by Peter Coyote
I had trouble with some of Slade’s pals too. Spider, for instance, was a limber young thug with a quick smile full of bright teeth, a handsome, swarthy face that resembled Omar Sharif’s, and an instantaneous readiness to fight. If someone in a supermarket, in the midst of scanning the soup, the dried herbs, the toothpaste, and the Q-tips, accidentally caught Spider’s eye, that dark face, grinning with malicious intent, would be in his before he could disengage his eyes, saying, “Do you wanna fight or what?” It was startling and effective and was backed up by training as a boxer. The few times I ever saw anyone take him up on it were disappointing, because the other guy invariably lost.
Another endearing quality of Spider’s was that he had no conscience or sense of responsibility to others—a garden-variety if amiable sociopath. He could drop acid in your orange juice in the morning, steal your car, fuck your woman, and then eat your lunch with the same crazy smile and infectious giggle. His idea of a culinary ne plus ultra was a bacon sandwich composed of two slices of bread and one pound of bacon. He would stand at the stove cooking the whole pound, oblivious to the spattering grease (or numbers of people to be served by the available bacon) and rap: “You know how when you were a kid you could never get enough bacon? You know how there would just be a couple of pieces on the plate, or like, when you go in a restaurant, or whatever. I mean, YOU CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH BACON. Well, I can. So this is why, how, I make my bacon sandwiches.”
Danny Rifkin had come to stay a while. The manager and, as far as I was concerned, the true conscience of the Grateful Dead, he resembled Haile Selassie’s kid brother—curly Ethiopian hair and beard, pronounced Semitic nose, and cinnamon-brown skin. Unable to accept the easy spiritual homilies so in vogue at the time, Danny spurred himself—as well as, by example, the band and all that knew him—to be a better person.
Spider, in his infinite wisdom, had secretly poured LSD in Danny’s morning tea. It was a bright blue day, Danny was in the garden tending his mounds of corn and beans, and I was off somewhere on one of my endless runs for auto parts to keep my truck running. Consequently what follows is Danny’s story:
A horse and rider approached. It was Del (not his real name), a highway patrolman who came to the ranch often to shoot and to talk guns and hunting. I assumed that his curiosity might be related to official espionage duties because he always brought reloaded highway patrol—issue ammunition for our pistols so that we could afford target practice together. As a group we had little other than recreational drug use to hide, and being equally curious about him, I drank coffee with him, smoked cigarettes, and discussed the issues of the sixties, the effects and dangers of different drugs, the relationships among culture and economy, politics, and ethics. He was intelligent and provocative in his questioning and appeared to be nonjudgmental and honestly curious. Although he never appeared in uniform, he was clear about his identity, and I respected him and protected him from witnessing anything that would have put him in conflict with either his job or his personal principles.
There were other cops around as well, however. Tony Veronda was a barrel-chested, good-natured, simple-as-cow-flop cowboy on the surface but shrewd and unsettlingly watchful underneath. He thought that his visits, disguised as neighborly bonhomie, were the epitome of undercover operations. He mentioned once that he was an assistant sheriff’s deputy, and his conversation was peppered with the type of jocular remarks about drugs that a white bigot might make to black people about watermelon.
One day he was rambling on about a sheriff’s department surveillance of a particular type of plane whose unusual name spelled “acrobatics” backward or something. The subtext of his story was that the police were omnipresent and omnipotent and had tracked the plane from Mexico to San Diego and from San Diego to somewhere else, where they were waiting for it to arrive with its cargo of marijuana.
Since I knew a friend who owned such a plane (and pursued such a livelihood), I called him and mentioned my conversation with Tony. He instantly hung up without saying good-bye. Three days later, he called back and said that I’d saved him a lot of grief and money, and was there anything we needed at the ranch? I mentioned our ten-gallon, sawdust-insulated hot water heater’s insufficiencies, and two days later a Sears Roebuck truck delivered the largest, slickest, hot water heater known to humankind, replacing our little improvised job with a behemoth that must have held ninety gallons. Thanks to Tony, we were in hot water.
On the day of Danny’s “dosing” by Spider, Del arrived on horseback, riding solo over the hill. He was ill at ease and uncharacteristically cold. “There’s more behind me” was all he said tersely to Danny, without hesitating or looking right or left.
The LSD was just turning Danny’s brain to scrambled eggs, but it didn’t require brains to figure out what Del meant. Though he had some difficulty assessing the exact population of the ranch, getting distracted by whether or not to inform the bushes and trees as well, Danny managed to get the word around and started everyone on the task of hiding their guns and personal stashes of dope. Everyone but Spider, that is, who decided that the moment was perfect to leave for Sausalito and exercise his overpracticed hand at seducing teenyboppers; he pursued them with the same directness he used in challenging people to fight, following his time-tested adage: “Ask enough people to fuck and you may get slapped a lot, but you get fucked a lot, too.”
No sooner was the last Smith-and-Wesson wrapped in plastic bags and buried in the whole wheat flour or stashed in the compost to cook with the horseshit and decomposing salad greens than the air swelled with an escalating pulse. Red dust trails appeared down the road just as a helicopter rose from the gully and slipped low over the hill. A grand assemblage of state, county, local, and federal law enforcement agents swarmed us, converging from every direction on this tiny gaggle of underfed, impoverished citizens. The women stood around absently, half naked, babies suckling, nervous systems resonating with the harmonics and dissonances of so many engines whining, whistling, groaning, and roaring simultaneously. Because the group knew that it was doing nothing that might warrant one-tenth of this police attention, the event was interesting public theater, not a cause for alarm.
The police hit the decks running: SWAT types in body armor carrying M1s, crouching low under the thudding copter blades, highway patrol and county sheriffs, DAs, and the obligatory FBI guys. They presented Danny with a botched and inexplicit warrant of sorts, which might have been useful had Danny been able to read it. It mentioned something about an LSD laboratory in the barn and marijuana plants in the garden and was so far off the mark that the spectators lost interest and let the lawmen go about their searches as they chose.
When the revelation occurred, perhaps serially, perhaps simultaneously, that “there was nothing there,” the event fizzled to a sodden finale worthy of the cast of Police Academy. The place was what it looked like: a rundown ranch house, overcrowded with old trucks, ramshackle outbuildings converted to living quarters, and desperately poor people.
When that revelation penetrated their group consciousness, they organized a military evacuation with a great deal of busy huffing and stern warnings, chest puffing, some mediocre glaring, and not one word of apology for disturbing the day. They even refused an offer of fresh mint tea, which Ananda brought out of the house, naked from the waist up per usual. They squeezed into their idling vehicles and motored off in dark, oily clouds of disappointment.
The overcrowding, the poverty, and finally the police were too much for Slade, and around this time he transferred his base of operations to the Grateful Dead ranch in Novato. Compared to us, the Dead were rich, and their scene was full of great toys and props—more Slade’s style. We saw one another after that but not as often and across a subtle divide. I lost track of him for a while until I met his daughter at Danny Rifkin’s fiftieth birthday party, and she told me that her dad was a guest of “Uncle Sugar” in a new prison in Colorado. A letter from Slade followed shortly thereafter, and it was great to hear f
rom him again, tough and cool as ever. One line of his letter caught my attention:
I’m so sick of living with whining white bankers and S & L looters and young, totally fucked-up black crack dealers that I’m almost ready to take the pledge and promise forever to stay in my own lane and never cross the solid yellow line again. . . . Not quite, but almost.
That was pure Slade, and perhaps I had been lucky to have lost track of him. His edgy boredom demanded placation in curious and unsettling ways. I walked into the yard one day, for instance, just as he was convincing Arlene, a statuesque redhead with more courage than sense, to allow him to shoot a cigarette out of her mouth. She walked off ten paces and stood there, neck craned forward so the cigarette would clear her remarkably prominent breasts, and Slade sighted down the barrel of his black, hammerless, snub-nosed .38 Special. I held my breath, but my imagination raced ahead and rode the small slug ripping Arlene’s lower jaw off and flecking the fence with bits of tongue. There was a sickening clap of shock as the gun fired . . . and nothing moved—not Slade, not Arlene, not the cigarette. Slade regarded the gun blankly, shoved it into a pocket, and walked away. Arlene looked down her nose at the intact cigarette, took a drag on it, and followed him, while I remained transfixed, chilled in the shadow of what might have transpired.
I had no idea where he was headed that last day when he packed up his goods and he and Spider headed down the road in his sporty MGB for the last time, churning up a trail of dust that finally obscured them like a smoke screen. Olema was mine, collectively speaking. The last “foreign elements,” the last dissenting voices to the Free Family experiment, had left and we were now commencing . . . something. I did not know exactly what, or how to describe it. But just because Slade and Spider had left did not mean that things would now be more harmonious.
Ruth and Morris Cohon at their wedding breakfast.
Wearing my “actor’s suit and shoes,” with Jessie Benton and her son Anthony, 1964.
Jessie Benton, daughter of painter Thomas Hart Benton. A natural aristocrat at Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard. 1963. (Author’s photo)
Emmett Grogan, Harvey Kornspan, and Richard Brautigan at the first Artist’s Liberation Front meeting in San Francisco, 1966. (© Lisa Law)
Bill Lyndyn, Mime Troupe puppeteer, master con, and . . . I suspect on LSD here. (© Chuck Gould)
Sam and me posing for Tom Weir around 1966. I’d have taken my clothes off too, but probably couldn’t get those damn boots off. (© Tom Weir)
Judy Goldhaft (Berg) preparing one of her grand tie-dyes. (© Chuck Gould)
A Digger house food run—Judy Goldhaft in the print dress, Nina in the white shirt, and Ron Thelin in plaid. (© Chuck Gould)
Freedom House, not the best photo, but no history of the day could exclude him, and this is what we had. (© Chuck Gould)
Sweet William, after joining the Hell’s Angels.
Pete Knell, President of the San Francisco Hell’s Angels. A truly great guy who taught me much.
Freewheelin’ Frank—poet, artist, incendiary being. Brought into the fold by Michael McClure. (© Chuck Gould)
Natch’l Suzanne, pregnant with her twins Taj and Gamilah. (© Chuck Gould)
Nina Blasenheim, Angeline, and Kent Minault. 1969. (© Chuck Gould)
Paula McCoy, the Digger hostess. A shooting star. (© Chuck Gould)
Billy “Batman” Jahrmarkt and Kirby “Radio” Doyle, pondering the mysteries in 1968 or 1969, before Billy left for, and died in, Afghanistan. (© Chuck Gould)
David Simpson’s house-home towing “The Bare Minimum”—the Digger’s free fishing boat. (© Chuck Gould)
In front of their truck, named “The Albigensian Ambulance Service”: (left to right) Judy Goldhaft holding Ocean, Destiny Gould holding Solange, Peter Berg. (© Chuck Gould)
At Olema, 1969, recovering from hepatitis. Note: snakeskin now gone from hat band. (© Chuck Gould)
The Digger poster we pasted up all over San Francisco, designed by Peter Berg and artist Mike McKibbon. The H.I.P. merchants considered it a shakedown.
Olema Gothic, 1970: Ariel, Sam, and me on the Olena Commune. Ariel’s now a PhD with a daughter of her own. (© Casey Sonnabend)
Vinnie Rinaldi, the cosmic clown, laughing at Ron Thelin working. (© Chuck Gould)
With J.P. Pickens, musician, artist, “Beat” elder, in 1968. (© Chuck Gould)
“Dog-eater”—this is what I looked like rolling up to my mother’s door after Morrie’s death. The photo was snapped by a photographer who bought my dad’s cameras at the fire-sale of my mother’s possessions. (© Martin Cohen)
Chuck “Mooneagle” Gould—running partner, photographer, “uncle” to all the kids. (© Chuck Gould)
Top row (left to right): Photographer Chuck Gould, Jane Lapiner (and Omar’s eyes), David Simpson with Sierra, Judy Goldhaft, Peter Berg, Destiny Kinal. Bottom row: World’s dumbest dogs, unknown boy, Aaron Rosenberg and Ocean Berg, Gabrielle Cohen holding Solange Gould with Gillian Kinal, unknown. (© Chuck Gould)
Hardcore Digger, Samurai Bob, at Turkey Ridge, not too long before he died.
The house, shed, and barn looking toward the mountain which makes half of the Delaware Water Gap.
Nicole Willis—the Turkey Ridge “time bomb.” 1982. (© Leslie Landy)
Poet Gregory Corso, the derelict who called out to me, “Pierre! Oh, Pierre. Coyote-man!” when I was working on Wall Street.
As Chairman of the California Arts Council, 1976.
Hanging out with Gary Snyder, around 1998.
17
free fall
By now Sam had had our baby, Ariel, and moved back to Olema, asserting her right to be there by pointing out, “It’s free, isn’t it?” Because of its isolation, the ranch was a perfect laboratory for the exploration of absolute freedom, and before long was overflowing with eager pilgrims who devised ways to forge small niches for themselves in the already overpopulated environment. I nicknamed Olema “the Fool’s School” (including myself as enrolled) because by and large, most who came up the road knew less about group life, hygiene, and labor than I did. However, since I had been blundering around there longer than they had, my stature was automatically elevated to the formless and far-from-invested role of patriarch. Among my self-appointed responsibilities was the struggle to instill a rudimentary sense of responsibility into each new arrival.
Some Pearls of Wisdom from the Leader
• If you let the baby shit on the floor and then eat it, you’ll have a sick baby and a shitty floor.
• Free food doesn’t mean that I cook and you eat all the time, asshole.
• It’s fine if you want to take speed, just don’t talk to me! I don’t actually care that the insects are communicating with you.
• I know the Indians used moss for tampons, but you’re picking poison oak.
People usually stayed long enough to get their acts together before leaving to present themselves as seasoned communards elsewhere. Despite the turnover, lack of hierarchical leadership, and aggressive libertarian values, we did learn a great deal about living together. Large meals were prepared more or less on a schedule; trucks were kept running; a garden was planted and harvested. There was pretty good music daily and usually an easy amicability reigned. This last was not inconsiderable when you consider that sometimes twenty people were living in and around the one-story ranch house with one bathroom and, until the gift from our dealer friend, a ten-gallon hot water heater.
Revolutionary experiments are fine in theory, but in practice they could frazzle the nerves of a mummy. My old Haight Street partner J. P. Pickens, had moved his wife and three children into the barn. J. P. was a true original—musician and composer of great feeling, an older bohemian whose life was dedicated to spontaneity and social experiments. He was a devoted father and loving husband to his sensitive and rather ethereal wife, Mary Anne. Unfortunately J. P. had a pronounced predilection for methedrine. He used it as a creative fuel and would sometimes stay awake f
or days on end reducing himself to a raw and vibrating bundle of nerve ends. His methedrine-driven obsession with collecting had not abated; it now threatened to overwhelm the barn. He would disappear for days and return with his stake-sided pickup loaded to the top rail with impossible amounts of Industrial Age flotsam: ring-and-pinion gears, dental equipment cabinets, plastic tubing, soggy cardboard boxes filled with pipe fittings, and random Formica samples—all of it, by his estimation, invaluable and “too great a score to leave, man!” Trying to deter him was like trying to arrest a force of nature. One bizarre midnight, I heard an unusual low rumble outside. I calmed Sam, rolled out of bed, and looked out my window to discover next to the barn a full-sized tractor-trailer truck, idling and rattling like a ball-bearing factory in an earthquake. J. P. was standing on the running board urging the driver in a hoarse whisper, “Be quiet, man! These people are a little uptight about my stuff.” Something snapped and I ran outside stark naked, screaming at J. P. and the driver to get the fuck out. J. P. threw the man a look begging him to understand, as if he had brought a friend home for dinner only to find his wife having a tantrum. The truck executed a noisy, laborious three-point turn and shambled down the road. J. P. turned to me as if nothing had happened, grinned happily, and said, “You want some speed?”
