Once upon a time, long long ago

I gave the keys to the Poppycock to the street punks working and regularly emptying the register into their pockets, scrounged up an old boy scout pack I loaded up with a blanket and a change of clothes and headed out hitchhiking. 

I stopped off at a place or two in the Santa Cruz mountains to loosen up a little. 

I first stopped by a semi-commune where I stayed an afternoon and evening, the only thing of note that happened there was my disastrous attempt to bake some bread. I’d bought a can of hops believing it sort of molasses and used it in the bread. (Didn’t have a clue it was for making beer.) 

The bread came out super bitter. 

Bummer.

Moby Grape had a ranch nearby they’d bought while times were good and having met them when they played the Poppocock, I dropped in and said hi to those guys. We hung out for a while but I didn’t stay long, but went on down to Santa Cruz.

In Cruz I stopped by to visit another guy I’d met at the poppycock. He lived with his pregnant girlfriend and I found their relationship very strange. He provided dinner and I ate with them. His gf didn’t get her own plate. He let her eat some from his plate but not much. I found this pretty weird and the only thing I could figure was this might be his way of keeping her from gaining more weight than he wanted her to.

When I left I hitched down Hwy 1 headed for Big Sur.  After passing Monterey I met some other guys on the road, Tim, Charley and George, also hitching. We stayed together until we got to Big Sur proper at the River Inn. We split up there and I got a ride down near the state park, got off by the bridge and slipped into the park from the path.

I crashed that night near a couple I met there who had a campsite right where the trail dropped into the park and in the morning cooked breakfast for them in return for the food they had left over and weren’t taking home.

They were camped next to another couple that stayed. He was a young, tall guy who didn’t talk much, from Palo Alto who had some window pane for sale. 

I wangled a deal to make he and his girlfriend breakfast; potatoes and eggs with the food I got from the couple I met the night before, in trade for a hit of the windowpane.

After breakfast we went our separate ways.

I dropped the hit and wandered over to the meadow.

I was hanging out on the meadow watching the folks playing Frisbee when I heard what seemed to be a  band playing rag time dixieland. I looked around but didn’t see where it was coming from.

As it got louder I sat up and looked for where was the loud radio,beginning to think I must be tripping.

A full blown marching band appeared, marching down the road around the meadow, playing “When the Saints Come Marching In”, in ragtime.

There were a couple of drums, several horns, including a guy wearing a top hat and tails playing a tuba, and a guy playing a tambourine made from a bedpan. They sounded great but it was strange as hell!

After they disappeared off down the road that surrounded the meadow I shook my head and wandered off in the direction of the camp-sites. 

Walking along the dirt road past the camp-sites. I came upon a camp-site where a middle aged chubby woman in a mu-mu was crying and carrying on something fierce! “My little doggy, my little doggy”.

As I walked up, with the acid starting to come on but not too heavy yet, she asked me “oh please can you help me?” There were several other ladies, younger, doing various chores around the camp but they had all apparently given up. I looked at her for a moment pulled myself together as best I could and said “I’ll try, what’s the problem?”. 

“My little Doggie is locked in the car and I don’t have the key and she’ll die it’s so hot please please help me” 

Even as spaced as I was I realized the car was in the shade under the trees and there was no danger but I could see she was panicked. 

“Hum” I said, “I’ll see what I can do.” I checked the car, and thought I could get it open if I could find a piece of wire somewhere around. 

After some searching around at the outskirts of the camp-site, I stumbled across a rusty wire coat hanger buried in the leaves. I straightened the coat hanger out, slipped it through the edge of the window and after struggling for a while, managed to hook the door handle and get the door open. 

She snatched the little dog up and fell all over me with thanks. 

I started to wander off, starting to feel pretty high, but she and the other ladies insisted I had to stay and have dinner. 

They were making this outrageous cioppino in a hugh pot, probably 5 gallons,which smelled really good.

A couple of the folks there were younger ladies – 20’s maybe and we kicked back and smoked a joint one of the girls sparked up. We sat and talked about this and that for an hour or so. I shared a skinny joint of Colombian I had stashed. 

Those guys I had met on the road wandered by. Tim had a little more weed so we smoked some more.

As we sat I heard that music again. 

It got louder and louder. I didn’t recognize the tune this time but it was the same rag-time kinda stuff. We looked up as the music got closer and closer, Here come the band! Same tuba guy in top hat and tails, same bedpan tambourine, same guys! 

As we sat and watched, to our complete amazement, they marched up, set down their instruments and made themselves comfortable. 

We all just looked at each other. The guy in the Top hat (Tuba Player) came over and thanked me for saving his wifes little doggy. 

They called themselves “The Oily Scarf Wino Band” and were up from the LA area, Topanga canyon mostly.

We all had bowls of cioppino, smoked some more and got to know each other. 

We all hung around all night and crashed at their campsite. The next day Charley, George, and I chilled at the camp but Tim and the top hat guys daughter seemed pretty attracted to one another and they wandered off together. 

After the crew from down south and thereabouts left for home, Tim says he needs to go down to Topanga because they’d arranged to meet.

We talk it over and it turns out Tim has a ’52 Ford in Fremont but it has a leaky radiator. So of course we decide to hitch up there from Sur and try to fix it.

After a LONG trip hitching we get there and it turns out the radiator tank was split. I bent the seam back together and crimped it as best I could. There was an old barn by his house and Tim rounded up an old fashioned soldering iron we heated on his gas stove and some solid core solder with help from some acid flux I got I got it to hold pressure. 

We immediately pile in, put our change together for some gas (33 cents a gallon), and head south on hwy 1. Got there the next day where Tim hooks up with his lady love. 

The rest of us went off checking out the local scene. We hit the Topanga Corral, where there was a decent band playing and had a couple of beers.
We were all using pouch tobacco and rolling our own cigs which we smoked at our table.

At the bands break we headed up the hill to share a joint or two before heading back after the break.

We left later, heading over to The Old Post Office Cafe, also in Topanga Canyon. The cafe was a pretty neat place—peanut shells and sawdust on the floor, rustic tables, and a decent crowd filled the place. As we sat smoking our hand rolled cigs and shooting the shit, I casually noticed a sort of short guy come through the door from the rear and stop. Apparently the manager, obviously sniffing and looking around. He went from table to table, taking his time.

When he came up to our table he sniffed a couple of times and suddenly snatched my cigarette from my fingers and started yelling at me. “What do you think you’re doing! You can’t do that shit in here!”

I was dumbfounded and protested, “Dude, it’s just a cigarette,” and showed him my tobacco.

He tore the cig in half and looked at it, it just looked kind of brownish and he stomped over to the door behind us and threw it out, walking off without another word. Charley and George were outraged and we left in a few moments.

As we left George said, “What the fuck was with that guy, he deserves to get fucked up!”

Charley agreed, saying, “Think we should look him up?”

As we walked out I saw the cigarette laying on the ground and picked it up. I looked at it carefully and started laughing. “Guys, it was a joint!”

Somehow sitting on the hill I’d rolled both a joint and a cigarette, sticking them in my shirt pocket but forgot one was a joint. At that we all crack up laughing.