He was often the last houseguest to wake. It was not uncommon for Chick to stagger down the stairs at the break of noon, justifying the trepidation Alex felt as he neared the bedroom door.
He thought he heard movement inside the room before he knocked. Maybe he caught Chick on the rare morning when he actually had plans for the day. Nonetheless, he knocked as softly as he could, hoping he would be heard.
There was again a commotion from inside the door. When the door opened, a few seconds later, Belladonna stood at the entrance, as naked as the day she was born.
He was as flustered as he had ever been. The only thing he could think to say was “I’m sorry. I was looking for Chick.”
Belladonna stared at him for a minute, one hand on the door, the other on her hip.
“You are a very apologetic person,” she finally said.
Alex did his best to keep his eyes on her face. He did not want to look her in the eye, given their short history however, it was significantly better than daring a peek below her neck.
Realizing this awkward moment could easily move from annoyance to agitation, he composed himself to the degree where he could speak in complete sentences.
“There was a raid on the house three doors down. I just saw it.”
Belladonna stared at him a second longer, then turned.
“Chick,” she said. The bed remained still.
“Chick!” she said again, this time with some anger behind it.
The bed rustled. From somewhere under the covers, a voice said something that sounded like “whaaa.”
“You might want to hear this,” she told him as she turned toward the bed.
He did steal a glance then. It was a little too quick to see much, but Belladonna obliged him further by walking back to the bed and giving Chick a rough shake. Alex turned his head after that, not risking the slim chance of an extra set of eyes in the back of her head. He could finally say he saw a girl naked after almost a month in Haight-Ashbury. He was pretty sure it was a record of sorts.
Chick was at least discreet enough to wrap himself in a blanket. He woke up quickly when Alex gave him all the details on the bust.
“We’d better hide the stuff under the porch for a couple days.” Belladonna nodded as she dressed.
“I’ll spread the word around the house just in case.”
He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re an early riser, man.”
Before the hour had passed, the porch supports received the additional fortification of as much marijuana and other assorted drugs and paraphernalia as Alex had ever seen in one place.
Alex watched the entire operation, which reminded him of a scene from the movie ‘The Great Escape’, from the safety of the porch. Benny kept a lookout on the front lawn while Skip handed the stuff to Cowboy, who was hidden somewhere in the dark dirty recesses of the foundation.
The word of the raid must have spread like wildfire. He saw two other houses in the block engaged in the same below the porch activity.
Sarah, a glass of milk in hand, joined him.
“You’ve caused quite a commotion,” she remarked, breaking into a white mustached smile.
A young man and woman hurried out the door carrying a cardboard box between them. Alex did not recognize either. He looked at Sarah, who shrugged her shoulders.
“Never seen them before,” she said, before walking to the railing.
“This should be an interesting day or two. Straight hippies. What an unusual concept.” Sarah turned toward Alex. “Would you care to place a wager on who succumbs to temptation and visits the underworld of the porch first?”
He did not hesitate. “Chick,” he said.
“Good choice,” Sarah said as she finished her glass of milk.
“But I’m thinking our friend Cowboy will indulge himself before he re-enters the world of sunlight. It is a crime of opportunity.”
“Damn!” Alex shook his head. “I didn’t think of that.”
Sarah stared out at Ashbury Street for several seconds before turning to walk past him.
“You should have,” she said to him, pointing to the smoke filtering through the floorboards, as she moved into the doorway.
SHERRY
The word on the street,
according to Chick, was that the raided house had become a haven for runaways, some under aged, and had been under observation by the authorities for some time.
This news pacified Chick and the other houseguests to a certain degree, though none felt confident enough to remove their stash from its dark hiding place. For the next three days, many a houseguest would enter the residence brushing dirt from their clothing.
After what was deemed a safe period of time, Cowboy was again sent below the porch and the recovery operation began in earnest. Within the week, the house was fully functional. Those who wished to be high did so with relative impunity. Short-term memory loss, it seemed, was a trait shared by many of the Haight’s inhabitants.
Alex’s status as a valuable member of the house grew with the incident. He had acquired the reputation of a neighborhood watchdog of sorts. Bleary-eyed houseguests approached him almost every morning, as he wrote his weekly article on the porch, asking him if ‘the coast was clear’.
Even the ultra-suspicious duo of Skip and Benny, who had taken him under their wing within the last couple of weeks, felt the need to confess.
“We thought you were a narc at first,” Benny told Alex, as reason for their delay in friendship.
Chick and his new constant companion, Belladonna, were visiting friends on Fulton Street one warm sunny late July afternoon. Sarah was putting in some hours at the Free Clinic.
Alex had more or less decided to spend the day wandering Haight Street, in search of good story lines, when Skip and Benny approached him.
“We’re heading to the Panhandle to grab something to eat. Word is the Diggers are set up and serving.”
The Panhandle was as good as Haight Street to Alex, and he was a bit hungry.
Skip and Benny were two rather normal guys before they arrived in San Francisco. Skip worked for his father at his food processing plant. Skip liked working there due to the many hiding places and large quantities of free food. The promise of free dope eventually outweighed the acquisition of free food and he left Austin, Texas for California in time to see, as he called it, the real summer of love.
Benny was not far behind him, although he lived a few states away in Virginia. Benny was working at a local auto parts warehouse with several other young men his age. His plan was to save enough to get him through at least one year of college.
Things fell apart when a vicious rumor spread through the warehouse stating that all the teenagers who worked there would be receiving draft notices within the month. Rather than take a chance on the rumors validity, Benny quit the next day, hopping a bus west.
Both credited the three days they attended the Monterey Pop Festival as the defining moment in their transformation to the Bohemian lifestyle.
“We are sticking it out to the bitter end, whenever it happens to be,” Skip said as they neared the Panhandle. “We have nowhere else to go.”
The Panhandle is a narrow strip of park about a block wide and eight blocks long. The park is located directly off the much larger Golden Gate Park. It is three blocks up from Haight Street.
Much like the Golden Gate Park, home of Hippie Hill, the Panhandle in 1967 was a popular meeting place for the free spirits of the Haight-Ashbury community. Being a flat piece of land, it became a perfect locale for impromptu concerts, dances, and other gatherings of interest.
The Diggers were an eclectic group of individuals. Primarily they were actors and the Haight-Ashbury was their stage. The Diggers sponsored or had their hand in most of the happenings during the heyday of the Haight.
One of the events was the daily distribution of free food in the Panhandle. None were turned away from these giveaways, no matter what their appearance or mindset. The Diggers only agenda in the Panhandle was to feed the hungry and perhaps engage in a performance or two. Their philosophy of giving without question was responsible for erasing some of the negativity felt by many of the area’s established residents toward their new neighbors.
A line had formed in front of the two long tables of food set up on the park grass. No sooner had Alex thought of Sherry and her bean soup than he saw her behind a table, and she was indeed ladling out soup.
The three joined the queue, Skip and Benny’s stomachs growled while Alex felt the first signs of indigestion at the prospect of seeing Sherry again. She probably won’t even remember me, he thought to himself as he neared the table. She wore another tight fitting tee shirt and low on the hip jeans. He could see she was once again braless. He began rubbing his arm without thinking as he stared at her barely covered chest.
The Diggers had sandwiches already made and wrapped at the table. Today’s choice was ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. From the looks of things, the pp and j sandwiches were winning the day by a significant number. At the second table, Sherry plied her trade over a large aluminum soup pot. He was close to passing up the soup when his eyes again zeroed in on Sherry’s tee shirt and the contents within.
With cardboard bowl and plastic spoon in hand, he waited his turn.
“Alex,” she said as he stood in front of her. “What took you so long?”
He was somewhat astonished she remembered him and was about to offer an apology when he recalled Belladonna’s admonishments.
“I was here a couple of times but I didn’t see you.” He was not proud of lying to her, but still hoped it took.
“I’m not here all the time. I’m sorry we didn’t meet up.”
She took his bowl hand and moved it over the container. The ladle went deep into the pot. When she removed the ladle, it indeed contained a considerable amount of beans.
“Thanks,” was all he could think to say as the cardboard bowl now weighed hot and heavy in his hand.
“What are you doing after lunch?” she asked as she dipped again for the next in line.
He had a witty line concerning flatulence in mind but said, “I don’t have any plans.”
“Good. Stick around. We’ll talk for a while.”
Alex sat, with his two friends, under a tree and watched Sherry work. She was right about the soup. It was quite good. They were breaking down the tables and loading the supplies into a van. There was no food to take back. Every last bit of it had been eaten.
Some of the diners left the Panhandle, but many stayed. Skip and Benny had made plans to thumb to either the zoo or the wharf, whichever was the easiest. He begged off, telling them he was content to laze under the shade of the oak and nap for a spell.