Bill and Siobhan are dive-bombing Idaho for the next couple of weeks, boating down rivers, panning for gold and generally running amok. The following priceless columns are from the early years of the Flying Pie, so anyone who reads it for the pictures is in trouble.
Anatomy Of A Decade
Court Lewis, one of our Piemen, has a weekly talk show on American Variety Radio out of Johnson City, Tennessee. The program is carried on several stations in the Southeast—including one in Orlando—and generates about 25,000 listeners weekly. Every so often, when he has a spot available between the flying trapeze artists and the dancing bears, Court calls us in from the bullpen, this week to discuss the sixties counterculture and what became of it. We think Court secretly likes to reminisce about these things because he once lived in Gainesville, himself, during which time he was a horrendous womanizer and notorious pursuer of dubious other enticements better left unnamed, he being on the radio and all. But, then again, who wasn’t?
Well, now we’ve probably got Court in trouble with his beautiful wife, Margaret, who makes all the bread for the family. It’s not easy these days to find a nice girl who is also the breadwinner. What? Oh, I see. Margaret, says Court, is the bread maker of the family. Well, that’s good, too. And it smells so much better than the other stuff.
Given time to reflect, the answers below are not the same ones given on the show but they are similar. Some of the descriptions of the Good Old Days have been written of in earlier installments of The Flying Pie, which happens now and then around here, but they are relevant in a new context. Besides which, a LOT of people read this column now who didn’t catch the earlier ones—even though they certainly COULD if they just scrolled back to the beginning. We figure you could finish the whole thing up in just under thirty years.
Question 1. Bill, you were at the University of Texas in Austin back in the early sixties. What was it like in those days?
Gee, I feel like Grampa talking to the chilluns about the Great War. But I was in Austin for most of the Summer and all of the Fall of 1962. What it was like was exciting. Obviously, everyone’s adolescent and post-adolescent years are memorable because we’re making earthshaking discoveries every day, forming rafts of new relationships with all manner and make of people and basically, negotiating through unlimited corridors of life without a hell of a lot of responsibility. I had been away from home before, having been to college in Oklahoma and working briefly at a magazine job in Champaign-Urbana, but Austin was nothing like these places. Austin, for me, was the good Disneyland.
I ended up in Austin by accident. I was driving my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model hearse across the country from Massachusetts (where I had been unjustly deprived of my driver’s license by a vengeful police chief who, unfortunately, lived directly across the street) to New Mexico, where I was to meet my friend, Jacques Guerin, and restart publication of my humor magazine, Charlatan, at UNM in Albuquerque. I made it all the way to Oklahoma City, where my hearse began to expire of coronary radiator disease. An old girlfriend, Rita Payton, took me in while the mechanics ministered to the poor vehicle. Since I was poor as a churchmouse, the ministrations were fairly meager. “No way you can make it to New Mexico—that’s a thousand miles,” said the nonrepairman. How about Austin, a mere four hundred? “If you’re lucky,” quoth he.
I had a friend in Austin. Gilbert Shelton, cartoonist extraordinaire, was to become editor the UT humor magazine, The Ranger, in 1962 and he had previously invited me to come and help him with it. I could sleep on his “hair couch,” he said. Without recounting a long, ponderous and often funny journey, I eventually made it to Austin. The hearse was on its last legs by then, huffing, puffing and emitting great clouds of steam as I pulled up in Gilbert’s back yard. “You certainly know how to make a great entrance,” he said, surveying the downtrodden vehicle. I gathered up my meager belongings and walked into the apartment, which, I believe, was on East 9th street, hard by the Interregional Expressway. The place was decorated in Early Shelton, having been enhanced earlier by a drunken wall-painting party, the art director of which was the redoubtable Tony Bell, also of Ranger fame. The music playing was “We Need A Whole Lot More Of Jesus And A Lot Less Rock And Roll,” by the Greenbriar Boys, who made a lifetime fan of yours truly.
The next day, my first in Austin, Shelton took me to a friend’s house on Lake Travis. The friend had a boat. The purpose of this boat was to allow us to splash around Lake Travis, firing pistols at floating cans and anything else brazen enough to raise its ugly head. Shelton handed me a gun. “Here, take a few shots,” he said to me, a novice, who had only seen guns on television. They didn’t let people in Massachusetts have guns. We have the Red Sox, after all, and there could be great carnage. I fired off a few wildly errant rounds and Shelton quickly retrieved his revolver. A good time was had by all.
That night, there was a party somewhere. There were few nights when there was not a party in Austin. Parties usually consisted of showing up at some brave person’s house and drinking beer. There would be anywhere from a dozen to a hundred people. Sometimes, the beer would be provided, more often if would be provided by yourself. Occasionally, there were eats. And very often, there was music. The music came from a variety of sources, one of them being a tall, buzztopped character named John Clay, whose consistent wardrobe included jeans and a t-shirt stamped “Property of Stamford High.” John carried a dobro guitar everywhere he went and he went a lot of places. John, merry man of mirth that he was, wrote a lot of songs about disasters he had read about in the newspapers. His two favorites were Road To Mingus and Anson Runaway, which he would be glad to demonstrate for you if prodded. “Prodded” consisted of you saying something like, “John, would you….” Don’t mind if I do, replied JC, breaking into song, delivered in a deliberate monotone and so often, at so many places, that everyone in the audience knew all the words. Say what you will about John, his songs were brilliant.Road To Mingus (a small Texas town) told of a crew of hard-drinking youngsters who unsuccessfully attempted to beat a train to a railroad crossing. Not being content to merely recite the police version of the tale, John thought he would liven it up by adding an additional character. To wit:
They were takin’ the curves about ninety,
And they didn’t always stay on their side,
Then they met a little old lady
Just goin’ out for a ride.
The little old lady said “Let us drag
If you’re on your way to Strong;
I ain’t had nobody to race me
And it’s just a few hours before dawn.”
They gave her a half-mile head start
Because she was a lady;
She reached the railroad track up ahead,
They got there and so did the Katy (the train).
The car tore apart like a shot-up tin can,
It landed upside down.
The car kept part of their bodies….
The rest landed up on the ground.
In Anson Runaway, John concocted one of the greatest lines EVER:
As they got bigger, they took bigger things,
Becoming a juvenile criminal ring.
Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
If John Clay was a constant presence, the Waller Creek Boys were almost as prevalent. This trio consisted of guitarist Lannie Wiggins, banjoist/harmonica player, etc., Powell St. John, both of whom also sang, and UT freshman art major, Janis Joplin on the autoharp. Janis could also be persuaded to sing if you twisted her arm. These people played and sang anything and everything from obscure folk stuff to blues to funky Protestant church songs. They would sing Railroad Bill. They would sing The St. James Infirmary Blues.They would sing something they just made up on their way to the party. They were inordinately good.
Daily life in Austin consisted of waking up at a nominal hour, the previous night probably having been spent drinking at a party or rummaging around the Mexican section of town, often enjoying an 88-cent midnight meal at the lively Market Café where we competed to see who could find the most misspelled words on the giant wall menu. Eventually, we gravitated to the Ranger office in the Student Publications Building to work on the magazine. UT Student Publications was presided over by a suspicious gentleman named Loyd Edmonds, who was constantly on the lookout for dubious—often profane—material hidden in the margins of the magazine or in the copyright notice or some other obscure locale by the merry staff who saw all this as a great game they were playing with old Loyd, whom they called in print “the censors.” Occasionally, Loyd was forced to actually fire some perp who had heretofore successfully eluded notice of a cleverly placed but nonetheless heinous noun or verb.
Lunch and part of the afternoons were celebrated hanging out in the student union’s eatery/gathering spot, The Chuckwagon, provider of the greatest chili dogs in the history of man. One day, I was sitting by myself, chili dog in hand, editing a story I had written for the magazine, when the strains of a spectacular melody came rushing into the place from the nearby piano room. I got up, walked over and stood there in bliss as a beautiful young woman pounded out Silver Threads And Golden Needles, the first time I had ever heard it. I don’t know about you, but this was MY idea of total rapture.
Many evenings were spent a short distance from campus in a small neighborhood its residents called The Ghetto. “Neighborhood” might be an ambitious description, the whole area consisting of a few ramshackle buildings smelling of catpiss with a generous amount of open space for small gatherings, of which there were many. Smudge pots were often lit and placed strategically. John Clay lived in The Ghetto and the Waller Creek Boys were frequent visitors. Eventually, I moved there myself, sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor of Wally Stopher’s apartment—me and 17 other people.
One night, as the music was playing and the smudge pots were smoking, I surveyed the crowd, dressed liberally in ragamuffinry, and suddenly recalled a photo I had seen in Time Magazine. It was a picture the magazine had taken in San Francisco and the caption read something like “Beatniks Ply Their Trade.” My friends and I looked just like the people in the picture. Beatniks? Us? The label never even occurred to me. I wasn’t a beatnik, whatever the hell a beatnik was! Or WAS I?
That’s all, folks. Continued, of course, next week.
Well, now we’ve probably got Court in trouble with his beautiful wife, Margaret, who makes all the bread for the family. It’s not easy these days to find a nice girl who is also the breadwinner. What? Oh, I see. Margaret, says Court, is the bread maker of the family. Well, that’s good, too. And it smells so much better than the other stuff.
Given time to reflect, the answers below are not the same ones given on the show but they are similar. Some of the descriptions of the Good Old Days have been written of in earlier installments of The Flying Pie, which happens now and then around here, but they are relevant in a new context. Besides which, a LOT of people read this column now who didn’t catch the earlier ones—even though they certainly COULD if they just scrolled back to the beginning. We figure you could finish the whole thing up in just under thirty years.
Question 1. Bill, you were at the University of Texas in Austin back in the early sixties. What was it like in those days?
Gee, I feel like Grampa talking to the chilluns about the Great War. But I was in Austin for most of the Summer and all of the Fall of 1962. What it was like was exciting. Obviously, everyone’s adolescent and post-adolescent years are memorable because we’re making earthshaking discoveries every day, forming rafts of new relationships with all manner and make of people and basically, negotiating through unlimited corridors of life without a hell of a lot of responsibility. I had been away from home before, having been to college in Oklahoma and working briefly at a magazine job in Champaign-Urbana, but Austin was nothing like these places. Austin, for me, was the good Disneyland.
I ended up in Austin by accident. I was driving my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model hearse across the country from Massachusetts (where I had been unjustly deprived of my driver’s license by a vengeful police chief who, unfortunately, lived directly across the street) to New Mexico, where I was to meet my friend, Jacques Guerin, and restart publication of my humor magazine, Charlatan, at UNM in Albuquerque. I made it all the way to Oklahoma City, where my hearse began to expire of coronary radiator disease. An old girlfriend, Rita Payton, took me in while the mechanics ministered to the poor vehicle. Since I was poor as a churchmouse, the ministrations were fairly meager. “No way you can make it to New Mexico—that’s a thousand miles,” said the nonrepairman. How about Austin, a mere four hundred? “If you’re lucky,” quoth he.
I had a friend in Austin. Gilbert Shelton, cartoonist extraordinaire, was to become editor the UT humor magazine, The Ranger, in 1962 and he had previously invited me to come and help him with it. I could sleep on his “hair couch,” he said. Without recounting a long, ponderous and often funny journey, I eventually made it to Austin. The hearse was on its last legs by then, huffing, puffing and emitting great clouds of steam as I pulled up in Gilbert’s back yard. “You certainly know how to make a great entrance,” he said, surveying the downtrodden vehicle. I gathered up my meager belongings and walked into the apartment, which, I believe, was on East 9th street, hard by the Interregional Expressway. The place was decorated in Early Shelton, having been enhanced earlier by a drunken wall-painting party, the art director of which was the redoubtable Tony Bell, also of Ranger fame. The music playing was “We Need A Whole Lot More Of Jesus And A Lot Less Rock And Roll,” by the Greenbriar Boys, who made a lifetime fan of yours truly.
The next day, my first in Austin, Shelton took me to a friend’s house on Lake Travis. The friend had a boat. The purpose of this boat was to allow us to splash around Lake Travis, firing pistols at floating cans and anything else brazen enough to raise its ugly head. Shelton handed me a gun. “Here, take a few shots,” he said to me, a novice, who had only seen guns on television. They didn’t let people in Massachusetts have guns. We have the Red Sox, after all, and there could be great carnage. I fired off a few wildly errant rounds and Shelton quickly retrieved his revolver. A good time was had by all.
That night, there was a party somewhere. There were few nights when there was not a party in Austin. Parties usually consisted of showing up at some brave person’s house and drinking beer. There would be anywhere from a dozen to a hundred people. Sometimes, the beer would be provided, more often if would be provided by yourself. Occasionally, there were eats. And very often, there was music. The music came from a variety of sources, one of them being a tall, buzztopped character named John Clay, whose consistent wardrobe included jeans and a t-shirt stamped “Property of Stamford High.” John carried a dobro guitar everywhere he went and he went a lot of places. John, merry man of mirth that he was, wrote a lot of songs about disasters he had read about in the newspapers. His two favorites were Road To Mingus and Anson Runaway, which he would be glad to demonstrate for you if prodded. “Prodded” consisted of you saying something like, “John, would you….” Don’t mind if I do, replied JC, breaking into song, delivered in a deliberate monotone and so often, at so many places, that everyone in the audience knew all the words. Say what you will about John, his songs were brilliant.Road To Mingus (a small Texas town) told of a crew of hard-drinking youngsters who unsuccessfully attempted to beat a train to a railroad crossing. Not being content to merely recite the police version of the tale, John thought he would liven it up by adding an additional character. To wit:
They were takin’ the curves about ninety,
And they didn’t always stay on their side,
Then they met a little old lady
Just goin’ out for a ride.
The little old lady said “Let us drag
If you’re on your way to Strong;
I ain’t had nobody to race me
And it’s just a few hours before dawn.”
They gave her a half-mile head start
Because she was a lady;
She reached the railroad track up ahead,
They got there and so did the Katy (the train).
The car tore apart like a shot-up tin can,
It landed upside down.
The car kept part of their bodies….
The rest landed up on the ground.
In Anson Runaway, John concocted one of the greatest lines EVER:
As they got bigger, they took bigger things,
Becoming a juvenile criminal ring.
Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
If John Clay was a constant presence, the Waller Creek Boys were almost as prevalent. This trio consisted of guitarist Lannie Wiggins, banjoist/harmonica player, etc., Powell St. John, both of whom also sang, and UT freshman art major, Janis Joplin on the autoharp. Janis could also be persuaded to sing if you twisted her arm. These people played and sang anything and everything from obscure folk stuff to blues to funky Protestant church songs. They would sing Railroad Bill. They would sing The St. James Infirmary Blues.They would sing something they just made up on their way to the party. They were inordinately good.
Daily life in Austin consisted of waking up at a nominal hour, the previous night probably having been spent drinking at a party or rummaging around the Mexican section of town, often enjoying an 88-cent midnight meal at the lively Market Café where we competed to see who could find the most misspelled words on the giant wall menu. Eventually, we gravitated to the Ranger office in the Student Publications Building to work on the magazine. UT Student Publications was presided over by a suspicious gentleman named Loyd Edmonds, who was constantly on the lookout for dubious—often profane—material hidden in the margins of the magazine or in the copyright notice or some other obscure locale by the merry staff who saw all this as a great game they were playing with old Loyd, whom they called in print “the censors.” Occasionally, Loyd was forced to actually fire some perp who had heretofore successfully eluded notice of a cleverly placed but nonetheless heinous noun or verb.
Lunch and part of the afternoons were celebrated hanging out in the student union’s eatery/gathering spot, The Chuckwagon, provider of the greatest chili dogs in the history of man. One day, I was sitting by myself, chili dog in hand, editing a story I had written for the magazine, when the strains of a spectacular melody came rushing into the place from the nearby piano room. I got up, walked over and stood there in bliss as a beautiful young woman pounded out Silver Threads And Golden Needles, the first time I had ever heard it. I don’t know about you, but this was MY idea of total rapture.
Many evenings were spent a short distance from campus in a small neighborhood its residents called The Ghetto. “Neighborhood” might be an ambitious description, the whole area consisting of a few ramshackle buildings smelling of catpiss with a generous amount of open space for small gatherings, of which there were many. Smudge pots were often lit and placed strategically. John Clay lived in The Ghetto and the Waller Creek Boys were frequent visitors. Eventually, I moved there myself, sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor of Wally Stopher’s apartment—me and 17 other people.
One night, as the music was playing and the smudge pots were smoking, I surveyed the crowd, dressed liberally in ragamuffinry, and suddenly recalled a photo I had seen in Time Magazine. It was a picture the magazine had taken in San Francisco and the caption read something like “Beatniks Ply Their Trade.” My friends and I looked just like the people in the picture. Beatniks? Us? The label never even occurred to me. I wasn’t a beatnik, whatever the hell a beatnik was! Or WAS I?
That’s all, folks. Continued, of course, next week.
Anatomy Of A Decade—Part II: Rise Of The Druggies
A couple of weeks ago, we did an interview on the sixties with Court Lewis on American Variety Radio. This led to last week’s Flying Pie column about life in Austin in post-beatnik times (1962). The interview continued with a discussion of the advent of illegal substances in following years.
Question 2. What was the drug scene like in Austin and how was it different in Gainesville?
When I first arrived in Austin, Gilbert Shelton, Rangeroo Joe E. Brown and a few other ne’er-do-wells were busily investigating the hallucinogenic effects of peyote. There was no marijuana to speak of but clever boys will take advantage of whatever consciousness-expanding products are available, even if they make you throw up til you turn purple, which peyote certainly did. Shelton’s crew had decided the only way to keep the peyote down long enough to receive the pretty benefits was to ingest it with peanut butter. A LOT of peanut butter. This worked for some, not so much for others and I, for one, being no big fan of vomit, was having none of it. Fine. This allowed me to closely monitor the proceedings and drive people to the hospital, if necessary.
Most of you probably never messed around with peyote, having had access to more civilized products. Like LSD, peyote provides neophyte experimenters with alleged cosmic views in which all the secrets of the universe are revealed. Tsk, if only you could actually remember them when the high deteriorated. Shelton and company decided to confront this problem by wisely writing down their amazing visions while under the influence. For this purpose, everyone was provided with a giant legal pad on which to capture their brilliant discoveries. This worked fine, at first. The noble crew of scientists recorded the early effects of the drug in exemplary fashion, jotting down neat little grammatically correct sentences full of colorful information. As time passed and the peyote began to work its magic, however, their penmanship transmogrified into arcane scribbling, increasingly unreadable. And growing larger. Eventually, MUCH larger. When Shelton managed to fill up an entire page with a giant “N,” I collected up their lessons and let them out of the classroom for recess. Joe E. Brown immediately discovered a rock and roll band playing in the streets and was extremely grumpy when noone else could hear their exciting melodies. Needless to say, none of the determined students could recall one whit of their time under, although Joe couldn’t seem to get rid of a recurring tune in his head.
I’ll Take A Beer, And Supersize It, Please.
For centuries, of course, the main hallucinogen in Texas has been Lone Star….and other beers of distinction. Texans appreciate—even NEED—their beer. When all the hippies rose up in California and began smoking marijuana, they decided beer was no longer desirable and cool people should stop drinking it. This message never arrived in Texas, where the citizens merely added weed to their menus without ever a thought to dismissing their favorite brew. If it ever came down to a choice between the two, I have no doubt marijuana would have lost in a landslide.
In 1962, however, marijuana was not plentiful. Even so, the laws against it were strict. If some fortunate person was able to actually obtain a rare joint, he would immediately lock himself in the bathroom and smoke it up before anyone discovered his transgression. As for the other drugs, they were unheard of with the occasional exception of some biker on speed. One day, Janis Joplin opened a newspaper and read aloud a shocking article about some poor fool who had ingested LSD and promptly decided he could fly. My first thought was, geez, better stay away from that stuff. Janis’ first thought, of course, was “Where the hell can I GET some?”
Go West, Young Man! Or East, If You Prefer.
On Christmas morning, 1962, I drove my recently refurbished hearse out to Marilyn Todd’s house to pick her up and head east. Marilyn still lived with her parents at 19 and decided now was as good a time as any to see the world. Not being much for long, mushy goodbyes, she climbed out her bedroom window at 4 a.m. and off we went, chased from state to state by proxies of her outraged father, some of whom were actual policemen. This long and colorful episode can be found in earlier sections of The Flying Pie, but right now we are discussing matters other. Anyway, after a convoluted journey to Massachusetts, we eventually arrived in Florida, first taking up residence in Tallahassee, then Gainesville in 1965. We survived, if that is the proper description of it, by selling copies of the Charlatan magazine, which I had revived in Florida. Eventually, Marilyn came to her senses and returned to Austin and I, with a paltry $1200 of magazine profits opened the Subterranean Circus in September of 1967. What was Gainesville like then? Well, the following song will shed some light.
Fred & The Hippies (by Bill, who else?)
The Summer Of Love
While I went East, Gilbert Shelton, Janis and several other Austinites headed for San Francisco. Shelton became a principal in the Rip Off Press, a fabulously successful printer of “underground” comic books, including his own Fabulous, Furry Freak Brothers. And Janis….well, what can we say about Janis? She became the star of the show. East and West, a tidal wave of drugs punctuated the era. Everybody smoked marijuana, including the quarterback of the UF football team—and I know it because he bought his rolling papers from me. Beer-swilling fraternity guys who at one time had a striped Sego shirt for every day of the week had graduated to Cossack or Nehru shirts, bellbottom jeans and were puffing hemp. Young males were still draftable by the military at the time so Vietnam War protests were fervid and growing but the sway that marijuana and the fast-expanding LSD had over the society prevailed. Music, art and a generous amount of easy sex was the order of the day. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day. We’d live the life we choose, we’d fight and never lose, for we were young and sure to have our way. It was a nice thought.
In California, the hippies were building a new society. Everybody would be able to do whatever the hell they wanted, which mostly consisted of blissing out, listening to music, smoking dope and sleeping with anybody and everybody. Kids poured in from all over hell to join in the celebration, listen to the bands and accede to LSD guru Timothy Leary’s admonition to turn on, tune in and drop out (of conventional society). Still, you had to eat, right? No problem! A guy named Hugh Romney (of all things) took to calling himself “Wavy Gravy,” organized a small army he called the “Diggers” and began to feed everybody with donated food and cash contributions. The California underground newspapers, particularly the L.A. Free Press, celebrated the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, a rejection of the Old Ways, a new world of sex, drugs and rock and roll, eschewing war and convention and capitalism and the horrid strictures of “the straight life.” It was a nice thought, also.
It was easy to be swept away by the tide, especially in a place like the Subterranean Circus, where the whole gestalt reinforced the Great Leap Forward. I, on the other hand, was a few years older and not so sure. As long as jealousy was around, Free Love would be a problem. Smoking dope all day didn’t seem especially productive. Capitalism had worked okay until then. And every so often you need a good war. Guys like Hitler aren’t especially respective of peace and love, right? Stick a flower in the gun barrel of one of his storm troopers and see what happens. Besides, I was now an official business owner. You can’t be a capitalist and a hippie at the same time can you? I didn’t think so.
Here Comes The Bride
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. In 1970, I got married to Harolyn Locklair, a model from Miami, one of those few women who could cause automobile wrecks merely by crossing the street (this actually happened). We got married a lot like hippies do, in the nice little park adjoining the Gainesville airport, she crossing a quaint little bridge over a gurgling creek on her way to the “altar.” The ceremony was conducted by one of my valued employees, Danny Levine, an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church with a certificate to prove it. Irana—yep, she was around even then—was Maid of Honor and Rick Nihlen, who had a store like mine in Tallahassee, was Best Man. Appropriate to the occasion, Rick released a cageful of doves into the skies. (Siobhan, frownyface that she is, now rains on my ex-parade by telling me they probably all got discombobulated and died.)
The “reception,” fraught with free grass and liquor was held at my rambling two-story 1904-built house next door to the Circus. In tune with the times, Harolyn’s very straight parents were smoking away with the best of them and little children were passing out from wine overindulgence. And so, as a matter of fact, was Harolyn, which made for a grippingly exciting Wedding Night.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. Alright, alright, somebody else wrote that part. But they couldn’t have put it better.
That’s all, folks. For now.
Question 2. What was the drug scene like in Austin and how was it different in Gainesville?
When I first arrived in Austin, Gilbert Shelton, Rangeroo Joe E. Brown and a few other ne’er-do-wells were busily investigating the hallucinogenic effects of peyote. There was no marijuana to speak of but clever boys will take advantage of whatever consciousness-expanding products are available, even if they make you throw up til you turn purple, which peyote certainly did. Shelton’s crew had decided the only way to keep the peyote down long enough to receive the pretty benefits was to ingest it with peanut butter. A LOT of peanut butter. This worked for some, not so much for others and I, for one, being no big fan of vomit, was having none of it. Fine. This allowed me to closely monitor the proceedings and drive people to the hospital, if necessary.
Most of you probably never messed around with peyote, having had access to more civilized products. Like LSD, peyote provides neophyte experimenters with alleged cosmic views in which all the secrets of the universe are revealed. Tsk, if only you could actually remember them when the high deteriorated. Shelton and company decided to confront this problem by wisely writing down their amazing visions while under the influence. For this purpose, everyone was provided with a giant legal pad on which to capture their brilliant discoveries. This worked fine, at first. The noble crew of scientists recorded the early effects of the drug in exemplary fashion, jotting down neat little grammatically correct sentences full of colorful information. As time passed and the peyote began to work its magic, however, their penmanship transmogrified into arcane scribbling, increasingly unreadable. And growing larger. Eventually, MUCH larger. When Shelton managed to fill up an entire page with a giant “N,” I collected up their lessons and let them out of the classroom for recess. Joe E. Brown immediately discovered a rock and roll band playing in the streets and was extremely grumpy when noone else could hear their exciting melodies. Needless to say, none of the determined students could recall one whit of their time under, although Joe couldn’t seem to get rid of a recurring tune in his head.
I’ll Take A Beer, And Supersize It, Please.
For centuries, of course, the main hallucinogen in Texas has been Lone Star….and other beers of distinction. Texans appreciate—even NEED—their beer. When all the hippies rose up in California and began smoking marijuana, they decided beer was no longer desirable and cool people should stop drinking it. This message never arrived in Texas, where the citizens merely added weed to their menus without ever a thought to dismissing their favorite brew. If it ever came down to a choice between the two, I have no doubt marijuana would have lost in a landslide.
In 1962, however, marijuana was not plentiful. Even so, the laws against it were strict. If some fortunate person was able to actually obtain a rare joint, he would immediately lock himself in the bathroom and smoke it up before anyone discovered his transgression. As for the other drugs, they were unheard of with the occasional exception of some biker on speed. One day, Janis Joplin opened a newspaper and read aloud a shocking article about some poor fool who had ingested LSD and promptly decided he could fly. My first thought was, geez, better stay away from that stuff. Janis’ first thought, of course, was “Where the hell can I GET some?”
Go West, Young Man! Or East, If You Prefer.
On Christmas morning, 1962, I drove my recently refurbished hearse out to Marilyn Todd’s house to pick her up and head east. Marilyn still lived with her parents at 19 and decided now was as good a time as any to see the world. Not being much for long, mushy goodbyes, she climbed out her bedroom window at 4 a.m. and off we went, chased from state to state by proxies of her outraged father, some of whom were actual policemen. This long and colorful episode can be found in earlier sections of The Flying Pie, but right now we are discussing matters other. Anyway, after a convoluted journey to Massachusetts, we eventually arrived in Florida, first taking up residence in Tallahassee, then Gainesville in 1965. We survived, if that is the proper description of it, by selling copies of the Charlatan magazine, which I had revived in Florida. Eventually, Marilyn came to her senses and returned to Austin and I, with a paltry $1200 of magazine profits opened the Subterranean Circus in September of 1967. What was Gainesville like then? Well, the following song will shed some light.
Fred & The Hippies (by Bill, who else?)
When I moved out of Gainesville
In 1965,
Everythin’ was runnin’ normal
And convention did preside.
When I moved back two years later,
The spliff had hit the fan;
A psychedelic circus
Had descended on the land.
There were thirty thousand hippies
A-ramblin’ through the streets,
Dressed in everything from fringe vests
To cut up tie-dyed sheets.
They were smokin’ funny cigarettes,
Drivin’ painted paisley vans,
And holdin’ down their hair with
Beaded Indian headbands.
There were concerts by some strange-named bands
Like the Lilac Pillowslips,
There were light shows, there were love-ins,
There were Kool-Aid acid trips,
There were daily protest marches
For peace and love and grass,
There was purple sinsemilla
That would knock you on your ass.
I thought all this was not for me,
But attitudes can change
And teenage girls in mini-skirts
Can leave a man deranged.
So if you visit Gainesville, man,
Stop by at my crash pad;
Light up a joint—it won’t disappoint--
Have a hit on Guru Fred.
The Summer Of Love
While I went East, Gilbert Shelton, Janis and several other Austinites headed for San Francisco. Shelton became a principal in the Rip Off Press, a fabulously successful printer of “underground” comic books, including his own Fabulous, Furry Freak Brothers. And Janis….well, what can we say about Janis? She became the star of the show. East and West, a tidal wave of drugs punctuated the era. Everybody smoked marijuana, including the quarterback of the UF football team—and I know it because he bought his rolling papers from me. Beer-swilling fraternity guys who at one time had a striped Sego shirt for every day of the week had graduated to Cossack or Nehru shirts, bellbottom jeans and were puffing hemp. Young males were still draftable by the military at the time so Vietnam War protests were fervid and growing but the sway that marijuana and the fast-expanding LSD had over the society prevailed. Music, art and a generous amount of easy sex was the order of the day. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day. We’d live the life we choose, we’d fight and never lose, for we were young and sure to have our way. It was a nice thought.
In California, the hippies were building a new society. Everybody would be able to do whatever the hell they wanted, which mostly consisted of blissing out, listening to music, smoking dope and sleeping with anybody and everybody. Kids poured in from all over hell to join in the celebration, listen to the bands and accede to LSD guru Timothy Leary’s admonition to turn on, tune in and drop out (of conventional society). Still, you had to eat, right? No problem! A guy named Hugh Romney (of all things) took to calling himself “Wavy Gravy,” organized a small army he called the “Diggers” and began to feed everybody with donated food and cash contributions. The California underground newspapers, particularly the L.A. Free Press, celebrated the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, a rejection of the Old Ways, a new world of sex, drugs and rock and roll, eschewing war and convention and capitalism and the horrid strictures of “the straight life.” It was a nice thought, also.
It was easy to be swept away by the tide, especially in a place like the Subterranean Circus, where the whole gestalt reinforced the Great Leap Forward. I, on the other hand, was a few years older and not so sure. As long as jealousy was around, Free Love would be a problem. Smoking dope all day didn’t seem especially productive. Capitalism had worked okay until then. And every so often you need a good war. Guys like Hitler aren’t especially respective of peace and love, right? Stick a flower in the gun barrel of one of his storm troopers and see what happens. Besides, I was now an official business owner. You can’t be a capitalist and a hippie at the same time can you? I didn’t think so.
Here Comes The Bride
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. In 1970, I got married to Harolyn Locklair, a model from Miami, one of those few women who could cause automobile wrecks merely by crossing the street (this actually happened). We got married a lot like hippies do, in the nice little park adjoining the Gainesville airport, she crossing a quaint little bridge over a gurgling creek on her way to the “altar.” The ceremony was conducted by one of my valued employees, Danny Levine, an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church with a certificate to prove it. Irana—yep, she was around even then—was Maid of Honor and Rick Nihlen, who had a store like mine in Tallahassee, was Best Man. Appropriate to the occasion, Rick released a cageful of doves into the skies. (Siobhan, frownyface that she is, now rains on my ex-parade by telling me they probably all got discombobulated and died.)
The “reception,” fraught with free grass and liquor was held at my rambling two-story 1904-built house next door to the Circus. In tune with the times, Harolyn’s very straight parents were smoking away with the best of them and little children were passing out from wine overindulgence. And so, as a matter of fact, was Harolyn, which made for a grippingly exciting Wedding Night.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. Alright, alright, somebody else wrote that part. But they couldn’t have put it better.
That’s all, folks. For now.
