In the mid 1960's, High Schools on the south shore of Long Island had dances with local rock bands almost every weekend. Especially in my neighborhood.  The fabled Happy Daze were real enough with teenage nightclubs like The Sugar Shack.  The Pau Club a few miles east was big with the surf set until the creep who ran it got busted for liking kids TOO much. It was pau for Pau. But the best school summer music scene wasn't even at my school. It was two miles away

at General Douglas MacArthur High School. They threw outdoor dances every weekend all summer long. Teenage paradise. Party Lights. Free refreshments. Dark corners. Did I mention the beach? It was only a few miles away, a short spin on the Southern State Parkway and you were transported to Oceanic Paradise. Jones Beach, with it's famous amphitheatre, huge swimming pools, restaurants, boardwalks, and wide white sandy beaches. Just East of Jones Beach was where my buddies and I hung out; Gilgo Beach,  the 60's capitol of East Coast surfing. Really nice sandbars and wall to wall bikinis. The first East Coast Surfing Championships were held there, and I shocked all my friends by placing 3rd in my heat. The hottest surfer around that scene was George Fisher, who died on a motorcycle at the peak of his career. I also spent a lot of summers camped out at Ditch Plains, in Montauk on the very tip of Long Island. For a few bucks a week you could pitch your tent and ride incredible waves. This scene was where pot first showed up in our surf crowd. There were teen clubs in nearby ritzy Southhampton with live bands. I remember I smoked with some surfer from L.A.. I had never been high before, and this guy kept saying "Isn't this the most beautiful music you ever heard?" And I'm going 'yeah' and bobbing my head to what was probably some awful bar band. I recall telling the guy that 'I can read people's minds!' 'I can tell what these girls are all thinking!' They were mostly all stuck-up Hamptons girls. I could read the vibes. Our scruffy, sunbleached crew was dead last on their list of dance partners.     Another nice adventurous thing for us was that for $1.65 you could take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan and really get in trouble on your own. Around my junior year in school my friends and I started smoking grass and hanging out in Greenwhich Village looking for the elusive Bob Dylan, whom we almost worshipped . My buddy Jack and I actually followed him around the West Village one night for half an hour. His worst nightmare-high school idiots! He finally ditched us by going into 'The Kettle of Fish" coffeehouse where you had to be 18 to get in. One place they would let us in was the Cafe Wha? It was the seediest, dumpiest dive you can imagine. Dylan got his first NY gigs here. It also had some of the worst bands in town, but it did have Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, with Jimi (James)Marshall Hendrix.  Some time later, just when 'Are You Experienced' was released, I saw Hendrix at a cab stop on Eighth Avenue, trying to flag down a Checker. It was a rare chance to speak with him so I gave it a shot. Told him I'd seen him play before and he said "I'm Jimmy James and I play with The Blue Flames at the Cafe Wha". I was amazed at how he assumed his old, comfortable identity as Jimmy James of the Cafe Wha? "Are You Experienced" just started rising in the charts, and Hendrix was already recognized as some kind of genius. It was so typical of him to be humble. His star may have been rising, but he seemed skittish about assuming the trappings and attitude that went with being "Jimi Hendrix". He asked if I was a musician and I said I played the guitar. We gabbed for a minute before a cab stopped. He was a very down home sort of guy. A polite and cheerful blues character right out of a movie. Not at all like his corporate image as some sort of jungle wildman. The madness of superstardom came later. Jimi was a true Southern Gentleman. I always thought Little Richard must have been brain-dead to fire him.

A ROCKER ON EVERY BLOCK

There were some future rock stars in the 'hood. Eddie Mahoney always sat in to sing with all the bands. The kids would crowd around the Gymnasium stage to hear the future Eddie Money wail on "Gloria". He could tear it up way back then. My mom always wanted to feed him, he was so skinny. We called him Eddie Spaghetti, a name he actually sang under for a while.. My neighbors Tommy K. and Richard T. were both accomplished guitarists, and had a popular band at my school, The Intruders, that played highschool gigs and teen clubs. The drummer, Kevin B. was from the neighborhood too.  One day they brought me to a jam session down the block from my house where Eddie was singing. I met a piano player there who lived a few miles away -  Billy Joel. He played in a band called the Hassles. Eddie fronted his own group too, the Grapes of Wrath, who did a lot of gigs with the Hassles and the Intruders as well. Kevin B. wound up being Eddie's percussionist during his prime career years. There were other local musical tentacles around too. John S., a bassist for the Intruders, sometimes played with house hippies Soft White Underbelly at the State University at Stony Brook. They are later known as Blue Oyster Cult, godfathers of Metal. .So there was a lot of  exposure to serious rockers just by walking out my front door. In N.Y., you could drink at 18 and nearly everyone had fake I.D. at 16, so the bars were packed with High Schoolers every weekend. The big hangouts were Ryans & Zolis in Hempstead. Cover bands spit out 'Midnight Hour' and 'Mustang Sally' for what seemed years. Across the street was Nassau Community College (which I later attended ) and sometimes bands would play there. One spring day someone told me the Beach Boys were playing there for free. Whaaat? Being a surfer/skateboarder/BeachBoys fan I dropped everything and hopped the bus to check it out. Sure enough, the graduating class had booked the band for a free outdoor concert.  I snuck in (just hopped a low rope) and behold:  I was a foot away from a tiny stage on the lawn, and there were the  boys from Hawthorne in all their Top Ten Glory, in my hometown! It was like a message from God vindicating my worldview. That show programmed me for the future-hooked on Rock forever. I  began playing guitar at 14. Had a couple of Danelectros from the local Sears. $29.95 new. Drove my parents and neighbors crazy playing an 'E' chord over and over again for weeks. Plugged into the RCA jack in the back of our Admiral TV.  Hassled every guitarist in school to show me things. The  guitarist from the local surf band, the Torquays, was the only guy who spent a few minutes a week with this pain-in-the-ass kid and his 30 dollar axe. I finally learned some other chords.  The British Invasion changed everything and before I knew it the draft was breathing down my back. Watching 'Shindig' and 'Where the Action Is' on TV after school everyday was like dangling a carrot before a donkey's nose. Looking out the thermapane at three feet of January snow  then turning to watch Steve Alaimo and Paul Revere and the Raiders and a bevy of bikinied babes doing the Twist live from Malibu was a recipe for major change. California had been calling my name for a  long time. The beach mad surfing crowd I ran with had more in common with the Southern California lifestyle than with the everyday world of the New York/Long Island  rat race. We  lived for the summer, period. The rest of the year we mostly skateboarded, killing time waiting for summer to roll 'round again.  When the pull of surfing became too strong, we  surfed in icy winter conditions sometimes wearing full diving wetsuits. Sneakers over the booties, no leash and a bulky hood over your skull.. We must have been nuts.      Soon Uncle Sam's ravenous need for even more troops in Vietnam was a strong motivation to head West . I'd soon realize that I wasn't the only square peg in America heading that way.  Some of my surfing buddies decided to drive out to California and convinced my folks to let me go with them. It was ostensibly to scout out potential colleges, but we really wanted to scout out waves and girls. Somehow we wound up in an apartment in Inglewood. It had Jumbo Jets roaring 100 feet above the roof and a raucous freeway interchange 100 feet away. Luckily a new roomate was involved with a band in Hollywood. I wound up mixing their sound and ended up in the middle of the paisley craziness that was the Sunset Strip in the winter of 1967. The band was called "The Roque". Everyone was barely 18 and swept up in the tsunami of Rock n' Roll that was engulfing the world. And we were in the center of the action. The Doors were God and Sunset was awash in bell-bottomed adolescence. Hip meant clothes. Hip meant Pot. Hip meant quaffing mom's diet pills and lying about your age and jamming into clubs to see Arthur Lee and Love or The Seeds. Yesterday's cheesy garage bands were suddenly thrust into the national limelight. The Roque was really on the fringe. Car shows in Pomona, strip bars in Cucamonga, and our proudest acheivement, The Miss Teenage America Pageant's 'Teen Fair'. It was an all-out production at the famous Hollywood Palladium . A carnival atmosphere prevailed on the grounds outside the hall. The actual pageant was held inside the main building. The 'Fair' was an outdoor event. Corporate shills hawked all manner of teenage necessities like acne cream and makeup from booths decorated in faux-psychedelic designs. All the bigshots were there. Keds. Levis, you name it. This exploding youth culture thing was going to be a big business godsend. Even the U.S. Army had a recruitment booth but spent most of their time fending off insults from the crowd. The Roque did their set, and as we were breaking down the gear this guy in a suit approached and said he was from a new musical instrument company, Sunn, and that he really liked our group and would we mind changing our names to "The Sunns" and do promotional ads and concerts for the company. In return we would get tons of new equipment and wads of cash. Our revered leader, Steve P, mumbled something about not trusting people in suits and dismissed Mr. Sunn. I told Steve he was blowing it, but the Sunn guy did have a goofy suit . So who did Sunn finally get to be their poster child? Who was handed all the goodies a band could ever want? Jimi Hendrix! Perhaps fame and fortune did walk away that day, but that was sort of the unofficial attitude anyway. All the fake cutsie-pie B.S. of  Miss Teen America was staring sarcastic rowdy Hollywood Teen-Nation straight in the eyes. Guess who blinked? After a couple of hours of unknown bands like ours, a loud disembodied male voice rumbled out over the fairgrounds. We all had to leave, the fair was over. It was only five o'clock, kind of early, and no one was really mentally ready to kiss this party goodnight. Within 15 minutes, Sunset Boulevard was jammed with thousands of teenagers, laughing, dancing on cars, reveling in each other's presence, exhilarated at their own numbers and still in a partying mood. There were no cops at first and friendly anarchy prevailed. Before long the first armored LAPD schoolbuses arrived, packed with helmeted officers. Traffic was gridlocked, then the first bottle flew. It hit the bus and shattered. Ripples of fear percolated throughout the crowd as several dozen blue uniforms scampered out. Just as it looked as though a riot was about to ensue, a loud voice was screaming "Look!" All eyes looked upward at a giant billboard that advertised a Las Vegas hotel, and had a twirling showgirl statue atop it. It's movable marquee letters spelled out " A NEW GENERATION OF SLOTS", but some crazed fair-goer had climbed the 60 feet of ladder and was busy re-arranging the letters to the crowd's delight. The crowd cheered like the Coliseum for Ben-Hur as a cop raced up the scaffold. The kid took the "D" from Del Webb's name and finished spelling his new message: "LSD GENERATION". The crowd went ballistic with cheering. Even the cops were hypnotized. Eventually the kid was dragged down to a chorus of boos. But it was enough of a climax for the crowd and soon the cops left and everybody went home.    WE LIVE ON LOVE STREET  Rapidly tiring of the 'business' of music, I looked for a way out of L.A. in April of 1967.  I responded to a free ride offered to San Francisco for an anti-war demonstration.  I hadn't given Vietnam much thought lately, but a free trip North sounded like adventure. I found myself with about 25 people at dawn in front of the ''Fifth Estate" coffeehouse on Sunset Strip. A lot of familiar Hollywood faces. Street kids wanting out of scary old Hollyweirdness. The cops had really been cracking down on hippies and runaways.  Up pulls an old three ton flatbed truck with cattle slatting on the sides. We all looked at each other in shock. We're going hundeds of miles in THAT??? But, reassuring us, the driver draped a ratty black tarp over the fencing and off we chugged up U.S.101 to the promised land . We caught heavy rain near San Luis Obispo and the tarp leaked. Kids sneezed and coughed. We ate green apples until we got sick. It was freezing and wet. Someone passed around some unknown pills (God, we were dumb!) and we got even sicker. This was some hard traveling.  All I knew about "Frisco" was that Jack Kerouac, my alltime favorite writer, hung around there. SF to me was Blackie Norton praying in the smoky ruins while Jeanette MacDonald swooned heavenward in the old  film "San Francisco". My first glimpse of the sacred city was through a hole in the tarp at 3am on a Sunday morning.I saw the gigantic Hamm's beer sign, bubbling in all it's neon glory across the bay like the ancient beacon of Alexandria. Man, this must be a COOL city, I thought. The truck groaned to a stop at the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets. So did the rain. It was replaced by the thickest, spookiest fog I ever saw. We all crawled out the tailgate, miserable and achy. We were  drowned rats on a strange street in a strange city in the middle of the night in a Jack the Ripper fogbank.  The driver finally exited and pointed across the street to Golden Gate Park. "You can crash in the park if you want to." A couple of kids crossed Stanyan and disappeared in the soup. Then the driver said "There may be some floor space in the Digger's crashpad."  That sounded better than wet trees, so off we tramped to Clayton Street a few blocks away. One kid with us had been there before. That was reassuring , as the old "Grand Lady" Victorian house we arrived at loomed eerily in the misty streetlight.  We knocked and were greeted by a girl. She was an American Indian, late 20's, wearing a Harley T-shirt. She said we could sleep on the floor if we stayed quiet. Oh Boy! A nice warm floor to sleep on! We were stoked. Of course the place was wall-to-wall bodies.  Must have been 50 people snoring.  I awoke at seven to the sound of the Indian girl banging an iron pot with a spoon. "Rise and shine you hippies! Today is the big day!" People began crawling out of their bags. Teenagers, College students, Bikers, an old wino. A black conga player. A few beatniks. I cautiously wove my way to the kitchen. I could smell coffee. That's not all I could smell. In the huge kitchen an older Indian woman was stirring an industrial size cooking kettle on the stove. A Hell's Angel was chopping up mounds of vegetables with a Bowie knife. Someone was taking freshly made bread from the oven. People are leaning against the walls, drinking coffee and passing joints. They offered me a toke and I coughed my brains out. (Something I would do again while hanging out with the Jefferson Airplane.) "There's hash in it," said the Angel. Everyone laughs good-naturedly as I wipe my eyes. Welcome to Haight Street, pilgrim!  All this food was going to be given away later in the day in the Panhandle, a park that paralleled Haight Street. I helped steady the big kettle of stew in a VW bus on it's way to the park. The "Diggers" sponsored this feed by begging food from supermarkets and wholesalers. Nobody was going to starve to death in the Haight this summer. They served free lunch every single day at noon to one and all. Diggers never talked you to death, they DID stuff. And the admission was always free. Maybe a voluntary donation if you had it. The original Diggers were 17th Century English revolutionaries who did the same things. Today a local band, The Grateful Dead, would play during lunch from atop another  flatbed truck with a generator.  The Diggers were sort of an open commune started by members of the S.F. Mime Troupe, including film star Peter Coyote, who didn't care for Obie awards and Bill Graham's management style (He handled business for the Mimers). The main inspiration was a guy named Emmet Grogan, the legendary King of New York.  The Neal Cassady of the East Coast. Their credo was "May the baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind." But their main claim to fame was feeding the hungry for free, and opening "Free Stores" in major cities where anyone could get free clothing. If one word could sum up their philosophy it is the word FREE. And that Digger stew in the park?  It wasn't always the tastiest, but it was palatable and it kept you alive and they always had a salad to go with it. I remember the great writer Richard Brautigan was a regular customer.  HELLO DALI: THE SUMMER OF LOVE  Before the behemoth Vietnam peace march of April, 1967, the Haight-Ashbury district was a viable community of creative bohemians. Artists and writers and actors and musicians of all flavors had claimed about a square mile of the old Irish/Italian working class neighborhood. The nascent gentrification of North Beach sent waves of bohos to the low-rent, aesthetically pleasing area bordering the man-made Eden of Golden Gate Park. It was a very low-key insider's scene. The Great March changed all that forever. Thousands of demonstrators discovered what the '49ers and WWII vets found: the most charming city in the United States. This 3rd wave of immigrants moved right in to this heavenly haven of Hip. The original denizens lost their little secret and the world flocked to the Big Party. The world needed a party. Reality was Vietnam (I was 1-A) and your uptight teen culture hating teachers, parents, and authorities in general.. So the kids poured in, fueled by Life Magazine features, Tim Leary's rise to prominence, and a thousand different things that spelled "The West is the best, get here and we'll do the rest." It was sort of a 24/7 Mardi-Gras for eight months, only instead of eyeballing floats, we gawked at each other. The Drugstore Cafe stood on the corner of Haight and Masonic streets. It was the eye of the hurricane, a non-stop party within the non-stop party. But the big attraction wasn't the hot fudge sundaes. What passed as street corner dope dealers tended to congregate in front of the cafe. Sometimes a hundred people would be blocking the sidewalk, all trying to make a deal. It was a supermarket of soft drugs, kind of like Amsterdam is today. It was very benign when compared to today's Uzi-slinging powder buccaneers . It was a gentle, humorous, civilized hodgepodge of American youth looking for romance and meaning in a country gone crazy on war. Kids who never fit into the brainy/jock/cheerleader high school mold flocked in from all over. The former class artists, clowns, guitarists, poets and dreamers were all there. But it wasn't long before huge influxes of runaways, abused kids, and a rougher element began to erode the fragile Peace & Love tapestry of the Haight. By October the ridiculously re-named "Drogstore Cafe" had become an outlet for Heroin, downers, speed and all sorts of junk dope that had nothing in common whatsoever with the Psychedelic Experience. The sharks had moved in bigtime by Halloween. Tracy's Donuts  Tracy's was a donut shop on Haight street. In June of '67 you could buy a fat 'Frisco chocolate-dipped donut for a nickel and a cup of coffee for a dime. At night, Tracy's became the evening hangout for those who couldn't quite afford the varied, daried delights at the Drugstore Cafe. One night I was in there with about 50 people. Chuck Berry was blasting from the loudest jukebox on earth and everyone was beating their hands on tables to the rythym.  All of a sudden the music died, and all eyes turned to the front door where a bunch of uniformed cops were standing. Some old-timey looking Officer Sullivan-type said loudly: "Everybody here is under arrest!" "You are present where narcotics are being sold." They marched everybody out the door and into these waiting squad cars and paddy wagons. I was the last person out. A cop gestured to the open cruiser door and said "Right this way.." I looked him in the eye and said "I'm not a hippie. I'm a college student." "I saw it all on TV back home in New York. I came to check out the chicks! I'm a science major...Where's my I.D? It's on Cole Street, right around the corner. I'll go get it and come back!" Amazingly, the cop said "Go get it!" I ran my ass off and actually came back with my I.D;  but of course the cops were all gone by then. I really lucked out. I could have done hard jail time for the two hits of LSD in my pocket.  Burned  I knew things were really getting bad when I bought a joint for a dollar from some long-haired, bell-bottomed peace-sign flashing dude on Haight Street. I went to the old outhouse behind Tracy's and lit it up. I choked and gagged. It was Oregano! I was really shocked. And angry! What an ugly realization. The Avalon and Fillmore still brought me back again and again for the music, but the Big Party was getting serious lately. Then S.F. Mayor Joe Alioto (A Democrat!) hated hippies and liked teargassing and beating them up courtesy of the S.F.P.D. who were anything but liberal. Bad Vibes soon dominated the street. I was really getting depressed watching the scene be destroyed by forces no one really understood at the time. Someone was even selling "LoveBurgers" Ugh!  Luckily I soon ran into some cool folks from Santa Cruz who took me to the all-time greatest beach party California ever saw. It was actually a wake for Neal Cassady, real-life model for Kerouac's Dean Moriarity character in my favorite book, "On The Road".  CASSADY'S WAKE  One October day in 1967 I found myself sitting on the steps of the Bank of America on Haight Street. I went to withdraw my last five bucks, but they said that was their money because I hadn't deposited any in so long. Actually, the bank thing was just so I'd have some extra identification in my pocket. The more the better on Haight Street, with all the new pushy cops around. So there I sat, paralyzed with a severe depression born of seeing the Haight scene degenerate so badly in just five months. Tired, run-down and hungry, I sure didn't look like an advertisement for Flower Power. Then an amazing thing happened. This beautiful, young flower-child looking girl about my age walks by me then stops and comes back and asks why I'm so bummed-out. Seems she lives near Santa Cruz on a commune in the mountains. Amazingly enough she invites me to go there with her and some friends in her car. An angel! She doesn't have to ask twice. The commune is a beautiful redwood studded enclave on Black Mountain Road. Everyone there is totally sane, healthy and mellow. It was an actual family, plus friends. We went to the beach a lot and tripped out on surf and sand and sky. It was just the antidote I needed. But it was time to leave after a while, and well rested and happier, I hitchiked south. I made it as far as Limekiln Creek Beach in Big Sur. This was (and is) one of the most amazing spots California, with wooded waterfalls minutes from the spectacular rocky shoreline. It was a popular camping place for Hippies on the road, scenic and secluded. I spent the night in my bag in the woods and awoke around three a.m. to the sounds of Harley-Davidsons. Lots of them. Trucks and cars too. It was the beginning of what would become this incredibly long caravan of San Francisco Freaks. The patron saint of psychedelic roadrats had passed away-Neal Cassady Himself. Found poetically stiff on the side of some railroad tracks down in Mexico. The former railroad worker ended up where he statrted. This millionaire hippie friend of the Dead's from Palo Alto decided to send Neal out in style. All night the vehicles poured in. Hell's Angels by the dozens, Hog Farm Buses with pennants at half-mast, painted  Volkswagens, hitchikers galore,  and hundreds of denizens from the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz,  & North Beach. This was going to be the greatest farewell ever. Flatbed trucks were jammed together for a stage. Lights, generators, equipment. Right on the beach. All the Haight bands showed up, including the Dead, Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother, not to mention scores of troubadors from all over the map. Roaring fires were built in the sand, and as the day wore on, huge spits were erected over the coals, where whole pigs were roasted like in some Elizabethan feast. There had to be a couple of thousand attendees. When the local Constabulary got wind of the affair they wisely left it alone, standing on the cliffs above the beach, ogling the proceedings (and naked girls) with binoculars. I've been to a lot of beach blowouts in California since then, but Cassady's Wake takes the grand prize. That night I sorta stumbled into someone's camp in the woods. I was a bit wasted and got lost, but the guys at the campfire were really nice and offered me some hot coffee. As I drank it I noticed that the older person looked EXACTLY like Jack Kerouac. I'm not making this up. I never said anything to him, but I just knew it was him, having seen his picture many times before. Years later there were stories that he indeed was present. No one had to convince me. NANCY  Then the whole affair got even crazier after the last 'mourners' left. There were only a handful of hardscrabble hippies on the beach. Myself among them. We were wondering what to do and where to go. Broke and hungry again. Just then another caravan pulls into Limekiln! It was a movie crew with several 18 wheelers. On the sides of the trucks it read; "Boots Productions". It was Nancy Sinatra! She was filming a TV show in the woods behind the creek, by the waterfall. She was going to dance along the rim of the falls and sing.They wanted to hire all of us kids to haul lights and equipment back into the woods for them. Money and meals for two days! No one had to twist our arms. My first movie gig sent me down the road with a pocketful of cash and a full stomach, ready to take on the next phase of the Great 60's Journey. Nancy was way cool. You could tell she would have liked to hang out with us, (everyone else was twice her age) but that was never going to happen. But she was friendly. These boots are made fer walkin thoughMIRACLE TICKETS... There is a famous legend surrounding the Grateful dead about "Miracle Tickets". Most people think that a miracle ticket was simply an amazingly fortunate score of a ticket to a sold-out show. Usually obtained at the last minute from some kind-hearted fan who could have scalped it. But the actual miracle ticket was a long-standing tradition among the band themselves. At all their gigs in San Francisco there would always be some die-hard fans who just hitched in from Butte, Montana or somewhere remote, who found themselves shut out of a sold-out show. After the show began, the stragglers would slowly drift on out of the neighborhood. But if you were REALLY hardcore you just hung around the stage door for half an hour. Somebody from the Dead would always poke their head out and soon hand the hardcore a ticket for free. I remember getting one on New Year's Eve at San Francisco Civic Auditorium (Now Bill Graham Auditorium) from drummer Billy Kreutzman himself, right there on the sidewalk. With Rock and Roll though, you just never know. Once I saw the Rolling Stones at Winterland. They were so great that I came back the following night although I had no ticket and it was sold out. I ended up near the stage entrance where the backstage celebrities and guests were lining up to get in. Bill Graham himself was doing the door. I was standing there playing "Sweet Virginia" on a harmonica when I noticed The Jefferson Airplane on that line. I slightly knew Grace Slick from going to so many shows and living in the Haight. She saw me and motioned to me to come over and squeeze in line between her and guitarist Paul Kantner. Wow! Was I lucking out. I squeezed in and the line began to move. When we got to the door, Bill Graham grabbed my arm and said "forget it", pulling me out. Grace said "he's with us",  but Graham was buying none of it. Backstage was already seriously overcrowded, the fire marshall was there, and not even the High Priestess of Rock and Roll could get me in there. Not long before this gig, I wound up backstage at the Fillmore West with the Airplane. This lady friend of mine had something going with guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, and invited me backstage to meet the band. So there I am, the last set has been played, and I find myself sitting on the floor in a circle with my friend, Jorma, bassist Jack Cassady, and Grace and a roadie. Grace opens her purse and removes a large pipe. "Cool" I thought. We're going to smoke some herb. She packs the pipe from a film cannister and lights it. Everyone takes a big toke and it comes to me. I take my usual big-ass weed toke and immediately begin to cough my brains out. I sounded tubercular. Tears were running down my face. I had just power-inhaled some black 50 Megaton Afghani hash. No one even blinked as I began to recover. The pipe came to me again and I repeated my blustery act, even worse. After another hit, I finally held it in for a while. I came close to passing out, it was so strong. All I could think was, how can she sing so well and still smoke this plutonium? I think it's because she's a Scorpio. Tough stuff. MORE DIGGER FUN  One afternoon on Haight street I was strolling along when I see all these people crowding the sidewalk near the Digger's storefront. Just then a flatbed truck full of broken mirrors pulls up and parks. The crowd soon removes pieces of mirror and congrgates in the street. Soon a big Greyhound tour bus is seen chugging up Haight. It says "Hippie Hop" on the front window destination sign. It's full of aging straight tourists, gawking out the windows at the "Freaks" of Haight-Ashbury. They've read about it and seen it on TV, now here they are. Oh Boy! The crowd of Diggers soon surrounded the bus so it had to stop. Then they held up mirrors to all the windows and began shouting in unison: "Loook at the Freaks! Look at the Freaks!" You could tell the tourists inside were getting nervous now that they were the objects of derision. Before long, the usual zillions of Haight Street pedestrians were crowding the hapless Greyhound, chanting the chant. It all lasted about 20 minutes until the cops restored what passed for 'order' in the Haight. Some of the cops were laughing their ass off too. That was the first and last "Hippie Hop" bus tour in S.F. R.Crumb himself later immortalized the event in ZAP COMIX. THOMPSON'S CHICKEN RANCH  Somewhere around this time period I landed back in Southern Cali at Laguna Beach, the most bohemian of the seaside towns. Here I met up with a family of artists who were fascinated with Astrology and UFO's. We all stuffed into their Mom's VW Camper one day and drove out to Joshua Tree, 100 miles east in the high desert country. We unsuccessfully looked for UFO's and wound up visiting friends of theirs at a commune just outside the tiny hamlet. Thompson's Chicken Ranch is exactly what the place had been in the past. Just a small egg farm with a bunkhouse/kitchen and a few outbuildings. Now it was occupied by about fifteen freaky hippies who shared their money and food communally. Nobody was into alcohol, heroin, cocaine, or pills. They smoked some weed, chewed a little Peyote,  but nothing sinister. It wasn't really a hedonistic sort of place at all.  The residents were heavily into astrology, auras, meditation, mystic Christianity, yoga, music, and art. It was almost Biblical in it's desert setting, a reborn Egyptian Mystery School for Hippies. It had this fantastic library of hard to find books on religion, spirituality and magic. It was the first time I ever heard the word 'Karma". I just fell in love with the place on every level and decided to try and hang around a while. The Joshua Tree National Monument (now a national park), an awesome mega-wilderness, was the ranch's backyard. It was the classic communal family. No leaders at all. No criminals either, if you don't count the AWOL marine from 29 Palms who could beat anyone in chess in a handfull of moves, and I mean ANYONE. Kathy ran the place. She paid the rent and did a lot of the cooking. Women were the real engines at Thompsons. There were some geodesic domes walled with old automobile roofs. There was a backyard sauna. There were huge communal meals every night. There were grocery runs to nearby Palm Springs where we got free food from Safeway and some churches a couple of times a week. Local real estate magnate Mel Benson sent weekly care packages too. It wasn't easy feeding dozens of people every night on few dollars, but that place did. There were a lot of good musicians who passed through . It became almost famous as a refuge for L.A. musicians who wanted to escape Hollyweird for a few days. One resident,  artist/Kabbalist Armando Busick, painted the Iron Butterfly's second LP cover at the ranch. The band was among many who sat crosslegged and shared food + around the giant dining room table that Indian Summer of the Summer of Love. We always had some good jams going down. You never knew who might pop up. Guitars galore. And not just Rock and Rollers. I'll never forget the lovely and talented Sarah S., a classical flautist from Washington D.C. with whom I shared many adventures. She hated wearing shoes, but she could play Puccini for hours without missing a note. I once saw her make $100 in ten minutes, playing Verdi on a North Beach sidewalk. The Committee Theatre was so infatuated they adopted her as an official  member.  Years later in Mendocino and Mt. Shasta I bumped into some of the former ranch residents. When I moved back to the high desert in 1999 I ran into even more, still living here on this beautiful moon. Today the ranch still sits just off Highway 62, and you can still see my UFO painting on the water tank after 40 years. It's a B&B now called 'Spin & Margies". Check it out..