A memoir of the Hippie Days

The old couple never spoke to me for the two-hour drive to Laredo. I wondered if they were frightened by my long hair and ragged clothes, my Indian-print headband, the paisley patches on my bell-bottoms. Maybe they picked me up before they got a good look at me. Perhaps they were just kind and quiet people who couldn’t think of anything to say to such a bizarre and alien being. At any rate, they dropped me off at a truck stop on the outskirts of Laredo where I would have a better chance of catching a ride north. I lingered over lunch at the diner and checked out the truck drivers. They were hard looking men in dirty cowboy hats and pointed-toe boots. They looked pretty much like the other cowboys and ranch hands I’d seen all over south Texas. The only way I could tell they were truck drivers was that only their left arms were sunburned. I approached several for a ride. Most just looked me over and told me to fuck off. The afternoon was wearing on before one agreed to give me a lift. He was only going as far as San Antonio, then heading west to Tucson, but I figured it was better to be moving than not. I had heard San Antonio had a small hippie scene. Maybe I could find a crash pad there and get a ride with some hippies.

We went out to his truck and climbed in. I was pleased I at least knew how to climb up into the cab. It’s not easy if you haven’t done it before. I had only been in a big rig once before, years ago in Ohio on one of my very first times hitchhiking. It had been raining and I was cold and scared and I was thrilled that this huge truck had ground to a stop for me. I felt like a real hobo, riding in an eighteen-wheeler. I’d looked up at that huge wall of metal in confusion. Then I noticed the steps let into the side and scrambled on up. I made use of the convenient big shiny silver handle that runs up just behind the passenger door, only to discover it was the exhaust pipe and that I had burned all the skin off the palm of my hand. I’d been too shocked and embarrassed to make a fuss, so I squeezed my hand between my knees and tried not to moan for the whole ride from Xenia to Columbus.

This time I swung myself into the seat as if I knew what I was doing. In a minute we were off, cranking up through what seemed like dozens of gears. The guy was friendly enough, and we chatted as we roared north on I-35. He told me he was running a load of appliances from Brownsville to Tucson. He asked me where I was from and what I was doing, and I tried to tell the truth as much as I could without mentioning drugs, politics, Vietnam, religion, or my impressions of Texas and its inhabitants. That left food, sex, and music, but that was enough to fill up the three hours to San Antonio. Actually, I was enjoying riding in the big comfortable cab, and I began to consider asking if I could ride with him to Tucson. This whole trip had started out as a trip to the coast, after all, and Tucson was a hell of a lot closer to California than Fort Worth was. But I wanted my stuff back and I wanted to see Elissa again, so when we got to the intersection with I-10, he pulled over and I thanked him and climbed down. He roared off in a blinding cloud of dust and flying gravel and I turned my back and covered my face until it cleared. Then I looked around. It was not an encouraging sight.

I had imagined the intersection of the interstates to be in downtown San Antonio. It’s one of the main crossroads in the whole country. I-35 runs from the border at Laredo all the way up to Minnesota, while I-10 runs from Jacksonville to Los Angeles. I thought it would be a busy place crowded with truck stops and restaurants and a relatively easy place to catch a ride. But there’s a beltway around San Antonio to carry all that heavy traffic around the city. I was standing at a cloverleaf in the middle of the Texas plains, as flat as a griddle, with not so much as a building in sight in any direction. There was little traffic coming up from Laredo and even less on the beltway road. A car or truck passed maybe every ten minutes, going ninety or more, bent on getting where they were going and not at all inclined to stop for some scruffy figure standing out there in the middle of the plains without so much as a suitcase. Car after car whipped past with no thought of stopping. Sometimes I saw faces staring out at me: bored salesmen dazed from hours of driving through featureless scrub land; wide-eyed children with their foreheads pressed against the glass; frightened-looking women no doubt thinking that there was no amount of money they would take to stop out there and let me get in the car with them. They were probably wondering what the hell I was doing out here all by myself, and imagining terrible stories to account for me.

The afternoon light faded and the sun sank toward the western rim of this immense table I was standing on. A line of clouds like the edge of a blanket came up from the west until the sky was covered. It began to get cold. I was only 150 miles from Mexico; I had imagined it would be hot here. But it was now late February, and it gets bitterly cold in the winter in Texas, even down here. All I had to wear was the jeans and shirt I had on, an old Navy surplus peacoat with the sleeves falling off, and an olive drab plastic poncho I had found in a trash bin in Rio Grande City. I took the poncho out of my pocket and pulled it over my head. It was thin plastic and it didn’t close up on the sides, so it just flapped in the breeze when a car zipped by. I realized that it wasn’t going to keep me warm at all and the temperature was quickly falling. If I didn’t get a ride before dark I could be in serious trouble. Normally if I get stuck hitching I’ll start walking, as much for the feeling of making progress as any real hope of finding a better spot. But I could see the road for miles ahead and there was no hint of a gas station or phone, much less someplace warm to sleep. This was a lousy place to hitchhike - you normally want a stoplight or a fast food place to make people stop and take a look at you. But at least the cars turning onto the beltway had to slow down to take the cloverleaf. Out there on the open road there was even less chance that somebody would stop. Also, there was an overpass there that could conceivably offer some protection and there was clearly no other scrap of shelter this side of the horizon in any direction. So there was no point in trying to go anywhere. There was nothing to do but stand there till I get a ride.

As the last light faded, my chances and my spirits dropped. At least in daylight they could see me standing there for a long time and it gave them some time to consider picking me up. At night, their lights didn’t pick me up until they were right next to me. They just got a quick glimpse of some dark hooded figure standing out there in the dark. By the time they did wonder if I might be a hitchhiker, they were two miles down the road. It was basically hopeless, I realized, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

There was a big green highway sign there marking the exit, the kind you see hundreds of times a day without thinking. Out of boredom, I walked over to examine it more closely. It was really quite large, with two heavy square wooden posts set deeply in the ground. The letters were raised pieces of white metal, fastened onto the green sign. Little circular reflectors fit into round holes in the letters. I was struck by how much work went into designing, building, and erecting this one dinky little sign. One letter was loose, so I pried it up further and pulled out two or three of the reflectors.

With the darkness came a wind. It wasn’t blowing hard, but it was really cold and it cut through my thin clothes as if I were naked. I hunkered down in the slight shelter of a clump of mesquite, wrapped the poncho tightly around my knees, and felt sorry for myself. Every half-hour or so a light blinked on the southern horizon and I watched the car approach, trying to decide if it was worth getting up to thumb. In the end, of course, I couldn’t afford to let even a tiny chance of a ride go by, so I struggled to my feet, shook the kinks out of my knees, and walked over to the edge of the pavement. Clutching the poncho around me, I stuck out my thumb and put on my most ingratiating non-threatening face. I held a reflector and tried to flash it toward the car to let them know I was there. It seemed to take hours for the car to get there, then it was upon me in seconds. It flashed past with a dopplering roar, whipping my poncho from my grasp to flutter over my head and let out what little warm air I’d managed to collect. Sometimes the drivers, startled by my sudden appearance, jerked the wheel in surprise and the car lurched into the left lane. Not one touched a brake. I returned to my bush and squatted down out of the wind again.

I’d been miserable for a long time, but now I was starting to get scared. It was completely dark, with an overcast sky. There was no chance of catching a ride until daylight. I had no idea what time it was, but it’d been dark maybe two or three hours, so it couldn’t be much after eight or nine. At this time of year it wouldn’t be light until six or seven. That meant I was going to have to last ten or eleven hours. It was getting colder fast. When a car went past I could see my breath in the glare of the lights. It couldn’t be much above forty and bound to get colder as the night went on. There was a real chance I could die of exposure out there. I had no food, no water, nothing to make a fire with. I couldn’t think of a thing to do to help myself.

As it got later, the sparse traffic died away. I waited for an hour and only one car appeared, going south. There was no point in standing up there in the wind, so I started walking toward the overpass. I’d noticed that many overpasses have a ledge up underneath the ends of the bridge where I could at least get out of the wind. Maybe I could roll up in the poncho like a burrito. It was so dark it was hard to walk on the sloping gravel on the berm, so I got on the pavement and walked right down the middle of the interstate. It was a mile or more to the overpass and it seemed like I’d been walking a long time when I made out the guardrails of the bridge looming up ahead. I held onto the concrete wall and let my feet slide down the steep bank. I slithered down through some thorny shrubs and managed to catch myself before reaching the edge of the road cut below. The ground under the bridge was a steep slope of concrete at nearly a 45-degree angle. To my dismay, there was no ledge at the top. The slope just came up to a wall maybe two feet high that abutted the bottom of the bridge. I went down the slope and crossed the other highway in hopes there was something better on the other side, but it was the same. I scrambled around in the bushes beside the road, hoping there was some kind of a cavity I could crawl into, but there was nothing. In the end, I decided that the wind was less at the top of the slope, just under the bridge. I duck-walked out to the middle of the slope and crouched there with my back against the wall, the top of my head against the bridge, and tried to brace my feet on the steep slope. It was covered with that fine gray dust that seems to blanket everything near a highway. I brushed away as much as I could with my hands, but it was still slippery. I pulled the poncho around me and tucked it between my feet to hold it down. Then I sat, wishing with all my might that I were someplace else. What I wouldn’t give for even a nice warm jail cell now.

Several times during that interminable night I heard a car approaching on I-35. I huddled there, too miserable to get up and clamber up to the bridge to thumb. When the car at last thundered over my head I had to wonder if that wasn’t the one car on the whole road from Laramie to Duluth that would have picked me up. It was probably three love-starved college girls from Laredo looking to find some wandering hippie to introduce them to the joys of sex. But even these thoughts couldn’t keep me warm for long. It was bone-chillingly cold now. I gripped the edges of the poncho to keep them closed and wrapped my arms around my knees to wait.

Even as exhausted as I was, it was almost impossible to get to sleep. Once or twice I dozed off, only to be awakened when a big rig thundered by right above my head. A couple of times I crawled out to look around or take a pee and there was nothing at all to see. The sky was flat black, the land flat to the horizon. There was no traffic. The only object to be seen on the whole plain was the hump of this overpass. Miserably, I crawled back in and tried to lock my feet against the concrete so I wouldn’t slide down. In spite of my best efforts, however, I steadily skidded down the steep hill, a few inches every time I shifted my weight.

Sometime during the night I woke up and discovered I was wet. My breath condensing inside the poncho had soaked my clothes. Dark streaks of water ran down the slope from under the edge of the poncho. I was shivering violently and couldn’t seem to stop. I knew I was bordering on hypothermia. Deciding I had to walk around to get my circulation going. I unlocked my frozen limbs and crept out from under the bridge. The ground was white. I bent down to feel it. There was a thin dusting of snow, dry and powdery, gathered in little heaps around the bases of the bushes. I was reminded of that famous Jack London short story, To Build a Fire, where a prospector is lost from his dog team in Alaska in the winter. He tries everything he can think of to stay alive, but he can’t get a fire started and he eventually freezes to death. These conditions weren’t anything like Alaska, but it was obviously a dangerous situation. I decided it was better to keep walking than to fall asleep again and possibly freeze. There was no place to walk to, so I shuffled across the bridge and back, once, twice. At least the wind had stopped. The snow swirled around my feet as I trudged along, beating my arms around my chest to stay warm. I noticed depressing little bits of flotsam beside the road: cigarette butts, gum wrappers, a broken tail light reflector. Never had a night been so long. After a few dozen times across the bridge, I couldn’t face another one. I crawled back under the bridge, picked a dry spot, and locked myself into position again. I looked down the slope at the black pavement below. If I were to pass out, I’d tumble down the slope and roll right out onto the pavement. If a car came by, they would be unlikely to see me before they ran over me. With these cheerful thoughts for company, I fell asleep again.

When I woke up there was a change in the air - a slight breeze, a smell of something different. With a groan, I unlocked my stiff legs again and crawled out. It was time for more walking. When I pulled myself up onto the bridge, I could see the road stretching off into the distance in four directions. I finally realized that that meant that it was getting light. There was no welcoming glow of sun, no twittering of the dawn chorus, but there was a dim gray light filtering down from the overcast sky. I’d survived the night.

I had to get warm, so I started walking briskly north. There wasn’t much hope of getting anywhere on foot, but there hadn’t been a car in hours and I had to feel like I was doing something. I walked perhaps two or three miles, my mind so sluggish with the cold and my misery that I was hardly thinking at all. Suddenly I became aware of a sound behind me. I turned and looked back and saw a car bearing down on me. I stepped quickly off the road, dug a reflector out of my pocket, and waggled it at the car’s lights. A rusty old Ford stake bed truck slowed and the driver looked me over as he went by. I turned and started walking again. A few hundred yards up the road, the truck swerved off onto the gravel and skidded to a stop.

My heart leaped with joy and I wanted to dash after it, but I was too cold and stiff to run. Also, in the past I’d several times had cars stop well past me, then when I ran to them they tore off with a hillbilly laugh and a spray of gravel in my face. I didn’t think I could stand that right now, so I just kept up my pace. The truck didn’t move. I could see the driver eyeing me in the rear view mirror as I approached. I came up to the passenger door. It was locked. The driver shouted at me through the glass.

"Where you going, son?" he called.

"Originally I was headed for Fort Worth," I shouted back. "Now I just want to go someplace warm."

He looked at me a moment more, then leaned across and unlocked the door. I clambered in and stammered out my thanks. He took off with a roar, then looked over at me.

"How long you been out there anyway?" he asked.

"Too long. Most of yesterday and all night."

"You need to cut that hair," he said. "Nobody’s going to pick you up in Texas with you looking like that."

Normally a comment like that would send me off on my canned tirade about freedom of expression and the founding fathers having long hair and so on, but right then I was too happy to be sitting in front of his blasting heater.

"Yeah, I figured that out eventually," I mumbled contritely. Nothing more was said. My clothes were steaming in the heat of the cab.

After an hour of driving we came to a roadside restaurant and stopped. He asked if I needed money, but I told him I had a bit. I had a big meal of bacon and eggs and hash browns and cup after cup of hot coffee. Finally I felt recovered enough to talk. We chatted and listened to country music for six more hours as we drove north across some of the most boring and uninviting country I’d ever seen.

Then a silhouette appeared on the horizon ahead, something tall and irregular. Finally I realized it was the skyline of Dallas, with skyscrapers standing out in the middle of the scrub brush. The driver was continuing north and had planned to take I-35 right through Dallas, but he took a small detour on I-35 West to take me to Fort Worth. Soon another, more humble skyline appeared ahead. The interstate bypassed around Fort Worth, and I asked him to let me out at a railroad switching area that appeared to be the closest approach to the city. I thanked him profusely and he drove away. I climbed down to the tracks and started walking toward Fort Worth. Fully recovered from my night on the plains, I was feeling pretty good. I liked coming into a new city like this: not knowing a soul, knowing nothing about the town, nobody knowing me. There wasn’t a person on Earth who knew where I was right now. I was free to do anything I wanted, open to any adventure.

I realized it was still further away than I thought. Like the Emerald City, it seemed to always be the same distance away. I walked for a couple of hours, always hoping a slow freight would come by that I could jump into town, but none ever did. It was late afternoon before I came to a fairly ugly industrial area on the edge of town. I made my way through it, found a major road, and followed it into town. For lack of any better idea, I walked toward the biggest buildings, thinking that might be where the hippies and street people congregated. It was almost evening before I found myself on the streets of Fort Worth.

It was a bigger city than I had imagined, looking a bit faded and old, but with a lot of new construction going on. I got something to eat at a greasy spoon diner and wondered how in the world I was going to find Elissa, if she was even here. Normally you can just walk around a city until you see some other longhairs, then ask them where you can crash. I tried that for a while but didn’t see any. It was rush hour on a weekday, and everyone on the street was either a businessman or a woman shopping. They eyed my filthy disheveled appearance with curiosity mingled with distrust. I sure couldn’t walk up to one of these suits and ask where hippies go to crash. It began to get dark, and I thought I might have to try to find a cheap hotel. Then I spotted two young guys and a girl across the street. They weren’t dressed all that weird - they’d be picked as country cow freaks in New York or LA - but they all had hair and the girl was wearing granny glasses. I jaywalked across the street to catch them.

"Hey, brothers," I called out. "Know where I can crash tonight?"

They all turned to look at me in surprise. I must have made quite an impressive figure, with long greasy hair down to my shoulder blades, dirty clothes, and a mud-streaked plastic poncho, but they waited for me to catch up.

"Man, where are you from?" one of the guys asked, with a tone as if he wouldn’t be surprised if I answered with something extraterrestrial.

"Well, right now I’m coming from the border and heading roughly toward San Francisco. But I have had a very rough trip and I just need a warm place to sleep. I’ve had it with sleeping outside."

I glanced at the girl to see if she was suitably impressed with my wild tale, but she was looking me over as if she had found me washed up on a beach.

"Jeez, I dunno," said the other guy. "I don’t know of any place like that."

"Oh, man, I really need to crash," I sighed. "Is there a hippie part of town, you know, some kind of a street scene where there are a lot of freaks?"

"Sheeyit no," laughed the first guy. "You must be really lost. This is Fort Worth."

"I knew I shoulda toined left at Albykoiky," I groaned in my best Bugs Bunny voice.

They laughed, even the girl. She stepped out from behind the second guy, as if deciding I wasn’t quite as scary as I looked.

"The only place we know where people go a lot is the Cellar. Maybe you could try there."

"The Cellar? What kind of a place is it?"

"Well, it’s kind of a night club, I guess," she said. "They have drinks and music and you can dance if you want."

"And they have go-go girls," put in one of the guys.

"That sounds okay," I said. "And hippies go there a lot?"

They all laughed. "Well, we may be the only hippies in Tarrant County, but there could be more. And if they were going out to party, they’d go to the Cellar. Every other bar is a cowboy shit-kicker bar."

"Okay," I said. "Where is it?"

"Just a few blocks from here," replied the girl. "That’s where we’re going. Come on."

I followed them through the urban streets of Fort Worth. It was getting dark already and neon lights were coming on up and down the streets. I regaled them with a hair-raising tale or two of my adventures getting there. Then we stopped at the top of a flight of stairs going down into one those fenced-in stairwells. A hand-painted sign above the door designated it as The Cellar. The E’s were funny, with just three horizontal strokes and no vertical. A bass guitar thumped from within. We filed down, paid a dollar cover charge, and pushed through a heavy velvet curtain.

It was dim and smoky inside, with lights flashing around the bar and one of those rotating light balls throwing colored beams through the smoke. Recorded rock and roll gushed out of the speakers mounted on every wall. There was a small stage in the middle with a round section extending at each end. There were three girls in bikinis doing the swim and the monkey and other nondescript dances on the stages. It was a big room, with maybe a hundred tables, but it seemed close with the low ceiling and all the walls and ceiling painted flat black. Above the stage was another The Cellar sign with funny E’s.

We got a table, ordered drinks, and watched the girls dance. They were fairly attractive and easy to look at. They danced fairly dirty, like a strip joint, but they never took anything off. This was Fort Worth, after all. A few people were dancing on the dance floor in front of the stage. The girl we had come with danced with each of the other guys, then I asked her to dance. I went into my usual spastic dance, spinning wildly around the floor with my hair flying out in a big circle around my head. I always dance barefoot, and my filthy feet were kicking up dust on the wood floor. She seemed mildly taken aback by my weird dancing style, but then everyone always was. She didn’t seem inclined to repeat the experience, so I just sat and drank and watched the crowd, hoping to spot someone who might know a place I could crash.

The crowd was all young and seemed moderately hip, but in a clean-cut provincial sort of way. They had paisley shirts and bellbottoms, sandals, and love beads, but there weren’t many with long hair or truly extravagant dress. They seemed like young city people with jobs who thought the hippie scene was cool. After work they put on their hippie beads and totally unnecessary head bands and came down here to dance like they imagined they did it in Haight-Ashbury. Still, it felt much more comfortable than any other place I had been for quite a while, and I was enjoying myself. I was also trying not to think about how totally blank I was on how I might make contact with Elissa, if she’d even come to Fort Worth.

The go-go girls were constantly changing, and I realized they were also the cocktail waitresses. I started noticing one in particular, a tall statuesque blonde with a wonderful body and a nice smile. She was by far the best dancer, and there was always a crowd of guys hooting and hollering by the stage when she danced. I held myself above such shenanigans, but I had to admit she was a real fox. Most of the other girls looked like suburban Texas farm girls a little surprised to find themselves doing what they were. Most were indifferent dancers, swaying mechanically to the music in what they thought was seductive moves. But the blonde was different. She was really interpreting the music with her body, changing her moves with the changes in the music. She had a classically beautiful face, with high cheekbones and full sensual lips. Her eyes were a deep green and seemed a bit amused at all the hollering yokels. Watching her was getting me really turned on, and I was having fantasies about asking her for a place to stay. Once or twice I was sure she was looking at me with interest. Then her stint was done and she climbed down and picked up her drinks tray and started making the rounds. She came straight over to our table and I looked up at her in some surprise, wondering what opening line I should try. She looked at me quizzically. The kids with me seemed as surprised as I was to have this beautiful babe approach me.

"Is your name Brian, by any chance?" she asked.

I was astonished. Here I was in a city I’d never been in before, in a bar I didn’t know existed half an hour ago, and this beautiful chick seemed to know me. The theme of Twilight Zone came to mind.

"By a strange chance it actually is," I managed to reply. One of the guys swallowed an ice cube in surprise.

Her face lit up with a huge smile. "Oh, wow," she laughed triumphantly. "I knew it. There can’t be that many people with hair like that in this cow town. Hi, I’m Sammy."

"Hi, Sammy. How the hell do you know me?" I stammered.

"Because Elissa told me to keep an eye out for you," she said.

"Elissa?" I said, completely flabbergasted. "Is she here?"

"She’s staying with me at my apartment."

"Really?" I stammered in disbelief. "That’s great. Hey, can I stay there, too?" Already I was having fantasies of a threesome with Sammy and Elissa.

Her smile faded. "Oh, well, I don’t know about that, man, with you being so hot and all."

"Hot? Did Elissa tell you that?" I asked, pleased. "Well, she should know."

"No, not hot like that," she giggled. "I mean the cops are looking for you. You’ve been busted."

"Well, yeah. But I did my time, man. I just got out of the slammer." The kids at the table looked on in amazement at this strange conversation.

"No, I know about that. This is a new bust. You’ve been popped in Fort Worth, too."

"That can’t be, man," I smiled. "I just got here an hour ago."

"Yeah, but your shit got here first, and the cops have it now and they’re looking for you."

"Oh, man," I groaned. "Usually I can at least get to a place before I get busted there."

"It’ll work out," she said cheerfully. "I gotta work. I get off at eleven. Then I’ll take you to meet Elissa."

"Okay, and thanks, Thanks a lot." She moved off and I again admired her figure. Guess that threesome probably wasn’t going to work out, I mused sadly. I couldn’t figure out about the bust. My stash was in a cookie tin in my duffel bag. The last I’d seen it, it was in the back of Sean’s ambulance. But if the car had been busted, Elissa would be in the clink too. I resolved to worry about it later. I settled back to get drunk and enjoy the music. The kids I came with decided to leave early. Maybe they thought the place was going to get raided and they’d be caught in the crossfire. No doubt they felt they’d fallen into bad company.

It was a long time till she got off, but I didn’t mind the wait. Sammy danced several more times. As the night got later and people got higher, the music got louder, the dancing got wilder, and the go-go girls cranked it up. They started to tease the crowd, like they were really going to strip. They’d pull their bra straps down and toy with the waistbands of their panties, but they never showed anything. One unfastened her top and danced for a while holding it up with her hands. The guys went wild, shouting for her to take it off, but stripping was illegal in Fort Worth and the club could have lost its license, so she was careful not to reveal anything. Still, the place became steamy with eroticism. Sammy was the best at it. She could drive the crowd wild with her dirty dancing. As soon as she climbed up on the stage the crowd would start cheering for her to do something. She seemed to enjoy the attention and played to it but never did more than tease and promise. I was in no hurry to leave.

When the place closed at two I was quite drunk and aroused from hours of dancing and watching Sammy. She changed and came out and collected me. I enjoyed the looks I got as we walked out together. In street clothes, Sammy was still attractive but not as spectacular and exotic as she had appeared on stage. I would still have jumped her in a minute, of course, but she gave me no encouragement. We walked out to her battered old VW bug and she drove me through the streets of Fort Worth, now mostly dark and empty.

"So about this bust," I said. "What happened?"

"Well, those people you were travelling with, Sean and Chris? They got busted. The car was searched and the cops found the dope in the guitar case. I guess your name was on it."

"Wait a minute. This doesn’t make any sense. My stash wasn’t in the case. And I am not quite stupid enough to put my name on my stash box: ‘This illegal substance belongs to Brian. If lost or strayed, please call…. Not too cool."

"Well, I don’t know exactly what happened. I guess Sean and Chris told the cops it was yours. I know the pigs are looking for you. It was in the newspaper even."

"Where are Sean and Chris?"

"They’re in jail."

"Why didn’t they take Elissa, too?"

"She wasn’t with them at the time. They were being really shitty to her, so she came to stay with me."

"But she left my stuff in the car?"

"No, she took most of it to my place. But they still had your guitar. Sean wouldn’t let her have it."

"Oh, man. What a towering heap of crap." I slumped down in the seat with disgust. I hated to think of all my beautiful stash in the hands of the cops. I tried to remember all the stuff I had in it. It was my best variety pack, lots of rare and exotic goodies from around the world, all carefully packaged in brightly colored little plastic boxes, and tastefully arranged to show off my wares to prospective buyers - and to impress girls. Gone, all gone. Not to mention my poor electric bass. By now I was so used to losing stuff, having it ripped off, or getting it confiscated by the authorities, that I was learning the Buddhist principle of non-attachment. Oh, well, less stuff to have to carry around and worry about.

"So how’d you meet Elissa?" I asked after a few minutes of grieving.

"She came into The Cellar one night looking for the scene, same as you. She asked me what the work was like. I guess she was getting pretty desperate for some cash. We got to talking. The poor kid didn’t know where to go. So I let her crash with me. I like her a lot."

"Yeah, Elissa’s great. Man, I was only in jail like a week. I thought she could just ride around with Sean and Chris for a while and then I’d find her again. They were jerks, but I didn’t think they’d try to frame me."

We turned up a side street and she parked the car.

"Stay here," Sammy told me. "The cops know where Elissa is staying and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were watching her to try to catch you."

"Oh, yeah," I sighed. "They probably are."

"What should we do?" she asked. "Maybe I should call her instead of going in."

"No, the line may be tapped. Why don’t you go in and tell her I’m here? Tell her to go out like she’s going for a walk. I’ll meet her."

"Okay," she said nervously. We scanned the few cars parked along the street, trying to see if there were guys sitting in any of them. They appeared to be empty.

"Here goes," she said. She got out and walked away. I slid down in the seat and watched her disappear around a corner. Here we go again, I thought, scanning the parked cars and doorways for lurking figures. Back into the cops and robbers game they force you into. What a load of crap the drug laws are. They turn a huge number of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. Whole organizations of tax-paid government employees are sent out to hunt these people down and lock them away for long intervals. And who benefited from all this? Nobody. Dope is only dangerous because it’s illegal, which makes it expensive and forces you to deal with criminals to get it. If drugs were legal, there’d be no "drug problem." Why couldn’t people see it?

Hunched down in the car seat, peering anxiously at every window and passing car, I felt like a resistance fighter in occupied France, with Nazis and informers everywhere. Why is it any different from that, for me? This is my country too. Why can’t I pursue my happiness? What’s worse, I pay these guys who are hunting me – or I would be if my income were reportable. I found myself humming the Stephen Stills song For What it’s Worth - "Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep." If they were watching Elissa they’d probably follow her to me. I imagined a couple of suits approaching the car, trying to nail me. What would I do? I scouted a couple of possible escape routes between some of the old houses. I decided I didn’t want to be caught in the car. I got out and strolled slowly along the street, listening for footsteps behind me, watching the shadows.

Then I heard someone coming. I slipped into the shadows beside a front stoop and waited. A woman appeared at the corner where Sammy had disappeared. She looked cautiously around, then started walking toward me. When she got close enough I could see that it was Elissa, looking small and scared. I suddenly felt sorry for her. Here she was, eighteen years old, a small-town girl from Illinois, off on her first big adventure, scared and alone in a strange town, going to meet a wanted criminal on a seedy back street. This wasn’t her scene at all. When she reached my hiding place I whispered her name. She jumped at the sound and turned to peer into the darkness.

"It’s me," I said, and she flew into my arms.

"Oh, Brian," she gasped against my lips. "I have been so scared. I didn’t know what to do. After you and Mike got busted we drove up here, but Sean and Chris were really mean to me. They wouldn’t even stop when I had to pee."

"Why were they being such shits?"

"I think the cops down there in Roma and Rio Grande City really scared the shit out of them and they were blaming you and Mike for getting them into trouble. And they were taking it out on me."

"Those assholes. How’d the bust go down?"

"When we got here they found some people to stay with, but I didn’t like them. They were hard and scary and mean to me, too. And Sean and Chris were still treating me like dirt, so I didn’t want to stay there with them. I heard about the Cellar and went down there to see if I could get a job. Then I met Sammy and she invited me to stay with her, so I got all our stuff out of Sean’s ambulance. All except your bass. Sean had started playing it a little and he said he wanted to keep it with him. I didn’t want to let him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I thought maybe they were planning to skip town with it and just rip you off.

"Anyway, Sean was trying to sell some dope for a little spending money. One of the guys at the place they were staying wanted to buy but didn’t have any money. He said he had an old set of weights -- you know, barbells and stuff -- at his parents’ house. Sean agreed to help the guy pick them up and pawn them to get the cash. So one night when the guy’s parents weren’t home, they all drove over to this guy’s parents’ house and started hauling all these weights out of his garage and loading them into the ambulance. Some of the neighbors saw all these strange-looking people hauling shit out of the house and thought it was a burglary. They called the cops, and they caught them."

"Didn’t the kid explain it was his house?"

"Yeah, but the whole thing looked suspicious, I guess. So they searched the car and found the shit in your guitar case."

"I didn’t have any in there."

"I know. After you and Mike got busted, Sean was blaming you for all our troubles. He was really freaked out, like raging. Then on the drive up here a cop car came up behind us with his lights on and Sean panicked. The cop went right on past, but Sean was really paranoid. He had Chris put their stash in your guitar case so they could say they didn’t know about it."

"That’s sweet of him."

"Yeah. So when they got stopped in Fort Worth, he said it all belonged to this hitchhiker they had picked up and they hadn’t known anything about it. Sean even told them where you were."

"What? Oh, man, that is so cold."

"The cops were going to call Rio Grande City to have the sheriff send you up here. You must have gotten out just in time."

"When was this?"

"Two, no, three nights ago."

"Jesus. That was the same day Mike went back to the jail to see if our money had arrived. They must have called that same day after he left. And we just hung around town waiting for our money. I can’t believe Sean was trying to fuck me over like that. What did I ever do to him?"

"I know. He was really different after the bust in Roma. That vigilante thing just freaked him out completely."

I stared at her sadly. Then a happy thought came to me. "Hey, so it was really Sean’s stash that got popped? Where’s mine?"

"I still have it. I hid it after all this stuff came down."

"Oh, you wonderful thing," I gushed, giving her a kiss. "Oh, baby, you did really great. I’m so sorry you got into this mess. If I’d known all this would happen, I’d never have suggested that you stay with Sean and Chris. But there was no place for you to hang down there."

She burst into tears. "I didn’t want to leave you there in jail, honey. I just didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t have any money for a room or bail, even. And with you and Mike gone, Sean and Chris were just complete shits. I hate them."

"Well, it seems like you did everything you could. I’m sure glad you didn’t get busted too."

"I know. If I’d stayed with them one more night I would have been there too. I was so scared when I heard about it. I didn’t know what to do. I would have tried to leave town, but I knew you were coming here and I didn’t want you to walk into this mess without knowing anything about it. So I’ve stayed here and been afraid to go out. I did call the cops and asked what was happening with Sean and Chris. At first they didn’t want to tell me anything, but finally one guy told me that Sean and Chris were still being charged. They didn’t really believe their story about not knowing the dope was there. They didn’t really care about the guitar, but they wouldn’t give it to me. They’d only release it to you. They said that if I heard from you I should tell you to come in and give your side of the story. They said if you did, they’d give your guitar back."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Like I’m going to walk into the cop shop and say, ‘Yeah, I’m the guy who owns the guitar case. You know, the one full of dope. Can I have it back, please?’ I don’t think so."

"I don’t know, honey. They might be telling the truth. They’re busting Sean and Chris anyway. They didn’t even try to charge me. I don’t think they want to bust you. They just want to hear your side of the story."

"No way I’m going in there," I replied. "I can’t think of anything I could say or do that would help Sean and Chris, and I don’t have any strong urge to risk my neck for them. The cops can keep the damn guitar. Hey, maybe one of them will try it out. The guys down at the station can get a rock band together – The Psychedelic Pigs or something."

She smiled at that, the first smile I’d seen. I realized how scared she she’d been, and still was. I had to get her out of this situation. But how? We were broke and didn’t know anybody in the state. The only person we did know was Sammy. There was nowhere else to go.

"Elissa," I said. "I don’t think there’s anyone watching you. I checked the street out pretty carefully and didn’t see anything. That doesn’t mean they’re not there, but I don’t think we’re big enough fish for them to put a tail on you. We need to talk to Sammy right away."

She hesitated, looking about at the dark buildings around us, then nodded.

"Then let’s walk together, like a couple. If they’re looking for one of us, they might pay less attention to us together. We started back toward the apartment, with her snuggled up against me and my arm around her shoulders. Man, she felt good to me. I was so happy to find her.

We went to Sammy’s apartment and she let us in. It was a small, unattractive place, but clean. She had put some psychedelic posters on the dingy walls in an attempt to liven it up. We got out my stash and passed a pipe or two as we caught up on the news. Sammy obviously knew all about Elissa’s travails so far, but she asked a lot of questions about my jail experience in Rio Grande City.

The smoke made me realize how hungry I was. The girls were too. Sammy fixed something to eat and we sat around the kitchen table and talked as we ate.

"Listen, Elissa," said Sammy. "You know I love you, girl, but you two cannot stay here. I can’t afford trouble. Dancing just barely pays for this dump, and this is the bottom rung. I can’t afford to lose my job."

"I know, Sammy," said Elissa. "We understand. You’ve been great to take me in and help me when I was completely at the end of my rope. I’ll never forget that."

"Yeah, we understand," I said. "I don’t want to get anybody in any more trouble, least of all to the one person who’s been nice to Elissa. But where can we go? We don’t know anybody here."

"Where do you usually go? Elissa says you’ve been on the road for months."

"Well, yeah. But for part of it we were on a bus, and for most of the rest we were in an ambulance. So we always had places to sleep on the road. And we went to towns that were known to have hippie communities: Denver, Boulder, Taos. I figured I could just walk into Fort Worth and find a free place to crash. I’m stuck here."

"I’m trying to think who might help you," said Sammy. "There’s a couple of houses around where a lot of hippies live. But I only know one guy who lives in one."

"Do you know how to contact him?" I asked.

"Yeah, I have his number, I think."

"Would they take us in, do you think?"

"Well, it’s not really a crash pad. Just a few people live there. They might let you stay there."

"Yeah, it’s worth a try," I said. Already I was thinking that a freak family in the middle of cowville might be very happy indeed to see a man with a tin can full of dope.

Sammy looked up the number in her notebook. "Yeah, here it is. Joe Lowry."

"Do you mind calling him?" I asked her. "If you don’t feel comfortable doing it, that’s okay. We’ll think of something. We’re not your responsibility, you know."

"Yeah, I know. But I can’t just turn you out on the sidewalk, can I?" She called the number.

"Joe? It’s Sammy. Yeah, hi. Yes, it has. Too long. Listen, can I ask you a funny question? Yeah? Okay. Do you think Jim and Bev would let a couple of strangers stay with you guys at their place?"

She listened for a while in silence. Elissa and I strained to hear the tinny little voice at the other end.

"Well, they’re not exactly runaways, no," Sammy said. "They’re not kids. They’re from out of town and they’ve gotten into a bit of a jam." She waited for his question. "Well, a legal jam. They’re a little hot, but nice, really, both of them," she added quickly.

"Well, for drugs. Some people they know got busted a few nights ago and the police want to talk to them. No, not exactly. No. No. No, they didn’t confiscate it. Yes. Yes. Well, maybe. Yeah, probably. You will? Great. Come on over to my place, then."

She hung up and looked at us with a broad grin. "He’ll do it. He’s going to ask Jim and Bev, they’re the ones that own the place, it it’s all right with them. But he’s pretty sure it will be."

"Great!" I shouted, and Elissa’s face relaxed immediately. It’s astounding how stressful it is to not know where you’re going to sleep. It’s a hard feeling to get used to. When I’m just living on the street, every day I first figure out where I’m going to stay the next night. Sometimes it’s a hassle. Sometimes it takes most of the day. But once it’s settled, then I can enjoy the rest of the day. Food is easier to find and less stressful. I can always find something to eat. But sleeping under a bush or on a fire escape is a miserable way to spend the night. And you’re completely vulnerable to anybody who stumbles on you.

We rapped for a while, then there was a knock at the door. There was a momentary panic while we whisked the paraphernalia out of sight and got ourselves together, then Sammy went to the door.

"Who is it?" she asked. "Joe," came the welcome reply, and she admitted a tall, chubby guy about nineteen or twenty. He had an open, friendly face and he looked us over curiously as we were introduced.

We sat and talked and told him our story. I brought out the pipe again and filled it with my best Afghani hashish. There’s a time to pull out all the stops to make a favorable impression. The hash worked with its wonted efficiency and soon we were all giggling together like old friends. We asked him about the house where he lived.

"Oh, it’s great," Joe said. "It’s this normal-looking house in the suburbs where a young married couple just turned on and dropped out. They still work and stuff, but they let all these other freaks live in their house and they get high a lot. They’re really cool."

"How many people live there?" Elissa asked.

"Well, there’s Jim and Bev and their baby, and Martha, and Sue, and me, sometimes. I still live at home sometimes, but I go over there whenever I can. There’s always something happening."

"And you think Jim and Bev would let us stay there a while?"

"Sure, I think so. Shit, man. You bring hash like this, they might let you sleep in their bed."

"Okay," I said. "Let’s go see them. You got a car?"

"Yeah, are you ready?"

"It’ll just take a few minutes," said Elissa. She went to get her stuff together. Sammy lugged out my ratty old army duffel bag. It was like seeing an old friend. And I could change clothes for the first time in about ten days. Elissa brought out her little blue suitcase. She and Sammy hugged and we both thanked her for all her help.

"Bye, guys," she said. "Good luck. Bye, Joe."

We went out and squeezed into Joe’s VW bug. We rolled slowly through the empty streets of Fort Worth for what seemed like many miles, until the tall buildings were just a smudge of light on the horizon. Finally we turned onto McCart Street and rolled to a stop in front of a white frame house on a corner. It looked exactly like every other house in the neighborhood. It must have been two in the morning by then.

"This is it," said Joe. "Chez Carter, or That Damned Hippie House, depending on your point of view."

We hauled our stuff up onto the porch and Joe led us in without even knocking. We stepped into a little entryway. Through a doorway I could see a darkened living room. I expected June Cleaver to appear around a corner, crying, "Hippies! In my clean living room!"

Instead, there were four or five freaks, guys and chicks, lying around on the floor listening to music in near darkness. They ranged in appearance from only slightly bizarre to looking like narcs. They looked up at us in some surprise.

One guy got up to greet us. He was very tall and thin, with that straight-backed, long-necked, exceptionally clean look I associate with Mormons. He had blond hair cut short and an intelligent open face.

"Hey, Joe," he said.

"Hey, Jim. This is Brian and Elissa. They’re from Back East. Guys, this is Jim Carter. He owns this place."

"Hi, Jim," I said. On the way over I had been working on a speech to try to talk him into letting us stay there. It was full of pathos and human tragedy, playing us up like lost waifs thrown upon the strange shores of Fort Worth. But I was taken aback by how straight these people looked. And Joe said Jim owned the house. I’d never met a homeowner before. What were the chances these people would let a couple of unknown drifters into their home?

"Hi," said Jim. "You guys need a place to crash?"

Elissa suddenly laughed, and I realized how nervous she had been, too. Poor kid, she’d never lived on the street before. She must have been so scared all this time.

"Oh, do we ever, man," I said. "It would be so great if we could just stay here a few days. We don’t have any bread…"

Jim waved away my words. "Don’t need it here, man," he said. "This house is a port of refuge. You can stay here as long as you like."

I was literally overwhelmed. I had been in plenty of crash pads - usually ratty tenement apartments filled with smelly street people. I usually never even knew who paid the rent, if anybody. But this was completely different. These were people who really owned this house. This was their furniture, TV, knickknacks on the shelves. It took real conviction to open up their house like this to perfect strangers - and some courage. They didn’t know us at all. This was living the hippie creed to the max.

"Wow, that is so hip," I said sincerely. "Thanks, brother."

He brought us into the living room to meet the others. A tall, slim, pretty blonde woman got up.

"This is my wife Bev," said Jim. "This is Brian and Elissa. They’d like to stay here awhile."

Bev looked as straight and clean-cut as Jim did. She could’ve been any suburban housewife. From my limited experience with married couples, I immediately expected her to say, "What do you mean, they’re staying here?" I started a pre-emptive move.

"We’ll just be here a few days," I said hurriedly. "We’re on our way to California." I resisted the impulse to add, "Ma’am."

Her face lit up with a big smile. "Oh, that’s great! Come on in. Sit down. Is that all your shit? Just dump it beside the door till we figure out where everybody’s going to crash."

I relaxed immediately. This place was not what it appeared. I realized I had a prejudice to overcome. Just because they looked straight and talked with a soft Texan accent, these people were very cool. This may be the boondocks, but they weren’t just reading about the hippies in Life Magazine and putting on some beads. They believed in the lifestyle, and were living it.

We met their friends. Martha was a big tall heavy woman who looked a bit like Mama Cass. She had a big booming laugh and talked dirty for a girl. Then there were two guys sitting together. Rick looked like a Texas good ole boy. He was thin and rangy and had the lazy relaxed moves and lopsided grin of a cowboy. The other guy I couldn’t figure out. He was very small and dark, with a round head, horn-rimmed glasses, and one of those short chins and wide lip-less mouths like old toothless codgers get, so his mouth tended to disappear under his large nose. He was definitely an odd-looking guy. It was hard to guess his age, but he didn’t appear over twenty-five or so. He had odd, rather girlish mannerisms, too. His name was Ron, but was usually called Puss or PW, for no reason I could imagine.

They were all very nice and welcomed us to join them. They had obviously known each other a long time and had lots of little in-jokes and digs at each other. They seemed to all really like each other. They had a tiny baggie of dope and we passed around a bong.

Watching them, I recognized again how lonely it is on the road, always surrounded by strangers. Because I was never with people I knew, I always felt that I was on stage or something, like I had to act a part. I had eventually found a role I was comfortable with - I was the ultra-cool traveling dope dealer, full of wild stories of the street. People liked that stuff, enjoyed hearing my rap. I was welcome in a crash pad. But I was never in one place long enough to make friends. People drifted past, and I’d usually never know their last names. Watching these people laugh and talk, I envied them their closeness.

Elissa was generally quiet, but seemed to be enjoying herself. She sat next to me, holding my hand, and I think we were both just happy to be together and feel safe again. I’d been on the road a long time already and knew how to do it, but there’s always an element of fear out there. You’re totally vulnerable on the road, and you never know when you’re going to run across some psycho. Lots of people hated hippies on sight, especially here in the south. I’d be a perfect victim for some redneck sadist. There wasn’t a person in the world who knew where I was. I didn’t run scared all the time, of course, but the thought occurred. It must have been really scary for poor Elissa. She was just a kid, fresh out of her freshman year in college, and all this was completely new to her. Anyway, we stayed close and enjoyed the conversation.

They asked us how we came to be there, and we gave them a brief outline of The Story So Far. They seemed impressed by the recent bust. They asked us a lot about Sean and Chris and the trip in the ambulance. We regaled them with stories of the Elysian fields of peyote down in South Texas, and how unreachable they were. I waxed poetic about the joys of a peyote high, which none of them had ever done.

Then Jim announced that we had to put the bong away because he was about out of dope. There were groans all around. I glanced at Elissa with a grin.

"Anybody like to do some hash, then?" I asked innocently. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. One or two had tried hash before, but the others knew nothing about it. I went to my duffel bag and pulled out my old stash, an old Christmas cookie tin, and pulled off the lid. Everyone gathered around to peer inside. There were dozens of brightly-colored little plastic boxes inside, each containing a different drug. There were two pipes, a steamroller, and a small folding bong. The interstices were packed with small packages of cloth or aluminum foil, roach clips, and four different types of rolling papers. There was a collective gasp.

I extracted one bright red box and shook its contents into my palm - a ball of shiny black hashish as big as my thumb. "This is Afghani kif," I said, "scraped from the bodies of naked virgins after they run through the flowering fields." More exclamations of wonder. I was in my element. "Kif is made from marijuana, but much stronger, and the high is quite a bit different," I explain, as I extract my stiletto knife from my boot and shave off a sizable chunk. "It’s a brighter, sharper-edged high, sometimes with almost psychedelic visuals." I dropped the chunk into my carved wooden pipe.

"Afghani can be a little harsh," I continued, "so I like to mellow it with some Lebanese brown." I took out a smaller yellow box and shake out an irregular lump of what looks like light brown mud. I broke off a piece and crumbled it into the bowl, tamping it firmly with my chrome pipe tamper. I looked around at the others. They were staring silently, as if watching a religious ceremony. "Anybody like to try some?" I asked. That broke the spell, and we all gathered into a small circle for passing.

I lit off the pipe, took an immense hit, then passed it to Elissa. She grinned at me and did a good toke, then passed it on to Jim. That killed conversation for a while, as we were all flying in seconds. By the time the pipe completed its first round, no one was sitting up any more. It was some time before anyone spoke, and then it was Puss exclaiming in a reverent whisper, "Holy fucking shit."

I pushed myself back up into a sitting posture and pulled my stash toward me. "Yeah, not bad. How about some Vietnamese black, this time, just to take the edge off?" Elissa smiled at me from the corner. We were in.

Sometime around four or five in the morning, Jim and Bev retired to their bedroom, and soon after, the others left. Elissa and I cuddled into my ratty old single sleeping bag and did what we’d been wanting to all night. It was great to be together again. For the first time in months, we felt safe.

At seven I woke up enough to find Jim and Bev moving about. Jim was is a suit and tie and Bev looked great in a pastel suit. I realized with astonishment that they were off to work. Not only did they maintain this incredible hippie crash pad all night, but they also held down respectable jobs by day. My respect for them went up several more notches.

We woke up much later and had another nice slow one. Then we puttered about the house, cleaning up the mess and doing a pile of dirty dishes. It seemed the least we could do for the kindness they’d shown us. In the middle of the afternoon, Joe and Martha dropped by and we started up the bong again. At five, Jim and Bev got home, changed into civilian clothes, and the party started again in earnest. Three of four friends dropped in during the evening, and the party went late again.

After a week, I decided to see if I could find out what was going on with the bust. Using a pay phone, I called the Dallas cops and inquired about Sean and Chris and my guitar. They said that, under questioning, Sean had blown it by admitting that he knew the dope was in the guitar case, so they were definitely busted. After that, it didn’t matter where they got the stuff. So they weren’t looking for me. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do to help Sean and Chris. I asked the cops if my guitar case was evidence, and they said no, just the dope bag they’d taken out of it. I asked if I could have it back and they said sure, just come by and pick it up. They told me there was no warrant out for me. I wasn’t quite that trusting, but Joe volunteered to go down and get it, which he did with no hassle. So I even got my bass back.

By this time we’d become quite close with Jim and Bev. They were both great kind people, and very bright. We often had deep philosophical and political talks late into the night. Jim and I in particular seemed to think alike in many ways. I told Jim and Bev that I’d finished my business in Fort Worth and we were ready to move on, but they both asked us to stay on. We put the word out that we were looking for a ride to California, but we were in no particular hurry. Since we were broke anyway and didn’t know how we were going to continue to California, it was great to have a good place to stay. There was no discussion of how long we could stay.

So life continued in the incredible McCart Street crash pad. There was continuous partying, and on weekends there were often twenty or thirty people lying around getting high. Tarrant County Junior College (TCJC to the cognoscenti) was nearby, and a number of kids from the school spent their weekends at the Carter place. There was a constant coming and going of people, and all were fun to be around.

Elissa and I became sort of celebrities, mainly because we’d been outside of Texas. The others seemed to think we were pretty cool. I sometimes regaled the party with tales of dope deals on the Lower East Side or my adventures the summer before in fabled Haight-Ashbury. It came to seem sometimes that I was holding court, with a dozen or so starry-eyed hippies gathered around listening to my stories. I was becoming something of a local legend, and was enjoying the notoriety.

We got to know the regulars better; the ones we’d met that first night. Martha was very funny and loved to tell dirty jokes. Rick and Ron, it turned out, were gay lovers. They were completely open and blatant about it, which was shocking even to me (the gay movement had not begun to come out at that time), and absolutely mind-blowing in central Texas. We learned that Ron’s nickname Puss was short for Pussyface, for obvious reasons, and his classic Karmann Ghia was known to all as the Pussymobile. They seemed to be happy and in love and completely unashamed. They changed my attitude towards gays forever.

There was also a lot of straight sex going on. I was pretty sure some of the women in the family might be available, maybe even Bev, but I thought it best to ignore that. Some of the young Texas college girls that came by on weekends were really hot, though. There were a number of girls that I thought might be interested in me. Much as I liked Elissa, the first thoughts began to arise that she was keeping me from sampling a lot of other girls.

It was getting to be late March, and springtime had finally arrived in Texas. The last day of March was to be my twenty-first birthday, the day I was finally to become an adult. For a few days there had been talk of the whole family going out somewhere for a picnic to enjoy the spring weather. That day was a Sunday, and it dawned warm and bright and perfect. It was the first really warm day after a long cold winter. We decided to go to the city Botanical Gardens, have a picnic, and celebrate my coming of age. We packed food, Frisbees, bubble wands, streamers, and blankets into several cars, smoked a huge amount of dope to tide us over for a few hours, and headed for the park.

This was quite an outing for the family. Texas was not accepting of hippies and there was a lot of fear and hostility. We were all accustomed to getting hostile stares and shouted comments when we went out. Because of that, most of the family members didn’t look all that different from straight folks, but it didn’t take much hair to make a guy stand out in Texas in those days. Rick and Ron would have stood out anywhere; and my headband and hair down past my shoulder blades was a positive affront to Texan patriotism and manhood. So we had kept our lifestyle pretty much out of sight all winter. But today was just too pretty to stay indoors.

We knew we weren’t the only hippies in Fort Worth. Occasionally one of us would spot another longhair around town and we’d flash the peace sign to each other. We figured there must be another family hiding out somewhere. But we were totally unprepared for the scene in the park.

I guess everybody else had the same idea, because the park was jammed with people. And not just rednecks - there were literally hundreds of hippies out enjoying the sunshine, and if I was any judge of a high, we weren’t the only ones stoned out. In a more enlightened city the air would be blue with smoke, but not in Fort Worth in 1968. Like us, everyone had lifted off at home, then come out to the park. There were people playing guitars, people drumming, pretty girls dancing, people playing Frisbee, and just lying in the grass enjoying the day. It was a beautiful park, with pools and fountains and little shady dells. A few people were wading in the pools, laughing and splashing each other. It was a beautiful sight. I liked to think the entire hippie population of Fort Worth had turned out to help me celebrate my birthday. We were astonished to see so many hippies, and everybody else seemed to be just as surprised.

The authorities certainly were surprised. I don’t know how it started. Perhaps some outraged citizens called the cops; maybe the park police thought we were a demonstration or a riot or something and called for reinforcements; maybe the mayor looked out his window and thought they were being invaded. But Fort Worth was clearly not ready for hippies in their park.

Suddenly there were cops everywhere. Eight or ten cars pulled up all around the park and guys in suits and uniforms came running across the grass toward us. A black-and-white came roaring right up the sidewalk, lights flashing and siren ripping the quiet summer air. Six cops jumped out and leaped on the nearest people, wrestling them to the ground and screaming in their faces. Girls started screaming. I could hear shouts and curses. People started running in every direction.

I was sitting in the shade under a big tree with a half dozen of the family. I had been in enough busts and police actions to know it was time to get the hell out of there. "Everybody split up!" I hissed. "Get away from each other. Walk away - don’t run, that can draw a shot in the back." Elissa looked at me in alarm. "Go on, babe. Try to get back to the house." I immediately got up and started walking quickly away from the center of the fracas. Don’t look around; don’t draw attention; make no threatening gestures. I reached the edge of the park and blended into the crowd watching the cops slamming people around. I gently sidled toward the back of the crowd, thinking to slink quietly away.

I hadn’t gone fifty feet when four cops ran straight up to me, pushing the crowd roughly aside. "There’s one!" shouted one red-faced, beefy cop. "Get ‘im!" yelled another. I didn’t know why I was so popular, but I knew better than to resist. I stopped and turned to face them, my hands open and out. Two of them grabbed my hands and twisted them behind my back, doubling me over onto my knees and pressing my head to the ground. "Gotcha, you sumbitch," one of them shouted in my ear.

One cop held me like that while another frisked me. He pulled out the long narrow folding knife I always carried. "Whew, look at this, Leroy," he said, opening it and waving it around. "This boy’s carrying a concealed weapon. Hang onto him." Then he and the other cops ran off to beat up somebody else.

My hair had come loose and was covering my face, but I could see that I was in the middle of a crowd of people, all staring at me in fear and wonder. "What’s going on?" somebody said. "Why are they doing that?" asked somebody else. "Who is that guy?" "What did that man do, Mommy?"

I just held still and waited to see what would happen next. The cop holding me had a gun and a big heavy wooden nightstick and I was in no hurry to get acquainted with either one. I didn’t know what they could charge me with. I didn’t think the knife was illegal. We’d all been very careful to not be holding any dope, knowing we were going out in public. I hoped that I’d be let go with a warning to get the hell out of Texas. Right then, I was more than willing to do just that.

It didn’t take long for all the running and shouting to settle down. Then the cop holding me pulled me to my feet and pushed me along the street that ran beside the park. I could see five or six others being led the same direction. Considering there must have been a hundred or more of us in the park, it didn’t seem like a big haul of prisoners. As they brought us together, though, and we looked at each other, I realized what the scene was. I didn’t know any of them, but we were all guys, and we all had long hair. They didn’t want to catch everybody, just the "ringleaders." And obviously, the guys with the longest hair must be the leaders. Real native-born Texas boys would never wear their hair like a girl’s, so we must be Yankee commie agitators, sent down here to turn their boys into pinkos and pollute their womenfolk. They loaded us into a paddy wagon and took us off to jail.

This was already my third bust, so I was beginning to know the routine. We were booked, printed, and photographed, then dumped into a holding tank with a bunch of winos and petty crooks. After a while, they took us out one by one for questioning. I was shown into an examining room, where a guy in a suit was waiting for me behind a table. He waved me to a metal chair across from him.

He asked me my name, which I told him. I had no intention of leading him to the family, so I said I had no address. I said I was a college kid traveling across Texas and just passing through Fort Worth. I was tired and went to the park to rest. I had no idea what all those other people were doing there; I didn’t know anyone there; I didn’t know why I was in jail. "It’s not illegal to go to a park in this town, is it?"

"It may be for you, kid," he said.

"What are the charges?"

"Carrying a concealed weapon, for one. That switchblade you got."

"Come on. It’s a penknife. It’s legal if it’s less than 5 ½ inches, and mine’s five inches. It was a gift from my Dad." This wasn’t true, of course, but I wanted him to know I had a dad. People with no connections can wind up missing.

"We got you for loitering, too."

"Loitering? Come on, it’s a public park. You’re supposed to loiter there. That’s why they build parks."

"And vagrancy."

"Vagrancy? What the hell is that? I’m a tourist. What makes me a vagrant?"

"You had less than ten dollars on you when we picked you up."

"So what?"

"Under the civil code, anybody with less than ten dollars is by definition a vagrant. That’s thirty days."

"Bull. I just lost my wallet."

"Tell it to the judge, kid." He called for the guard and I was led back to the tank.

Now I was depressed. Here it was, my twenty-first birthday, and I was back in jail. I figured the weapons charge and the loitering were bullshit, but I didn’t know about the vagrancy. If it really was illegal to have less than ten dollars, I was guilty. And I couldn’t think of a damn thing to do about it. I sure couldn’t afford a lawyer, and nobody even knew where I was. I assumed I would eventually be allowed a phone call, and I was steeling myself to have to call my parents. They’d think I was calling because it was my birthday and would be pleased to take the call. Then I’d have to tell them I was in jail again. And how long would I have to stay here? There’d be a wait for an indictment, then a wait for a trial, and then thirty days in jail. What a crock. I sank into a deep depression. How could a day that started so beautifully end up so shitty?

Late that afternoon, a guard came to the door and called my name. I got up and went to the door.

"Yeah?"

"Grab your shit, kid. You’re outa here."

"What? How come?"

"You met bail."

"Can’t be. Nobody even knows I’m here."

"So you staying in?"

"No, no, I’m with you, man." He unlocked the door and led me down a long green corridor. I kept trying to think what all this meant. All I could think was that there had been a screw-up and they’d gotten the names wrong. The only person who knew me was Elissa, and she didn’t have a dime. At the end of the corridor I waited in a room with a bunch of other guys while a clerk handed out people’s belongings. When my turn came I went up to the counter and was handed a plastic baggie with my headband, belt, and knife. I took it and was shown to a door. When I went through it, there was Jim Carter waiting for me.

"Jim! What the hell are you doing here?"

He grinned at me. "I bailed you out, man."

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, some drifter he didn’t know at all. He’d let me stay in his place, fed me, and now he was risking his neck and a bunch of money to bail me out of jail?

"You did?" I stammered. "What the hell for?"

"Couldn’t let you spend your birthday in jail, could I?"

He told me the bail was two hundred dollars. I was overwhelmed. I thanked him over and over, totally knocked out by his kindness and trust. I swore I wouldn’t let him lose his bail money.

"I know you wouldn’t," he said. "Come on, let’s get out of this dump."

We went out to his car and headed for home. He told me that nobody else in the family had had any trouble. They did what I said and scattered, then met back at the car. I asked if they saw me getting popped.

"Sure, man. Everybody did. Didn’t you see the TV camera?"

"No, I kind of had my head on the cement. What camera?"

"A local station had a crew there, right next to where they grabbed you. They had the camera right on you when they were busting you. It was cool."

"Yeah, it was great. My fifteen seconds of fame."

"No, really, it was pretty neat." Jim was excited; he thought it all very exciting. "Everybody was all outraged, even the straights. They were all asking what you had done."

"I was wondering that myself," I said. "They charged me with a concealed weapon, vagrancy, and loitering."

"That’s all bullshit," said Jim. "They’ll never make any of that stick."

"Man, you’re driving fast, Jim," I observed. "Take it easy, let’s not get busted again."

"Hey, I want to get home before the evening news. You’ll be on it for sure, and it’s just a few minutes before six."

I settled back. Now that I was out, I was feeling a lot better. And Jim’s incredibly generous gesture really touched me. I wasn’t alone after all; I had friends. And the idea of being on the news started to appeal. I wanted to see what the bust looked like.

We screeched into Jim’s driveway and ran into the house. It was full of people - all the usual suspects, plus ten or fifteen of the weekend hangers-on. They were all gathered around the television. Bev was passing around popcorn. They all jumped up when we came in. Elissa squealed and threw her arms around me. There was a huge commotion as people congratulated me and slapped me on the back and shook my hand. It made me feel great. From feeling very scared and alone, I was back in the bosom of family. Suddenly Joe was shouting for everybody to shut up. "Shut up, god damn it, the news is coming on!"

We all quieted down and sat down to watch. There was a shot of the White House behind him, flags snapping in the cold Washington wind. The news guy came on, hair and tan perfect. He looked very serious.

"Today is Sunday, March 31, 1968. Today, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he will not seek re-election. He will retire at the end of his term in January."

"Hot damn!" somebody yelled. "He’s quitting, can you believe that?" Everybody was talking at once. We were all thrilled and excited. For years now Johnson had represented the enemy, the main driving force keeping us in the war in Vietnam. He’s escalated the war, started carpet bombing of Hanoi. He’d directed the police to stop the unrest in the streets, instigating countless police beatings of blacks and hippies. He was the leader of the forces opposed to the hippie movement. And he was giving up. It was completely unexpected news, and very welcome. We were winning. The people were finally winning.

There was the usual war story, footage of guys in camouflage creeping through the jungle, helicopters firing rockets, exploding balls of napalm. The usual unbelievable body counts: twenty-five Americans killed, five hundred Viet Cong.

There was so much talk going on about Johnson that we almost missed my story. But then it went to local news. There was a shot of people running in the park. "There was a demonstration today in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. Young hooligans disrupted a quiet Sunday in the park, frightening local families." There were shots of a couple dancing in a fountain, obviously terrorizing citizens. "Police made a number of arrests." Then there was a shot of a young guy with no shirt and long greasy brown hair being wrestled to the ground by three cops. The crowd around me yelped in delight, and I realized it was me. The camera moved in close as they frisked me. When they opened the knife and held it up, the camera made a long slow pan all the way down the blade and back up, as if it were a saber or something. It was so silly we all broke up laughing. Then there was a shot of me being hustled into the back of a paddy wagon with the other unlucky ones, and the wagon pulling away, leaving the city once more safe for law-abiding citizens.

When it was over, there was cheering and whistling. They seemed to think I had done a fine job of portraying the poor innocent hippie being savagely abused by the pigs. It certainly added to my fame, and I was starting to enjoy it. My birthday turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

One thing the bust changed was that we were stuck in Fort Worth while the wheels of justice slowly turned. We had several discussions about what I should do. Then Bev suggested I contact the American Civil Liberties Union. I didn’t think they’d be interested in my case; they mostly defended Communists and Nazis and other downtrodden masses, big high-profile cases involving major ethical issues. Mine was just an ordinary bust. But Joe and Jim agreed it was worth a try, and the next day Jim called them. It turned out they were very interested. They asked me to come down to their offices to talk it over.

When I met the ACLU attorney, he was very nice. He agreed the weapons charge and the loitering charge were nonsense and would be dropped. But he was very interested in the vagrancy charge. It turned out that the ACLU had been looking for a good clean vagrancy case for a long time. The vagrancy statutes are nothing more or less than a law against being poor, which is clearly unconstitutional. But a hell of a lot of people were doing time just for being short of cash. Lots of jurisdictions had such laws, mostly just as a means of locking up people they didn’t like and getting them off their streets. Most often the charges were never pursued. The cops would tell the guy there’re letting him go this time, but he’d better beat it out of town or they’d run him in for good. Most people would leave town, so relatively few vagrancy cases ever actually came to court. Those that did were often combined with other charges, like public drunkenness, urinating in public, shoplifting, or some other misdemeanor. What the ACLU wanted was a straightforward case, where the accused was clearly guilty of nothing more than being broke. I seemed to fit the bill. The case already had some visibility from the news story. The TV coverage clearly showed that I wasn’t doing anything and wasn’t resisting arrest. The lawyer asked me to describe everything that happened that day at the park.

When he’d heard my account of the arrest, the ACLU attorney was positively salivating. "Mr. Crawford," he said. "The ACLU will be happy to take your case, pro bono, meaning at no charge to you." Ecstatic and relieved, I started to thank him profusely, but he interrupted me. "But you should understand one thing. We are hoping you will be convicted."

My grin collapsed. "What? You want to lose the case?"

"Yes. You see, if they drop the charges, the case is over and the statute will remain in place for use against others. But if you’re convicted, we would appeal the case. What we’re hoping is that you will lose again and again and the case will move up through the courts and end up in the Supreme Court. That’s where we think we can win, where the statute comes up against the constitution. We’ve already had people working on a defense for the Supreme Court. If we win there, vagrancy statutes will be declared unconstitutional, and every single one will have to be stricken from the books, all over the country. Never again will it be possible to jail people just for being poor."

"Wow," I murmured. "It would be like the Crawford Decision."

"Exactly. You would be instrumental in getting vagrancy laws thrown out forever."

"That would be great."

"You must understand that it could take a long time; perhaps years. And until then you would be convicted. You might have to spend more time in jail, though the ACLU would provide bail, of course."

"Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean. So I’d have to hang around and be ready to go to court all those times."

"Yes. It would require a real commitment on your part. The prosecutors would no doubt offer you deals, to drop the charges, clear your record. We would want you to reject the deals and take the sentence so we could appeal again. Are you willing to do that?"

I thought about it a long time. That was a lot more time and commitment than I’d given anything in years. But then I thought of the cops breaking up that beautiful day in the park, scaring people and roughing up kids for no reason at all. It was wrong, and it should be stopped. Maybe I was just the guy to do it. What the hell, it wasn’t like my schedule was full or anything. I looked at the lawyer. "Sure, yeah, I’ll do it."

He looked really pleased. "Wonderful. I’ll have some papers for you to sign, authorizing the ACLU to represent you. Your indictment has been set for May 15^th."

"Jesus, that’s a long time away."

"Yes. As I said, it’s a slow process. They’re no doubt hoping you plead guilty, pay the fine, and get out of town."

"Not me," I said. "I’m going for the Crawford Decision."

When I got back to the house, I explained the whole situation to the family. They were as excited as I was. "Oh, man," said Joe. "Wouldn’t you love to see the cops have to eat their words and let everybody go they have locked up for vagrancy?"

"That would be so cool," said Jim.

"But that means we have to stay here a lot longer, right?" asked Elissa. She was still hot to get out to California. But I was having fun in Fort Worth and was no longer in a hurry to go.

Life continued in the same vein for the next month, with smoking and partying day and night and full-on heavy duty partying every weekend. Jim and I were often the last ones still awake in the wee hours, talking about everything from politics to religion to metaphysics to astronomy. Jim liked to hear my stories of the exotic drugs I’d encountered. About the only thing they ever got in Fort Worth was a fairly weak local grass known as Waxahachie Green. My stash of exotics was running low and I was saving it for special occasions. We’d done some speed and acid, but I was nearly out of that, too.

Jim kept asking me about the peyote fields down in Roma where I’d been busted. We talked again and again about what a shame it was that the fields were right along the Rio Grande, right under the noses of the Border Patrol.

"We did a couple of things wrong," I said. "First, we were very conspicuous. A whole bunch of hippies in a red Cadillac ambulance aren’t going to go unnoticed in South Texas. Second, we went into Roma to have dinner the night before the raid. That was really dumb. Third, we spent the night in the car out near the fields, increasing the chances of being spotted. And fourth, we were too greedy. Mike and I had two sleeping bags stuffed full of buttons in the first hour. I don’t know how many buttons that is, but a couple thousand for sure. At five bucks a button, that’s ten grand. If we had just quit then and laid low under a bush until after dark, we’d never have been spotted."

"So it seems to me," said Jim thoughtfully, "that a couple of enterprising guys could drive down there unobtrusively, arrive in the middle of the night, pick a few thousand buttons as soon as it was light enough to see, and be gone soon after daylight."

"Hell, yes," I agreed, "I know it would work."

"Let’s do it," he said. "It’s Saturday morning. We could go down there today, pick tonight, and be back by noon tomorrow."

I went cold. So far it had all been theoretical. But now Jim was talking about really going back to that same town where the cops had promised to kill me if they ever saw me again. If they got their hands on me again, I knew it wouldn’t be a week in a nice pleasant jail. I couldn’t play the innocent college kid or pretend I didn’t know what I was getting into. They’d either kill me on the spot, or send me to Parchman Farm, infamous Texas State Penitentiary, for a long, long time.

I’d been in plenty of risky situations before, but always sort of playing against the fairly slight odds of getting caught. Never had I done anything so completely and obviously dangerous, even demonstrably foolish. But if it worked, Jim and I could split ten grand for a few hours of being scared shitless. Working out the numbers, I figured that five thousand dollars would bring my life savings up to just about exactly five thousand dollars. What a difference that would make. I could buy a car instead of having to hitchhike everywhere. I could buy good expensive drugs.

But I think what decided me was the thought of actually getting my hands on enough peyote to be able to take as much as I wanted. Peyote always gave me the feeling that I was on the edge of some kind of breakthrough, some curtain through which I could just sense some other world. If I had enough, I could do it every day for a while; really see where the trip would take me; maybe pass through that curtain.

"Yeah, okay," I said. Jim grinned, but I could tell he was scared, too.

The first thing to do was to clean me up a bit. Jim already looked like your normal white-collar Texas guy. I couldn’t quite go that route, but we thought I might be able to pass for a cowboy. We pulled my hair up on the top of my head and Bev shaved my hair up from my neck and ears. When I put on an old cowboy hat Joe found, I looked like a scruffy, bearded ranch hand. As long as I kept the hat on, that is.

Jim had a little red sports car, the first Datsun I had ever seen. With its twin seats and a tiny streamlined body with racing stripes, it looked like anything but a smuggler’s vehicle. The down side was that the trunk was tiny. It wouldn’t hold much more than a small gym bag. Jim and Bev had a big steamer trunk in the attic of the garage. We lugged it down and cleaned it up so it looked respectable. We found some good strong straps and lashed it down tight on the luggage rack on the trunk lid. In the end it looked like the car in the Route 66 TV show. We decided that was a good look. If stopped, Jim could say he was off on a short vacation to Mexico. Since we didn’t match, we could say I was a hitchhiker he’d picked up, on my way to the Rio Grande valley to look for work on a ranch. It just might work.

"It would not work!" said Elissa as soon as she heard of the plan. "Are you crazy, Brian? I can’t believe you’re even considering going back down there. Do you remember that night out in the desert; the guys with guns and sticks? They told us they’d kill us if they ever saw us again. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that!"

I knew she was being sensible, but I was in no mood to be sensible. Sometimes I get these things rolling and I just want to see where they go, even though I’m perfectly aware it’s not a good idea. Elissa was terrified by the very idea of going back to the river, and she begged and pleaded with me not to go. A funny thing happened to me. Even though I knew she was right and I shouldn’t go, I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted to go down there, get it done, and be done with it. I think was part of it was to face my fear, to purge that pure, raw, loose-boweled terror I’d felt that night. Those guys had threatened and ogled and terrorized Elissa, too, and I’d been helpless to protect her. I had enough testosterone in me to resent being humiliated like that, and this was a way of sticking it back in their faces. If I went back down there after all their threats and pulled it off, I’d be showing myself, at least, that they hadn’t beaten me.

Elissa, of course, didn’t understand any of that and thought I was just being stupid. She shouted and nagged at me for hours and I became angry and resentful. Finally I told her that I was going anyway. I think we both knew that something had broken between us.

Jim and I took off a few hours later. We had a great drive down, driving fast, smoking dope and talking and listening to country music on the radio. I told Jim that we’d heard a legend that the Navajo always eat the first button they find right away. To skip the ritual invites bad luck. Perhaps that’s why Mike and I had been busted. Jim thought that sounded like a bullshit superstition.

I’d thought to look for the overpass where I’d almost frozen to death, but realized later that I hadn’t even noticed it. I guess we were talking. It was just another invisible overpass like a thousand others.

We got down into Starr County on schedule just after dark. We kept well away from the town and any lights. We found a roadside pullout and parked the car. We wrapped up in sleeping bags and dozed off and on. At three AM we pulled out and continued towards Roma. I pointed out the dirt road, but we drove on by, went another mile, and pulled over and stopped the engine. Not a light; not a sound. Leaving the lights off, Jim swung around and we went back to the dirt road. There was a half moon out, so it wasn’t completely dark. Jim drove slowly because the road was bad and the car was not built for off-road travel. We bounced and jounced along, occasionally scraping the muffler, until we came to the little wooden gate I remembered. Jim pulled the car around behind a big juniper bush. I put a couple of tumbleweeds in front of it, and it was nearly invisible.

Grabbing the stack of old pillowcases we’d brought for bags, we climbed over the gate and started up the hill beyond. My ears were straining to catch any sound. I knew the Border Patrol must be out here somewhere, but I guessed they’d be down closer to the river, where the hills fall away to the valley. They’d be able to look down and see anybody crossing the river. Mike and I had first been spotted by a plane, and they could only do that in daylight. By that time, Jim and I planned to be long gone.

We climbed the first two ridges, and I pointed out the row of skeletal power lines marching over the next hill. Jim nodded. We hadn’t spoken since we left the car, and I wondered what he was feeling. This was all new to him, and I was impressed that he’d come this far. He had courage, that was sure.

When we reached the bottom of the next valley, we left the dirt road and moved slowly through the sparse chaparral, bending low to peer under the larger bushes. Then I spotted my first button, lying right there in the moonlight. I caught Jim’s arm and pointed. He squatted down to peer closely at it. He’d never seen peyote. It was a nice fat one, three or four inches across. I took out my knife and laid it flat on the ground next to the button, then sliced it off right at ground level. I picked it up and cored out the prickles from the middle and shaved off the little tufts of tiny thorns that dotted its surface. I rinsed off the last hairs with a splash from my water bottle. We looked at each other, and Jim nodded. I sliced it into four quarters and handed two to Jim. I popped one in my mouth and started to chew. Jim examined his for a moment, then followed suit.

It really is astounding how unbelievably bad peyote tastes. Every time I brace myself for the taste, and every time I’m surprised. I chewed it to a pulp and swallowed it with some difficulty. I looked over at Jim, squatting on his haunches under the bush. He had a rather stricken look on his face, but he was chewing gamely. When he saw me swallow, he did the same.

"Shit," he whispered.

"Much like it, yes," I agreed, popping the other quarter into my mouth.

When we had finished the button and washed the taste from our mouths, we spread out and started duck walking up the hill. Soon there were more buttons, then more, until we were almost walking on a pavement of buttons. Occasionally I heard a breathed "Wow!" from Jim when he came upon a particularly big one. In twenty minutes we had filled out first pillowcases. We tied them closed and stashed them under a bush, then started on the next. By the end of an hour, we had each filled three. I stood up to stretch my legs. Looking around, I realized I could see much farther that when we’d started.

"It’s starting to get light," I whispered. "Want to try for some more?"

"No, let’s not get stupid. We’ve got a shit load already."

"Right, let’s get the fuck out of here." We tied up the bags and started back. By the time we got back to the car we each had heavy loads on our backs and it was definitely getting lighter. We opened the trunk and stuffed in the full pillowcases. We had to mash them in to get the trunk latched again. We double-checked the lashing on the trunk, then I hauled the tumbleweeds aside while Jim started the car. I jumped in and we started rolling quietly back down the hill.

With the car loaded, it scraped its bottom more, and we both winced at the noise every time it happened. I had images of us getting high-centered on one of these ruts and getting stuck. But we reached the highway without incident. I got out and peered up and down the road, then signaled to Jim and he pulled out onto the pavement. I hopped in, and we were off, heading north. After a half mile, Jim flipped on the lights and floored it.

I looked over at him. His face, lit from below by the dash lights, was shiny with sweat. His eyes were wild and his hair was blowing in the warm night wind. He looked over at me and grinned. I realized he was loving every minute of the adventure. Suddenly I was too. I also realized for the first time that we were totally ripped on the peyote. Nothing like getting it fresh.

Now all we had to worry about was the occasional Border Patrol checkpoints. It’s hard to get out of the Rio Grande Valley without going through one, but they’re only looking for illegal immigrants, and we didn’t think they’d make us open the trunk. It was clearly too small to hide anybody in.

As it turned out, we didn’t hit any checkpoints. We sailed back at about ninety-five miles an hour, whizzing across the flat Texas plains as fast as we could go. In late afternoon, we pulled into the driveway on McCart Street. The family poured out of the house to greet us. Elissa came out and hugged me and told me how glad she was to see me alive. It took three of us to carry the trunk into the kitchen. We set it on the floor and threw back the lid. A rank and indescribable odor emerged. The pillowcases were soaked through with dark green juice. We dumped them out on the kitchen table. The buttons bumped and rolled across the cracked Formica. A dozen or so rolled off the edge and landed soggily on the floor. With the last bag emptied, we could see that we had one hell of a lot of buttons. The pile covered the entire table and rose to a peak at least eighteen inches high. We all sat and stared at it in wonder.

"That, my friends," said Joe, "is one fuck of a lot of peyote."

We cleaned a few dozen buttons and passed them out. Not to be left behind, Jim and I each ate another. Soon everybody looked a little green. There were the usual comments about the taste and texture. When fresh, they’re about like boiled potatoes - firm, but easily bitten or mashed, and slightly greasy, about the color of a dark avocado. A few hours after being cut, however, they start to soften up and they get a little slimy, like okra. After two or three days they become wet and flaccid, like a rotten potato, and turn a bilious green somewhere between army green and stewed-pea green. They ooze and get covered in something very like snot. At no time do they taste good, but when they’re going off they do not improve.

But for now they were as appetizing as they were going to get, so we dug into them with a will. There were twenty or thirty people tripping non-stop the rest of that day, all night, and the whole next day. I was finally able to really take all I wanted and could handle, and I had an absolutely great time.

By Sunday night, a few of us were seated again around the kitchen table, staring rather blearily at a pile of peyote that was but little diminished, and obviously heading south fast. It was clear there was no way we could possibly eat even a major portion of them before they were rotten and inedible. It seemed a terrible waste. We could put a few handfuls in the freezer, but we didn’t know if they’d be edible when thawed. Someone suggested canning them in mason jars, but Bev said they were already too far gone and it would be an immense amount of work.

"How about cooking them?" Joe suggested. "We could make a stew or something."

"Ew," said Elissa, "peyote stew? Yuk."

"We could cook it down into a smaller quantity and bottle it," Jim offered.

"That might work," I said. "Maybe it would be like a milk shake."

"You know," said Joe, "that’s not a bad idea. If it were concentrated, we wouldn’t have to eat so much of it. And I think it would be easier to drink it than to chew up those slimy buttons."

"Yeah," said several people. "You could just hold your nose and gulp down a big mug of it. Touching them and smelling them is the worst."

"If we really boiled it down," said Bev, "we could make it really concentrated so you’d only have to drink a little bit."

"Hey, that would be great," I enthused. "That would be easy. Maybe we wouldn’t even get sick. But how could we cook it down that much? With this much you’d have to boil it for days."

"How about a pressure cooker?" asked Jim.

"It’d have to be a big one," said Elissa, or we’d be cooking five hundred batches."

Joe snapped his fingers. "I know a guy who works in a restaurant. I bet he could borrow one of those big industrial cookers. That wouldn’t take so long."

"Wow, do you think we could get one?" asked Bev.

"I can ask." He went to the phone and called a guy. When he returned a few minutes later, he was smiling. "He said they have a couple of cookers and there’s one they haven’t used in months. It’s old, but he says it stills works."

"Can he get it for us?"

"Yeah. He’s going to liberate it after his shift tonight and bring it over tomorrow."

"Outasight, Joe," we all exclaimed. "Way to go, brother!"

We passed a number or two to ease the coming own off the trip. People started to fade toward bed, and for once I wasn’t one of the last to crash. It had been a big weekend.

Joe’s friend brought the pressure cooker over in the morning. It was a big heavy cast iron thing with a massive two-handled lid with a huge pressure gauge and relief valve sticking up from the top. He said to fill it up with whatever we wanted to cook, cover it with water, and keep it over a steady fire for as long as necessary. Since we didn’t mention what we were cooking, we didn’t have any way of guessing how long it was going to take. We rinsed it out with boiling water and got started right away. Three of us sat around the table, taking a button, coring it, shaving the stickers off, rinsing it in cold water, and cutting it into bite-size chunks. When we filled a big mixing bowl, we dumped it into the pot. Since we were starting with the rottenest buttons first, it was not a pleasant job. Soon we were covered with the viscous green gunk and the kitchen was slippery with it. Finally the pot was full. We’d used maybe half of the peyote. We covered the buttons with boiling water, two or three gallons at least, then put the lid on and sealed it down. We put it on the stove and turned the burners up to full. Then we cleaned up the mess we’d made and took showers.

We cooked the pot the rest of that day. There were interminable debates about how long we should cook it. After a few hours, some of us wanted to open it up and take a look; others didn’t want to waste the heat and pressure we already had. When Jim and Bev got home from work, they commented on how rank the kitchen smelled. With the pile of buttons reeking in a garbage can and the steam from the cooker, it was like living inside a peyote button. We ate some more buttons and tripped most of the night away.

Sometime during the night we couldn’t stand it anymore and turned the burner off. We waited a little while, then released the pressure. A huge blast of rancid-smelling steam blasted out, causing quite a barrage of complaints. Then two guys held the pot with towels while two of us took off the lid and set it aside. We all peered in. The quantity was considerably reduced. The pot was less than half full of a thick green soup, rather like split pea. I got a slotted spoon and lifted out some buttons. They were shrunken, half-digested lumps, and pure white. We rinsed one off, let it cool, and then examined it. It was hard, like a raw potato. I sliced off a tiny slice and gingerly tasted it. Everyone watched me curiously.

"Doesn’t taste like anything," I shrugged. "Can’t even smell it."

"Hey, I bet that means we got everything out of it," said Joe. "We got all the color and smell out, so I guess we got all the mescaline out, too. It’s all in the stew. We peered out the soup with some respect.

"What now?" I asked.

"I think we should dip out the buttons and throw them away," said Bev. "Then cut up the rest and throw them in and cook it some more. That way all the goodies will be in the one batch."

"Yeah," I said. "We’ll cook them all up together and make one super-concentrated stew." We got to work and cleaned and cut up the rest of the buttons. They were still too many for the pot, so we filled it with water again, closed it up, and got it cooking again. Then we went to bed.

In the morning we woke to a terrible smell of peyote throughout the house. Everything seemed to be all right, but the smell from the steam was filling the house. We opened it up and threw in the remaining buttons, then started it up again. I slept most of the day, worn out from four trips in three days. In the late afternoon, the smell woke me up. I wandered out to the kitchen to check it out. The entire pot was black from staying on the burner for forty-eight hours. Steam was still hissing from the valve. I felt light-headed, whether from the tripping or the smell, I couldn’t tell.

Most of the others had gone out to get away from the smell. Elissa and I decided to take a walk as well. As we walked away from the house, Elissa sniffed the air.

"Is it just me, or can I still smell that shit?" she asked.

"I don’t know," I replied. "My nose is so full of peyote stink I can’t smell anything else."

We walked around a few blocks and soon felt much better. As we came down the alley behind the house, we looked at each other. There was no mistaking the rank jungle reek of peyote, thick in the air. Two neighbors were talking over the common fence.

"Well, I don’t know either, Marge," said one. "It’s like to drive Jim Bob crazy."

"Oh, I know," replied the other. "My Hal is down checking all the plumbing. He can’t tell where it’s coming from, either."

"I’ve called the city sanitation. They’re going to send a truck to investigate. I think it’s backed up somewhere."

They saw us walking by and gave us that fish-eyed stare all the locals had when trying not to see there were hippies in the neighborhood. We hurried home. Jim and Bev had just gotten home.

"Christ almighty," said Jim. "The whole neighborhood stinks! I could smell it in the car when I turned onto the street."

"It’s awful," said Bev, covering her nose with a dishtowel. She looked as the rest of us.

"Look, I think I’ve been pretty damn accommodating about this whole chemistry experiment. But I want my house back. We’ve got to get rid of that awful stuff."

"We just heard some of the neighbors talking," said Elissa. "They’ve called the sanitation department to come out and find where the smell’s coming from."

"That’s no good," I said. "What can we do?"

"Turn it off, for a start," said Bev, turning off the burner. "And open the windows. I’m getting a headache." We released the pressure, enduring one final blast of foul steam. We opened it up and let it cool a bit, then strained out the last of the buttons. We poured it out into a juice pitcher. It made about two quarts of a thick dark green juice. We hauled the remains out to the back yard and buried it, then cleaned up. We took the pot out to Joe’s car to return to his friend. It occurred to me that he might not be entirely pleased at the condition of the cooker. I resolved not to eat at his friend’s restaurant. Then we sat for a while staring at the pitcher of peyote juice.

"You know," I mused, "I figure there’s at least four hundred buttons that went into that pot, some of them really big. If all that mescaline is still in the juice, that’s four hundred pretty good trips, or a couple of hundred ripsnortin’ wallbangers."

"Yuh," Joe agreed. "That’s a lot of trips, even for this family."

"It’s also worth some money," I pointed out.

"How could we sell it now?" Joe replied. "Put it in coke bottles?"

"No, man. A whole trip’s worth is about a half a teaspoonful of the stuff. We’d have to sell it in little tiny bottles."

"Medicine droppers?" somebody suggested.

"I guess we could just let people take a swig."

"A very small swig. If you drank very much of this stuff, they’d never find where your head landed."

"The only way I could think of would be to give ‘em a straw," said Jim. "Let ‘em start to take a toke, then whip it out of their mouth."

We all laughed at the image. "It might work, though," I said.

"You might get punched out, too."

"So we invite four hundred heads over here to have a snort off my juice pitcher?" asked Bev. "I don’t think so."

"No, we should take it somewhere where there are lots of heads around," I said. "Then we could just hawk it on the street and get rid of it fast."

"Where could we do that?" asked Joe. "The Botanical Gardens again?"

"Perhaps not," I agreed. "Where is the nearest concentration of hippies? Someplace with a busy street scene."

"There’s quite a few hippies in Dallas, I guess," said Bev, "But there’s no street scene at all. It’s a few clubs is all."

"Houston is supposed to have a good scene," suggested Joe. "I heard that there’s lots of people that hang out someplace called Allen’s Landing."

"Yeah, that might work," I said. "How far is Houston?"

"Four or five hours south," said Jim.

"Up for another drive this weekend, brother?" I asked.

Jim smiled. "Sure, why not?"

The next day several of us tried a sip of the juice to see how it was. It tasted unbearably vile, but we took such tiny sips we could rinse it down immediately, so it was really pretty easy to get down. We waited an hour or two, trying to decide if we needed to take more. Then we decided we didn’t. Then we wondered if we’d taken too much. By the next morning we knew we had a truly great product. We kept a quart for ourselves and set the other jar aside for sale.

That Saturday morning Jim and Bev, Joe, Elissa, and I rode down to Houston in Joe’s old car. When we got there we asked around till we found Allen’s Landing. It was a newly redeveloped industrial area down by the Houston Ship Channel. We found a place to park a few blocks away around sunset. We had the juice in a glass one-quart orange juice bottle. We put a plastic straw in it. It was a little too long, but we just screwed on the top and bent the straw. I tucked the jar in the inner pocket of my pea jacket and we walked down to Allen’s Landing.

It was an interesting scene. It was no Haight-Ashbury, but there were a surprising number of freaks around. There were a number of bars and music clubs and open areas to hang out. There was music playing and lots of people strolling and shopping and sitting around. We strolled from one end of the street to the other, studying the crowds, the traffic flow, and the general ambience. I noticed two or three small but fairly obvious drug transactions, mostly in the shadows under the trees out in the park. Two or three guys passed us, mumbling the usual hippie street mantra: "Grass, speed, acid?" It seemed a pretty good place to try out our scheme. We sat on a park bench and watched the crowd for a while. Then I accosted a stoned-looking young kid in bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed tee shirt.

"Wanna do some peyote, brother?" I asked. He looked at me in surprise. He wore two strands of beads and had his hair brushed down to his eyebrows like John Sebastian. I guess he thought he looked pretty cool. He looked us over cautiously.

"Well, maybe, I guess. I never tried it."

"You’ve done acid?"

"Yeah?"

"It’s like that, only without that acid edge. No harsh colors; no speed nervousness. It’s one hundred percent organic, brother. All natural."

"Where’d you get it?"

"Never you mind, my curious friend. All you need to know is that it’s very, very good, and it will cost you a mere thin nickel."

"Only five bucks? For a peyote trip?" he exclaimed ingenuously, if unwisely. "Well, sure. Can I get two, so I can take it back to school? My roommate would love this."

"Ah, well, no. That wouldn’t work."

"Huh? Why not?"

This was the tricky part of my sales spiel. "Um, it doesn’t work as a takeout item. It’s in liquid form, you see. Strictly one per customer. It must be consumed on the premises."

"What? Liquid? I thought peyote was a cactus."

"It is. It was. But my associates and I have processed it; rendered it, so to speak, into a more convenient and palatable form. We distilled it down to its pure essence, so you receive all the potency and beneficial effects, without the less enjoyable aspects of eating the cactus."

"So I’d have to eat it…"

"Drink it."

"… whatever, right now?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"It’s a simple enough proposition. You give me five dollars. I have a bottle and a straw. You take a sip - a very small one. Very soon you feel very good."

He stared at me for a minute. "How long does it last?"

"Six, maybe eight hours."

"Wow. Well, okay." He took out five dollars and palmed it to me. At least he knew enough to not wave it around.

"Walk this way." I led him around behind a hedge where it was dark. I took out the bottle and opened it. The straw popped up.

"This juice is very concentrated," I warned him. "This jar contains around four hundred trips, so a little dab’ll do ya. Also, be ready. We’re still, ah, working on the taste."

"Okay." He reached for the jar. I pulled it back.

"No, I’ll hold it. You just take a sip."

"Shit. Okay." He leaned forward and took the straw in his mouth. I watched the liquid go up the straw. As soon as it passed his lips, I pulled the straw away.

"Hey, come on," he growled. "I hardly got any." Then a surprised look came over his face. "Jesus God. What is that shit?" He made a face like his shorts were too tight. "Christ, did you poison me?"

"Trust me, my friend," I said. "I’ll be around here all night. Your stomach may feel a bit unsettled in an hour or so, but ride with it. By nine o’clock you’ll be dancing with the angels."

"I don’t know," he said. "I didn’t get hardly any."

"Look. Come back here in three hours. If you want some more, I’ll be here."

"Well, okay, I guess." He wandered off and was soon lost in the crowd. I went back and sat down with the others.

"One down, three hundred and ninety-nine to go."

They complimented me on my sales style. I shrugged it off. "Just doing my job, ma’am. It’s all in a day’s work."

So that’s what we did for the next few hours. We took turns selling, and frequently moved to avoid drawing a crowd. Business was fairly steady, and the level of liquid gradually went down. We all had our pockets stuffed full of five dollar bills. By nine or ten the word had clearly gotten around because people started coming up to us asking for sips.

At one point a found myself in a circle of five or six fairly drunk college kids, all of them asking me dumb questions and spending too much time talking and not enough buying. I kept scanning the crowd around us, watching for any suspicious signs we were under surveillance. I noticed a kid with a huge grin on his face watching the operation. I recognized my first customer.

"Hey, bro," I called to him. "You’re back. You like another hit?"

The other kids turned to look at him. He grinned like the sun, a relaxed, mellow look on his face.

"Another hit?" he said, then started to laugh. "No. No, in fact I don’t think I’m going to need another hit for a good long time. Man, this is the best trip I ever had."

Perfect timing. "There you have it, folks," I said. "Another satisfied customer." I sold eight hits in one round.

And so it went, hour after hour. Soon it seemed that everybody I talked to was already tripping on our peyote. You could spot the ones who hadn’t come on yet. They were making faces and spitting and trying to get the taste out of their mouths. Many ordered cokes or something else to kill the taste. I’ll bet that was a great night for the soft drink vendors. They must have wondered what hit them.

The ones who had already come on were blissful. Looking out across the park, I could see dozens of small groups of people just sitting and looking around, looking up at the stars, or strolling beside the ship channel. All I could see were grins in the dark.

By two o’clock the crowd was thinning out and sales dropped off. We just had a few sips left, so we all topped off our highs and walked back to the car. It had been a memorable evening. I suspect it was long remembered by Houston, as well. Relaxed now, rich and happy, we started the long drive back to Fort Worth, and into drug legend.

Back home, we continued our routine of partying while we waited for my case to come up. Finally the date of my indictment arrived and I got as cleaned up as I could and went downtown to the courthouse. My attorneys were afraid they would throw in some extra charges, or worse yet, drop the vagrancy charge, but I was finally formally indicted on vagrancy and loitering, both misdemeanors punishable by up to thirty days in country jail. I entered a plea of not guilty. My bail was renewed, and I went home.

The peyote adventure had done nothing to lessen my fame in our circle of friends. More and more people kept coming over to the house to get stoned and try some of the famous peyote parfait. Lots of these new people were sexy young college girls from Tarrant County Junior College. I was particularly struck by one dark-haired cutie named Sukey, a name I had never encountered before except on mules.

One hot sunny day a bunch of us, stoned as usual, got out a ladder and climbed up on the roof of the house. The house was basically C-shaped with the open side toward the garage, so although the neighbors could see the ladder, once on the roof we were completely unseen. The house was in the middle of a huge tract of similar one-story houses, so no one could look down at us. The only thing visible from the roof was an immense high-tension tower next door, known to the family as the Flower Power Power Tower.

So we climbed up on the roof to smoke and sunbathe. Some of the girls took their tops off, including Sukey, which really turned me on. Several of us took everything off and spent the afternoon dozing and smoking and having a great time. I was fascinated by Sukey’s nude body, and developed a strong desire for her. Having Elissa just downstairs frustrated me. As open and free as sex was at the house, it would not do to fuck Sukey with Elissa right there. My frustration triggered a mean streak in me. We were laughing and teasing and flirting, and I suddenly grabbed all of Sukey’s clothes and climbed down from the roof. She was freaked out and begged me to give her clothes back, but I wouldn’t for a long time. Something about having her up there, naked and helpless, really turned me on. It’s the only time I ever remember intentionally being cruel to anyone I liked, and it has stuck with me ever since. After a while Martha took her clothes up to her and Sukie got dressed and left without speaking to me. Who could blame her? Elissa heard about it, of course, and was not amused.

Elissa sensed that we were drifting apart and became anxious about it. I think she still really loved me and wanted us to stay together. But I just kept being distracted by all the other women around and couldn’t give her the attention she needed. I simply didn’t have any interest in a committed relationship, and certainly not an exclusive one. She couldn’t handle that. It wasn’t fun for either of us.

There was another young couple, James and Muriel, that started coming around more often. They both looked quite straight, but they liked to party, too. Muriel was quite attractive and I thought I sensed her eye on me, but they seemed to be pretty tight together. James was rather intellectual and interesting to talk to. He and Jim and I had a lot of good talks together. Joe and Martha became a couple and seemed to be happy.

Finally in June, my case at last came to trial. The attorney from the ACLU met me in the hallway outside the courtroom. He told me to answer any questions honestly, be polite, and not try to make any speeches. He’d handle it all. That was fine with me.

Then we went in and sat down in the audience. There was already a trial going on. A young tough-looking guy about my age was up for auto theft. He’d lifted a Mustang and gone joyriding. His lawyer didn’t put up much of a defense, and no one seemed to care what happened either way, including the judge, the attorneys, or even the accused. He was posing and preening for the girls in the court, I guess thinking he was pretty cool. Then the judge told him to stand up.

"Young man, I find your excuses to be completely without merit," said the judge, looking at him severely over the top of his glasses. "You got drunk, stole a car, and drove around recklessly, endangering your own life, and more importantly, those of law-abiding citizens. I find you guilty of grand larceny, auto, and sentence you to seven years in jail." He banged his gavel. "Next case!"

The guy stood there looking stunned. I don’t know what he expected, but it sure wasn’t seven years. His face went beet red.

"That’s bullshit!" he shouted at the judge. "Seven years? That’s nothing! Hell, I can do seven years sitting on the can!"

The judge looked at him, no sign of annoyance on his face. "Is that so?" He jotted down a note, then looked up. "Well, in that case I’ll give you two more to wipe your ass. Next case."

The guy looked like he was going to explode, but a beefy bailiff came and took him out. The courtroom was quiet. I did some math. Let’s see, he would have gotten out in ’75, but that smart remark made it 1977 before he walked. I imagined that those last two years would be very long. I learned something about the absolute power of a judge. I resolved to be as polite and contrite as I knew how.

The court clerk stood up.

"City of Fort Worth versus Brian Kenneth Crawford, your honor. Vagrancy and loitering."

"Mr. Crawford?" said the judge. "Please come forward."

I got up and went through the gate and stood in front of the bench. The judge looked me over.

"Have you an attorney, Mr. Crawford? If not, one will be assigned from the public defender’s office."

My attorney stood up. "I represent Mr. Crawford, you honor. William Johnson." There was an immediate buzz of whispers around the room. I saw the district attorneys look at each other.

"I see." He looked from him to me, made a note, then glanced over the case. "And do you still plead not guilty, Mr. Crawford?"

"I do, you honor," I replied.

"Well, let’s get started then. I see the arrest was made by Patrolman Gutierrez. Is he in court today?"

A uniformed cop stood up. "I am, your honor." I glanced at him in surprise. He was a Latino, but the cops who’d grabbed me were all white. I wasn’t sure if I’d recognize them, but I knew this guy wasn’t one of them. I glanced over at my attorney. He met my eye and gestured to me to remain silent.

"Would you please come up and tell us what you observed on…" he glanced down again, "…on Sunday, March 31, 1968? You may sit down there, Mr. Crawford." I sat down as the cop took the stand. He took out a small notebook and leafed through it. He started to read.

"I was on patrol in the Botanical Gardens that day. I observed a group of young people in the fountains."

"In the fountains, did you say?" interrupted the judge.

"Yes, your honor."

"What were they doing there?"

"Well, I guess sort of dancing around and splashing in the water, your honor."

I leaned over to my attorney. "I was never anywhere near the fountains," I whispered.

"Doesn’t matter," he replied.

"What else did you observe?"

"Well, there were lots of people on the grass, and walking around and so on."

"It is a public park, is it not, Officer Gutierrez?"

"Uh, yes, it is, your honor. But these people were making a real disturbance."

"What sort of disturbance?"

"They were being very disorderly, your honor. You know, shouting and all."

The judge looked over his glasses at the cop. "Do you mean shouting out political slogans, obscenities, epithets, threats against the government, incitements to riot?"

"Well, no. But they were shouting, and laughing, like. Loudly."

"Laughing with criminal intent," observed the judge dryly. He made another note. "I see. And what did you observe Mr. Crawford doing at this time?"

The cop studied his notebook again. "He was part of a group that was obstructing the sidewalk, your honor."

"That’s bullshit," I hissed to my lawyer. "I was on the grass under a tree."

"Doesn’t matter," he replied again.

"These people were making a disturbance," continued the cop. "They were lying on the sidewalk and frightening people trying to use the park. Some of them were urinating in the reflecting pool."

"He’s lying," I whispered again. "Nobody did that, certainly not me."

He waved me aside airily. "Doesn’t matter." I was started to get concerned about him. Why