A Letter From Leslie OnThe Road - 1962

Leslie H. was a sister in our little San Francisco band of dirty Peaceniks. I lost touch with her years ago so I can't ask her for permission to print this letter to me. But it's a document well worth sharing - it seems to me a brilliant picture of The Life, as we baby beatniks conceived it in that long ago year of 1962.

I don't have much left from that era, but God is gracious, and left me this letter. How can I not share it with you? That it still exists is a minor miracle.

Leslie is eighteen and on the road with Peter, her lover (they married later, a true-love match.) She's living the life we loved. The long hitch-hiking journeys, the drugs, a bit of the world-weary feeling I associate with those unpsychedelicized times, the uncapitalized sentences, the eternal ongoing planning of adventures to come. And of course - the literate self-awareness and ability to express herself well on paper.

Together they make up the essence of my times, kiddos - welcome to the winter of 1962. The day I received it the snows were beginning to fall over Long Island and the first winter rains were pouring into the sewers of Lily Alley, San Francisco.

I've added a few links to references that may be obscure today.

christopher christopher christopher

how happy i am to get your lawn letter--i'm childishly delighted and even overjoyed. here for the last couple of days i had been, not homesick, but kind of surprised and sad at being 3000 miles away from anyone who really knew how i function. (this is the result of being bored silly and therefore starting to take it out on peter, but trying not to, because he really doesn't react well to threats of leaving or not sleeping with him at all.)

all this culminated last night with peter pouring chocolate milk shake on my head and i throwing my newly acquired enovid out the car window. i cried myself to sleep thinking of the past with the help of three seconal. but all is slightly better this morning--peter and i woke up early and talked and made love. so i have made him his breakfast, listened to e power biggs playing bach's royal instrument (the organ), finished sanding, oiling, stringing, and tuning our new guitar--we took off all the mexican finish and wanted to leave it like that and oil it, but we ended up some how putting mahogany varnish on it--, and teaching myself bach's minuet in g major on the piano and guitar.

a new thing for me--a snow storm the other night. if i had been younger or marguerita i would have run outside in it naked. now the snow has been here for two days and it is melting and looking a bit soiled.

we have been here for three weeks and i haven't yet seen new york city, which is why i think we hitched out here. i can't really remember why we came anymore except it has something to do with rolexin and the president and me and peter and new york/and cuba and kruschev and bombs

once i had a job for two weeks where i had to type all day.

i could tell you what happened to us hitch hiking and the people we met and what they said but it is not really very interesting or xxxxxx

(typing fades and gets scratchy-looking)

What is wrong with the fucking typewriter?

(she switches to pencil)

i will use a drafting pencil for want of a pen.

(she switches to blue ink)

i found a pen - i don't like it

(this time she switches to black ink with bold point)

here is a fountainpen. i'll use this.

anyway my point was that before i started i thought that hitch hiking to new york would be a great adventure and it wasn't at all just mostly cold and boring. i have lost all my faith in jack kerouac.

we did meet some wonderful people in madison, wisconsin. They were students and mostly hippies but some cool - not cool really, but sweet. peter and i set out to close the university of wisconsin by turning everyone on to rolaxin (romilar there) i was introduced to everyone as the high priestess of romilar. we were staying with two great friends of peter's - sam and john. one night we were all high and someone knocked on the door. john answered it and a man asked - do you have any cockroaches. sam told him - yes, but they're on our side.

the night before we left i got into a drinking contest with peter. i lost miserably. it's the first time i've ever been drunk. i vaguely remember crying for two hours about my abortion - peter was very sweet and says i really wasn't too bad. i also somehow cut off a large section of big toe. i am now firmly convinced that pot is so much better for teen-agers than booze.

i don't want to write on and on and bore you. so i will shortly close.

how are you and linda and expected baby? and working, being responsible, etc.

everyone there except peter's mother thinks we're married. address any future mail accordingly. i even have a woolworth's golden wedding band ($1.00, without tax) i am also maybe pregnant, which is fine with both of us. peter is a very fine person to have babies from.

we have plans. we will be back in san francisco by april (by way of virginia, etc.) and then peter and i will get jobs (if i am not pregnant, i will) save money until june. take a bus to mexico city - some odd $60 dollars (both) and go to mexico city college. my parents will support me - i will support peter. will have baby in mid-August and let a maid take care of him ($15 a month). i want so much to learn things! i mean, at college - therefore a maid for the baby. i am going to see all the art galleries and museums in new york (while peter works - he may be able to get a job as an artist's model for 7.50 an hour). i am going to learn to really cook - no instant anything. and find a place to practice piano, and look at new york and maybe sew pregnant clothes. - why do i always plan things?

anyway write to me - maybe often. i need it. are you kidding about the naval? tell me about it.

have you seen or heard of riley, teresa, and george. do you have addresses of the first two?

very much love to you - and i will think about you.

[this letter started out fine but it bogs at the end and is incoherent - i'm sorry]

leslie

Bonnie and Juliet, Romeo and Clyde

I learned two useful pieces of information this week. First, I learned how to structure a comedy. You build it like this: "They're going to lose! Oh no, they're going to lose!...they win." Now, here's how you structure a tragedy: "They're going to win! Oh boy, they're going to win!...they lose."

Modern people don't like tragedy very much. Maybe we have enough of it in our own lives. A movie with a 'downbeat ending' is a hard sell in Hollywood, but back in the old days it was different. Theater-goers lapped it up. "C'mon, Willy. Give us another one where the beautiful fourteen-year-old stabs herself to death because her hot but sensitive seventeen year old lover poisoned himself when he thought she was dead but she's really not. That was your best play so far!"

I will never, ever forget walking out of the Larkin Theater into the rain after seeing the Zefferelli Romeo and Juliet. My date and I were stunned. We couldn't speak. Our fellow moviegoers stumbled out at the steady, slow pace of people who've heard some ghastly news about their loved ones' sudden and untimely demise. There was no after movie chitchat - just stunned silence. Yet, when they saw us, the people jammed outside waiting for the next show didn't start running the other way. They could hardly wait to get in and eat some of that stuff we just ate.

And that movie remains one of the high points of my Sixties movie-going experiences, right up there with that other full-bore tragedy, Bonnie and Clyde, where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard, a trio that we've grown to care a whole lot about, go down in a shocking and unforgettable blaze of machine gun fire as the credits roll.

Aristotle, before he married Jackie O. and settled down, used to say that watching fictional characters we cared about go down in a blaze of gunfire made us feel better. We were 'purged' of a lot of emotional crap that was building up inside us and left us free to build up some new crap.

I don't know, myself. I've read that Charles Dickens couldn't decide whether or not to kill off his heroine Little Nell. Then, one afternoon he was hanging out with his illustrator and old Cattermole pointed out the structure of The Old Curiosity Shop so far had been, "They're going to win! Oh, boy, they're going to win!..."

Dickens answered something like, "Oh, maaan! Why you tell me that now?"

The whole world wept. People in New York crowded at the docks waiting for the next ship from London. Before it even docked, they shouted at the sailors, "Is Little Nell alive? Say she is!" But of course she wasn't. The whole city went home in stunned, cathartic silence, and stared at the embers of their little fires. But then they thought it might be nice to roast a bit of cheese. And perhaps a wiener. Because, all in all, it was Little Nell in a book who died. And their own little Nell was sitting right beside them enjoying the fire.

I'm going to make sure Walrus, Sylvie and Paulie lose, lose, lose. If Sylvie gets shot down at the end, it'll be her own darned fault - I want nothing to do with it.

One More Once for The Summer of Love

Writer and itinerant hipster Greg Hoffman just sent up a few photos he snapped at the Summer Of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in Golden Gate Park Sunday before last. I put them up without further comment on how old everybody is and how long ago 1967 was. Survival must count for something.

THE AMAZING CHARLATANS ONE MORE TIME.

Unless you were hanging around San Francisco in the mid-Sixties, you've probably never heard of The Charlatans. But they had their moment. The very first Haight-Ashbury band - and the standard bearers of psychedelicized rock and roll. They never had any hits, it's a wonder they recorded at all. George, the leader, the guy in the straw hat, couldn't play an instrument. But he had a great fashion sense and designed the band for the pop world that ruled before guys like Jimi Hendrix and James Gurley changed the rules.Here's a picture of them circa 1966:

THE CHARLATANS IN THEIR HEYDAY

When The Charlatans were having a good night, they were the best dance band on the circuit. And, in the early days, the psychedelic ballrooms were all about dancing.

JAMES GURLEY AND FRIENDS

Actually, the beauty is James' wife, Margaret and the itinerant hipster with the press pass is Greg Hoffman. For a year or so, Jim Gurley (as he was known then) was king. As lead guitarist for Big Brother and The Holding Company, he went further out then anyone had gone before. I thought he was inspired and I knew what was good in those days. Street legend said that Gurley learned to play lead guitar by sitting in a room on Pine Street for weeks on end listening to and copying John Coltrane solos. Not note for note - but in the spirit. You can hear his work on Janis' best album, Cheap Thrills, and decide for yourself.

Here's Jim as Haight-Ashbury pinup:

WHEN GURLEY WAS GOLDEN

No disrespect. This Bob Seideman photo became a popular poster and could be seen in kitchens and bedrooms across the Haight-Ashbury for at least a year.

SUMMER OF LOVE 40TH ANNIVERSARY

September 2, 2007
San Francisco

San Francisco Chronicle's story:Summer of Love bands and fans jam in Golden Gate Park.
Relix Magazine's story: Old Hippies Come Out of the Woods for Summer of Love 40th.
More photos of the anniversary party from Clara Bellino.

What Happened To The Haight-Ashbury?

You want to know what really happened in the Haight-Ashbury from 1964 to 1967? Good - then read this: Love and Haight, in today's Observer Music Monthly. It's really quite good. The first time I have ever read something semi-accurate in the major media.

Donovan - 61 Yesterday

Hey, Donovan has joined the rest of us forerunners who, due to circumstances beyond our control, live in the Sixties. Welcome, man.

Don't Look Back, the great Pennebaker doc about Bob Dylan's 1965 English tour is finally out on DVD and I read a review of it the other day. A commenter, desiring to demonstrate Bobbie's big dog status in 1965, chose to describe the filmed meeting between the two, where Donovan played his soon-to-be-hit, Catch The Wind, and Dylan supposedly destroyed him by following with his It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.

I'm sorry, but this is all wrong. The truth is everyone, with the possible exception of John Lennon, was blown off the stage by Dylan in the mid-Sixties. So what? Donovan was and remains an authentic voice in his own right. Dylan himself recognized it. That's why Donovan was sitting in the inner sanctum trading songs with the man.

To me, Donovan most perfectly captures the flower children aspect of the Sixties. No one else of the era could have written a line like this one (from his 1967 album Wear Your Love Like Heaven),

"Have you found the secret door
to let you down to the earth's deep core
you'll be back in time for tea
with a diamond to show me."

A spiritual journey with no suffering, no pain. And probably with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy along for the adventure. It's what we all wanted, wasn't it? Oh, I forgot for a minute. You weren't born yet. Well, it was. And Donovan's music captured the moment surpassingly well. Besides, I want my tea too.

Hail, Atlantis!
Here's a penny for the old guy.