

**A Change of Consciousness**

**A Hippie 's Memoir of the Sixties and Beyond**

**By Rand L. Greenfield**

Copyright (C) 2015 by Rand L. Greenfield

All rights reserved.

Book design by Rand L. Greenfield

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

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Rand L. Greenfield

Visit my website at _www.randgreenfieldauthor.com_

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: August 2015

Published by Sixties Publishing, LLC

ISBN: 978-1-62747-151-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62747-152-7

"And while I stood there, I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw, for I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things in the spirit."

Black Elk

**Dedication**

To my father Dr. Michael B. Greenfield and my mother Simmie Margolin Greenfield, who made it possible.

To my wife Tessie, who made it happen.

To my daughter Sima, who it is for.

**Acknowledgements**

Thanks to:

My wife Tessie who took on most of the burden of word processing and marketing;

My daughter Sima who took on responsibility for the mysteries of social media;

Lynn Wellman who threatened dire consequences if I didn't produce a book and who kindly reviewed the first draft;

Steve Robinson for his kind permission to use his writing;

Tom Bird and his staff for all their help in turning an idea into a reality;

And Jordanites everyone, for their help and encouragement, past and present, and especially to Katy Murphy Ingle for her generous permission to use her paintings.

**Introduction**

"We need to open up, to relax, to get away,

to obey the deeper laws of our being."

Henry Miller, "The Wisdom of the Heart"

I was a hippie, man. Man, was I a hippie! The word comes from the language of the Beat movement. A hippie being someone who was "hip" or "with it" and I was definitely "with it." I was the very definition of a hippie, "an unconventional young person of the Sixties." But of course, hippies didn't go by the book unless it was the Whole Earth Catalogue or Be Here Now. They defined themselves and their counterculture as they went along. So a hippie could be anything he or she felt was "hip."

The tales of an aged hippie set forth herein reflect the extraordinary times that were transforming both America and myself. I was, or attempted to be, one at a time or altogether: A dreamer. A lover. A spiritual seeker. A psychedelic sojourner. A comrade of the commune. A nonviolent revolutionary. A Deadhead. A draft dodger. A tree hugger. And always, a traveler and an adventurer. I was open to whatever lay down any of the many roads that I travelled and I believe it was this openness that protected me as I went, for who would wish to injure such a harmless, naive pilgrim? And long after the Sixties, I still took the path less travelled at every opportunity.

But you must wait to hear my thrilling tales. Before I describe my hippiedom in detail, we must stand back and look at the times I was traversing. Why were there hippies and why did we seek to be unconventional? My generation was the most prosperous and best educated in American history. For most of the Sixties, if one chose to drop out of the economy for a few years, a good job still awaited on one's return. My generation was therefore free to look beyond short term survival, a luxury not available to the previous generations, and we did not like what we saw. Hippies fought against the conventions of society because what we saw was that the social structure was suffocating, society's goals were self-defeating, and the end result of it all was violent and destructive. Threats to our continued existence could be seen in the stockpiles of nuclear weapons, our ever-increasing industrialization with its concomitant destruction of the environment, and the hatred that, around the world, fed war and racism. A popular song even portrayed us as being on the "Eve of Destruction." We could only conclude that we must liberate the old culture: sexually, spiritually, artistically and in just about every other way. The Fifties had been about conquering the physical world with: mass industrial production, atomic energy, interstate highways, and rockets and satellites. The Sixties became about becoming one with the spiritual world and ending the separation of each from the other.

A change of consciousness brought about a counterculture that accelerated that change as the new consciousness grew and evolved. At first the use of psychedelic drugs was the main source of a new perspective. Clinical studies show the psychedelic experience to be both significant and lasting, producing a new world-view that is both positive and sustaining. For many, the more demanding, but more permanent, path of achieving oneness through spiritual development supplanted psychedelic drugs. For others such an awakening could be achieved merely by viewing a vibrant, fecund earth rising behind a dead and lifeless moon against the backdrop of an infinite void. But whatever the path, a change in consciousness came from the direct experience of a oneness with the earth, and therefore each other, a return to the aboriginal connection of man and nature. This was a real and lasting change of consciousness by those who experienced being a part of all creation. After such an experience the world could never be viewed the same again.

And so a counterculture emerged as a reaction to conventional society and as an expression of a changing consciousness. In 1967 hippies heeded the call to "put a flower in your hair" and go to San Francisco. In the "Summer of Love" the counterculture went public. The new culture was the opposite of the prevailing one. The counterculture went from: closed to open, exclusive to inclusive, static to evolving, puritanical to hedonistic, Orwellian to non-authoritarian. The counterculture was a new music, a new art and a communal, natural style of living. It was: a family of "brothers and sisters", a Rainbow tribe, a political and cultural movement, a "dissenting religion" and/or the harbinger of a "New Age." A new word emerged: "consciousness-raising" defined as: to increase concern and awareness, especially of political and social issues. The counterculture was against the Vietnam War and for environmental protection, the assertion of civil rights, and a non-violent fight for peace.

My generation may not have achieved all our goals but we did raise many a consciousness and we were vastly influential. These extraordinary times transformed America, for better and for worse, in ways both profound and mundane. Today, the Beatles are heard in the supermarket and marijuana is well down the path to full legalization. Meditation is taught by your HMO, yoga and massage studios are everywhere and Tibetan Buddhism and other Eastern religions are well established in the west. Local, organic and vegan food is readily available, as are practitioners of oriental and integrative medicine. More profoundly, the law, to some extent or another, now protects women, African Americans, and the LGBT community. Environmental protection, again to some extent or another, is a legal fact and a strong movement. We ended the Vietnam War and with it the draft. The military is now an all-volunteer force. This is all a long ways from the Fifties and it all came out of the Sixties.

Before we relive the amazing adventures of a hippie I will provide a brief sketch of the historical context in which my stirring stories of yesteryear took place. For those of my generation who might say "But I was there", as the saying goes: "If you can remember it, you weren't there." So if you changed your consciousness a little too much, or are now just a little too old to always remember where the car keys are, a refresher course will not be amiss. For all others you may choose to skip the history and go straight to "the magical mystery tour" at your peril.

The tales of an aged hippie that follow are my stories and the stories of others who shared my journey. When we are older, and most of life is behind us, we are our stories. They define the trip we took and why we are here and even where we may be going. Though memory may deceive, the tales herein are as true to the times and how I experienced them as my recollections can recall. A few names and incidents have been changed to protect the guilty. I have, and had, no such worries and prefer to expose my hippiehood in all its glory, idiotic and otherwise.

In 1968 I arrived in San Francisco, the beating heart of the revolution. The counterculture I joined there was trying to define itself as it went at warp speed beyond the limits of what society told us was good for us. The thought that there were good reasons why no man had gone there before never entered my mind. The hippie motto, "if it's fun just do it", should have come with a warning label: "Caution: your actions have consequences. Fun should be exercised with discretion." But of course all warnings would have been unheeded as I, full of heedless youth, was full speed ahead into the unknown. I turned and turned to the tunes of the Grateful Dead, experimented chemically and spiritually, sought the communal dream in New Mexico, and finally settled in the Land of Enchantment to do battle as a bearded lawyer for the environment and against the powers that be. Though certain elements of my hipness may have gradually passed away, such as using drugs other than Prilosec, I believe I remained a somewhat unconventional figure through the decades that followed my youthful escapades, though I may have become somewhat more conventional by the 1990's, or is that to be by my 90's?

Anyway, it was the Sixties that defined me and in my youth I shared in the adventure and risk-taking of an era that sought great change, and achieved some of it, but also saw much violence. I was fortunate that I had the freedom and resources to explore a time of great opportunity and excitement and that I survived the darker reaches of those times. To some extent, good stories are always good because you survived danger. It is disaster or near disaster, often stemming from naivete or sheer stupidity, that makes us sit up and listen. I hope you'll enjoy the tales and thereby make the craziness that engendered them perhaps worthwhile. How intact I came out of these experiments you must judge for yourself. Many did not weather the trip as well. So children, don't do what I did. (Like you'll listen.) Fellow travelers, it has indeed been a long strange trip.

**Contents**

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

**Chapter 1**

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.....

I would rather entreat thy company

To see the wonders of the world abroad

Than, living dully sluggardized at home.

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."

Shakespeare, _Two Gentlemen of Verona, I1_

In the summer of 1968 Paris was burning and I was running for my life from the Corsican thugs of the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite, (CRS), who's sole duty was to put down protest with the utmost brutality. All around me, students, workers and innocents like me, went this way and that like a school of fish as predators surround them. We all sought safety from the hard-eyed riot police who were drawing a net around us in the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of the Left Bank. I saw no escape and fear mounted in my mind while my body began to tremble.

I was an innocent, if not in intent, certainly in fact and in deed. I had scarcely had a chance to be otherwise. After 3 years imprisoned in an all-male boarding school, Lake Forest Academy (LFA), where our motto was "Give me a Break" and our anthem was "I Can't Get No Satisfaction!" the summer of '68 saw me on a Grand Tour of Europe. It was my reward for being accepted to Stanford for the fall. I knew so little of politics that I had won the Best Debater award for defending the Vietnam War, for whose draft I had just registered. My sole act of rebellion to this point was to watch President Johnson's speech on TV telling the nation he wouldn't run again. Why was this a revolutionary act? Because I had been denied permission to do so by an idiot posing as a teacher. How little was I prepared for Paris and the Days of Rage? I haled from Danville, Illinois, just down the road from Hoopeston, a farm town that proudly claims to be, "The Buckle on the Corn belt." Could I have been more innocent? I think even Mark Twain would agree, no!

So here I was abroad at last and, man o man, had I stepped into the merde. On arrival in Paris I had seen the lay of the land when I was greeted at my pensione on the Left Bank by what would have been a beautiful young woman except for the hideous purple bruise which covered half her face. When I inquired as to what the hell was going on, she filled me in. France was in the middle of a cultural revolution that was the closest thing to an actual civil war that the Sixties saw. Popular revolutionary slogans ranged from, "It is forbidden to forbid" to "I'm a Marxist-of the Groucho variety." May had seen demonstrations and strikes by workers and students that had brought troops into the streets and brought the economy to a standstill. The battles in the Latin Quarter would inspire the Rolling Stones' song, "Street Fighting Man." President DeGaulle even fled the country for a day, fearing a coup. My landlady was about to go out and reenter the fray. I, on the other hand, decided not to join the revolution but instead to cut my stay short. I quickly left Paris to find peace in Spain. And Spain was very peaceful, since it was a fascist dictatorship with Franco's Guardia Civil on every street corner. After enjoying the delights of Provence, Italy and Switzerland. I headed back to Paris.

Upon my return, even though the side streets still held vans full of CRS troops parked and waiting, there were neither riots nor protests. The revolution apparently being over, I spent several fun-filled weeks getting to know the city with a group of Russian emigrees. My French vocabulary was improving but with what must have been poor grammar and a terrible Slavic accent! I had been on my way to visit my new friends on the Left Bank when I turned a corner and was suddenly facing an angry crowd. Unbeknownst to me, the Soviet Union, in response to the "Prague Spring" and its attempt to liberalize communism, had just invaded Czechoslovakia. Why the left vented anger against the Reds by attacking their own right-wing government I never figured out. But then I've never understood much about politics, other than that I was never any good at it. As I turned to retreat I found only more furious protestors on all sides. I struggled against the masses but no direction yielded an escape route. The noise of chanting became a deafening roar as people reacted to the appearance of the riot police. Soon there were screams as the first contact was made up ahead of me. To the smell of smoke from burning cars or tires was now added the first faint whiffs of tear gas. Fear gripped me as I saw no way out and a close encounter with the thugs who were already beating people with batons quickly loomed.

Just then I felt a hand clutch my shoulder. Startled, I turned to find a young man of about my age, 18, dressed like a student in jeans and a t-shirt. He was saying something but the din of the riot drowned him out. He pointed to the side of the street and yelled in my ear, "allez avec moi!" He then began to pull me in that direction. He looked like a nice guy and there was no other option. So I nodded and let him pull me along. We held hands, as it was the only way to keep from being separated. He forced a path ahead and I slipped into the spaces he created. As the roars of the street battle mounted, we reached the edge of the crowd. We were pushed up against a building with our backs to the wall. To the left and right, I could see shield-carrying troops coming down the front of the buildings. Soon they would be upon us.

My newfound friend yelled, "Vite! Vite!" He pushed me towards the troops and I was going to resist when I saw a shadow at the end of the wall. My rescuer went ahead and then reached back for my hand. I was pulled into the darkness. It was a narrow alley, just wide enough for a person to go down. I could now see in the dim light a few people running ahead of us. As I ran I prayed no flics were waiting at the other end. And I could run. One reason I got into Stanford was that, in my "Glory Days", I had been a starting halfback on an undefeated soccer team.

The sounds of violence and rage and the odors of fires and chemicals had been fading as we ran. As we came out of the alley the air cleared and the roar of the riot died away to a distant, all but inaudible, dissonance. We found ourselves in a plaza with trees and a monument. It was peaceful and calm. I had been saved! Hallelujah! Exhausted, we slumped down on a bench and caught our breath.

My benefactor sat close by me. My gratitude was overwhelming. Our conversation went something like this.

"Je suis Rand."

"Je suis Jean-Paul."

"Jean-Paul, merci beaucoup pour aidez-moi!"

He modestly demurred, "Mon Cher. C'est ne fait rien." (It was nothing.)

I begged to differ. "Au contraire."

Jean-Paul placed his hand on my shoulder and inquired: "Mais vous peut aidez-moi." (Can I ask a favor?)

I replied, "Certainment. Dites-moi." (Yes???) I was not prepared for the response.

"Tu est tres beau." (I think you're hot.)

Jean-Paul continued, "Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" (I think he sang this part but I'm not sure.)

I had noticed that Jean-Paul had put his hand on my shoulder when he asked me for the favor. I had thought that was understandable after what we'd been through. Now I suddenly realized: He hadn't been saving my life, he'd been saving my ass and it was because he wanted it! Jean-Paul was a homosexual. (Not that there is anything wrong with that!) I don't remember ever thinking at all about homosexuals, as they were called then. Though I must have known about it that is far different from being confronted with its actual presence. It certainly did not exist in Danville, Illinois! (Right?) This was the first time, to my knowledge, that I had ever met a gay. And I would later be flattered that he thought I was attractive. But for now I was flummoxed. His words had quickly disabused me of the notion that my savior's actions had not had an ulterior motive. I was thankful but not that thankful! I wish I could say that I reacted in a calm and rational way. However, my response was to mumble the following and flee. "Merci, mais j'aime les femmes. Bonne chance and au revoir." (Sorry Charlie!) I still regret that I didn't buy him a beer and that he wasn't a mademoiselle.

I did find my mademoiselle, which was the main goal of the entire trip, in fact of my entire adolescent existence. It just wasn't how I had imagined it would be. Having survived the storming of the Bastille and the lust of my white knight, I once again sought more peaceful climes and headed for Amsterdam. I stayed in a wonderful hostel there. I drank beer in the bar where I met lots of people and the jukebox played Ray Charles singing, "Hit the Road Jack!" Every day we repaired to the Heineken brewery for a free lunch of beer, cheese and mustard. In the afternoon we toured, including the Anne Frank house and the Rijksmuseum.

One evening a couple of American students invited me for a drive. When I got out of the van, it was in an old neighborhood of stone houses and canals. As we walked I noticed the unusual zoning. There was an ancient church not far from several houses, each with large picture windows. The windows were backlit with red lights and featured a lady sitting on a chair or divan. Now you may think like I did that Danville had had nothing like this and we'd have been wrong. A few years ago a review of a book on prostitution in Illinois actually mentioned Danville. I then discovered the entire history. The town was infamous for its bordellos, first established by Chicago mobsters in the 30's. In the 40's all of Danville was off-limits to the eager troops of the nearby airbase. In the 50's a visit was a necessary rite of passage for the males of the neighboring University of Illinois. My cousin Barry worked in his father's fur shop then. Some of their best customers were the ladies of the night who just loved their furs! He remembers guys wandering into the shop to ask directions to the red light district. I'm told this fine, old tradition continues today with "massage" parlors still to be seen out in the hinterlands of the county. Alas, growing up, my ignorance in things sexual, like most of my generation, was vast. The knowledge of this history, and of the thriving industry my hometown supported, had been most unfairly kept from me. Now I had come across the Atlantic to find what had been just next-door, or had I?

As I window-shopped along the canals, I finally lost my heart to a beautiful young woman framed in one of the windows. She was wearing a Purdue University t-shirt, which she filled out admirably. This grabbed my attention, the t-shirt that is, because Purdue is just down the road from Danville. With her blonde Dutch good looks, she could have been a cheerleader. I rather nervously entered the house and made the young lady's acquaintance. It could not have been a better introduction to one of life's greatest pleasures. Not only was she skilled but, most importantly, she was kind and patient. Mission Accomplished!

But as I still had ten days left before my return flight, it was on to Edinburgh for the Festival. It was my first real festival, the Sweet Corn Festival in Hoopeston doesn't count, and one of the most memorable. Although the concerts and plays, which were held throughout the city, were wonderful, the Tattoo in the castle was the highlight. I went with an American girl I met at the B&B I was staying in. As evening fell, we climbed the steep hill above the old town. Up through the swirling mists the castle at last appeared. The floodlights illumined massive gates through which we entered and found our seats facing the parade ground. Soon, a troop of gurkhas marched out and preceded to do amazing tricks with their long deadly, curved knives. After the gurkhas came the ROTC drill team from Rutgers. The cadets began to twirl and toss rifles with fixed bayonets and thrilled the crowd with their evolutions. The finale was the march of the bagpipe bands of the Royal Army's Scottish regiments. The skirling was sterling! We returned after midnight to find that our landlady had left us a thermos of hot chocolate and delicious scones with which to close out the night. Hurrah for Scotland! Now it was time to go join the counterculture in its San Francisco home.

**Chapter 2**

"The Generation Gap"

"What's good for General Motors is good for the USA."

The Fifties

"We don't trust anyone over the age of 30."

The Sixties

Where did the counterculture come from and why was I joining it? The previous generation, "The Greatest Generation", had survived the Great Depression of the Thirties, won World War II and bequeathed to its many children, the "baby boomers", the economic miracle of the Fifties. This was an economic prosperity never seen before or since. It was based on a military/industrial power that dominated the globe. It was a domestic tranquility based on conformity to conventional behavior, with dire consequences for those who did not conform.

I was born in the Fifties, a cultural decade running from 1945 and the end of World War II to 1963 and the assassination of a president. This decade had little room for individual expression either culturally, politically or sexually. Books were banned, Americans denied work because they wouldn't sign a loyalty oath and yet other Americans jailed for refusing to testify about the alleged un-American activities of their friends and colleagues. Sex was not supposed to be discussed, abortion was illegal, divorce was frowned upon and single parents were a scandal. It was a society based on injustice and discrimination, often violent, against blacks, Jews, gays and others. Women were to be seen, not heard, and certainly to be kept from power, economic and political. Racism and segregation were enforced by the Jim Crow laws of the southern states. When additional means were necessary, there were murders, lynchings and bombings.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of the "military/industrial complex" which was taking over our country and driving a cold war and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. School children practiced "duck and cover" to ward off the threatened nuclear annihilation of the "mutually assured destruction" promised if the cold war ever went hot. The ever growing destruction of the earth and our environment by the military/industrial complex became all too obvious as smog blanketed our cities, rivers caught on fire and oil covered the seas.

The World was in chaos as, following World War II, the European colonial empires had begun to dissolve as local populations sought their independence. There were wars, civil wars, genocides and huge exoduses of populations to and from newly founded states. For example, the French fought insurgents for control of both Indochina and Algeria. In Indochina the French were defeated in 1958. Vietnam was then divided into two new countries. The Soviet Union backed the North and the U.S. backed the South. The North continued to fight to unite both Vietnams. Having learned nothing from the French failure, our involvement in the struggle gradually grew. We did not recognize the truth that this was a national liberation movement but instead saw it as a first step in a communist push to conquer Southeast Asia and then the world.

The Fifties ended shortly after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis which almost ended the world. For 13 days, the Soviet Union and America faced off against each other with their fingers on the nuclear trigger. It may have been the closest we came to nuclear annihilation throughout the cold war.

Given all of the above, beneath a prosperous and placid surface, a great angst ran through society. The Beat movement was a response to this anxiety. It was composed of the voices of many individual artists. Kerouac took us on the original road trip. Lenny Bruce used words not heard before in public, for which he was hounded by the police and convicted of obscenity. And Alan Ginsberg "Howled" about it all. These voices were heard by my generation. When LSD and rock 'n roll were added to the message of the Beats, a mass movement was born, the counterculture.

**Chapter 3**

The Politics of the Sixties

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

United States Army, Vietnam

"Make love not war"

"Flower power"

I came of age in and was defined by the Sixties, the cultural decade that began in 1963 with the assassination of one president, John F. Kennedy and ended with the resignation in disgrace of another, Richard Nixon, in 1974. These events shook the country to its core. Like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 everyone remembered where they were when they heard the news of JFK's death. I was dissecting a frog in Junior High Science class when the announcement came over the loud speaker that the young, charismatic leader who seemed destined to take us to new heights was dead. Kennedy had been the youngest president ever. He had brought us through the Cuban Missile Crisis, given us the Peace Corp and had said that the question was not "what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." The handsome king of Camelot had had a gorgeous classy wife and two beautiful young children. We were all stunned at his death. But it was just the beginning of a violent decade at home which echoed the much greater violence we were creating overseas in the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War dominated the Sixties. 1964 had seen the beginning of the escalation of the war, the draft and the anti-war movement. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing war was soon followed by the bombing of North Vietnam and the introduction of US ground troops. The draft that sustained the war threatened all the young men of my generation with being thrust into the Heart of Darkness to kill or be killed. This existential threat gave birth to the anti-war movement and sparked both nonviolent and violent opposition to the war and to authority.

The anti-war movement grew out of the anti-nuclear movement. The semaphore symbols for ND, nuclear disarmament, formed the iconic "peace symbol" of the anti-war movement. The anti-war movement's growth accelerated with the increase in numbers of draftees and casualties. It further expanded as government lies about the conduct of the war were revealed, especially by the publication of the purloined Pentagon Papers. In 1967 the yuppies surrounded and tried to levitate the Pentagon. Here the picture was taken of a young girl putting a flower in the barrel of a soldier's rifle. Martin Luther King then tied the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement when he came out against our involvement.

The Civil Rights movement was another source of turmoil and violence. Blacks had begun to gain political power in World War II as they moved North to work in Defense industries and served bravely in the Armed Services. Yet, the North saw continued discrimination. "Burn Baby, Burn" was the motto of rioters as riots swept black urban areas. Meanwhile the southern states worked hard to keep blacks in their traditional place, that is as close to slavery as possible, with segregation, deprivation of voting rights and violence as needed. In 1968, the Kerner Commission would find that "our nation's moving towards two societies, one black one white -- separate and unequal."

Dr. Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement. He combined soaring oratory with the civil disobedience of Thoreau and Gandhi to change completely the relationship of black and white Americans. In 1963, Dr. King said, before 200,000 people on the national mall in Washington, "I have a dream all men will one day be brothers." He began to see this dream move forward.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy and was a Southerner from Texas, was able to push legislation through Congress. As a result in 1964, the Civil Rights Act passed ending legal segregation. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act passed guaranteeing the rights of blacks to vote. The Democratic Party was torn apart by both the anti-war movement and the reaction to the enactment of Civil Rights Laws. The Democrats of the southern states went over to the Republican Party and, as a result, in 1968 Republican Richard Nixon became president. And the Republican right wing, which is so powerful today, was born. The country was now moving through a landscape that was changing and was changing rapidly, and on seemingly every level, bringing chaotic and violent reactions and counter reactions from every direction.

The Sixties ended in 1974 with the trauma of the realization that indeed, as many had suspected, Richard Nixon was a crook. He had sat in the White House using his vast power to commit felonies in aid of his reelection. The Watergate scandal started with a botched burglary at Democratic headquarters. This eventually led to charges of impeachment, and, before a trial could be held, to the resignation of President Nixon. This had followed the resignation of Vice President Agnew who was later convicted of bribery. Who could be concerned about breaking the law by evading the draft, smoking marijuana or taking LSD when the President and Vice President were themselves committing felonies? Violence through political assassination, unprovoked police attacks on nonviolent demonstrators, National Guard shootings of our students, and bank robberies, kidnappings and bombings by radical leftists all fed into the feeling that our society was out of control.

**Chapter 4**

1968

"America, love it or leave it."

"We are all astronauts on the Spaceship Earth."

James Lovell, Apollo 8 Astronaut

1968, the penultimate year of the Sixties, was the year I graduated high school and set forth on my own path in life. The country, the world, was in violent turmoil and I was headed right into the center of the whirlwind, to San Francisco to begin college at Stanford.

On January 31, 1968 an unexpected offensive was launched by the North Vietnamese. The US Embassy grounds in Saigon were taken and held for 6 hours. An iconic photo of a South Vietnamese general brutally executing a prisoner filled the papers. February, the month I became eligible for the draft, saw the highest weekly casualty report of the war, 500 US dead in one week.

While the offensive would end in a military defeat for the North Vietnamese, they achieved political victory. The "most trusted man in America", CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, returned from a visit to South Vietnam and contradicted the military's claims that the war would soon be brought to a successful conclusion. He called for a negotiated withdrawal. This was the turning point of the war. President Johnson went on TV and announced he would not run for reelection and that he would put limits on the bombing of North Vietnam. Peace talks began in May. August saw troop strength peak at 541,000 and all bombing of North Vietnam was halted. In 1973, we would declare "peace with honor" and withdraw completely having suffered casualties of 58,000 dead and 304,000 wounded.

On April 4th, Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was in Chicago at that time, one of 225 cities where rioting broke out. I was trapped in my cousin Melissa's apartment for three days before I felt safe enough to go out on the streets.

The politics of assassination continued as the leading Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president and his attorney general, was shot in June. The democratic process stumbled on to the Democratic National convention in Chicago. There, Chicago police were seen to brutally attack nonviolent demonstrators without any provocation. In November, in the closest election in history to that date, the Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon was elected president.

However all was not doom and gloom in this year. A new word appeared, "counterculture." The Whole Earth catalog was published and became the Bible of the "back-to-the land" movement. The National Wild and Scenic Rivers and National Trails Acts were enacted. The Beatles' White album, their biggest seller to date, came out. Carlos Castaneda published "The Teachings of Don Juan", a description of the use of psychedelic drugs by a shaman of an aboriginal tribe in Mexico. And in December, the Apollo 8 mission successfully completed the first manned orbit of the moon, paving the way for a manned lunar landing the next year. Apollo 8 also took a photo of Earth rising over the moon. "Earthrise" became the iconic photo of the environmental movement.

The big historical "what if" of the Sixties is: what if John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. had not been assassinated? Would Vietnam have never grown into a war? Would the Great Society have soared? Would there have been no hippies? The question is interesting but the answer is unknowable. Our liberal leaders were assassinated. So in 1968, as I set out to chart a course for my future, violence was everywhere, authority and its institutions were under attack from all sides and I was threatened with being drafted into the Apocalypse of Vietnam. Welcome to the Sixties!

**Chapter 5**

"Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate."

Longfellow, A Poem of Life

For me the sunny California skies were the recipe for a new life of ever broadening thought and action. I had four years with my only responsibility being to get good grades. Three years at Lake Forest Academy had not only made me ready to party but had taught me how to excel academically with minimal effort. I wish I could have taken full advantage of Stanford's riches by concentrating solely on academics and achieving maximum success. It certainly would have changed my life's course. But there was no way it could have happened. It would have been hard for anyone, anywhere in 1968. For me, at the epicenter of psychedelic rock, Owsley acid and free sex, I didn't have a chance.

I had decided on Stanford after a spring break road trip, one of many to come. Mickey and I came to Palo Alto to visit another LFA boy from the previous year. As we came down Campus Drive, balmy breezes fanned the towering Palms. The boulevard opened up to a vista of handsome sandstone buildings with red tile roofs. Behind were the foothills, where the thousands of acres of an ecological study area, complete with a reservoir, extended into the Coast Range. It was indeed "The Farm", if not as pristine as when Leland Stanford used his railroad riches to make it his farm, yet still a semi-rural retreat not yet spoiled by the many new buildings and ubiquitous cars of today. And just down the road some 30 miles lay "The City" (to be spoken as if San Francisco was the only one worthy of the name). We met our friend and, after smoking my first joint, we went to "The City" to see my first comedy club act. It was the master political satirist Mort Sahl. Immediately, my political perspective was changed from rote acceptance to skeptical resistance. Outright rejection of the power structure would follow. Later, as I pondered the beauty of the campus, while smoking yet another joint, I decided that I was sold on the school. (I had already decided I was sold on marijuana.) I there and then vowed, "I shall return!"

This decision was probably inevitable given that I was following my father's path in going to the Bay Area. He got there by a more convoluted route. My Dad got his M.D. from the University of Illinois in 1928 and did his internship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Where, by the way, he was on duty on Valentine's Day 1929 when a bunch of ambulances pulled up carrying the eight victims of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Al Capone had executed his rivals with tommy guns. My father had to pronounce them dead, which was not difficult as he said it looked as if someone had taken sewing machines and stitched the corpses up, down and sideways with some very large stitches indeed.

After his internship Dad had been lucky to get a job in Houston with the Public Health Service. The Great Depression had begun with the Stock Market Crash in 1929, which was followed by a temporary closure of all the banks and economic activity falling 50%. Jobs were all but unobtainable and a federal paycheck was a treasure beyond measure. Dad then moved to another federal job with the Veterans Administration in Danville, where he met my mother and began his career as a psychiatrist. From there, he made it to the Bay Area where he took a job at the Menlo Park VA.

My Dad's stories of the good life by the Bay may have been what first attracted me to Stanford. And now the deal was sealed and I was on my way there. But the deal, and I, almost never happened. The good life for my father ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was in the Army Reserve and was called up immediately. Dad was ordered to report to the Port of Embarkation at Fort Mason in San Francisco. This was unusual as there usually was some training for reserves just being called up. At the fort a colonel ordered him to report to a Dutch cargo ship bound for the Netherlands East Indies, as the doctor assigned could not be found and the ship was sailing. It was clear that the quick fall of the Netherlands East Indies was all but inevitable so it didn't take any great insight to know that these orders meant almost certain death or capture by the Japanese. As my father boarded the ship he was resigned to his fate. Just then he heard a siren approaching. Dad turned to see a Jeep, emblazoned with MP, race up to the gangplank. When it stopped, two military policemen got out and made the lost doctor walk the gangplank! They handed my Dad orders to report back for reassignment. He was never so happy and relieved in his life.

A week later the SS Aquitania pulled into port and was requisitioned from the British for an emergency voyage to evacuate dependents from Hawaii. My father was assigned as ship's doctor. (It's the army. A psychiatrist for a ship's doctor?) The ship was called "The Grand Old Lady", was the last of the old 4-stackers and was the pride of the Cunard line, of Titanic fame. The Aquitania still had its British crew and all of its luxurious furnishings. Dad enjoyed a stateroom, the tablecloths set out for the six-course meals prepared by a top chef, and many other amenities not usually seen in Army service. As they entered Pearl Harbor, they were met by jubilation despite the fact that debris was scattered everywhere and sunken ships were still being salvaged from oil-slicked waters. The dependents had waited weeks and weeks for evacuation and now the largest ship ever to enter harbor had come and could carry them all away. Unfortunately, due to fear of submarines, what was normally a pleasant week's voyage to San Francisco was a month-long anxiety ridden ordeal. "Old Granny" made one more trip back to Hawaii before going through the Panama Canal to New York, where it became an Army transport and was stripped to the bone. My father accompanied an entire division of infantry to Scotland where he was detached from the ship.

Dad was sent to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London, commanded by General Eisenhower. My father survived many attacks on London by bombers and V-2 rockets but it was the V-1 "buzz bomb" that almost got him. The V-1 was the predecessor of the cruise missile. You knew it was going to hit when its distinctive buzz ended as its fuel ran out. Walking across a park and hearing the buzz die out, Dad and the nurse he was dating hit the ground. The bomb landed close by and the explosion shook them, covering them in leaves and dirt but luckily leaving them intact. My father had other postings in England until ending the war in Liege, Belgium. He did have to use his service sidearm, one time, but it was not in combat. It was to fire warning shots to quell a riot at a US Army replacement depot in Birmingham. Dr. Michael B. Greenfield is mentioned in the official Army "History of Neuropsychiatry in WWII."

So we survived both the Nazis and the Nipponese Empire in order that I could arrive at Stanford in the fall of '68. And here I was, a freshman, at Roble Hall. My mother, being a good Jewish one, had intervened in my absence to change my dorm assignment from an all-male freshman dorm to the first coed dorm in the country with the sexes alternating rooms on the same floor. It was so groundbreaking that the first week of school we were interviewed by the LA Times. I was already part of the sexual revolution and I had just set foot on campus!

My Roble assignment was critical because of Stanford's one great defect. The ratio of men to women was 2 to 1. Roble's more abundant opportunities and more tranquil atmosphere were much more attractive than the alternatives. The dorm's other great advantage was that it was in a quiet, isolated part of the campus with a grove of trees in front and Lake Lagunita in back. You wouldn't want your high interrupted by the noise of the workaday world; I mean it was perfect for academic contemplation. Thanks, Mom.

I shared a suite with three other freshmen, all Californians with much more sophistication than me. My friend to this day, Steve Robinson, would be most responsible for remaking a callow youth into one with some sophistication. One of the first weekends of the Quarter a friend of his brother Bill came up from USC and took us to North Beach to get drunk and go to my first strip club, the iconic Carol Doda's. Miss Doda was quite the sophisticate and provided some much needed education. This whole episode illustrates the difference between SC and Stanford, as eventually I would much prefer hippie chicks, dope and the Grateful Dead to Carol Doda, beer, and stripper music.

As you may see by now, the list of firsts will be a long one. There are so many firsts because I cannot emphasize too much how isolated and parochial the rural Midwest was in those days. My biggest cultural deficit was in gastronomy. The only ethnic restaurant in Danville was Italian, hardly exotic. Steve soon introduced me to the burrito, which is now ubiquitous throughout the country, but then I knew nothing of chile, neither red nor green. My Chinese Economic Development professor introduced Chinese food to me, along with that marvelous invention, the lazy Susan, which was in the middle of the restaurant's large round table. I enthusiastically spun it about in order to sample all the dishes, which my professor had special ordered for our class. But I was most amazed when the dorm's eating hall put a platter of strange green globes on the table. They had sharp points on them that hardly made them inviting. I was puzzled until informed that these were artichokes, a crop mainly grown down the road in Watsonville. In fact, rumor had it, that one of the students paid her tuition by trucking them up to the campus commissary. I was shown how one could eat this thistle and I love them to this day.

Now I must give Danville its due. Eating at Tony's Italian restaurant is one of my most vivid memories of growing up. It was such an institution that the local paper, the Commercial-News, did a story in 2006 on the town's memories of Tony's and even published the recipe for his marinara sauce. The restaurant was in a green shack, just north of town, which looked as if it would fall over in a strong breeze. It was so small it only held 6 or 8 tables and the well water they served had so much iron your mouth puckered up. Winnie was huge and domineering. If she got tired she simply locked the door, put up the closed sign and did not respond to frantic knocks from customers seeking spaghetti. And I believe the secret, unpublished ingredient for the sauce was the ashes of the well-used cigar that Tony always had in his mouth when he came out front to greet the customers. They had had a restaurant in Chicago and mobsters were said to come down to Danville to eat at Tony's. (And check on their houses of ill repute?) As the stories go, I was not well behaved when in my 3's (4's, and so on). When I was about 5, Winnie had had enough of me and I was banned from Tony's for a year or so. I don't think my family has forgiven me to this day.

As my politics grew more radical so did my hair and my beard. But politics was incidental to partying at that time. My only political act that first year was to see a draft counselor and map out a strategy to avoid going to Nam. Those who could afford college had little problem avoiding the draft. And while that was unfair I thanked god that I was on the plus side of that balance. As my father was a doctor a friend of his had already established a medical record of digestive problems to support my being a 4-f. If that ploy were to fail, my folks were willing to support me in Canada. With the odds stacked in my favor the draft was not a major worry of mine.

I didn't know it at the time but I had gotten into Stanford just as it turned from "a good regional institution into one of the most prestigious research universities in the world." And "despite the sit-ins, demonstrations and civil disobedience, academic life thrived in the 60's." So I would partake, between trips of all kinds, of the intellectual bonanza available. My freshman seminar in Chinese economics was taught by a young Chinese professor, whose family had lived through the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. (This Chinese version of culture change brought misery and death to millions, all courtesy of Chairman Mao and his little Red book.) My Twentieth Century Russian History Professor had actually been a member of the transitional government which followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. The government lasted a year or so before the Bolsheviks massacred the too gentle intellectuals and Lenin became head of the Soviet Union. And that was just two of my freshman year professors.

But it was the mother lode of women, drugs and music, which I was to most earnestly mine that year. The first women Steve and I made an acquaintance with were some high school girls who were hanging around the Student Union. I didn't know it but Annabelle would lead me to my one and only encounter, so far, with a private detective. Annabelle was a very cute young thing with a very troubled home life. I was only concerned with the fact that she was more than willing to participate in us both trying to figure out this sex thing. That all went quite well until she ran away from her boarding school. I only knew that she had stopped coming by my room. I was informed of her troubles when they became mine. The dorm resident assistant came to me and told me that a private investigator wanted to talk to me about her whereabouts. That scared the hell out of me, as she was certainly underage. I was soon talking to a pudgy middle-aged man who did not look like Sam Spade the detective but who put the fear of god into me anyway. I could tell him nothing.

A few weeks later, with mounting dread, I again answered the door to find an attractive, distraught middle-aged woman standing there. She informed me that she was Annabelle's mother and that her daughter was still missing. Again, I could tell her nothing and she left quite disgusted with me. A few days later there was another knock on the door and I answered it with what was now approaching the realm of terror. There stood Annabelle. I quickly brought her in and she told me of her odyssey in the Haight with the hippies. She wanted to make love but after a story of free love and beyond I thought caution was in order. I finally convinced her that I could have nothing to do with her if I wanted to stay out of jail. I bundled her up and drove her to a corner near her boarding school and left her there. I never saw her again but a year or so later received an anonymous letter, postmarked Palo Alto, which I have always thought was from her. The letter was a page long and described a young boy's dreams of escaping his troubles at school by showing his schoolmates that he can fly. I later learned that this was a quote from "Reminiscences of Childhood" by Dylan Thomas. I hope Annabelle learned to fly and that it took her to good places.

**Chapter 6**

Opening the Doors of Perception

"Better living through Chemistry"

One day as I walked through the dorm's lounge the TV caught my attention. The talk show host (Tom Snyder) was just introducing an extraordinary looking wild-eyed fellow as an ex-professor called Timothy Leary. Dr. Leary, the leader of the League for Spiritual Discovery, then educated the audience on the potential for the exploration of the mind through psychedelic drugs. Such drugs had long been used by native peoples in religious ceremonies. In 1944 LSD, a derivative of a fungus, was discovered when a researcher accidentally ingested some and had a legendary, hallucinatory bike ride. Early clinical tests had shown promise of therapeutic benefit from the use of such drugs. Dr. Leary soon convinced me that I too could benefit from such an exploration. Later I would find out just who this man was and what exactly I was about to get involved in.

Timothy Leary had been a professor in the psychology department at Harvard. In the fall of 1960 he, along with his fellow professor Richard Alpert, began formal experiments with psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms." This "Harvard Psychedelic Club" also included Andrew Weil and Huston Smith. Dr. Weil would become the father of integrative medicine and Huston Smith would author the definitive text on world religions. The Club was to move us from the Fifties into the counterculture, "from intellect to intuition, from mechanistic thinking to mysticism, from the scientific to the shamanic....chang(ing) nothing less than the way we look at mind, body and spirit."

The members of the Club partied with the likes of Alan Ginsberg, the Beat poet, and Aldous Huxley, whose books describing the psychedelic experience were popular with the Beats but an author best known for his book "Brave New World." There was all too much fun and games and it all came apart when Andrew Weil outed the Professors' extracurricular activities in an article in the student newspaper. Their Professorships were terminated in 1963. They became media celebrities and by 1966 Leary and Alpert had moved on to San Francisco.

San Francisco was where it was all happening. At the beginning of the 1960's Ken Kesey, a Stanford student, took a job at the very same Menlo Park VA hospital where my Dad had worked. Kesey's experiences on the psychiatric ward there would form the basis of his novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." But perhaps more importantly Kesey participated in CIA-funded experiments with LSD held at the hospital. By 1964 Ken Kesey would be leading a posse, the Merry Pranksters, on an infamous drug-fueled, cross-country trip in a bus named Further with Alan Ginsberg on aboard and a visit with Jack Kerouac as the destination. The counterculture was being born as Kesey put on public "acid tests" across the Bay area in 1965 and 1966. LSD was supplied along with music and a light show. The house band, the Warlocks, was soon renamed the Grateful Dead, after the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a guide to death and rebirth.

The psychedelic experience that Leary, Kesey et al. sought to bring to the public leads to the experience of: the unity of all creation and multiple realities. The result is a polytheistic view of the universe where all religions are seen to express the same truth. The powers that be don't like individuals to be empowered or a society where everything and anything is possible. The "authorities" want to shape and enforce their own reality through authoritarian religions, "patriotism" and a fear that divides people into "us" and "them." The counterculture thus threatened the status quo and those who benefit from it. The sensational media coverage of the growing use of psychedelic drugs led to LSD being outlawed in California in 1966. This was soon followed by a national ban.

Timothy Leary did not care what the powers-that-be said. In 1967, before 30,000 hippies in San Francisco, the "pied piper" of LSD proclaimed, "Tune in, Turn on and Drop out!" Dr. Leary later clarified this by saying that he never meant to urge dropping completely out of society but only that a "gap" year or two would be beneficial by allowing a chance at another perspective on life. People heard what they wanted to hear. Leary not only inspired me but he also inspired John Lennon to take LSD. Lennon wrote a song about his acid trip, entitled "Tomorrow Never Knows." It begins, "Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream. It is not dying. It is not dying." Leary fearlessly took on Ronald Reagan in the race for California Governor. Despite Lennon's penning him a campaign song, "Come Together", Leary lost. But he had already won my mind.

My first attempt at achieving a higher state of consciousness was to be no more propitious than had been my experience with Annabelle. As luck would have it, a few days after my epiphany by TV, a former LFA boy invited me to lunch. I met him at the student radio station where, to the tunes of the latest psychedelic rock, he told me that he thought it would be a good idea if we dropped some acid as an appetizer before lunch. I said that sounded like a wise course of action to me. It wasn't. I was later to learn that such drugs should only be consumed with someone you trust and only in a safe and secure environment. I didn't know Eric well and the eating club we went to was loud and boisterous. Not only was I tripping heavily, with the food moving around on the plate and changing colors, but the acid was cut with speed so that everything was going on at a mile a minute. None of this was conducive to a healthy appetite, so I hurriedly excused myself and headed for home.

As I crossed campus on the way to my dorm, the clouds raced by overhead and the buildings loomed large before them. Fortunately for me, my roommate Steve was home. Although the pictures hanging on the walls were imitating flat screen TV's, with their moving images, Steve managed to settle me down. In a safe and secure setting my mild anxiety disappeared and I could enjoy the astounding nature of my perceptions despite the speed at which they were happening. I lost myself in the music Steve put on and found that pizza, even one with animated ingredients that were trying to escape from the clinging crust, was still delicious. The drugs soon wore off and reality returned to normal. All in all, it was enough to have put most people off such things forever. But for me, it was just a taste of what surely would be better days. All were much better as, thank god, I never had to deal with contaminated drugs again. How many trips I took I'll never know but 17 were memorable enough to remember in some detail. And I cannot forget and must add in the marijuana brownies, as powerful as any LSD. The fact that a study group of psychology grad students watched us as we ate and then tripped out was a bit disconcerting but did not lead to any psychological breakthroughs, or breakdowns, on either side. Most trips were in that first year and I tapered off until I only remember two after Stanford. But there were so many hallucinogenic drugs available that we had at least one party where we had a large bag of powdered mescaline, a derivative of peyote cactus and much less intense than LSD. We encapsulated it ourselves while licking the powder off our hands as we went. And boy, did we go! But the most memorable delivery system was the blotter acid, which was a page from an old book with a drop on the word, "Mirage." So, I ate a mirage and had a miracle as the world turned into a new and marvelous place.

The best drug tale of the times, apocryphal or not, was a Halloween story. It seems two dudes were tripping on acid in Napa. They passed a store that had pumpkins stacked in front of it. Suddenly, the street was filled with pumpkins rolling every which way. The two stoners looked at each other and said, "This is some seriously groovy acid!" This was told just after my first earthquake, which was strong enough to make every one in the cafe run into the streets. Like all good Californians, the threat of earthquakes was soon forgotten, except for this tale.

My experimentation with consciousness altering substances was probably as preordained as was my choice of Stanford. As, once again, I followed in my father's footsteps. His first job after his residency was a hospital in Houston, where he was appointed to the Public Health Service to attend to merchant mariners. One day he did rounds before going off duty. He noticed a sailor had a box of long brown cigarettes. When Dad asked what it was, the reply was marijuana. The man then pulled out a reefer and offered it to my Dad. Dad went off duty and retired to his room where he and another doc did some research on the effects of marijuana on the brain. The reefer must have been just off the boat from Bangkok as he was blown away. And just then the public address system called out, "Dr. Greenfield, wanted in surgery!" He went to the OR to find that there were mass casualties and he was the only one available to do a surgery. As he operated, every part of the surgical field stood out in vivid detail with the blood and blood vessels standing out in living color. As a result, he said it was a better operation than it would have been without the chemical assistance. He never smoked anything else again as he had no opportunity before he grew too old for such shenanigans.

Dad also had time in Houston to visit Mexico. On his return he used his government car to smuggle two German Jewish refugees across the border. Seeing the Public Health Service insignia the border guards just waved them through. The next year he transferred to the VA in Danville. As he was the last new doc to arrive, he was assigned to the post no one else had wanted, psychiatry. He had no more qualifications for this than any other M.D. but this was serendipity as he went on to become a 50-year life member of the American Psychiatric Association. It was also lucky because no one ever competed with him for his psychiatric posts. This allowed him to survive personnel turnover, after turnover, and keep his federal paycheck throughout the depression years.

The next trip I remember after the borderline bummer was a Spring Break Road Trip. Steve took me home with him to Whittier, California. A friend of his took us to his dad's boat and we set off from Newport Beach. It was "Twenty-six miles across the sea" to Santa Catalina Island, a trip immortalized in song by the Four Preps. The island had long been a resort destination and was once the spring training home of the Chicago Cubs.

I decided that being on gentle seas and headed for a tropical isle was a good time to drop some mescaline. What could go wrong? By the time the boat was far from shore, I was too. I stood above the deck at a steering position held aloft by metal poles. The view of sea and sky was spectacular and I was becoming one with the universe when my rapture was rudely interrupted by shouts from below. They were yelling up to me that the steering below was out and that I had to steer the ship. I believe I heard the words, "You must save the ship!" Being a true mariner, I took command. Clutching the wheel with a death grip, I turned us back on course. But the boat did not respond. In fact, it thought starboard meant port. So I tried port but the vessel went starboard. I continued my heroic struggle, with no success, until I became conscious of laughter coming from below. The bounders were taking advantage of my condition to amuse themselves! I had no time for such monkeyshines and so smiled, returned to my reverie and left them to steer me as they would.

Suddenly, an island appeared out of the sea. It was long, humpbacked and verdant green. But most astonishingly it was breathing. The hills inhaled and exhaled, in and out. I was mesmerized. I was actually seeing the vegetation exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. If we could all perceive this, then perhaps we would all know the truth that the whole earth is alive and we are only a part of the whole.

When we arrived in harbor, the waves disappeared and balmy breezes welcomed us. The boys guided me into a dingy and we rowed ashore. There we found a dance in progress. We met some fine-looking girls in bikinis and walked them back to the dock. Our plans to take them out to the boat were foiled when we found the dingy missing. I was in no shape to help and watched open-eyed as Steve fetched a policeman and carried on a conversation with him. At this, the girls fled and left us to a night alone on the boat. The return trip was uneventful. The most amazing thing is that I was never seasick. I have an inner ear disorder, Mennierre's Disease, and am highly prone to motion sickness. So prone am I, that I am probably the only person to ever get seasick on Lake Vermilion in Danville. This was the only time I've been on the open ocean and not been seasick. I, therefore, must, without hesitation, recommend mescaline as a preventative for seasickness.

I returned to my academic studies refreshed by my sea voyage. My experience of my final exams was most extraordinary. When I began to write the exams the knowledge flowed out of me in a single burst and I just turned in what I had written without reviewing it. I got 3 A's and a B. I later found out that this is called automatic writing. The self gets out of the way and cosmic consciousness puts the words directly on the paper. I had opened my mind to the universe and it was kind enough to supply the content needed. This book was a similar experience.

Other subjects did not go so well. I had to drop the last quarter of Physical Science, the course designed to get non-majors their science requirement. I had had a C and a D and was now failing. Not even cosmic consciousness could help me with science and math. At LFA I only passed chemistry because of blind luck. After completely using up my unknown substances, I had no clue as to what they had been. I woke up the next day to discover that my finger was black. I guessed silver nitrate, which was one of the two unknowns, and got a C. I got a D in geometry and thank God that somehow I never had to take algebra or calculus. Although, as we shall see, I did voluntarily take a math class at Stanford: Numerology and the Occult. As for science, the only way I could meet Stanford's requirements was to wait till they offered a science I could really relate too. I aced Human Sexuality. And no, there was no lab or rather the entire campus was an on-going experiment in free love. When summer came I left for Danville.

**Chapter 7**

Riding that train

From San Francisco to Danville, Illinois was a trip measured not in miles but in units of consciousness and time. One was in the Sixties headed for the 21st century and the other was in the Fifties hoping to return to the even further reaches of the past. One was open to any and all new ideas and the other was a closed world of suspicion and hostility. In Danville my appearance truly made me a "freak" in the eyes of most who beheld me. My parents pretended not to know me in public. Most people instantly disliked me, my employers took the opportunity to make me pay by giving me the worst jobs, such as putting on a respirator and going under the foundry to dig out the waste beneath the factory floor, and I only got jobs in the first place because everybody in town had a relative with mental health problems and were thus beholden to my Dad.

Danville also was the South. It was not the Deep South but south of Chicago is southern. One could hear a twang in some folks' speech and outside of town one could find hillbilly country, complete with trash and junker cars in the front yards. African-Americans constituted a large part of the population and provided most, if not all, of the servant class. I still remember my African-American nanny's spellbinding tales of the adventures of Aquaman. My most vivid memory of the southern mentality is at age eight or so when my mother took me and my sister and the maid's daughter out for a coke. We sat at the lunch counter and waited for service. None came. When we asked to be served the manager told us in no uncertain terms that they did not serve "niggers." The little girl was 7 years old. My father was the only private psychiatrist in town when he was black balled for membership in the top country club for being Jewish. Although he had also initially been denied entrance to the University Of Illinois Medical School, because the Jewish quota had been met, this latest insult was even more devastating as it came from colleagues and those whose families he was healing.

Now I must give Danville some respect. It was almost as good a place to grow up in in the Fifties as Mayberry, being safe, quiet and prosperous. As kids we freely roamed the streets, fields and forests. We walked alone to the Custard Cup for the best custard and cold fudge ever. We were dropped off downtown and went to the Karamel Corn store before double features at the movies. I still have the Oscar Meyer weiner whistle thrown to me from the weiner shaped Weinermobile. And while the adults fasted on Yom Kippur the kids went around the block to the drugstore soda fountain to gorge on ice cream sodas. Unfortunately, like much of the Rustbelt, Danville has fallen on tough times. Its population is now less than in the 1920 census and it is the cheapest place to live in the US.

Danville claims a strong Lincoln connection, which is a big deal in the Land of Lincoln. The town is the seat of the Federal District Court for Eastern Illinois. This is the same court who's circuit Abraham Lincoln rode from Springfield in the west to Danville in the East. Lincoln tried cases in Danville, sharing the same bed, as was the custom, with the judges and other lawyers traveling the circuit with him. Lincoln had many friends in Danville and met his law partner and bodyguard Lamon there. Another claim to fame is being the birthplace of Dick Van Dyke and Gene Hackman, who were trained in its community theatre. On the Dick Van Dyke show, Rob Petrie's birthplace was Danville and we all thrilled when the town was mentioned or was a setting for an episode. Gene Hackman wrote a thriller called "Justice for None", set in Danville with a plot revolving around an injustice being perpetrated against an African American. Most of the action occurs at the VA where my Dad worked. It's a good read, as are all his novels.

Danville was and is also a place of great natural beauty. It is where the Eastern hardwood forest ends and the prairie begins. The town was founded where the North Fork, the Middle Fork and the Salt Fork meet to form the Big Vermilion River, which flows 15 miles SE into the Wabash. The Middle Fork is Illinois' only National Wild and Scenic River. The area has Kickapoo State Park and numerous other parks and forest preserves, along with Lake Vermilion and Kennekuk Cove reservoirs. It's a great place to hike, swim and boat.

So here I was and the summer of '69 turned out to be a great one. The main ingredient responsible for this was marijuana, and its cousin hashish, large amounts of both of which I brought back with me from California. The weed in those days was not harsh on the throat and a single hit was a mellow high, not a psychedelic trip. The hashish was much stronger and easier to transport. In the Bay area they both were cheap and of very high quality. Vermilion County became a hemp producer in World War II when the fall of the Philippines cut off the US supply of hemp. The authorities were so paranoid in the 60's that they hired my buddy John and others to burn the hemp that still grew wild besides the roads. He would go out the night before and harvest some to smoke. This was rope not dope and both sides were nuts to even care about it. However, it does illustrate how desperate the Illini were for some mary jane. The whole country was desperate, as there was none to be had outside of California, unless, of course, you knew me.

I now became close friends with one of my most unforgettable characters, the late, lamented Ted Hile. Ted looked a lot like me: medium height and weight, slender but wiry, brown hair and medium complexion. Although, since his way out of Nam was the National Guard, his appearance was straight with none of my hirsute embellishments. Ted was a charmer and a wheeler-dealer. He made leather belts and hash pipes, dealt dope and sold Tiffany belt buckles. He was even crazier than I was. We were to have good times together.

My parents went off on their first and only European vacation and would be gone for weeks. I was left alone in the house. Party time! A perusal of the medicine cabinet found some samples that needed sampling. One was a case of cough syrup that had a large amount of codeine as a key ingredient. The other was a thirty-day supply of time-release amphetamines. My Dad got me a job at the Western Brick factory, which claimed to be the largest brick factory in the world. After a few days, management put me to digging deep ditches, lots and lots of ditches. The first day went well, with help of the amphetamines I must have set a new record for deep ditch digging, but the handwriting was on the wall. The "hippie" was to be given the worst jobs until he quit. Their plan worked, as after some days of this I told them to shove it. I became footloose and fancy free just in time to meet Ellen.

One of our neighbors, and longtime friends, invited me over for lunch to meet her niece from Omaha. Ellen was 15 going on 32. She was much more mature than I was, which was not _a hard task._ Ellen was also very beautiful and very smart. A petite brunette with a great figure, she was looking for something to enliven her stay in Danville. I was perfect material to pass the time with. But, as fate would have it, we fell in love, or at least the adolescent version thereof, which is pretty good in and of itself.

Our favorite pastime was to go out to the strip mines. Danville had pioneered coal strip mining in the 1850's, but it had ended in the 1940's. Left behind were vast acres, some just flat, empty ground and others which had been taken back by the forest but all riddled with large pits that had filled with crystal clear water. Some of these swimming holes were in the parks but most were just on vacant land. We had this playland to ourselves. It was a great place to skinny-dip or to make love in the sun. Ted and his brother would come down, share joints with us and fill the air with multi-colored smoke: purples, reds and oranges. The show was courtesy of the National Guard and the smoke grenades stolen from its armory and being put to the most peaceful of purposes.

The popular Midwest pastime of fairs also helped pass the time. The boys and I used to go up to Hoopeston to the Sweet Corn Festival. The main attraction was the betting on the mouse races. A large, round surface with a hole in the center was divided into different colored wedges. Mice would be placed on the outside of the circle and you would bet on which mouse would reach the center hole first by picking its color. Then, the mice were released and the fun began! I took Ellen to watch the mice run and then to Springfield to see the one-hit wonder, Iron Butterfly at the Illinois State Fair. IN a Godda DaVida, baby!

All good things must end, the cough syrup was no more and it was time for Ellen to return to Omaha. We pledged undying love and that we would soon see each other. I then took her and her aunt to the train station. Danville was and is a railroad town. It was the headquarters of the C&EI (Chicago & Eastern Illinois) and was actually a Chicago suburb as you could get on the train at 6:30 am and get off in the Loop at 9 or so. Today it still has 4 tracks and 3 lines but no passenger service. Growing up the sound of trains in the distance carried over the fields to my bedroom. Once a year there would suddenly appear in downtown Danville a crew of men seemingly off a large pirate ship. As a ten-year old I stood mesmerized at the sight of rough looking men with eye patches and peg legs. I later discovered that Danville was then the site of the annual Hobo's convention.

I was about to put Ellen on one of the most famous trains of all time, the Wabash Cannon Ball. The route ran from Detroit to St. Louis following the Wabash River most of the way. The Cannon Ball is enshrined in song,

"Listen to that jingle, the rumble and the roar,

As she glides along the woodlands, or'e the hills

And by the shore.

Hear the mighty rush of the engine,

hear the lonesome hobo's call,

As you travel cross the country on the Wabash Cannon Ball."

I followed Ellen aboard, carrying her bags. After I put her bags up in the overhead, we saw her aunt and my friend Tony waving at us. He had ridden his motorcycle out to say goodbye. We waved back till I noticed their waves were becoming frantic and their smiles turning into frowns. I turned to see another train passing us. It then dawned on me that the other train wasn't passing us but we were passing it! Our train was leaving the station!!! I turned and ran over to the conductor and told him the situation. He looked me over carefully and, with a twinkle in his eye, he smiled and said, "No problem." Then he had a conversation with someone on his walkie-talkie. With that concluded he told me to follow him. As we went down the car the conductor told us that the train would soon come to a curve and slow down and that I should be ready to jump as someone would be waiting there. Without a pause for thought, I responded, "Sounds good to me", as did most any crazy idea at that time. I once again kissed Ellen goodbye, he opened the door at the end of the car and we stepped out onto the platform. Between the couplings I could see the ground quickly passing by but that did not make me hesitate. And sure enough the train began to slow and a crossing appeared amidst the forest. I thanked him for his help and he smiled back. Then he yelled, "Now!" I stepped down the stairs and came off running but I didn't even stumble it was so smooth a landing. And waiting there, with engine running, was Tony on his motorcycle! And thus ended my last ride on the old Cannon Ball. The hobos would have been proud of me. DOT, OSHA and other alphabet soups would not have been. It couldn't happen today and this probably would avoid injuries and save lives. But, as the conductor had obviously surmised, I was young, fit and ready to take on any adventure. For me, jumping off a moving train was a piece of cake and a very sweet one indeed.

**Chapter 8**

The Sound of Music

My parents had no interest in music and there was no music in the house as I was growing up. However, the public schools in Danville had an extensive music program. In addition, to being introduced to playing the recorder, which I continue to this day, I learned all the old American folk songs such as "The Erie Canal." The year I lived in Pittsburgh a school trip to the symphony hooked me on classical music. At LFA, one of my dorm masters, Mr. Barry, was thrilled to have someone to share his world class collection of jazz LP's, including many 78's, and he educated me in the world of jazz. I was so gung ho that I bought a small stereo and went to the record store and bought my first album, one by Oscar Petersen. I found an unbelievable FM station that played all jazz and woke up to the voices of its European female disk jockeys and their incredibly sexy accents. I joined a music club and the first album sent was not the one I ordered, but, by serendipity, it was "Wave" by Antonio Carlos Jobim, which remains my all-time favorite album.

But it is rocking and a rolling that is our subject here. Music bound the counterculture together and was a large part of the psychedelic experience. And there was another counterculture across the Atlantic. The "British Invasion" would link the two. America had sent the Brits the Blues and rock n' roll and they sent us back the Beatles. The band's appearance in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan show was a sensation. By April the Beatles had the top 5 singles in the country. There were many other popular British bands in the invasion, most notably the edgier Rolling Stones, but the Beatles became the living embodiment of the counterculture.

The Beatles are the best selling band in history. "...in the form of popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative and more distinctive." They introduced many new stylistic and technological innovations. Their influence went global and extended beyond music. They had not only introduced Indian music to the Western audience but also helped popularize meditation and eastern philosophy. The Beatles influenced everything from haircuts to bellbottoms to the art used in advertising. They starred in several movies, including the animated "Yellow Submarine." It was a phenomenon the like of which we've not seen since. I remember making a special trip to the record store in Palo Alto to get Abbey Road the day it was released. I rushed back to the dorm where friends had the joints all rolled. We spent all afternoon listening to the album over and over again. It still sounds good after all these years.

Other music was also transformed by the counterculture. Jazz was liberated and electrified a la Miles Davis and his album Bitch's Brew. The folk music of the Fifties went electric in 1965 with Bob Dylan's controversial appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. Festivals became the meeting place of the counterculture. This phenomenon peaked at Woodstock in1969, when we were a "million strong."

At LFA I had gone to a Simon and Garfunkel concert, which while being very good was hardly rock. My first, and one of the all-time best, rock concerts was in, of all places, Schaefer Lake, Indiana. The summer of 1967 Jefferson Airplane was touring and got booked into this summer resort, which was more accustomed to farmers than to hipsters. Their first album, "Surrealistic Pillow," was just out and they were obviously taking any gig they could get. The concert was in a small dance hall and by midnight less than a dozen people were left. I was leaning on the stage at the feet of Jorma KauKonen, the lead guitarist, with no one beside me. The band played, for at least a half hour, their quieter numbers, like "Today" and "Coming Back to Me", seemingly for me alone. What an introduction to the best of San Francisco Psychedelic rock this was and it took place in the least, likeliest of places and without a psychedelic drug in sight, though the band probably had some hidden away somewhere.

The summer of '69 saw my first music festival. Not long after Ellen left, Ted took me with him to the house of a friend of his to meet her father. I had never met the father or his daughter, Anne, who was in summer school at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. I didn't know it but this was the beginning of the most epic road trip of my life and it began with perhaps Ted's greatest feat of wheeling and dealing. Somehow he convinced this man that his daughter needed someone from home to go and keep her company. Ted then went further beyond the bounds of reason and persuaded this man that he needed a companion on the trip. The guy, who owned an auto dealership, handed Ted a company credit card and said for us to have a good time. I had no idea what was going on but if he wanted us to have a good time I was willing to oblige. So we packed up and headed to the airport with credit card in hand. I don't think I had ever seen a credit card before, let alone used one, but Ted seemed certain how to use it and to good effect.

We arrived in DC, courtesy of Chevrolet, Pontiac or some other domestic producer, and I met Anne, along with a girlfriend of hers, when they picked us up at the airport. Anne was a nice and very attractive young woman, as was her friend, and we spent the day driving around Virginia. We treated them to some of my dope but they declined the acid that Ted and I dropped. As day faded the acid had not. The girls dropped us at a dorm at the college, which was between sessions. The custodian showed us through deserted halls and left us in a room bare but for stripped beds with bedding and towels lying on them. Apparently, we were the only ones staying in the dorm. After a shower we decided that sitting in a sterile room while tripping all evening would be a bummer. Also we were starving. So we wandered out into the streets.

We had no idea what to do or how to do it but it sure was interesting watching it all go by as we walked and walked. After quite awhile went by without finding a place to eat we saw two men approaching. They were about ten years older than us and didn't look like students. They smiled and stopped to chat. It must have been obvious that we were stoned and helpless. It soon became clear that I was once again perceived as "cute." We made it clear that we didn't swing that way and they took pity on us and took us in tow, no strings attached. Soon we were at a Greek deli and had a wonderful meal.

After the meal they took us back to their apartment. They sat us on a couch, gave us a beer, turned on the music and let us trip out on a lava lamp. Dripping and swirling red shapes flowed and glowed till one was drawn in to where the mind could drift away in the eternal motion of the universe. Later, after we returned to earth, the guys explained that they were actors from New York and came down every summer to act in the Pageant. The Colonial National Park is in Williamsburg and most of the city was kept as in olden days. The Pageant recreated life as it was. The actors were very gay and very nice. We had a good time till we finally came down and walked back to the dorm. Once again I owed a debt to the gays.

In the morning Anne and her friend picked us up and we spent the day sight seeing in DC. The credit card got us rooms in a motel for the night. The next morning was the Fourth of July and DC is the place to be for Independence Day. By evening the mall was packed with hundreds of thousands of people, all waiting for the fire works. Ted exchanged a joint for some ice cream from a vendor with a cart and soon we were helping to sell the popsicles and Eskimo pies. With each purchase the purchaser was entitled to a free toke. It was a miracle we weren't busted. I guess it was too crowded for the fuzz to get to us. Anyway the fireworks were as good as federal dollars can buy and that means absolutely amazing. Freedom for All!

We went back south to Smithfield, Virginia and stayed with Anne's aunt. She was a lovely older woman with a large, beautiful Colonial. She showed us great southern hospitality. At the end of our stay, she gave us a poem that she had written. My greatest regret in writing this memoir is that the poem is lost in the mists of time. I do remember a line where we "showed a gentler guise than local youth did present." We were quite pleased to have impressed such a gentlewoman as being gentlemen. She was one who could see beneath outward appearances.

By July 10 we had made it back north to Laurel, Maryland. We used the magic credit card to get two rooms at the Holiday Inn by the racetrack where the next day was to begin the two-day Laurel Pop Festival with Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck and many other bands. The first day was spectacular and was headlined by Led Zeppelin. The next morning we went into the coffee shop for breakfast. The motel was so full that they had to use every chair. A long series of tables had been put together for the Led Zeppelin entourage and there were four empty seats. That was where we were seated! It was a stairway to Heaven, Jimmy Page and bagels.

The next night we all dropped psilocybin. The festivities were livened up by distant thunderstorms that provided an amazing lightshow without being threatening. The Mothers of Invention headlined and blew the audience away. In the middle of their set the clouds glowed with lightning bolts that spelled out, to my melting mind, "Sacred in his Duty." I have no idea what that did or does mean but hope I was and am. We tripped on home to the hotel. Ted pushed the elevator button and the doors opened to another visionary experience. An older man in hippie attire grinned at us through a green face. Ted and I looked at each other in hopes that one of us could tell whether this was real or not. The dude could tell we were tripped out and said, " Come on in. I'm with the Mothers." Thank God, his face was green! We all got in and I began talking to the green man. When he found out I had some good weed he grew quite excited. I had been holding a lottery ticket all this time and now it would pay off. He said his name was Jimmy Carl Black and he was the drummer for the Mothers. Jimmy invited us to their suite where there was an after concert party going. Oh yeah!

The suite was packed with band members, crew, significant others and groupies. A tape deck was playing music from studio takes, past and present. The crowd just about roared when I pulled out a large baggie of very good Panama Red and Ted and I began to roll and pass out doobies. Anne and her friend went off and I looked around but didn't see Frank Zappa. I asked Jimmy where he was and he said that Frank did not do drugs and was in his room writing music. I was disappointed, as I could not know that I would meet Frank a few years hence. Eventually, Ted and I hooked up with two groupies and spent the night with them. I like to think they thought we were "Mothers" of some kind but who knows? Anne and her friend probably made it somewhere with somebody, maybe even a real "Mother." Years later the Mothers made a movie with Ringo Starr called "Two Hundred Motels." This was one of the motels. Pretty Cool!

Ted got married a year or so later to a girl from Watseka, which was just up the road from Danville. I was the Best Man and performed my duty by getting him loaded and driving him in his car to the wedding. Unfortunately, it was an old beat-up piece of junk. Halfway there it died. In the middle of corn and soybean fields we stood by the road in our best duds and stuck out our thumbs. It must have been a sight. Every few minutes we went into the corn stalks and toked up some more. This must have helped as we did get a ride and arrived before the scheduled start of the ceremonies. I was indeed the best man for the job.

At the end of the summer of '69 I packed up to return to school. Tony's cousin John Acton, who I had known since junior high, decided to drive back out with me and see what was up. Once in San Francisco I took him to where hippiedom hung. The Family Dog was still holding concerts out on the beach between Golden Gate Park and the Cliff House. We got loaded and danced our brains out. The band Spirit was really grooving and so was I when, suddenly, I felt a blow to the top of my head which brought my gyrations to a halt. I rubbed the crown of my head and looked about me to see what had happened. I saw something at my feet and bent down to pick it up. It was a stick, a drumstick. Apparently, the drummer had thrown it up high, intending to catch it on the way down, thus showing his incredible skill. Unfortunately, he wasn't so skilled and the stick flew way up and out into the crowd before crashing down on the crazily dancing hippie's head. I showed the offending instrument to John and he was amazed, but of course he was amazed by everything that night. I still have the drumstick.

John left me in the Haight with some other Danville people he knew. By this time the Haight had become a mean place with lots of heroin and speed. These folks were doing hard drugs and passing round a runaway teenager just as Annabelle had probably been used. The Summer of Love was long gone. I took the poor girl out to lunch. She obviously hadn't been getting fed well as she scarfed down all that she could. I tried to convince her to find a better situation but she refused and I got out of there as fast as I could.

**Chapter 9**

Rocks, Riots and Waffles

I returned to Roble in the fall of 1969. I took Psych I with Prof. Zimbardo who was quite the entertainer and later had a PBS show. He is still famous for his "prison" experiment where he arbitrarily divided students into "prisoners" and "guards" and left them to their own devices. Within days the experiment had to be halted because the "guards" were brutalizing the "prisoners." Human nature revealed, who doesn't love power? At the time of our class he was experimenting with hypnosis. I tested very high for hypnotic susceptibility, which I was to put to good use later, and was fascinated as Prof. Zimbardo hypnotized students and sent them on psychedelic trips without the use of drugs. In hindsight, I should probably have followed my father's footsteps here too and become a psychologist. It was probably the statistics requirement that stopped me, as it did with anthropology.

Ellen and I were in constant touch and the note she sent sums up our feelings:

Rand,

Today, I remembered the strip mine, my aunt's at lunch when I met you, the Fair and our friends and I fell in love once again.

She also sent me, to go with my bell-bottom pants, a necklace of orange plastic beads with a single white bead in the center to remember her by. I thought it was really cool! I still have the beads.

While flying to and from the coast I stopped in Omaha at every opportunity. Of course, it was de rigueur to smoke a joint in the airplane bathroom so that one could better enjoy the view. Strangely enough it wasn't this but my attempt at an airline discount that brought in the feds. Ted had a deal to fly cheap and so loaned me his discount card. I was attempting to board in Indianapolis when I was pulled aside by two grim looking suits. I was certainly the most suspicious, looking character in the airport with my worn leather jacket, full beard and ponytail and these were the days of airline hijackings, all of which should have given me pause but, as usual, it didn't. So here I was a perfect target for bored security types. They questioned me and, when I gave my address as "711 Oak Street", they looked at each other with raised eyebrows. I said, "What?" They responded, gloweringly: "That's the third time this week someone's been from Oak Street." By now I was sweating bullets. The most threatening looking one stated unequivocally: "Without ID the only way you're getting on that plane is if you let us search you." I readily agreed as, for once, I had no contraband on my person. You could see that they thought they had me as they went right for the jacket pocket with a small bulge showing. A hand came up with the incriminating evidence, and their faces fell as they recognized my Hohner Harmonica. Deciding I was possibly musical and certainly harmless they let me on my cut-rate flight and I cheaply winged my way to my true love.

My occasional stops in Omaha included: a Rod Stewart (Yeah!)/Black Sabbath (boo) concert, helping produce a local PBS show and one of the greatest light shows of all time. A meteor shower was scheduled so, naturally, Ellen got us an airplane. Not just any plane either, but a twin-engine corporate plane with a red plush cabin with a bar. Her pilot friend took his girl into the cockpit and took off. We then had the cabin all to ourselves. The weather put the kibosh on the meteor viewing with a high ceiling of cloud but instead we were provided a ringside seat for the mother of all light shows. The flat plains of Nebraska spread out before us and the storm front was a distant towering wall that reached from horizon to horizon and climbed much above our altitude. It was too far away to be a threat or to even effect our flight but it still allowed a perfect view of the show to come. While we flew parallel to the front and smoked our joints the dead black of the storm wall was lit from within by lightning of all sizes and shapes, from the heavens to the ground. For an hour or so we watched the electric light pulse and the jagged spears of energy flow through the sky as they sought the earth below. As the storm moved closer we turned for home, with great appreciation for the power that can come from the seemingly benign clouds in the sky above us every day.

Back at Stanford politics was now to escalate to the point where even I could not stay uninvolved. Political strife had begun at Stanford with the civil rights movement and escalated with the Vietnam War. The University was a particular target as it was a center for military research. By 1969 police were on campus and using tear gas. Associate Prof. H. Bruce Franklin had founded a group that called for the violent overthrow of the government and then actually took steps to do so. Franklin called for "a people's war on campus" and gave speeches that incited student violence. What followed were more than 13 riots, several arsons, a shooting and a bombing. The Provost said: "things were up for grabs and the future was just very full of risk...[this was] a campus where you stop replacing broken glass that gets broken faster than you can replace it." This was happening all around me, with Roble being a hotbed of activism where anti-war meetings were being held.

At some point I decided to attend an anti-war meeting in a large auditorium. A couple, who were factory workers and obviously dedicated Marxists, Maoists or just plain anarchists, took a small group of us aside and educated us in the dialectic of the day. It must have been a good spiel because we all joined the large crowd in marching to the University administrative offices to demonstrate. When we got there, before the demonstration could begin, someone threw a rock. At the sound of breaking glass I knew that I wanted no part in violence and I left immediately. Later I attended another meeting more to my liking. Joan Baez and her husband, David Harris, led a discussion on the Quad. He had been student body president and later went to prison for resisting the draft.

I now joined the absolutely, for sure non-violent protestors. I helped picket the ROTC building. Some fifty of us sat in at the building's main entrance. Occasionally, some lovely women would come by and bring us food, such as waffles and syrup, to sustain us in our vigil. One day, a cadet approached the doors, seemingly not intimidated by the crowd at his feet. Next to me a giant of a man, who was on the football team, handed the baby he was holding to his wife and stood up before the cadet with a smile. The cadet took one look and turned away.

It all spun out of control in the spring of 1970 with the invasion of Cambodia which openly expanded the war beyond Vietnam's borders. At Kent State the National Guard had to be called out and students were shot to death by the troops. Stanford was in such chaos that the administration canceled classes for the rest of the quarter. My old friend, Lynn Wellman, who had taught me to drive, was going to the University of Washington. We often visited each other and here was a good opportunity so I spent several weeks in the Seattle area with him. On returning to campus I sat with bated breath as again the draft lottery was held. This time my number, 161, was a winner! I dropped my student deferment and got a permanent deferment. Vietnam, and the draft, were not only no longer a direct threat to me but were winding down and headed towards their end. By the next year the political battles were all but over and thus ended the War and my political life on campus.

My father had an instrumental role in saving my friend Tony from the draft. My dad gave him a letter setting forth the grounds for his disqualification for the draft based on his "being crazier than a squirrel." Or was it madder than a wolverine? Nuttier than a pecan pie? Anyway Tony took the ball and ran with it. He showed himself to be a great actor as he created a persona and presented it through multiple layers of examinations and appeals until at last he had convinced the government he was unfit to go kill Vietnamese soldiers. Tony remains grateful for this act of kindness to this day.

I think my predicament influenced my Dad to do all he could to keep all sons out of the draft, especially after his having dealt with the horrific results of prior wars. I have never regretted not submitting to the draft. I've never met anyone who served in Vietnam who wasn't seriously damaged in some way by this unnecessary, and unwinnable war. I think history has proven that the nation was well served by those who opposed the war and helped bring it to its sad conclusion and that their courage and sacrifice was in many cases, and some ways, equal to the undoubted courage and sacrifice of those who did honorably serve. And all this comes from a military history buff, with great respect for the military, that believes that World War II was a just war for the Allies and the '67 War a just one for the Israelis. It is sad that we have learned nothing from the failures of Vietnam and now face the horrific consequences of the fatal decisions to attack Iraq and to not have fought the limited engagement in Afghanistan that could have been successful.

**Chapter 10**

Who loves not women, wine and song,

Remains a fool his whole life long.

Johann Heinrich Voss

So at least by one man's standards I've not been such a fool. I've always loved women and the women in my life have all been strong personalities, from my mother to my great-aunt to my wife and daughter. I believe women should be in charge of the planet. They aren't called Earth Mothers for nothing. The fairer sex has to be able to do a better job than the men have done. As for the other necessities of life Old Johann would certainly approve of substituting weed for wine and rock 'n roll for gypsy violins.

The summer of 1970 saw me in Danville for only a few weeks before we set off on another epic journey. Tony and I went up to Chicago to hook-up with my Stanford buddy Tom and his official hippie vehicle, a VW van. Our first stop was in Ann Arbor for the Blues Festival. We set up camp in the van by the field where the festival was to be held. The next day some 20,000 hardcore blues fans appeared to partake of an incredible lineup. All the Chicago blues icons were there, from Otis Rush to Buddy Guy. But the real attraction was all the old timers, like Howlin' Wolf, one of the people who created the foundation of rock and roll. As with most of the blues men he never partook of the riches and fame that the white boys did who followed him. Here, the original creators of the blues were getting the acknowledgement of the debt owed them. We got seats in the front, the venue was comfortable and the crowd was mellow.

It got even mellower when someone came on stage with a grocery bag and flung the many joints it contained into the audience. Seven fell on us alone, preparing us well for what lay ahead. Roosevelt Sykes, Big Mama Thornton and others played and we enjoyed. The second night Johnny Winters and his brother came over from the nearby Rock festival. The brothers paid their respects by jamming with the people they idolized. The festival ended as the sun set and the air grew cool and calm. As the crowd slowly made it's way out the sounds of spirituals sung by the eldest of us, Son House and his wife, hung in the air. This blessing was taken in, and away, by all of the new generation who had come to hear their message and carry it on.

And so we traveled north to cross into Canada at Saulte Saint Marie. To the east lay Desbarats on the North Channel of Lake Huron. Stanford friends had a summer camp there. We spent a few days with them and then went up the Mississagi River to camp in the forest by Aubrey Falls. The Falls were spectacular, very tall and wide and totally isolated. We had the place to ourselves. I got stoned and lay on a deep bed of moss, next to the waterfall, and let the spray of the falling, water cool me as I dreamed. Then, we all went for a swim in the river that ran right by our tents. After swimming it was rock hopping up the tributary creek where we had anchored our beer and provisions to keep them cold. On our return we noticed an orange floating by in the river and than another. As our cache floated away we noticed that the river had risen substantially and was still rising. We later learned that the upstream dam had opened the floodgates. If we had swum just a little later we would probably been swept away and drowned!

Having survived the flood, Tony hitched home and Tom and I headed the bus out onto the Trans Canada Highway bound for the Pacific. We began picking up hitchhikers. Most of them were returning from the Strawberry Fields Festival in Toronto. Soon the bus held a dozen hippies, all sharing grass and food and good times. By the time we got to Banff we only had two passengers left. They were working at the Lodge and we got a free night in the employee's dorm. The next day it was time to drop some mescaline and see some of the most wonderful scenery in the world. We went out on the Athabasca Glacier and looked down through its crevasses to the river that runs beneath it. Then we went to the Lake Louise Lodge for lunch. Afterwards we hiked the trail behind the Lodge and were stunned by the pure turquoise waters and the snow capped peaks beyond. I've never since seen a color to match the intensity of the lake's green-blue glacial waters. We then drove to Prince George and turned south to follow the scenic Fraser River Valley to Vancouver.

When I arrived back at Stanford fall classes had not yet begun. Someone put me up in his basement dorm room where I met a bunch of summer students. One day some of us were playing music and a pretty, redheaded woman climbed in through the window and said she was Lauren and wanted to join the fun. Dan then wandered in with his guitar. We all became good friends. Before Dan left to return to Columbia my girlfriend Maryam had given him her address and he pursued her over the summer. Dan would steal Maryam away from me and Lauren would then help me recover from the loss. C'est la vie in the life of a hippie.

Ellen managed to slip away from Omaha and make it out to California. We drove down to Big Sur to camp at Pfeiffer State Park. After setting up our tent we put on swimsuits and headed for the waterfall. As we splished and splashed, an older couple came into the pool and we were soon talking with them. Karel was one of the most striking figures I've ever met. He looked like an Indian guru. He was slender and wiry with curly hair and a long frizzy beard, both more grey than black. His eyes were mesmerizing. They radiated an energy that was spellbinding. The rest of the day was full of the magic of one of Earth's most beautiful places, all of it magnified by Karel's magnetic presence. That night we sat by the campfire and I discovered that Karel was a full Professor at Stanford! He was in the math department and, beyond hearing him say his specialty was Harmonics, I would never understand what his area of expertise was. But he invited me to come visit him at his home. We became close friends and I would learn a lot of things from him, some even vaguely mathematical. I now had to return to campus and find a place to stay for the fall.

**Chapter 11**

Co-op Capers

As I looked for a new abode I heard from some Roble people of a campus house that was being taken over by a bunch of hippy types, like me. The University listed the Co-operative as follows: "we enjoy working together and we're cheap." They called it Jordan House and it was a large three story building on a quiet, tree-lined street of other similar houses just a short walk from the quad. Sounded good so I joined up and what a good decision that was.

I later got the story of Jordan's founding. Some folks had approached the Dean of Housing with the idea of a cooperative community and he had an empty building, so Voila! I had now transitioned from the first coed dorm in the country with both sexes on the same floor to Stanford's first self-governing coed co-op, with all sexes on, off and floating over the floors. Believe it or not, this was to be the fulfillment of one of Leland Stanford's dreams: a principle purpose of the University's founding to be the fostering of co-ops. Thus began a trend to fill other empty fraternity/ sorority houses with co-op communities Today there are seven co-op houses at Stanford whose themes include: ecology, non-violence, international and gender-neutral living. None can possibly be as amazing as the original Jordan House.

Some forty of us, all with different ways of expressing our hippieness, crammed into every corner of the house. Merlyn even lived in a renovated closet. Jordan's founders listed that they were "looking for girls that like to cook." This succeeded not only in recruiting cooks but also in helping achieve a balanced ratio of men to women. Most Jordanites' memories of those days most often revolve around shopping, cooking and cleaning. (Jordanians is already taken and Jordanites has biblical overtones with a hint of super powers). We were most appreciative of the fact that the cost of eating was 1/3 of the typical dorm. There were no complaints about the food, only about me. I must've heard cheap and missed the part about working together.

Doyne Farmer recalled: "... one house meeting where we all realized that Rand Greenfield had never showed up to cook or clean for several quarters. We voted to throw him out of the house and a delegation stormed up to his room. We read him the riot act and he told us that we were not legally able to throw him out of the house and there was nothing we could do. So much for empty threats." Such was a foreshadowing of what my future profession would be.

I don't remember this Gothic tale of the villagers storming my room and I find it curious that I would not remember such an event. I also can find no one to corroborate this story. Also it is questionable whether we could decide on the simplest things, let alone my expulsion from paradise. Alan says: "I remember vaguely (perhaps I've embellished the original memory) a house meeting trying unsuccessfully to decide on how to decide things. There were some folks in favor of voting. Others favored consensus. All I remember was that there was no decision because there was no agreement on how to decide."

However I do recall a time I attempted to cook. I and at least one other Jordanite were preparing to prepare dinner when we were informed that the producer of "Little Big Man" was providing a free sneak preview at Mem Aud that very night. (It is still one of my favorite movies.) We decided that this was a must see and left out the fixings for a hamburger dinner before departing for the show. So I at least had the intent to cook and intent is 9/10ths of the law, or something like that. I can recall no other cooking or cleaning experience so the jury is still out on this one.

I hope Molly is not on that jury as she tells the following tale. She was one of the main people who took responsibility for our food. One night she caught me enjoying the contents of an industrial sized can of tuna I had just opened. She lectured me on how this was not a cost-effective snack, concluding with: "And what if everyone did that?" Without missing a beat I responded: "Then there is no problem as I'm the only one doing it." I was well versed in the Marx Brothers as every week a film historian presented, with an introduction, classic films at Geology corner. Molly's story continues the theme of my bad behavior and starts a new one, the class clown. Betsy named me as one of three Jordan comedians, another being one of my girlfriends. Betsy says: "to try to get a word in edgewise at the dinner table with Wendy's and Randy's comic repartee was impossible." So there is no question that I made a significant contribution to the community, albeit a humorous one.

In Jordanites' memories, after food comes: sex, consciousness expansion (with and without drugs) and music, in about equal proportions. (You can't have sex all the time.) Of course, these categories tended to overlap, such as acid and the Grateful Dead, acid and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, not to mention, sex while stoned or the ever popular, marijuana and munchies. One time my significant other and I couldn't make it to the Yoga retreat in Santa Cruz without stopping for sex among the Redwoods. Both sweet unions complemented each other.

We often organized disorganized group outings, such as the trip to San Jose to see "2001" on psilocybin. It was memorable not only for the psychedelic fun but for the incident in the parking lot. It was quite a transition from outer space to the reality of the lobby. We made it to the parking lot but were still struggling to adjust, and figure out how to get into the car, when a middle-aged woman approached us. She asked our help in fixing a flat tire. Those of us capable of functioning at that level helped, that was certainly not I. Meanwhile the woman talked to the rest of us. She told us her husband had just been fired because a computer had taken over his job! We were spooked. Hal had left the theatre and no one was safe!

Last of all memories comes academics. My transcript reflects that somehow I, and presumably all of us, received an A for "Origin of the Coop Community." I think we wrote the book on this one. Also there was an A in Music Improvisation, which I believe was also an in-house special. I do vividly recall "Sleep and Dreams", an actual course in a classroom with an actual Professor, Dr. Dement, who invented the science of sleep and founded the first sleep disorder clinic. It was a fascinating and groundbreaking class. When I told this story to a doc I met recently at the poker table in Reno, where he ran such a clinic, he grew quite excited and told me that Prof. Dement was his mentor (the clinics are now ubiquitous). I am still quite skilled at both sleep and dreams.

There was also an adjunct institution, Big Al's Ballclub. Alan brewed and dispensed the beer required and Stan drew the logo on our shirts of Mickey and Minny having carnal knowledge of each other. We finished second two years in a row in the intramural soccer league. Each year we were undefeated until the championship game when we met the foreign players of the Business School and were soundly defeated. Other athletics I indulged in included Ping-Pong next door and pool at the Student Union. One day Steve Lawson, my regular playing partner, did not appear at the Union. I had a pickup game with a stranger. As I broke and proceeded to run the table twice, something I've never done before or since, the stranger did not believe my protestations and was certain I was Minnesota Slim waiting to lure him into a big bet. Steve has never believed any part of this story.

The Sixties saw the sexual liberation of women as the birth control pill became available and abortion was legalized. This was accompanied by the Equal Rights Amendment and the overturning of obscenity laws. At Jordan, sex was plentiful what with in-house girlfriends, the girlfriends of other female Jordanites, and females from outside our orbit. Nevertheless, by spring, Adair, Jennifer's best friend, had possessed my heart.

Adair was a beautiful blonde who studied dance in Santa Barbara but came up often to stay with her brother in Mill Valley. On one such visit we saw the Who at a theatre in the City. They did the complete rock opera "Tommy." The next day the Chronicle quoted them as saying it had been the best performance they had ever given of the rock opera. I, for one, couldn't see how it could have been better. We got up late the next morning and sat on the deck of her brother's house eating breakfast and reading the paper. It was Easter Sunday, her brother was gone and all was quiet. Then we heard the faint strains of music drifting up from the valley below. We went to the railing and looked down to see activity on the ball field. Someone was setting up a stage and testing the sound. We hurriedly got ready and went to investigate. By the time we got there a crowd was gathering. We discovered that this was a free concert presented by the many musicians who lived in Marin, including James Cotton and Michael Bloomberg. It was awesome. What a weekend for music!

Spring break Jennifer and Martha and I drove down to Santa Barbara in my car. About midnight I let Martha drive while I took a nap. I awoke from a deep sleep to the sound of sirens. I attempted to gather my faculties and looked in the rearview mirror. I was jolted awake by the sight of three California Highway Patrol (CHIPS) cars with lights flashing and on our tail. I looked at the speedometer and Martha was going over 100 mph. I began yelling obscenities at her, interspersed with hysterical cries of "Stop the car! Now!" This finally woke her from her trance and she slowed us to a stop. We got out of the car and I was suddenly freezing. I instinctively reached into the car and got out my torn and worn leather jacket and put it on. I don't know where I got it, as it was third or fourth hand goods, but I loved it. This jacket is visible in the "After" picture of me. It was my "freak flag", along with the pony tail also barely visible in the photo. But, as my mother would have said, it was really a "shmatte", Yiddish for a rag.

Terror returned when I spied three CHIPS approaching us on foot, led by a sergeant. The two troopers began to search the car while the sergeant questioned us. He asked me what was in my pocket. Now, my fear knew no bounds. I had unthinkingly put on the jacket without remembering the contents of that pocket. I could see the police report enumerating the evidence: one film canister containing 4 grams of hashish and one pipe for smoking same. The pipe had been fashioned by Ted out of plumbing parts and was so heavy that its weight had made it obvious that a heavy object was contained within the pocket. I had been so sleepy and preoccupied that I had not remembered or noticed this fatal telltale sign. As I hesitated and pondered what the click of the handcuffs closing on my wrists would sound like, the sergeant now demanded, "Show me what is in your pocket!" I heard a difference in his voice and took it for a command that could not be ignored. With heavy heart I slowly brought out the incriminating paraphernalia. To my utter astonishment he merely glanced at the contents of my hand and turned away to ask the troopers if they had found anything. They said no they hadn't and he responded, "OK, Let's go." Then he turned back to me and said, "A trooper was just murdered. We were looking for the gun he was shot with. If you had hesitated a second longer I would have decked you!" Then they ran to their cars and roared off. I never let Martha drive my car again.

The hippie movement was transitioning from experimenting with consciousness expansion with drugs to a spiritual orientation, often tied to a return to the land. In fact, the whole hippie movement can be seen as a "dissenting religion", a direct descendant of Emerson and the transcendentalists, who said that true religion, "would allow every man to expand to the full circle of the universe." If so, psychedelics were the hippie's original sacraments, mother earth the tabernacle and The Whole Earth Catalogue the bible. Psychedelics were then replaced by religion, mostly eastern, from Alan Watts and Zen Buddhism to Sufi Sam and the Universal Dances of Peace.

Richard Alpert led the way when he left psychedelics behind and went to Nepal in 1967. There he became Ram Das, the servant of God, when he took up the path of his Hindu guru. He said that LSD can get you there but can't keep you there. For him, love was much stronger, made manifest through prayer and meditation. Ram Das became the hippie's spiritual leader.

I was open to all spiritual paths. I was raised as a Conservative Jew and bar mitzvahed in the synagogue in Danville, which my grandfather founded. Some of my earliest memories are of the whole mishpocheh gathered for Passover. I had two Aunt Anne's. The Pennsylvania one had me enthralled at thirteen with her yoga and meditation. I thought she was "the cat's pajamas." The Danville one was a dedicated observant Jew who in later years gave me the book, "Funny, You don't look Buddhist." I tried many different paths at Stanford. In my sophomore year I was interested in Transcendental meditation, when we found that our "secret" mantras were all the same we were greatly disappointed. There were hardcore Ananda Marga yogis at Jordan. Alan has: "another vague memory... of coming into the TV room one Monday evening to watch Monday night football, finding the room full of meditators standing on their heads, and deciding football would be best watched elsewhere." I yoga'ed in a less serious vein, but I was quite taken by the Servants of Awareness. This group was similar to the Edgar Cayce movement in that it was based on the voice of Cosmic Awareness as given through trance readings. I still know the Law of Love by memory: "The Law of Love is that law which places the welfare, concern and feeling for others above oneself." We had weekly sessions of study and trance readings. In the trances I heard facts that I knew were true and that the person in trance could not have possibly known himself. Anyway, the meetings were enjoyable and, even better, was the fact that afterwards Phyllis and I went for beer and pizza with bay shrimp on top.

The penultimate spiritual experience was a guided acid trip. Dan, the Cosmic Awareness leader, and some helpers had about a dozen of us take acid and then lie down on pads in a big room. He was our guide on a journey of the death of the self, into the White Light and back to be reincarnated as a new self. Dan followed the procedures set out in the "The Psychedelic Experience, a Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead." We were led into a deep meditative state. I awoke from my meditation to a place where there was no self and all the objects in the scene around me had no identifiers. It felt like a baby's first view of the world, utterly fascinating and with absolutely no context. It was beautiful and completely peaceful. This was the Chikhai Bardo or complete transcendence-beyond words, beyond space-time, beyond self. This lasted quite a while and then I began an hallucinatory journey. My guardian angel came down and took me away to the Land of a Thousand Rainbows where crystal gems refracted the clear white light of the spirit into colors beyond counting. It was marvelous. These were karmic apparitions of the Chonyid Bardo. This lasted a long while. I was happily touring the wonders of a fantastic land when suddenly Wham! My self was back and I was tripping away in the room I, or my consciousness, had left. I was calm and comfortable as the leader helped us come down off the acid and we could then discuss the incredible trip we had been on. This was definitely the way to do acid! It is a shame that all the endless possible therapeutic uses of the psychedelic experience vanished with the end of medical experimentation, brought about by public reaction to hyped headlines and politically driven fear. Fortunately, such studies have begun again and hold promise for the treatment of alcoholism, tobacco addiction and anxiety and/or depression, especially among cancer patients and the terminally ill.

We also experimented with hypnosis. A psychology graduate student came to my room and spent the best part of an afternoon with me. He easily inducted me into a hypnotic state. He checked this by asking me to lie when I was asked where I was born. When asked I answered St. Petersburg without hesitation. The induction puts you into a state of complete relaxation and a feeling of total safety. You feel so good that you are willing to do whatever you are asked by this person you trust, as long as it does not disturb your tranquility. The minute anything would disturb your comfort, like the Hollywood standby of being asked to murder someone, you would come out of this hypnotic state. My hypnotist proceeded to have me do all kinds of things that were really fun. I did age regression and experienced a part of my life as a baby. I did an acid trip without any drugs. Neatest of all was to leave my body, fly out the window and over to the lake and to then dive to the bottom of the lake and experience an under sea world. Mesmerizing, indeed.

**Chapter 12**

Uncle Jerry's Band

Food, sex, yoga, soccer, great classes, etc. were all nice but for me it all revolved around the music and that meant The Grateful Dead. There were many great bands but to see the Dead wasn't just to see a concert. They had begun to create an experience with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests and continued to evolve that world and take one into and beyond it. The Grateful Dead combined original music and lyrics with traditional songs and styles, fusing all genres into their own sound. Every song and every performance was unique. Bill Graham, the key producer of rock 'n roll shows in San Francisco and in New York, said of them, "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do." They even had to design their own sound system to do it with. And their sound engineer, Owsley Stanley, "The Acid King", produced the acid, which fueled it all. Free drugs were often passed out, as if we didn't have enough of our own, and the psychedelics were the springboards for the dive into the pool of our dreams.

The music was superbly written, the band was excellent and the staging was mind-blowing in and of itself; but the key to it all was the lead guitar. Jerry Garcia stood there with an incredible grin on his face and let his fingers fly. With incredible virtuosity he led you off to places never seen and while you were exploring new wonders you were amazed to find that after eons of travel he had brought you, and the band, right back to where you had started. And the whole time you never stopped dancing, dancing with yourself, with those around you, with the whole wide universe for it was all One. And then when you thought you'd rest a bit, the music started again and the chords lifted you up and the rhythms animated your limbs and before you knew it you were off again on the ride of your life. And this went on for hours and hours.

The best concert I was ever at was New Year's Eve 1970-71 at Winterland. The contents of grocery bags full of joints were flung into the audience. People wandered through the crowd passing out tabs of acid. As it was New Year's Eve flasks of bourbon also made the rounds. Jerry played pedal steel guitar with another of his many bands, the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Everyone watched the large clock on stage countdown and took on more and more fuel for the trip ahead. The center of the incredible light show was a giant screen showing a herd of horses running through fire untouched. Just before midnight Jerry slipped away and Bill Graham appeared dressed as Father Time. The screen showed the count down and, at midnight, 1970 changed to 1971. At that moment a large black man in a diaper replaced old man time and the screen disappeared to reveal the Dead with Jerry hitting the first note on the first second of the New Year. And we were off for hours, seemingly endless days of magical, musical touring. Booze and acid was an interesting mix. I remember one time awakening to the awareness that I was an alcohol puddle on the floor but deciding that it was cool because I could rise up and takeoff again so what the hey?

Fellow Jordanites remember a pair of concerts later that year in May.

Oliver relates his memory thereof:

"The Jordan group I went with numbered about 5 or 6. My crazy memory can't place anyone in particular though in the group. We made a parking spot by pushing a parked car (a VW bug; literally skidding it) to make room for our car.

I thought I ('d join) in on some mescaline, since I'd done a couple of acid trips freshman year and found the ride down to be pretty dark and disturbing. For me, mescaline was super nice. Whatever I ate for this concert it was an awesome, transformative trip. Yes, some crazy cool liquidy thing was going on with the lights and people were dancing right down to the floor and writhing. Most clear in my mind was one song, pretty sure it was Uncle John's Band, when the Dead went off on a seriously long and free-form instrumental that everyone travelled with far from the original music. Then on the same one note the whole band brought it all back from outer space to Uncle John again. It was an incredible moment - the place nearly came down with the cheering and screaming. Best song of my life. I tripped so beautifully at that concert and discovered that no matter how confusing or worrisome life got, I would always feel at home, at peace, with real friends, music and the natural world. I guess the tripping and the Dead and our group gave me either wonderful shallowness or wonderful insight cuz I haven't had a deeply angst-y episode since then."

Greg recalls:

"Randy Greenfield had an extra ticket for Friday night ... the ticket was a work of art with the skeleton crowned with roses similar to the album cover of their two record live album. I took him up on it and a few of us (who else?) headed up together. Some kool-aid with LSD made the rounds. I was reluctant. This was my first Grateful Dead concert and I wanted to remember it. We were on the ground floor in the first row of seats facing the stage across the expanse of wood floor. There were multiple light shows going on simultaneously with colors of oil and water pulsing through the overhead projectors along with various videos some of which were cartoons. Part of the time while the Dead were playing, people were rolling around in ecstasy on the floor. It was so amazing. I had to go back with Randy on the next night. I have never seen anything like that before or since."

So another significant contribution I made to the Jordan community was that I was The Deadhead.

I must have been to well over twenty Dead concerts in my four years at Stanford. The greatest thrill was at a concert at Stanford's Frost Amphitheatre, a beautiful intimate outdoor venue. I was lounging by the stage, smoking a Pall Mall, when I heard someone asking me for a cigarette. I turned around and was amazed to see that familiar grin of Jerry's. Pall Mall was his brand and I was his man! We smoked and chit-chatted and then he thanked me and stepped up on the stage and away we went. Glory! Glory!

In those days I never would have believed it possible that the Dead would ever have anything to do with Danville, Illinois; or that there would have ever been a rock festival there. It would have been more likely that "those damn hippies" would have been ridden out of town on a rail. Well, it just goes to show you that anything is possible. Forty-five years later I read that Danville was not only hosting a rock festival but it was to be named after a Robert Hunter song lyric and to headline Bob Weir. One was the Dead's great lyricist and the other a band member. I couldn't have imagined it on the best acid Owsley ever made. It gives me hope for peace in our time and that the planet will be saved.

Another great part of Dead concerts was the warm up groups, usually local, and always good. The first band was often Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks of "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" fame or Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. Then would come the likes of Quicksilver Messenger Service or Carlos Santana, a great guitarist getting greater every time he played.

And, of course, it wasn't all the Dead. The music scene was varied and I partook of it all. There were other local headliners, such as: the Jefferson Airplane and the Steve Miller Band with Boz Skaggs. Outside talent was often British, such as: Traffic, the Moody Blues or Joe Cocker, whose epileptic fits and unique voice were unforgettable. American headliners included bluesmen and my first Cajun music with Dr. John. And of course there were the blockbuster acts in big arenas, such as the Stones with Tina Turner opening. Then there were the many clubs and small venues and the different genres they hosted. For jazz I saw Pharoah Sanders at a jazz club and was introduced to the folk sounds of Odetta and Doc Watson's bluegrass picking in a church. The high point of clubbing came in Marin. I remember it so well because before the start of the music Captain Beefheart announced that Jimi Hendrix had died and that the performance was dedicated to his memory. After the Captain came the Mothers of Invention. When the music was over I hung around by the front door pondering fate and the incredible performance Jimi's passing had inspired. The crowd had left when once again I heard a voice asking me for a cigarette and turned around to see Frank Zappa and his mustache. I had missed him in Maryland only to bump into him here. We shared a smoke and made small talk. Meeting Jerry and Frank was probably the only good thing to come out of smoking tobacco. Since I later quit and have suffered no obviously ill effects I guess it was worth it.

**Chapter 13**

Trouble in Tahoe

I spent the summer of 1971 in a large house in the middle of five acres of orchard in Los Altos Hills, just to the south of Stanford. I had 8 housemates and we were evenly divided between hippies and Marxists. While my new, found friend, Hogan, and I divided up ounces of hash upstairs; the real crazies were hatching up plots of world revolution below us.

Lynn was working construction in Lake Tahoe and asked me to drive up and bring a pound of grass. Anything for an old buddy, so I made a buy and hit the road. By the time I got to the lake night was falling. All I could see was the road and forest on either side. As I drove south along the California shore it became pitch dark. I was going the speed limit, 45 or 55. There was no traffic at all to slow me. Suddenly, out of the dark loomed a sign - Speed Limit 25. Before I could react I heard a siren and saw red lights behind me. I pulled over and a local policeman came over to my car. He was about my age, and looked even younger. He looked even less intimidating than I did but all he needed was a badge since the mere thought of a pound of dope in the trunk made me all too anxious to appease him at all costs. The policeman (policeboy?) told me the fine was a $100 and I could pay it now and drive away, otherwise I was going to jail. It was a classic speed trap and I was caught. I had spent almost all my money on the weed and was going to be repaid when I got it up there. So paying the fine was beyond my means.

After some discussion he told me to follow him to the police station so I could call someone to come bring me the cash. As we drove there was still no traffic and nothing but forest around us. After a couple miles there was a small clearing in the forest and in the clearing sat a very small building. It had a light on in front and as he pulled up to it I could see a small sign saying Police. There was no sign at all of what the police might be protecting. I pulled in behind him, parked and followed him into the station. It held two small cells, a few chairs and a desk. I took one look and thought, "This looks like the Mayberry jail, so this guy must be Barney Fife."

He showed me the phone and I called Lynn. I was praying that he would answer the phone and, thankfully, he did. The Cavalry was on the way. The kid then surprised me, saying, "Let's go outside it's a nice evening." He then walked outside and I followed him out. He did exactly what I was afraid he was going to do. He walked over to my car and went around back to the trunk. Fear gripped me as I contemplated what would happen if he should open the trunk. But, he didn't ask to open the trunk; he just leaned up against it and smiled at me. What could I do? I went over and leaned against the trunk next to him and smiled back.

We proceeded to have a long conversation, all the while admiring the incredible starlit skies above us. The whole time I'm praying that he wouldn't smell the dope that was just inches away from him behind the thin metal of the trunk. I thought, "Barney would have never have caught on so maybe I'm safe." And that is just what happened; he never showed any curiosity about the contents of the car. Evidently his only training was in how to operate a speed trap and the only concern of this constabulary was to extort as much money as possible. After an exhausting hour, my nerves were just about shot when Lynn arrived. I paid the extortion happily and drove away thanking my lucky stars that this whole episode had only cost me a few hours and $100.

Later that summer Hogan and I decided to attend the hippie festival planned for the 4th of July in Yosemite National Park. We both had cars, but for some reason, a thirst for adventure perhaps, we decided to hitch there. All went well until we got to Merced and stopped for lunch. We heard someone talking about what was in the newspaper. So we searched for a paper and sure enough there was news. Big news. Yosemite was closed. The Park Rangers had tried to clear the hippies out of their camps and the ensuing riot had forced the park closure.

With great disappointment, we went out into the 90-degree heat of the summer and stuck out our thumbs to head for home. Now we were in the Central Valley, California's and the country's main source of fruit and vegetables. It was not known for being liberal, far from it. The farmers passing us by surely reviled the dirty hippie hitchhikers and the tourists did not come to California to watch the crops grow. Hour after hot hour nothing happened. No one stopped. As the sun got lower we were about to give up and find a place to camp. Just then a beat up old car pulled over. Inside were two women, a little older than us. They certainly weren't hippies as their hair was teased, permed or something. No heavy hippie Mama would mess with her hair like that. The one on the passenger side called out the window, "What's up, boys?" We told her our tale of woe, all the time sizing her up. She didn't exactly look like the kind of women we were used to hanging out with. But strangeness has a large element of sexiness to it; something new and different was always welcome. Besides, she wasn't half bad looking. We'd sought out adventure and here it was in a guise unexpected but alluring.

The driver leaned over and, with a big smile, greeted us with a, "Hello!" She was even better looking. The passenger said, seductively, "Well, we can't get you out of town but we can put you up for the night." That was music to our ears so into the car we jumped and off we went.

They took us to a little old beat up house and boy, did they take care of us. Over a great spaghetti dinner they told us about life in Merced as a hairdresser. The bottom line was, it was boring! I guess they had decided that we would enliven their evening and you can bet we did. After wine and weed these women allowed us to show them our undying gratitude for their hospitality. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

In the morning, they dropped us off at the best place to hitch in Merced. We said our goodbyes and put out our thumbs. Once again it was 90+ degrees and no one was stopping. We went back to the cafe for lunch and again we heard people talking about what was in the paper. We found a copy and the headlines went something like this, "Cannibal Hitchhikers on the Loose!" Two men, about our age and dressed like hippies, were roaming the highways of Central California, leaving a trail of mayhem behind them. People were disappearing and the only remains to be found of them were knucklebones on the seats of their abandoned cars and the bones had unmistakedly been gnawed on.

Hogan and I looked at each other with consternation. We were screwed! We certainly couldn't expect a ride now. Everyone who looked at us would see blood-thirsty cannibals plotting to murder them and pondering the recipes to use for the remains. We were destined to wither and die by the highway in Merced. With no hope we went out into the heat and waited by the roadside. Hour after hour went by and again it seemed that the day would end with us stuck in Merced, again.

We were getting ready to go seek some shelter when out of the heat haze came a vision. A truck was slowing down and it was not an ordinary truck. It was a snack wagon! It's silver sides shown in the sun with the promise of cold drinks within. The truck pulled up in front of us and stopped. As we stood there in amazement the driver's door opened and out came a vision of beauty. She was tall and athletic looking with long dark hair which framed a perfect face. We were speechless. Without saying a word she walked to the side of the truck and unlocked the latch. She lifted the door, which ran most of the length of the truck. Securing it, this goddess of mercy turned to us and finally spoke, "Help yourselves. It's hot out here."

After we had gotten over the paralysis, which this unexpected apparition had brought upon us, we stepped forward. As we picked out some cold drinks, she informed us that she could take us past Stockton and into the environs of the Bay Area. She secured the door and we followed her to the cab, hopped in and off we went. As she drove, she told us that she was studying to get a license to drive 18-wheelers. Soon she would have her wish, a real truck beneath her. We thought she'd be the best looking semi-driver in America, and the kindest. We then asked her if she had heard of the cannibal hitchhikers who were out and about. She had not heard, lucky us, and laughed at the thought. Why we couldn't have possibly wanted to do mayhem to her lovely bones! We agreed, though thinking of other things we'd have liked to do with her, and thanked her profusely when she left us off, wishing her luck in her new career. We watched her drive away and stuck out our thumbs. We had no further trouble getting home.

Hogan and I didn't succeed in making it to Yosemite but before the summer was over I would get to see the wonders of the Park. I was invited to go on a backpacking trip to Yosemite with Mark, Griff, and Griff's dog. My only prior experience in the wilds was at a camp in Northern Pennsylvania. I was about 14 and the culmination of the summer was for the boys in our cabin to go camping in the Alleghany National Forest. It turned out to be lots of fun but hardly a training session for backpacking the Sierras. Soon after our camp counselor helped us set up camp by the trailhead, a girl scout wandered by, then another. Using our wilderness skills, we tracked them to their lair. The respective leaders agreed that our time was best spent together. So, while the leaders wooed each other, the boys and girls played together. We never moved our camps. During the day we swam in the nearby lake and took some small hikes into the forest. At night, we drove into town for burgers and then went to the drive-in movies.

The other memorable thing about camp, other than entering the dining hall to find that dinner was corn and peanut butter, was my first kiss. Luck took the form of a paucity of older males. This resulted in me being invited to the final dance by a gorgeous 16 year-old whose name I still remember, Leah Shepps. She took me behind the boathouse and kissed me. I loved it but had no real idea what to do about it. Kissing back seemed to work though.

Yosemite was to be my first wilderness experience and I thought that I was well served by having Mark, a hardened veteran of the wilderness, leading the expedition. To my chagrin, I was to discover that he was to make no allowances for a tenderfoot. He took us into the National Forest on a trail and then cross-country to enter the Park in the backcountry wilderness. To do this we had to climb up several hundred feet over a snowfield to get to the top of the ridge, which marked the boundary of the park. After this ordeal, it got even worse. We had to cross a stream by going over a downed tree with a fall of at least 15 feet below us. I made it but, to my embarrassment, only by crawling along the trunk. At this point, I'd been humiliated, scared shitless and was literally a tenderfoot, as my new boots were making mincemeat of my feet. After further challenges, we finally dropped into Yosemite Valley. I was enchanted by the beauty of it all and was enjoying myself until we were thrown out of the park. A ranger came up to us and told us no dogs are allowed in the park. He then gave us an alternative, which was to turn around and go over the boundary of the park and camp in the national forest. Happily the route he gave us was much shorter and easier than the one we had come in on. The next day, Griff and I and the dog spent the day in a beautiful alpine valley with a small lake. Mark hiked out and brought the car around to a nearby trailhead. He came back for us and we were soon headed back to Tahoe. The beauty of the country outweighed any of the rigors of the hike. I'd immediately fallen in love with the wilderness and I told myself that it would be much easier next time.

We went into South Lake Tahoe for dinner and an evening of entertainment. I had never been in a casino before and the incredible noise and lights of Harrah's took me by surprise. I found myself separated from my buddies and wandered around looking at the various games. I decided to step up and check out the Craps table. After a few minutes of watching, I suddenly felt a presence behind me. Two large men wearing cowboy hats, boots and pistols stepped up on either side of me. They said, "You're leaving." They took me by my elbows and escorted me out to the sidewalk and dumped me there.

I stood there, bewildered, when I finally spied two figures standing forlornly under a street light. It was Griff and Mark. I walked over and said. "You guys know what just happened?" They looked at each other sheepishly and then told me the story. The same two guys had come up to them and told them that they were being asked to leave the casino because of the way they were dressed. And not to come back dressed the way they were. I asked, "What was the problem?" Mark pointed down to his crotch. I saw that his Levis were completely split open up the crotch, no wonder we'd been shown the door. We went back to our van and smoked a joint while Mark changed his pants.

We decided "once more into the breach" was a good strategy and back to Harrah's we went. Once again I lost track of them and went to the Craps table. As I stood there, a well dressed older man asked me if I knew how to play. I said: "No. I have no idea." And he responded, "Watch me and I'll show you how." So I spent 15-20 minutes learning the fundamentals of Craps. My mentor was betting what I thought of as large sums and probably losing more than he was winning. At last the dice came round to me and I decided to have a fling. I put down a minimum bet of $2. I threw a 7. I then proceeded to let it ride as I threw six more passes. By that time there was quite a sum of money in front of me. The whole time I noticed that my teacher had been backing my play with even larger bets than his norm and he was grinning like there was no end in sight at the thought of the riches that I was providing for him. At this moment, when all was going so well, I again felt the presence of two large cowboys at my elbows. They said to me, "Pick up your chips. You're leaving." They escorted me to the cashier, where I cashed in my new found wealth, and then took me to the door, put me outside, and said, "And this time, don't come back!"

I was left on the sidewalk wondering what had happened now. And once again two forlorn figures tried to avoid my gaze. I walked over and, with disgust, demanded an answer of them, "What did you do this time?" Griff turn to Mark and said, "You tell him." Mark said, "We were walking along, and I said to Griff, "What are those holes in the ceiling?'" Griff responded, "Don't you know? That's for the cameras. They're watching everything we do." Mark was vehement, "No way. I don't believe you." Griff 's reply was, "Well, that's the truth." Mark was unaccepting, "It can't be." And he raised his hand to the ceiling with his middle finger extended. And that's the end of that story. Fortunately, they don't remember me at Harrah's and I can still play poker there. While I've never ever had a lucky streak like that at dice again, at least I didn't crap out. I was just thrown out.

**Chapter 14**

"Think me not unkind and rude

That I walk alone in grove and glen.

I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As much as I loved Jordan house, I decided that it was time to head for the hills. I wanted most of all to be in nature and sought a place in the foothills of the Coast Range behind the campus. An ad led me to Portola Valley. I turned off the main road and followed a side road across a large, empty meadow and up a small valley to the first and only development in sight. It was about a dozen houses surrounded by forest. Beyond these habitations the road became dirt and disappeared up the mountain. I went to the address in the ad and rang the bell. The man who answered was short, stocky and missing 2 or 3 of his fingers.

Now, my first guess could have been that he was an alligator wrestler. Why alligator wrestler you may ask? This would have been because of my boyhood experience with men without all of their digits. When I was about 10 we visited the Seminole reservation in Florida. The alligator wrestler came out and, despite the fact he was already missing 3 or 4 of his fingers, went into the pit with the gator. He rubbed the reptile's belly till the beast fell into a trance and its jaws gaped open, revealing rows of giant teeth. As the Seminole warrior was beginning to insert his hand into the maw of the gator, all fell silent. Now, I must mention that my father was famous for one of his physical peculiarities, the power of his sneeze. The roar of the sneeze coincided with the closing of the reptile's toothy trap, the recoil of the wrestler and the audience's gasp of fear! When the wrestler turned to face us we were all glad to see that he had not lost additional digits. However, my father was not happy to receive the death stare he was given by the Seminole brave.

But I knew that my prospective landlord was not a wrestler of alligators or any other varmint. As he walked me down to the room for rent he mentioned that he was a machinist, so ended the mystery. The room he showed me was amazing. Set off by itself next to the garage, it had its own entrance. It was a large bedroom and bath with a balcony from which one could see The City, thirty some miles away. The price was right and, once I saw what lay a few minutes walk away, the lack of a kitchen would no longer be a serious impediment. After I left the house I walked up the dirt road and along the creek, which ran beside it. I soon came to a grove of redwoods with a little, waterfall among them. The sun filtered down through the tall trees and played on the foaming, falling water. This was to be my shrine and I was to discover that no one else came up here except an occasional biker on a Sunday. (Now the whole area is so built up I can't even find the house.)

I returned to the junction with the main road where some Stanford friends had a house. I stopped in and they agreed to my having kitchen privileges at their place. (They may have regretted this as I only knew one recipe, vegetable soup, and while it was good they probably grew to hate it.) So I went back and rented the room. I then moved my waterbed into my own pad and settled into my last year at Stanford. I did have one constant companion in my little nest. Someone kept coming onto the balcony at night searching for food that might have been left out. One night, I waited up and finally caught the bandit, it was a possum. He showed no fear and kept up his nocturnal raiding. I didn't begrudge him his findings and as good hippies do we coexisted.

The classes I took this year were the most enjoyable I had at Stanford because I could take anything I wanted. It began with one of the largest classes at the school. North American Indians was so popular because of the topic and a great husband and wife teaching team. It was a solid foundation for understanding, when I arrived in New Mexico, the oldest and most diverse culture of that state's multi-cultural landscape. The Evolution of Primate Behavior was taught by a very attractive though strait-laced woman who made quite a sight when she got up in her severe business suit and demonstrated the movements and calls of the mating rites of baboons. I took Modern Architecture and the tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright house on campus hooked me on the master forever. Minority Voices in Literature reinforced my love of Henry Miller and the guest lecture by Lenny Bruce's manager was a wonderful close-up look at an iconoclast.

But my favorite class was Independent Study in Mathematics. I would never have believed I would get an A in such a course at Stanford. Let alone one taught by a former Fulbright fellow at Cambridge and a former resident of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where Einstein hung his hat. Of course, this was thanks to my friendship with Karel. For my last two years at Stanford I hung out quite often at Karel's house. Karel was a wise and gentle soul with a twinkle in his eye. He was always a fun person to be around and was kind and generous as well. His wife Peg was likewise and a great cook to boot. Karel and I met weekly at his health club for a sauna and a cold plunge and afterwards we had a snack at the coffee shop. Over coffee, we discussed the latest chapter of our textbook on Numerology and the Occult. It gave him a whole 'nother viewpoint on numbers. What his original viewpoint was I'd never know. This was the height of my mathematical achievement, such as it was.

Much of my time was spent exploring the Coast Range. I had met another Stanford Professor, Allan Cox. He was one of the world's most distinguished geo-physicists. Beyond that I only knew that he was very popular among the students and that he had won a prestigious prize and used the money to purchase a cabin in the redwoods on forty some acres. The dirt road behind my house climbed to the summit to meet Skyline Boulevard. Allan's cabin was near that junction. I only met him a few times but spent a lot of time at his cabin, which he made freely available. I once spent a whole day hiking all the way from my room to the cabin. The beach was a half-hour or so the other side of Skyline. Maryam, Dan and I once went to the beach and ate peyote. After vomiting up rainbows, we came back and hugged the redwoods. Yes, I am a tree hugger and peyote does make you throw up but in a most interesting way.

Thanksgiving I returned to Yosemite to see what winter was like up there. We had the whole valley pretty much to ourselves and stayed up late watching the stars over El Capitan. I awoke in the morning to a changed landscape. Everything was covered in snow and the view was even more enthralling. I walked over to a little creek, which ran nearby. I knelt down and washed my face in the stream. When I straightened up I was face to face with a black bear. The stream was shallow and only a few feet wide so he would have had no trouble stepping across it. We both froze and stared into each other's eyes. He may have been a juvenile but was still plenty large. Apparently my lack of aggression was apparent to him and he had better things to do, so off he went. When my beating heart slowed I turned and went to tell of my encounter.

Christmas was another crazy road trip. You may be thinking by now that I could only have so many "Get out of Jail Free" cards left before I ended up in prison, which was the fate of one of my close friends, or that I would awaken to that fact and slow down. But no, I saw only sunshine and peppermint. On I went tempting fate at every turn, and a good thing I did or I would be out of material by now. But not to worry, many an adventure still awaits us.

I flew to New York and took the subway to Dan's apartment. Or I thought that was what I was doing. I didn't know east side from west side. When I climbed above ground I found myself in the middle of a Harlem afternoon. I was east when I should have been west or vers vica. There I was, in all my whiteness, carrying a suitcase and surrounded by mean streets upon which only blacks walked. As I stood undecided on what to do a ten-year old boy came up to me and asked what the heck I thought I was doing. When I told him he responded that Columbia was across Harlem on top of the heights towards which he pointed. He offered to be my guide for a few bucks. It was money well spent and my bodyguard escorted me through Harlem to safety. Or it may have been that any criminals around were simply too stunned at my appearance to contemplate mayhem. In any event I arrived intact at Dan's place.

We decided to go visit Lauren in New Jersey. We got on the bus at the Port Authority and as we walked back to our seats I did a double take. Seated in front of me was my Stanford buddy Al and his girlfriend. "Of all the gin joints in all the world", here we were, on the other side of the continent, on a bus to New Jersey. No one spoke for a few minutes we just stared. Finally, we all said, "Can it really be you?" I didn't even have his address. So he gave me his home address in Plainfield and when he got off the bus we said our goodbyes. We went on to Lauren's and she was very glad to see us. Her parents were not so happy. They made it plainer and plainer, minute-by-minute that they did not appreciate their daughter hanging around with some dirty hippies. It grew so hostile that we fled the house with Lauren in tow. It was Christmas Eve, dark and cold and we had nowhere to go. A manger anyone? But by serendipity I did have Al's number. We found a payphone and called him up. He came over and took us home. We were welcomed and fed and given places to sleep under the tree. We were awakened in the early morn by Al's many younger siblings crawling over us to get to the presents that were just behind us. It was one of the best Xmas's ever.

A few days later Dan and I decided to hitch up to see a friend in Connecticut. We started off in the Bronx and got five rides, one after another, right to Mystic. Two things were memorable. One was that each of the rides was given us by a single woman. Even during the holidays one ride from a single woman would have been unusual but five and in a row was nuts! We finally asked the last driver why she had stopped for us. Her response was, "You look so harmless." We didn't know whether to be insulted at her perception of our meekness or proud of our centered state of consciousness. The other memorable event was the Connecticut state trooper finding my stash of grass. We later found out they had a fearsome reputation for jailing marijuana offenders. Whether it was the fact that the trooper was: only a few weeks on the job; impressed by our Ivy League credentials; feeling the holiday spirit or was just a nice guy that motivated him we'll never know. But for some reason he destroyed our joints and sent us on our way. I just kept jumping into the unknown and landing on my feet.

I graduated early thanks to advanced placement credits earned at LFA. So it was off to Danville with degree in hand but I didn't leave behind my many connections to Stanford, and two of those connections would come back to haunt me. But for now I was occupied with trying to figure out what comes after four years of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.

**Chapter 15**

"Caste Your Fate to the Wind"

Vince Guaraldi

No more classes. No more coeds. No more Stanford. Time to find a place in the world. In the spring of 1972 the country was in a deep recession. The only hope of employment was back in Danville. And once home it was easy to get a job. The largest employer in town was the General Motor's foundry. Its generous health plan was also my father's largest source of revenue since even a short time working there could drive you nuts. One word from him to the plant manager and I was hired. Those who worked there told me that many a new employee threw in the towel after less than an hour. This did not dissuade me as the pay was unbelievable and it was a nice turn of events to become a United Auto Worker after spending so much time studying Justice Brandeis and his development of legal protections for unions.

It was a good thing I was in excellent physical shape because the first week I worked not only the weekdays but Saturday and Sunday as well, at double and triple time. The plant was large, extremely dirty, noisy and dangerous. I had to wear safety glasses, earplugs and steel-toed boots. Engine parts were cast in sand molds and then sent to my section to be cleaned and tested. They could weigh up to 65 pounds and were hung on overhead conveyers. They were cleaned behind hanging rubber mats by being blasted with BB's. The apocryphal story told newbies like me was that a worker fell through a skylight into the BB section and had to be taken out with a forklift. It was bad enough that the mats had gaps and I was constantly, being hit by the BB's slipping between them. Boy, did they sting! Once cleaned, I took the hanging pieces down and put them in water where they were further cleaned and tested for leaks. This made them slippery and liable to landing on your foot. A single shift involved slinging around many tons of iron, quite a task for someone weighing in at only 150 pounds.

I worked the swing shift, 2pm till 10 pm. When I got home it took a Guinness stout or two to come down and I usually didn't get to bed till well after midnight. I worked there for two months and made a ton of money. When I told the manager I was going to quit he offered me a spot in their management, training program. I thanked him but said I had other plans. I didn't tell him that what exactly, or even vaguely, they were as I didn't know myself. I only knew that they didn't involve General Motors. My friend John went to the General Motors Institute and made a career with the foundry division. I envy him his pension and health care but not all those years on the line.

So what now? I went up to Chicago to visit my Dad's family. While at LFA I had spent many happy weekends with my cousin Arnie, his wife Eunice and their four boys. While visiting them yet again I happened to run into Arnie's brother Shelly who taught at the University of Chicago. Shelly made me an interesting proposition. Friends of his from the Art Institute were with a group who were attempting to build a School of Applied Research (SOAR) on 200 some acres in the mountains outside of Albuquerque. They were camping on the land and building a solar structure. Shelly felt bad he couldn't join them so he decided to give them some support. That was to be me. He offered $300 and a plane ticket for me to fly out and work with them for the summer. I had only ever driven straight through New Mexico but I knew the state had mountains and forests, Native American cultures and ruins and was much less populated than Illinois or California . I didn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew. It blew towards the southwest.

I bought a new tent, packed up my camping gear and said my goodbyes. I flew to Albuquerque and started hitching. I had a map with a circle on a mountain where SOAR, in whatever form it took, was supposed to be. I got a ride to the interstate and another one twenty miles east through Tijeras Canyon and the Sandia Mountains out to Edgewood, where the plains began and ran east all the way to the Mississippi. I turned north towards South Mountain and got a ride with a camp counselor whose card read, "Saving souls is our business, our only business." I don't know if he saved my soul but he certainly saved me some shoe leather. He left me off at Cedar Grove, which consisted of a cafe and a housing compound. This was where the paved road turned east and a dirt road went straight ahead into the now looming Mountain. I was now in Santa Fe County at the southern end of a chain of mountains which ran north to Santa Fe. SOAR was, hopefully, a mile away on the side of the 8690-foot San Pedro peak. I went west a half-mile or so before turning into the mountain and following yet another dirt road up an arroyo and into the thickening pinon pine and juniper woods. That road ended at a sheer slope where I found a bunch of people, vehicles and tents. They were sitting around a campfire and as the light began to fade I walked into their circle and said, "HI! Shelly sent me."

They all looked at me with surprise on their faces. There were nine of them and they welcomed me into the communal circle. Their arms might not have been opened so wide if they had known the true nature of my abilities. I had absolutely no experience in, nor talent for, construction or any of its trades. I would be given the simplest jobs, such as painting the shed, to no avail. Although I did a great job painting the northeast upper corner, it only led to my overturning the paint can and spilling most of the paint. But I was enthusiastic and I did try. Did I already say that intent is 9/10ths of the Law? Yes? Well it is!

Richie and Larry were the chief constructors. They had built bridges in Bolivia with the Peace Corps. Richie would become one of my best friends. We certainly made an unlikely pair. Rich is a big, burly man. His family was originally pioneer folk in Wyoming and he literally grew up with cowboys and Indians. This was pretty far removed from a slender bookish Jewish boy from Danville but so was South Mountain, New Mexico. Also I'm pretty quiet and sorta shy while Richie is a glad handler and never lets an opportunity for a conversation to pass him by, especially if it is in Spanish. Eventually, Richie would become one of the leading experts in the world on conifers and rare trees and found one of the largest rare tree nurseries in the world.

Richie told a lot of good Peace Corp stories about Bolivia. But my all time favorite story comes from Africa. A Peace Corps volunteer once told me of his arrival in his village in West Africa. After a few weeks no one had warmed up to him and he was feeling lonely. He didn't want to try to have sex with a local girl fearing that would be frowned on. So he hitched a ride to the nearest village some thirty miles away. There he found a willing African girl and got laid. Feeling much better he then returned to his village. Upon arrival the whole village came out and greeted him with smiles, laughter and hugs. He asked what was going on. The villagers said that they had thought he didn't like them because he hadn't had sex with any of their women. Now they knew he did like them, liked them quite a lot in fact, as they had heard from the other village. In another culture this would have resulted in death or a shotgun wedding. But here it only meant you liked the people and was the way to happiness for one and all. So much for cultural differences!

I joined Richie and the rest of the crew in building a stone and concrete solar structure, which was to be the "Commons Building." As there was no well we had to frequently drive around the mountain, through the pass and down into the valley where the main road ran. There we stopped at the Golden Inn to get our precious bodily fluids, water and beer. This road is the Turquoise Trail and runs north to Santa Fe. North of the pass they still mine gold. Even further north the ghost town of Madrid was once such a big, coal-mining town that Presidents and major league baseball teams visited. And closest to Santa Fe, turquoise was mined in Cerrillos. In the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 the richest mines in this area were lost and have never been found again. They could be somewhere on South Mountain and I'm not the only one who dreamed of finding them. The Golden Inn had mining relics as its theme and the bartender spoke of his many prospecting adventures. The bar also had a western firearm theme, which went well with the bikers who came out on weekends for the rock music and stayed to fight and finally burn the bar down.

I would learn all the above and more about the long and varied history of this area. SOAR is a registered archeological site. It was a summer camp used by the pueblo people to hunt both mountain game, which migrates between the Sandias and the San Pedros, and the herds that ran on the plains. The pueblo people also harvested pinon nuts there in the fall. On our land there are many potsherds and arrowheads scattered about, as well as a prayer circle that still sits in a sunny meadow. The Comanche came out of the east and rode down through the pass to raid the pueblos themselves. At the southern foot of South Mountain Cedar Grove had water, grass and trees. It was a stop on a main east-west route used since the early 1800's by trade caravans, and later by stagecoaches and cavalry patrols. As a result, most of the large ponderosa pine on that side of the mountain had been logged off. The Canon del Agua spring on the north side of the mountain was a hideout for the bandit De Silva from Las Vegas. He hid his stolen horses there. More recently there had been tales of survivalists and marijuana growers hidden near the peaks and sightings of drug planes landing at night on the highway.

Cedar Grove was a Bahai Community, which had a nice little cafe and a swimming pool they let us swim in on occasion. We only knew of one other settlement on the south slope of the mountain, a couple that lived high above us and delivered their baby up there all on their own. Our campsite was completely isolated and quiet. Driving on the roads one would see golden eagles and coyotes quite often. Above us the land rose steeply to a ridge and then straight up to the peak. Directly over us was a very unique ecosystem. On a steep slope was a rockslide surrounded by cactus where a fault brought water to near the surface. This water sustained several aspens, which are usually only found at higher elevations with much more rainfall, and never among rock and cactus. Richie and I wandered all over the mountain. At San Pedro Peak and the lower summit to the northeast, Monte Largo, and over on the north slope there were still large ponderosa and even some spruce. The going was rugged up there but the views out across the plains were spectacular.

After awhile, Richie and I decided that it was time to see some more of the country and to visit other communes to see how they did things. So we headed north to Taos, commune central. Somewhere around Espanola we saw a sight any two red blooded boys would have been thrilled by. Two young ladies were hitchhiking and we screeched to a stop. They got in and we began to chat, with each party scoping out the other. Both were Hispanic and quite striking with fine, brown features framed by jet, black hair on top of long lean bodies. They said they were going to visit friends in hope of finding some fun. I gave them a joint and Richie asked if maybe we could provide the fun. He told them we were going to camp in the mountains that night and invited them along. They agreed and we headed into the mountains and up a small river to where we camped in a deserted campground. After dinner and a joint or two we paired off and retired to our respective tents. In the morning all awakened refreshed and reinvigorated. We spent most of the day together hiking in the forest and then drove north. Richie and I bid the girls adieu when they decided to head west somewhere before Taos. On we went to find us a commune.

Just at sunset we came over a rise and the view spread before us was mind blowing. There lay a high plain surrounded on all sides by mountains and bisected by a giant chasm that split the earth from north to south. The scene was lit by the setting sun's rays, splintered through the clouds and spotlighting the splendor of the limned land. The plain was an ancient rift valley where the land had been torn apart by the violent movement of the earth. The cleft in the altiplano was the Rio Grande Gorge. It runs 96 miles, beginning in Colorado and continuing down through New Mexico. The next day we walked the bridge which spans the void on the Taos Plateau where the gorge is 600 to 800 feet deep. I gingerly looked down at the river flowing far beneath us, and saw back in time through the eons it took for nature to create such a chasm. This whole area was declared the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in 2014. The sections of the Rio Grande and the Red rivers in the upper gorge are wild and scenic rivers. I later frequented a hot springs in the lower gorge right on the river. We spent the night in Taos and in the morning we got directions and drove a ways north and then up a mountain to find there our first commune, Lama.

I didn't remember at the time but I had already been acquainted with Lama. One of my girlfriends at Stanford, Pat Robinson, had given me a gift that is still with me. It was a box containing: a large illustrated book, "From Bindu to Ojas"; a smaller book, "A Cookbook for a Sacred Life"; sheets of photos with quotes; and a phonograph record of chants and prayers. Lama Foundation and Ram Dass produced "Be Here Now" in 1970. Now I was at the source of this blessing. Lama's buildings were scattered throughout a ponderosa pine forest just below the National Forest boundary. The view looked west out over the gorge and that primeval hole in reality looked even more awesome than before. This was an ecumenical spiritual community. Murshid Samuel Lewis who was also a rabbi and brought the Dances of Universal Peace to San Francisco and then Lama, is buried there. Lama welcomes teachers and seekers of all faiths. Rich and I danced and twirled in the large geodesic dome with thirty or forty others. Later we hiked up the hill to pay our respects at Sufi Sam's grave. Throughout the years I would continue to Sufi dance at many places across the country and to return often to Lama. I consider it my spiritual home.

Lama is also the success story of the communal movement. The spiritual bond that unites its members provides the means for them all to achieve their common goals. We left Lama and went to what we would find were several examples of unsustainable communal efforts. The last commune we visited, New Buffalo, was like the others. It was depressing in its squalor and lack of cohesion. The doctors in the book club I've been a member of for quite some years all tell a common story of their time in the Public Health Service in Taos. They would be called out to one of the communes to treat an epidemic. They would lecture the inhabitants on the value of proper sanitation. And a few months later the same commune would call with the same problem, still not solved.

As Rich and I prepared to leave we noticed a guy standing by himself in a corner and looking pleadingly at us. His distress was obvious. He came over and introduced himself as Renee, a Frenchman touring the states and stuck in New Buffalo of which he had an opinion similar to ours, it sucked! We agreed to rescue him from the disaster that was and took him back to SOAR. He worked with us a few days and then we all decided to drive through Albuquerque around to Placitas on the west slope of the Sandias to see John Lee Hooker, a great old blues guitarist, at the Thunderbird Inn. While there, and thoroughly enjoying the blues master, I asked a pretty young blonde to dance. Her name was Chris and she was from Dodge City, Kansas. We kept dancing and when it was time to go I got the courage to ask her to come back to my tent with me. She agreed, either out of curiosity at the nature of my abode, at my nature or both. We again made the long drive. Back on the mountain we all said our goodnights and Chris and I headed to the small, flimsy cloth structure I called home. Renee spoke to me and I turned back to him. He asked me if I would mind if he joined us! I guess I should have seen it coming, him being French and all a menage a trois would be par for the course! But once again the happenstance of unusual sexual advances left me flabbergasted. I sputtered out, "I don't think so." Then I retired with Chris for a night of pleasant romping under the stars. Typical for me, it did not turn out to be a one-night stand. We saw each other off and on for a few years.

My continued astonishment as extraordinary sexual advances were made to me grew not from the fact that such things didn't exist in Danville, but from my ignorance thereof. Although most people in Danville would also have considered them uncommon, in fact they were as widespread there as in a big city. We just didn't know about them because they were hidden. But my Dad did know, as he later told me. He knew every secret in town and there were many, from the upper crust to the wrong side of the tracks, and most involved sex. Affairs. Gays. Transvestites. You name it and Danville had always had them. And Dodge City must have had them too. Republicans and Democrats all suffered, and some saw a psychiatrist, because of the repression of natural instincts. Hopefully we are beginning to lessen the stigma and allow a more healthful attitude of openness to prevail. Meanwhile, I preferred to keep the ladies to myself.

I had completed my commitment to Shelly and was thinking of the future. The oneness I sought now was most easily seen, and felt and heard in the wild, a wild that was under increasing threat. I felt that I should help preserve that wilderness, or some semblance thereof. And so I decided to make the environmental movement my profession.

The danger that the earth was in first became obvious to me when I arrived at Stanford and found that most days I couldn't see across the Bay because of the smog. I really joined the movement on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day. It was the largest demonstration in US history and was a bi-partisan creation. Twenty million people participated across the country. I was in a throng on Stanford plaza listening to speeches and visiting different booths to get information. All of this excited my imagination and was the first step to combining my love of nature and my psychedelic and spiritual experiences with an avocation.

The environmental movement showed that it was a national political force that day but it had begun with the conservation movement that sought to preserve the wilderness before it disappeared. The first National Park was created in Yellowstone in 1872. John Muir was instrumental in creating Yosemite National Park in 1890. He founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and helped create many more National Parks. His reason for saving nature was that "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." President Theodore Roosevelt put the conservation ethic into practice with the creation of National Forests and many National Monuments and Parks.

While the fight for conservation continued, with the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the protection of the Grand Canyon from a proposed dam in 1965, the movement would go beyond conservation to address the threats industrial society posed to our health and the planet's ecological stability. This new direction was the result of catastrophes, such as the toxic waste at the Love Canal and the oil spill at Santa Barbara, and of best-selling books that revealed the dangers of overpopulation and of indiscriminate pesticide use. The result was statutes protecting our water and air and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce them. (This agency was the creation of a Republican President, something we cannot imagine today.) The issues now became technical and involved large financial stakes. The reaction by the moneyed interests would become fierce.

When the economy went global so did the environmental movement. The whole earth was now threatened by growing global problems including: an ozone hole in the Antarctic, deforestation in the Amazon, the imminent death of the oceans and a loss of species so great as to be called the Sixth Great Extinction. And then the existential threat of Global Climate Change became an unavoidable fact. (Unavoidable that is unless you are the Republican head of the House committee on the Environment.) The Earth is our only home. "There is no Plan B." So given the past, the present and an inkling of the future what were and are we to do? I went to law school.

I had spent most of my senior year at LFA working with Professor Nathanson of Northwestern University School of Law on an independent study project on Justice Brandeis and labor law. With an English degree and Justice Brandeis's example of achieving social change through the law, law school seemed the obvious way to aid the environmental cause. In retrospect, this was the time when I should have consulted a career counselor, with perhaps better results, but this was not to be. I visited the University of New Mexico School of Law and was impressed, especially by their Natural Resources Journal and associated programs. But I had an invitation to a farm in Oregon and wanted to check out the U of O so I headed to the Northwest.

But before I left, I was voted in as a member of SOAR and allowed to buy 5 acres, at $200 an acre, and to pick out my lot. It was at the front of the property along the road and the arroyo, and included the campsite. It even had a few alligator junipers, which are the largest and oldest trees on the property, and a view across the plains to a butte and an isolated mountain. My friend Tom and I had looked at some beautiful, lush property in Mendicino but couldn't get it together to buy it. Now I would achieve the goal of having a pied a terre, a foot to the earth, albeit earth studded with cactus, and it would be all mine.

SOAR had begun as an unusual commune in that it was based on monetary contributions and the division of common goods based there on. The idea of founding a school then disappeared and the community devolved so that each owned his own land and shared the Commons building and some other assets. Eventually all communal assets disappeared and it became merely a residential community where several buildings were built. It now sits completely abandoned, though I visit occasionally. Evidently the earth is not enough, you need a deep and common spiritual connection to it and to each other for a community to thrive and survive. And perhaps this is achieved through teachers like Sufi Sam and Baba Ram Dass or a movement like Zionism and the Kibbutz. These communal efforts may be a lesson to us all as we struggle to find a sustainable path for the global community. In any event I had my land and a deep friendship with Richie, a pretty good return on my time so far in the Land of Enchantment.

The farm near Vernonia was surrounded by lumber company land where all the old growth had been logged off and secondary forest grew. In Oregon the secondary forest was big, bigger than most of the trees in New Mexico. My favorite spot was where two old growth cedar logs had fallen across a ravine and had been too difficult to get out in the years when old growth had been plentiful. The fallen trunks were many feet across, many feet thick and hundreds of feet long. I would walk out on these natural bridges and sit and meditate.

Dan and Maryam came to visit and we had a blast voting. It was an absentee ballot from California and included an initiative to legalize pot. We smoked many a joint while debating how to vote on this issue. At last it was unanimous in favor of the herb. I took the LSAT, the law school admissions test, in Portland. I then had to decide on which law school to apply for as an in state resident.

Oregon was wonderful but the grey clouds and drizzling rain was constant all winter and coming from a desert people I'm just more comfortable in the desert than in the rain. Besides I needed to be in a place of solitude and South Mountain was it.

My girlfriend Pat had written me that: "I'm looking at my life now as a search for magic." The hippies were all looking for magic. For me where better to find it than sitting on South Mountain "alone like a sparrow upon the Hous Top, and like a pelican in the wilderness."

Tony Hillerman described best the mind of those who choose New Mexico:

"From the crest...[of the Sandias at night the] dark spaces represent thousands of square miles of mountains, mesas and plains occupied by absolutely no one. I am one of those who treasures such empty, silent, untouched places." South Mountain was one of those places, with just such a vista. New Mexico's not called the Land of Enchantment for nothing. I was not the first, nor would I be the last to fall under its spell. I applied as an in state resident at UNM. As expected, I was rejected in Oregon and accepted at UNM. So back I went from the forests and the beaches to the high desert and the mountains.

Upon returning to New Mexico I hooked up with Richie who was working construction and we rented a beautiful adobe house near Old Town. I had some time before school started and went backpacking on my own. This is somewhat dangerous but immensely fulfilling. I spent three days circumnavigating Bandelier National Monument. Adolf Bandelier had carried heavy cameras and large, glass photographic plates into this country to document the ancient Native American civilization whose remains are protected by the Monument. In the canyons by the headquarters are cliff houses and the remains of pueblo style multi-story stone buildings, which I have visited many times. This time I hiked far out into the park to the Stone Lions shrine amid the pine forest on the high mesas. To get there meant going up on to a mesa, across and down into a canyon, then going up to a mesa, and down and on and on. Once at the far end of the park I dropped down into the main canyon. Here Frijoles Canyon was wild with thick riparian forest, with many beaver dams in the creek. I then came downstream back to the park headquarters. During the whole three-day trip I only met one other person on the trail and he was a Park Ranger. I passed my time in camp by reading "The Delight Makers" by Adolf Bandelier. His novel brought me back to the time when the Canyon was the home of the ancient ones. Here was yet another way to partake of the magic of New Mexico.

**Chapter 16**

"Lost in Juarez and it's [summer]time too."

Bob Dylan, "Just like Tom Thumb's Blues"

Friends began to gather in New Mexico that summer. First came Sarah and her friend from Harvard. Sarah was from Stanford and a close friend of Tom's. While we waited for Tom the three of us went up to the Pecos wilderness, which sits behind Santa Fe. We hiked in and camped at the base of Santa Fe Baldy and then in the morning hiked to the top of the peak. Now I've always been blessed with an excellent sense of direction but this is the one time it may have failed me. I became separated from my companions and missed the trail and found myself in thick forest with no idea of where to go other than down. I didn't panic but I did descend with more speed than was wise. I kept going down and the forest just kept going on and a trail never appeared. I was getting more and more worried as the minutes ran on. I had gone way past the base of the peak where we had camped and was still descending. It had been over an hour, maybe two or three. It was hard to tell the time as the forest stole the light but the daylight was being used up with no gain to tell for it. As I began to struggle with the rise of the first signs of panic within me, the forest suddenly parted and I stepped out onto a few foot wide band of beaten earth. It was a trail! Not the one we had climbed up in the morning but the main trail we had come in on from the trailhead. I later looked at a map and if I had gone just a bit east I would have missed the trail and gone into the heart of the wilderness where there were no trails and the only option would have been to follow the Pecos River out. My survival would not have been assured. Exhausted, I had to climb all the way back to camp and shamefacedly explain to two Iowa farmers who had never been in the woods what I had been up to. I've never been lost since and given that I did find my way cross-country back to camp I guess my sense of direction did not utterly fail me and perhaps had saved me.

Back in Albuquerque, not only Tom but Dan also was waiting for us. We decided to see the country in my new four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruiser. I had bought it so I could live out at South Mountain. With our packs tied to the roof and the interior full with the five of us and the rest of our gear, we headed southeast to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. At the Park we toured one of the wonders of the world. Carlsbad Cavern is the largest and most extensive of the park's many caverns. It is 829 feet deep with three miles of trails. You walk down and down, further and further into the underworld. The hot, dry air quickly becomes cool and moist. Ceilings and floors grow insane icicles and eldritch shapes of all sizes. Besides the stalagmites and stalactites, there are: Pools, Springs, and Grottos; Domes, Pits and Rocks, all individually named for their marvelous and unique characteristics. And the lighting makes it all glow eerily. One chamber has a "floor area equal to 14 football fields and enough height for the US Capital building in one corner." And astonishing chamber connects to yet another different but equally stunning chamber in a descending series of gigantic, geologic splendors. After this fantastic voyage we drove far from the headquarters and set up camp in the undeveloped Rattlesnake Canyon. It was starkly beautiful. The steep rocky ridges were covered with all kinds of cactus and succulents, beneath which scuttled lizards and numerous insects. Luckily, we encountered no snakes, only the beauty of the wild Chihuahuan desert.

That evening we drove back in to the main Cavern. There we waited under the full moon in the amphitheater by the entrance to the cave. Soon out of the huge oval hole in the ground spiraled up a few bats, then a few more, soon followed by dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands and thousands of them. The one million bats can boil up out of the ground at the rate of up to 5000 a minute. They circled and formed a cloud over us before flying past the moon and out to eat the insects of the Pecos River Valley. The rangers told us it was one of the largest flights ever. We were happy to have timed our trip so well.

We next drove south to Texas where the Rio Grande and the Mexican border separated El Paso from its sister city, Cuidad Juarez. There the Timothy Leary Turnaround awaited us. Here's how it happened to Tim and the consequences that resulted for him. In 1965 the LSD guru crossed the border at Laredo, Texas to get a visa for an extended stay in Mexico. Being told to return the next day Dr. Leary went back to the US to find a motel. US Customs found a small amount of marijuana on his daughter's person for which Leary took responsibility.

Now Timothy Leary may not have cared what the powers-that-be thought of him but they were keeping a close eye on the man who President Nixon would call, "the most dangerous man in America." Leary was sentenced to the imminently proportional sentence of thirty years! He appealed on the grounds that requiring one to pay a tax on an illegal substance was an unconstitutional abridgement of the right against self-incrimination. He won this appeal in the US Supreme Court.

Meanwhile he got in trouble in California and was sentenced, again for small amounts of marijuana, to the more reasonable term of twenty years! Before being assigned to a prison and a work detail Leary was given a battery of psychological tests. Not surprisingly he was assigned to a minimum-security facility as a gardener, after all, he not only knew these tests intimately, but had designed many of them, including the Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test. He soon escaped, climbing a utility pole and lowering himself hand-over-hand down a support cable over a 12-foot fence.

The radical, leftist group the Weathermen were paid $25,000.00 to smuggle the good doctor out of the country. He ended up in Algeria with fugitive members of the Black Panthers with whom he quickly fell out. He fled Algeria and was arrested in Afghanistan. Now facing 95 years in prison he received permission from the Weathermen to feign cooperation with the authorities. In 1976, after some years in prison, Leary was released on orders of Governor Sunshine, Jerry Brown.

Leary returned to the limelight with numerous book publications and a lecture tour. The 1982 tour was with his buddy, G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate fame. Liddy had been the chief burglar in the burglary which brought down President Nixon and had served time in prison for it. The two ex-cons were salt and pepper, left and right, and were a huge hit. Timothy Leary ended up back in the headlines he had always sought.

We would never have done the Timothy Leary Turnaround if we had known what it was but then no one who ever did it knew what he or she were doing or it would never have been done. We had never been to El Paso and our intent was to park on the American side and walk over the border into Mexico. Good luck with that. We found ourselves on a highway leading to a bridge with nothing along it. There were no places to park and no exits. Helplessly we found ourselves unable to stop and were sent over the Rio Grande into Mexico. Without thinking we turned around and came back. This time there was a place to stop in the United States, the border inspection station. There a guard asked us how long we had been in Mexico and I said, "About 30 seconds." Unhesitatingly, he motioned me to pull over for inspection. A few years later a turnaround would happen in the El Paso sector alone some 40 times a month. So Tim and I were not the only unwary travelers to end up in this predicament.

And predicament it was. We were ordered out of the vehicle and escorted into a building and then to a conference room. We were left there to ponder what was to come. Dan took charge and being a Sufi Sheikh he had us all begin to chant. By the time the guards returned we were all in a mellower state and some positive energy was being generated. The guards were absolutely positively sure that I was to accompany them to the car for a search. I had no idea what the others had in the car but I knew I had a baggie of weed so I was right back to being very apprehensive. At the car a guard with a German shepherd on a leash was waiting. They put the dog in the back and he became very interested in our food. I didn't know what else grabbed his attention, as I was occupied with the visions of Alcatraz that swam around my head. After a thorough search they brought me back to the conference room and left me there among the still ohming, allahing Ivy League hippies. With no other choice I joined in. After quite some time, maybe thirty minutes, a supervisor came into the room. He put two baggies on the table. He pointed to the one with a brown powder in it and said that my vehicle was being impounded pending a chemical analysis of the unidentified substance, which I had never seen before. He then pushed the bag with what I had thought was weed over to me and said, "We don't know what this is." Then he stood up and escorted us out to the car to remove our belongings.

As we were counting our blessings that it was the car and not us that was under arrest and packing up our things, suddenly the whole situation changed yet again. Two large guards came over to me and grabbed me by my arms and without a word marched me back into the building, opened a door and thrust me into a closet sized room which only had light through the ventilation louvers in the door. Again, with no alternative I turned to chanting and the sounds echoed within the small chamber to give a nice effect. After a few minutes the door suddenly opened and the supervisor motioned me out. He said, "We had a bulletin that a Randy Greenfield was wanted for armed robbery. It took awhile to get the description. Luckily for you it was: 6 ft 4, 200 pounds and blonde hair." He took me back out to the car where I picked up my backpack and joined the others in walking into Mexico. In the middle of the bridge they all vehemently insisted that I get rid of the "weed" or whatever was in the baggie they had given back to me. I tossed it into the shallow muddy waters of the river that had brought us to this pass.

We took a couple of cabs into the heart of Juarez and found cheap rooms by the market. There, with Tom on guitar and me on harmonica, we began to compose "The Juarez Blues." A bottle of tequila was there to help in the endeavor. But before we recorded the final version of our new song I inquired into who had brought the unidentified brown powder with them. Sarah confessed that she had bought it as LSD in Iowa. This was cause for another sip of tequila. After the song and the bottle were finished an inexpensive but good Mexican meal followed. Then it was time to hit the bars.

In one of the bars I fell into the world of Dylan's "Tom Thumb's Blues." As I sipped my cerveza a curvy Latina sat down beside me. She was in her early thirties, had been married to an American and had lived in Texas for many years. As a result, just like "Sweet Melinda" in Dylan's song, she spoke good English. But, unlike Dylan's woman of Juarez she was not a "hungry" woman. In fact, she was quite charming and beautiful and I could not resist her sweet blandishments. She did invite me up to her room and though she asked to be paid she "did not make a mess out of [me]." Instead, we had a very enjoyable evening and I was all the better for the experience. My sojourn in Juarez also went better than Dylan's as "when the game got rough" there was someone to help us.

In the morning we packed up and went back over the border to the public library and found the number for the ACLU. This connected us to Jack's law office and he gave us a friendly Texas "Howdy" and said to come on over. We arrived at his modest office and were shown in. A tall man in his early thirties and casually dressed greeted us and invited us to sit down. As we related our story, I kept watching the fish circle in the large aquarium, which occupied most of one wall. No sooner had we finished relating our tale when Jack pulled out a Dictaphone and dictated, non-stop and from memory, a petition to release my car. He obviously got a lot of the turnaround victims as clients. But I don't believe there had ever been five Ivy Leaguers before, probably nary a one. We were to discover that Jack was an intellectual marooned in a Texas desert of the mind. He looked upon our arrival as manna from heaven and he showed his enthusiasm by inviting us back to his house as his guests. When we happily accepted Jack shut down his office on the spot and took us on home. Now that's what I call a zealous defense!

Jack had a very nice home and the most obvious feature was the talking mynah bird in his living room. The next most obvious thing about Jack was that he liked marijuana, very much. He brought out grass brownies and hashish and proceeded to get us wasted for the next three days. Thank you federal government for putting in our laps more drugs than we ever would have found in all of Juarez! Jack further endeared himself to us as our counselor at law by taking us to the country club for dinner and his health club for saunas. These were probably places only the highest federal bureaucrats ever haunted. Thanks to the war on drugs we were kept royally entertained until Jack had to finally go back to work. We thanked him profusely and took the bus for Albuquerque.

A week later, after all but Dan had departed, a letter arrived in the mail in an official US government envelope. It was the response to my petition. It stated that an analysis had found the "unidentified brown powder" to be Nestle's Strawberry Quick and there being no criminal violation my car would be released upon payment of parking fees owed. I thought it a little punitive to charge me parking fees for having transported a terrible but legal flavoring across the border but hell my cruiser was mine again! I'll never know if it had or had not been weed or LSD they had found. The Border patrol had had three Stanford, a Harvard and a Columbia student to contend with, not to mention Jack. Even more to the point was the fact that Tom's father was a big-time corporate lawyer in Chicago and Sarah's family was a power in Iowa. There may have been some phone calls from higher-ups in Washington. Or was it that our chants had reached higher still? In any event I had survived yet another close call. Maybe I would be more discreet in the future? Nah, probably not.

Dan and I took the bus back to El Paso. We paid parking fees of $108.00 and the cruiser was released to us. Dan and I then headed northwest to the Gila National Forest. It was here that the first wilderness area in the world was designated in 1924. Aldo Leopold, a father of the environmental movement, was responsible for the protection of 755,000 acres including the Middle Fork of the Gila River. With wilderness on all sides we drove deep into the Forest to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Dan and I climbed up to a large cavity in the cliff wall. There the floor sloped back and up into the cave. On that vast platform sat several buildings of several stories each and all abutting each other. They were built of fitted stone and ladders led up through the apartments to the flat roofs. Above the roofs the cave was stained black from the cooking fires. Some seven hundred years ago the ancients had lived here. Now they were long gone. We went past the buildings and sat down on the floor at the back of the cave. There we began a silent meditation. We merged into the spirit of that ancient place and sought to become one with those who had been before us. Our trance was broken by a scream. We looked up and a family of four stood before us with wide eyes and open mouths. The mother was ashen and clutched her chest. We stood up and they noticeably relaxed. They had wandered through the ruins, seemingly alone, and had suddenly come upon two ghosts, with long hair and banded brows, visions of prior times. They had been certain that we were supernatural creatures until they had clearly seen that we were only hippies and not Kachina spirits. Clearly our meditation had been very successful, too much so for that family. After a good laugh all around we left them to their hopefully less eventful tour.

We then circumnavigated the wilderness, some 130 miles on mostly primitive or dirt roads. The scenery was spectacular. It went from open range with cactus and grass, through pinon and juniper and into ponderosa, fir and spruce. There were numerous creeks and springs as we traversed the headwaters of the Gila River at the base of the 11,000-foot peak that marked the highest point in the Forest. Beyond that we descended to the ghost town of Mogollon, population 1, where we hit the main highway at Glenwood. It was now time to return to the big city and see what was up with law school.

"Before"

1968 graduation

Lake Forest Academy

"And After"

Portola Valley, CA, 1972

Courtesy of A. Barling

Dr. Michael B. Greenfield, circa 1941

Karel deLeeuw, 05/06/71

Courtesy of the Stanford University Archives

Jordan House circa 2005, Stanford, CA

Courtesy of Katy Murphy Ingle, 1972.

Jordan House 7 am

1972, Courtesy of Katy Murphy Ingle

Flying the Freak Flag

Mt. Tamalpais, Marin County, CA, 1971

Courtesy of Oliver Dominick

Ellen, anonymous, circa 1971

Cruiser

1973, Courtesy of Tom Jacobs

Jordan House Reunion, Stanford Sierra Camp, Fallen Leaf Lake, CA, Oct. 2013.

Author 2nd row, far right.

Courtesy of Carol Hart.

**Chapter 17**

"Audace, Audace, Toujours L'Audace!"

Napoleon on audacity

I began law school with the idealistic belief that through reason man could establish laws for the betterment of mankind and enforce those laws with equal justice for all. I retained this belief until it was tested by reality and was found wanting in many regards. I should have seen what was coming but as we know by now I was never one to look beyond where I was at or to see what might be headed towards me. Anyways, I was too busy the first year to do much beyond study hard trying to figure out this new system of thought and reason. I met regularly with my study group, as there was strength in numbers. We were pretty diverse: Ally was an African-American from the south side of Chicago; George was of Polish descent, looked like a count in a romance novel and grew up following his dad from embassy to embassy through the Congo and on to Laos; and Ken was an Italian-American from New York who lived in the mountains not far from my land and had built his own house there. Together we made it through the year, with some help from a few joints and a beer or two.

I still am not quite sure how I ended up headed north on the Alaska Highway without any certain job waiting for me at my destination in Anchorage but end up there I did. After my first semester I had written to Professor Nathanson, of Northwestern University School of Law who had worked with me at Lake Forest and given me a law school recommendation, to tell him I had done well. I mentioned I was looking for summer work and that I was especially interested in Alaska.

Why Alaska? I'm not sure but perhaps because my friends Gary and Valerie fished commercially for salmon on the Kenai or maybe I was once again destined to follow in my father's footsteps. By early 1941 America was gearing up for war as fast as it could. In the North Pacific Alaska's defenses were being reinforced and work had begun on the Northwest Staging Route for aircraft. The Jewish Welfare Board decided to survey Alaskan communities to see what resources would be needed for the Jewish servicemen who were beginning to appear there in ever greater numbers. As a Jewish reserve Army officer already in San Francisco my Dad's name came up. Leave from the VA and an all expense paid trip to Alaska sounded good to him and so he went off in the summer of 1941 to visit Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks. His descriptions of Alaska surely must have fueled my desire to see "The Great Land."

But why mention it to a Professor in Illinois? The answer must have been, why not? As luck would have it, Prof. Nathanson replied that he was a visiting professor at Arizona State and knew another visiting professor from Anchorage. He was kind enough to give me his address. I wrote and inquired as to the availability of summer jobs and received the following response from Wendell P. Kay, the founding partner of one of the largest firms in Anchorage:

"...you will probably not have any trouble finding a job. The best thing to do is just come on up and start looking. Be sure to come in and see me when you get here."

It wasn't exactly a job offer, in fact it wasn't one at all, but if he said to come on up, come up all of the approximately 3500 miles, through tens of thousands of square miles of wilderness, across vast rivers and over rugged mountains, on the gravel roads of the Canadian Alaskan highway and the permafrost heaved pavement of the Alaskan highways, to go "Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow", we all know the answer I would give (had I ever said no to adventure?) and so on May 21, 1974 Gary and Valerie helped me pack the cruiser with our stuff, and, along with Odin their Norwegian Elkhound, we all headed north to Alaska.

Gary and Valerie lived in Albuquerque, which was where Richie introduced them to me. Richie had met them in Bolivia when they were traveling around the world. That trip also included immigrating to Australia and spending months in Papua New Guinea. They were thus excellent companions for the long journey into the wilds of North America that lay ahead. The first night we stayed with friends in Durango, Colorado. The second night we camped at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah where I'll always remember a tremendously large flock of swifts that darted in and out of holes in the cliffs above the river as they swooped down at dusk to catch insects.

We camped two nights in Yellowstone National Park, where 10-foot high snow drifts lined the sides of the roads, in May! We were certainly getting into northern latitudes. We took our first break here and spent a day touring the park. The wildlife and geothermal features were splendiferous. I especially remember the roaring waters of the Yellowstone River as it came over the falls. The trout dinner in the lodge was also memorable. Then it was back in the cruiser and up through Montana. Here we had a bit of an experience. We were looking for a place to camp and followed the road as the pavement ended, then on up a hill to where the gravel ended in a mud hole that brought even our four-wheel drive to a dead stop. There we sat until a rancher came up in a pickup and stopped just before the gravel ended. When he got out he was boiling mad that three hippies were stuck in his pasture. When we explained we were on our way to work in Alaska, as fishermen yet, he became very friendly and pulled us out and directed us to a campground.

We continued driving and driving past the peaks of Glacier National Park and over the border into Canada. We cut over at Red Deer to avoid Edmonton and the forest began to takeover and the habitations to grow scarce. By the time we crossed over from Alberta to British Columbia it was beginning to be a whole different world, one where nature dominated over the works of man. Dawson Creek, B.C. is where the Alaskan Highway begins. We had been on the road a week and had just arrived at the beginning of the Highway! We spent a day there provisioning and resting. I still remember the Canadian bacon we bought there, it was the best I have ever tasted.

Not far beyond Dawson Creek, at Ft. Saint John, the road became gravel for some thousand miles. Now it would be 150 miles between gas stations. Here the flat arboreal forest began to give way to the Canadian Rockies. While not spectacular and high like at Banff, they are nonetheless impressive and very wild. It was now a couple of hundred miles in either direction from the roadway till the map showed another road. At Muncho Lake, Dall mountain sheep wandered across the highway and we waited ten or fifteen minutes for them to cross. As we drove we could see the white dots of mountain goats high up on the sides of the peaks.

I knew we were really in the sub-arctic when we crossed the Liard River. The bridge seemed a mile long. I looked on the map and the Liard flowed north to the Mackenzie, which emptied into the Arctic Ocean. The map also showed that we were only a few miles from the Northwest Territories. Just beyond the Liard River crossing we entered the Yukon Territory. I was now in the place of dreams, of Jack London adventures, of the Klondike River and Bonanza Creek. It was exciting.

Our excitement took a bit of a hit when Odin returned to the Cruiser with a gift. He had been a very well behaved dog but no dog can resist the sweet smell of carrion and that was what he had rolled in. He brought that delicious odor back to share with us. It was not well received. Our efforts to clean him up were not very satisfactory to us, and not at all appreciated by him. We carried on with the scent of the wild stinging our nostrils.

The most astonishing meeting on the whole drive was somewhere in this area when we stopped by the side of the road to relieve ourselves. For some reason I went deeper than normal into the woods, some twenty or thirty yards. I stopped at the base of a high pile of boulders, maybe thirty feet high. Something drew my attention and I looked up. There staring down at me was a lynx. This was a precious gift as lynx are elusive and seldom seen. The large cat's speckled coat and tufted ears made a beautiful sight. We locked eyes and stared at each other for what seemed like several minutes. I saw the same "green fire" in those eyes that Aldo Leopold saw in the eyes of a dying wolf. It was a look into the wild soul of nature. Then he trotted off and I looked down and saw something white on the ground. I bent over and picked up the foot of a snowshoe rabbit, the main prey of the lynx. The foot was dried up so the lynx obviously hunted here often. I kept it and had it for many years.

Our first real civilization in hundreds of miles was when we arrived in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon and the home of most of the thirty thousand inhabitants of that huge swath of land. Beyond its borders we drove back into some of the wildest parts of Canada. One afternoon we stopped for lunch by driving off the road and to the edge of the unnamed creek that lay below the highway bridge above us. This unnamed creek would have been a major river in New Mexico. When the car stopped, we looked on in amazement as in front of us, only a few feet away, sat perched in a tree a mature, all-white arctic owl who peered back at us with no fear whatsoever in his yellow eyes. After a few moments he leisurely spread his gigantic wings and with what seemed a single flap winged across the river and away. That day we also picked up two hitchhikers who were mining silver up above the Arctic Circle. They were two large and tough looking dudes.

We stopped for a night at Kluane Lake at an Indian trading post. It was the largest lake in the Yukon. For dinner they served us inch thick filets of lake trout with no bones and said that the 350 square mile lake produced trout of up to fifty pounds. A fish story? I don't know but the fish was the best trout I ever ate. On the other side of the lodge we looked up at the magnificent peaks of Kluane National Park, which included the highest point in Canada, Mt. Logan at 5950 meters.

Soon we crossed into Alaska and the road became paved but was slower going as the permafrost made the pavement a roller coaster of swells. We now passed Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and then I saw my first glacier. I mean a real glacier, not a little ice on a mountaintop. Matanuska was a glacier that covered hundreds of square miles and just showed us a part of its northern flank, which came down close to the highway. Finally, after all those miles and two weeks of travel we came into Anchorage to one of the most awesome sights I've ever seen. To one side a full moon was rising over Susitna Mountain while to the other side the sun was setting over a large lake. A good omen was thus presented for my stay here in Anchorage.

I drove Gary and Valerie southwest more than a hundred miles and into the Kenai Peninsula to their fishing cabin at Kasilof. They had fished here for seven years and this was to be their last season. Here they set nets offshore and then came back to haul in the salmon. Their cabin was on a bluff above Cook Inlet and had a perfect view across to a smoking volcano, Redoubt by name. I would later return to go out in their dory and get seasick on the calmest day of the year. On my visits I would also: eat salmon roe omelets; go to Homer to see a play and buy King Crab legs at the docks, and, most impressive of all, watch from their window as a forty-foot wall of water crept up the inlet, Cook Inlet having the second highest tides in the world. But for now I had to go see the man who had said to come on up and see him.

In Anchorage I got settled into a house with nine people by the park strip, which ran along a good length of the downtown. A friend had given me the address and they had had a room available. So far, so good. Now I was to try my luck with gaining employment. In the morning I put on my coat and tie and walked to what seemed the tallest building in town. I found the law firm occupied a whole floor of that building. As I was ushered into the office of my potential employer I couldn't help notice that it looked north to where Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, dominated the view, despite being 240 miles away. Its occupant came out from behind his desk to shake my hand. Wendell P. Kay, though not a large man, presented an imposing figure as he welcomed me to Alaska. I was to later find out that he was known as "The Silver Fox", had been the Speaker of the House of Representatives and was now considered the foremost criminal attorney in Alaska. He graciously told me how much he respected Prof. Nathanson and that he would do what he could for me. He then sent me to the managing partner who told me that they had just hired a woman and wouldn't know till Monday whether they would have an opening for me! That was quite a let down. I went out to the park strip and sat down to ponder the future.

Being stranded in Alaska seemed a much worse fate than being lost in Merced had presented. I was very far from home. So far away was I that there were no live television broadcasts from outside Alaska. Just how isolated Alaska was became clear a few weeks later when the Alaska Highway was closed for two weeks by heavy rains and there was a shipping strike. Almost all the food had been imported from the lower forty-eight. Now it had to be air freighted. Milk and other goods doubled in price and then prices just kept on increasing from there. And such civilization as existed in Anchorage was not available once one left its environs.

In somewhat of a state of desperation I spent the next two days visiting every law office in Anchorage. The only offer I got was from Alaska Legal Services. They offered to send me to Nome. From Nome on a clear day Sarah Palin might actually be able to see Russia as it is pretty dang close. Nome is on the Bering Sea. It is just below the Arctic Circle about 500 air miles from Anchorage. Air miles because Nome has no roads that don't dead end in the middle of nowhere. It was not the destination I had envisioned when I set forth from Albuquerque to cross a continent. Well, at least I had one last chance on Monday. Another friend had given me the address of a woman who lived in Girdwood, which lay thirty miles out of town. It was the ski area for Anchorage. So I called and got an invitation for the weekend. Saturday morning I drove out and found a very hospitable young woman living by herself in a cute little cottage in a beautiful wild meadow at the base of the snow-covered Chugach Range. (Sorry, this is redundant as all real mountains in Alaska are snow-covered.) My new, found friend gave me a joint and took me up into the mountains. There she hiked up to a grassy area between two snowfields. It being a beautiful, sunny day (I would have great luck in that most of my stay in Alaska was unusual in being sunny and clear) she put a six-pack in the snow and took her clothes off. I followed suit and we had a wonderful time sunbathing and picnicking. I soon forgot about my troubles and just relished the opportunity I had been given to enjoy the Great North, whether that be Mt. McKinley or Nome. I later backpacked in the Chugach and reached a ridge, which looked out over an immense green wilderness that seemed to go on forever. The mere memory can still restore my soul all these years later.

On Monday I returned to the law firm and was informed that I was hired. No Nome, Hallelujah! I only had a year of law school so I had a lot to learn. They sent me to get the files of a company that made ink. When I said I couldn't find it I was told that they meant Inc. as in incorporated, Duh! I mostly worked with the Silver Fox. We had an even closer bond when we discovered he was from Watseka, Illinois, the town near Danville Ted and I hitched to for Ted's wedding after his car broke down. Mr. Kay's secretary, Rose, became a close friend of mine. We went together to a Taj Mahal concert, which was awesome. I would see a lot of her later in the lower forty-eight.

I also looked up the sister of my old girlfriend Adair. She was as gorgeous as Adair had been. I hoped to win her heart but in the end I only got a bit too exciting of a long weekend. We went to Cooper's Landing in the Kenai and backpacked in on a trail that led to a chain of lakes with cabins for cross-country skiers. We first climbed up to and through a pass into an alpine valley that led across a huge meadow and then down to the lakes. The meadow was covered with thousands of wildflowers of all varieties and colors. Across the valley on a far slope we could see a Brown bear browsing for berries. The Alaskan Brown Bear is the same species as a Grizzly, only larger, growing up to 1500 lbs. and 10 feet tall. Luckily we were too far apart for either party to worry the other. There was a big debate in backpacking circles as to whether to just make a lot of noise so as to scare the bears away or to carry a Magnum handgun or a heavy long gun. The problem being that such weapons might just anger and not stop the largest carnivore in North America. Hippies such as I opted out of the weapon strategy. Peace Brother Bear.

As we crossed the meadow my companion cried out. I went up to her and she said she had been stung by a bee and was afraid she might be allergic. I hurried us down to water so I could leave her to seek help. Happily this wasn't necessary and we made our camp for the night by a lake so clear you could see down many feet to where the salmon lay white and ragged, dissolving now that they had reached their final goal and spawned. In the morning I was washing up when I dropped a hairbrush my mother had given me into the little stream leading to the lake. It was swept away. I raced the rushing waters to beat them to the lake. Just before the brush was to disappear I flung myself prone on a log that spanned the stream and snatched the brush from certain oblivion. I still use it today. We hiked another two days to the highway where we hitched back to our car. We saw no one on our hike though it was the height of the season on one of the most popular trails in the Anchorage area.

I really wasn't aware that I was living through the last days of the Old Alaska. The Alaska Wilderness was vast and unpopulated. It had always been the place people from the Lower 48 (states) had come to escape society and live as they pleased. Some had come for the free land available to those who homesteaded it. Others came for gold or fish or timber. No matter the reason the pioneers of the Last Frontier had to be among the toughest people around to survive the climate and the wilderness.

Everything was about to change, dramatically and rapidly. The Alaska Pipeline would begin construction the next summer. The pipeline had been authorized by a single vote, that of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. He was later convicted of taking bribes as governor of Maryland. So, one wonders just how that particular vote came to be cast in that way. Nevertheless, one of the world's largest industrial projects was about to cross the state from the oilfields on the Arctic Ocean in the north to the port of Valdez in the south. Eight hundred miles of heated pipe, 420 miles of it elevated over permafrost, would cross three mountain ranges, thirty major rivers or streams and the migration routes of two caribou herds. After three years of construction it would eventually carry over 2 million barrels of crude a day to fill over 12,000 supertankers. As a result, tens of thousands of people would flock to Alaska looking for work, Alaska residents would get a large annual dividend check from the oil revenues and the project would make many people rich, especially the large corporations associated with the oil industry.

The owners of the pipeline promised that the environment would not be harmed as the latest safety measures ensured against any damage. Of course the big industrial projects always promise absolute safety, just as the XL Pipeline and the hopeful arctic offshore oil drillers are doing now. And of course, like the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan and the builders of the Titanic, these promises are seldom fulfilled. The Alaska pipeline would be no different. It has had a terrible safety record with numerous spills along its length. And then there was the Exxon Valdez disaster. A supertanker, captained by a known alcoholic, went aground and covered the pristine waters and shores of Prince William Sound, and their otters and seals and birds, with crude oil. Our continued exploitation of the earth is always a devil's bargain. The damage to the earth just keeps growing and growing as we continue to cover, seemingly every inch of the planet, with industrial infrastructure or its waste. But this particular ecological disaster, while predictable, still lay in the future.

For now the money was just rolling in. When I opened my bank account the teller said: "Oh, This is the third New Mexico driver's license I've seen this week." There was no telling how many Texas and Oklahoma ones she'd seen. The largest state in the Union, where the population was only 250,000 souls, was about to be overrun in an oil rush. The days when everyone knew everybody were about to end. But I was to witness the last remnants of the old Alaska.

Governor's Day was an old tradition. All the politicians in the state from the Governor on down attended with their spouse. In the park strip they provided a feast of salmon and homemade sides, such as potato salad. All were invited and all came, down to the drunks and hookers who were treated just like anyone else. Then there were games with prizes. With one of my housemates I won the three-legged sack race and a certificate for a free Arctic Burger. The fun ended with an ice cream sundae that was long enough for all the hundreds of people to line its sides and attack it all at once.

Another great change under way was that under the new Alaska lands act the federal lands that made up most of the state were to be divided up into federal, state and Native American ownership, accompanied by the declaration of many new National Parks and Monuments and wilderness areas. One of my friends was a geologist who was spending the summer being dropped by helicopter into the wilderness to spend days at a time conducting surveys. He told of taking rock samples from a cliff only to hear a loud huffing noise behind him. He turned to find a Brown bear towering over him. It was a terrifying sight. The bear's ears were pinned back, his teeth bared and his mouth white with foam. The whuffs and moans were coming from deep within and with the full force of the ursine's massive body. With no recourse other than bluff, being pinned to the rock, the threatened geologist entered into a huffing contest. His aggression convinced the bear that there were better things to do and off the monster rambled. I think my buddy would have been a good poker player.

I was to be intimately involved in the politics of the changes the state was going through and also with the violence that ensued when the prospect of large amounts of money sparkled in the eyes of the inhabitants of Alaska's underworld.

**Chapter 18**

"The scenery of Alaska is so much grander than anything else of its kind in the world that, once beheld, all other scenery becomes flat and insipid."

Henry Gannett, 1889/Chief Geographer, US Geological Survey

I had two major cases that summer. The first was Governor Egan v. Special Legislative Oil-Development Impact Committee. As a result of Wendell P. Kay being in trial, I, with my very limited legal experience, wrote the brief for the State Legislature. The case was a battle over who would control the oil revenues to come. It was a constitutional issue that required the interpretation of the separation of powers clause. I soon discovered that I needed to review documents in the State Law Library in Juneau. I asked what to do about this and was told to just go and do it. I obviously had no concept of an expense account but I quickly learned. I went to the travel agent who had the firm's business. She told me, "Do I have a deal for you!" For the same cost of round trip Juneau by air she threw in: round trip air to Glacier Bay National Park; a cruise on the Bay; and a night in the Lodge. I was beginning to like Alaska's legal system.

The flight to Juneau crossed a glacier the size of Rhode Island. When we arrived over Southeast Alaska it was a wondrous mix of iceclad mountains and sparkling waters dotted with islands covered in lush forest. The airport was shoehorned in between the water and a high wall of mountains, behind which lay a vast ice field. Landings there can be hairy. Arriving safely, I spent the day researching and meeting with my opponent, an Assistant Attorney General. I then went to the fanciest hotel in town, the Baranoff. After King Crab and Baked Alaska I slept soundly in my luxurious room.

Having worked hard it was time to play. The thirty-minute flight to Glacier Bay on a full sized jet was, for Alaska, routinely spectacular. The airport was not much, consisting simply of a runway and a shed set in an open field. It looked like a perfect place for the scene in the movies where the plane lands in the middle of nowhere and the drugs (or guns or fugitives) are quickly loaded aboard. After busing to the Park headquarters I took a trail out to the Bay. I found what looked like the primo campsite in the area and set up camp. Then I took a long hike down to and along the shore. In the morning I went into the Lodge and ordered breakfast. I was told that they didn't serve breakfast at 1 pm. I had hiked well past midnight and had never known since you can't tell time by the sun in the "land of the midnight sun." I once played tennis in Anchorage without lights and with no problem until midnight. I would later also be disoriented to come out of a bar after a night of beers to find it bright as day.

After breakfast (OK lunch) I talked to the Ranger and when I mentioned my great campsite he broke into laughter. He told me that it had been deserted because the night before a glacier bear had torn it apart to get to some poor camper's food. Fortunately, I had hung my food far away and high in a tree. Or maybe the bear had still been full of shmores. There is so much ice and snow in the Park that some Brown bears have a blueish coat, hence glacier bear.

I asked the Ranger where the best hike was and he put me on the trail to Bartlett Lake. Southeast Alaska is one of the world's only temperate rainforests. The forest here was lush. It was mostly old growth spruce with the towering trees coming up from a deep, unbroken carpet of moss. The trail was very nerve wracking for a single hiker. Previous hikers had made no visible impression in the thickly carpeted forest floor. The only guides as to where the trail was supposed to be were blazes cut into the trees but they were spotty at best. Off trail led only into the wilderness. I slowly felt my way from one blaze to another, going out and coming back to try a different direction as necessary. Eventually I came to a place where I had to choose between turning back and going ahead with no trail marker in sight either before or behind. If I proceeded I would be out of sight of the last blaze as I went forward in the hope of finding another one somewhere in the gloomy forest. Naturally I took the chance and at one point I stood alone in the wilderness, in the ghostly twilight of a mature rainforest, with no sign of the trail. As the moss muffled any sounds, the silence was otherworldly. I was as alone as I could be. I cherished the moment but not the predicament. I now had no choice but to step still deeper into the seemingly, untrodden forest and was greatly relieved when an orange blaze finally appeared ahead. Perhaps I had already had a sign that I should continue to trust in my luck. Just before I made my decision to continue, out of the gloom of the forest had flown a raven, which passed silently just over my head. The natives consider these large, glossy black birds sacred. It may have been a messenger. If so, I got the right message.

At last the trail broke out of the forest and stopped on the shores of a sun lit lake. The view was spectacular. Behind the lake rose the Fairweather Range, usually hidden by clouds but not today. The numerous peaks rose from sea level to top out at over 15,000 ft. This vertical lift from the surrounding landscape was more than double that of the highest peak in New Mexico or Colorado. I sat down and meditated on the wonders around me. As I did I suddenly became aware of a strange sound. At first I thought it was a moose in the shallows. But it was much too eldritch for that. It sounded like a lunatic howling at the moon. After several minutes two large birds revealed themselves. Wing tip to wingtip they zipped around the lake like maniacal characters in a cartoon. All the time their cries echoed off the water and the trees, sending a shiver up my spine. They then disappeared off at the far end of the lake. I was to learn that I had been treated to the mating ritual of two loons. It had been Loony Tunes for real.

I then boarded my tour boat. The park had 16 active tidewater glaciers that come down to the waters of the deep fjords, which penetrate inland from the sea. You could get into within ½ mile of one of them and two miles of most of them. We were lucky in that there were no cruise ships that day and we had the Bay to ourselves. On our way to the foot of the glaciers the wildlife viewing was amazing. Humpback whales breached besides us. Seals sunned on the many rocks that were scattered across the water. Islands were here and there. In their trees were perched many majestic Bald Eagles and, their avian opposites, my favorite, the funny faced Puffins with tufts on their heads like court jesters and large, clownish orange and yellow beaks. We cruised up a fjord and waited off shore. Our wait was rewarded by the sight of icebergs, calving from the face of a glacier and splashing into the sea. Unfortunately these glaciers had been in steady retreat for many decades and global warming (Yes, it does exist, Virginia.) does not bode well for them or for us. In Juneau I had a few hours before my flight so I took a bus out to a nearby stream at the foot of a glacier. The salmon were so thick they filled the water from bank to bank with squirming red flesh. I could have reached down and just grabbed one. My flight back to Anchorage had as great a view of Alaska's seemingly unending spectacle of beauty as the previous flights. The legislature eventually lost its power grab but I had gotten my time in Glacier Bay so all was well.

**Chapter 19**

The Massage Parlor Murders

The second major case I worked on that summer was the defense of an attorney charged with accessory before and after the fact to murder. I sat in the gallery for almost all of the trial and assisted Wendell P. Kay as he needed errands run. The background to this case was the beginning of the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. In anticipation of the riches to be had in this modern day rush for "black gold" the underworld had begun to fight for control of assets which would soon become much more valuable.

Jack London's stories told of how in the Klondike gold rush, next door in the Yukon, the miners often either did not make a strike or lost all their riches through fraud, violence or profligate spending. On the other hand, those who sold goods to the miners were often the ones who went home rich. And along with tools, whiskey, and food a coveted good to be sold was a woman's favors. Prostitutes had always flowed to the frontier where lonely men often gave away their riches for a little companionship or an instant's pleasure.

Alaska was no different than past frontiers. In Anchorage the end of 1972 saw the murders of two underworld figures and numerous bombings and arsons involving other underworld figures and businesses. There were rumors that the Mafia was trying to move in. A man named John Rich chose this time to get into the massage parlor business. He testified for the prosecution at one of the murder trials where the defendant was acquitted. At the end of August 1973, John Rich was himself murdered. His body was found 4 months later.

The story, as told by our defendant, Duncan Webb, a young practicing attorney, was that he was forced by a criminal conspiracy to aid them in the taking of Rich's massage parlors at the threat of his life. Now, this will become much more believable when you learn the history of the person making that threat. A bookkeeper at an Anchorage law firm, whose daughter was dating a heroin addict, asked this boyfriend to put her in touch with some "muscle." He introduced her to Gary Zieger, an Anchorage boy, who was known by all and sundry as a stone cold killer. After I got back to law school I met a couple from Anchorage. The two law students told me that they had grown up with the actors in this drama and could corroborate many of the facts, especially the fear induced by the presence of Gary Zieger. Everyone in Anchorage at that time knew that Zieger was the prime suspect in several unsolved murders. Only months before Rich's murder Zieger had been tried and acquitted of the gruesome murder of a young woman. It was rumored that during that trial both the judge and the prosecuting attorney were so concerned for their safety that they both wore concealed handguns in court. Amidst Alaska's many rough and tumble figures, Gary Zieger stood out as perhaps the most dangerous of all.

Webb said that Zieger appeared in his office one afternoon and demanded that Webb draw up a power of attorney to give control of Rich's massage parlors to the conspirators. In fear of his life Webb did so. The next day Zieger returned and ordered Webb to notarize the signed document. Again, fearing for his life, Webb complied, even though it is a violation of the law to notarize a document out of the presence of the signatory. Later evidence showed that Rich had been shot to death shortly after he had signed the document. An attempt to serve the document was unsuccessful as the massage parlor employees sensed that something was not right. The police were notified of the suspicious activity and began an investigation. During the investigation Zieger became a suspect in yet two more murders. On Nov. 27, 1973, before he could be charged in any of the cases, Gary Zieger's body was found. He had himself been murdered.

Of course, the prosecuting attorney alternately argued that either Webb was in the conspiracy from the beginning or that once threatened he had had the opportunity to go to the police and get protection. The courtroom was packed for final arguments. At the end of his summation, Wendell P. Kay, with tears in his eyes, was pleading for the life of his brother attorney. Not one of those present in that crowded room thought that this was melodramatic or over wrought. All were spell bound by this great orator. The proof was in the pudding. It was a hung jury. Some members of the jury had bought the story sold by the Silver Fox and Webb. Unfortunately for Webb, Wendell P. Kay was unavailable for the retrial. The story in lesser hands did not sell and Webb was convicted. However, the judge probably had personal knowledge of Zieger and his propensity to murder and believed that Webb had good reason to fear for his life because the sentence was only two years probation. The Alaska Supreme Court castigated the judge for the light sentence but all it could do was to disbar Webb. Wendell P. Kay died in 1986. I heard a story that he left $20,000.00 in his will for a wake to which all in Anchorage, high and low, would be invited. If I had been there I would have toasted to a great trial lawyer who helped me, a young lawyer far from home.

**Chapter 20**

On the Bus

Mt. McKinley National Park was as or more amazing than Glacier Bay. I was dating a librarian and we took a long weekend to go up to the Park with some friends. During the 240-mile drive north we picked up a backpacker about our age, who was also headed there. When we arrived we were now 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the furthest north I was to get. At 2000 ft. in the sub-arctic there were only a few small trees around us and they stopped where the elevation rose above 2500-3000 ft. There the tundra took over completely and covered the low, rolling hills with grass, moss and berry bushes. Braided rivers and streams cut through the landscape, which was dominated by the Alaska Range that lay at the other end of the park.

We waited while the backpacker went in to the headquarters to check on campgrounds, as it was reservation only. He came back elated because there had been a cancellation and it was at Wonder Lake. Wonder Lake was the furthest campground in and the scene of Ansel Adam's iconic 1947 photo. The dude asked if anyone wanted to go with him to the site he had just reserved. I knew a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when I saw one and immediately said, "Yes!" The others, for some unknown reason, passed. They took us 15 miles in to where the pavement ended and private cars were barred. My newfound friend and I then got on a bus and began the journey to the end of the line, a further 71 miles.

Before long we changed buses. We were now the only two passengers. We had gone only a short way when the driver, who looked a lot like us, stopped and turned to us with a large grin on his face. He pulled out a baggie and some papers and rolled a large joint. Smiling the whole time, he lit the joint and said, "Anyone want a toke?" The slogan of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their voyage on the bus "Further" was: "you're either on or off the bus." I was certainly now further than most and was definitely "on the bus", so we took a few tokes and the trip soon took on a whole new aspect. We came into Polychrome Pass where the colors banded in the rock were spectacular but our wonder at this sight was surpassed when the unexpected rise of a full moon left us speechless. As we drove a few caribou were seen silhouetted on the ridgelines. We next stopped at an overlook. When we got off the bus we found an arctic fox only yards away slowly crossing the road without a care in the world. The overlook gave a fine view of the riverbed some 50 feet below. There below us was an awesome sight. Six Brown bears were clustered around a large carcass of a caribou or a moose, which they were devouring.

When we reached Wonder Lake we also had reached the best place to view Mt. McKinley, which the Native Americans call Denali. Denali, "The High One", rises from 2000 to 20,320 ft., the highest point in North America. From Wonder Lake, which sits in front of the mountain and mirrors it's majesty, this is a vertical lift of over 18,000 ft. "No other mountain in the world rises so dramatically from its base and is so completely isolated." In addition, the sheer mass of its leviathan like length and width dominates the landscape and adds to the breathtaking spectacle. And to top it off the vast mass is almost completely, purely white, being covered in a deep shroud of snow. That is the view that captivated us as we stumbled, stoned and mesmerized, off the bus. And it was great luck indeed that the day was sunny and clear, as Denali is very elusive, being covered in cloud over 60% of the time in the summer.

We set up camp and sat looking at the mountain in awe. After our meditations it was then time to explore the tundra. We discovered that all around our camp was a thicket of blueberry bushes and the berries were ripe. We very carefully picked enough for dessert now and sourdough pancakes on our return home. We were so careful not because of the thorns but because blueberries were the bears' favorite treat. Fortuitously none were encountered. The two of us stayed up late watching the slowly changing light alter the countenance the mountain presented in oh so many ways. I added some harmonica music to the scene and then we turned in. When we awoke all was grey as a steady drizzle fell from low clouds. The bus ride back was subdued and was nothing like being on the bus had been like the day before, when the sun shined, the doobies were passed and the mountain sparkled. Now we were just tourists in the rain.

A few days later I was crossing the street in Anchorage when I saw Liz from Jordan House coming towards me. We were both astonished and swapped stories. She was on an expedition to climb Denali. I was satisfied with the view from Wonder Lake.

Winter arrives early in Alaska and so by the end of August autumn was beginning. School awaited me anyway so I bid adieu to Anchorage and drove with my librarian to catch the ferry south. The Haines highway passes through a river valley renowned for its bird watching. Though it wasn't the height of the season, that being winter when hot springs keep the river from freezing, the cottonwoods in the valley had dozens and dozens of Bald Eagles perched in them. By now this sight could have been like robins on a wire but I never tired watching these magnificent creatures.

From Seattle to Haines, Alaska, the Inland Passage provides a maritime route sheltered from the open ocean by the Olympic Peninsula, Vancouver Island and numerous other islands. The ferry ride down the Inland Passage was more than up to the Alaskan standards I had grown to expect. From the panoramic windows looking out over the ship's bow we could see not only just more Bald Eagles and awe-inspiring scenery but could watch the pods of Killer Whales that would come and go, taking turns leading the ship on its way. At night everyone without a cabin, that being most of us, made a space on the dining room carpet or on deck for our sleeping bags. My girlfriend and I got off at Prince Rupert, B.C., changed to the Canadian ferry and docked half way down Vancouver Island. From Victoria we got the Washington State ferry to Port Angeles where my buddy Lynn met me. We stayed at his place and after a day or so one of his friends came to me and asked if I minded if he took over caring for my girlfriend. Her parents lived in Seattle and I was leaving soon, and we weren't all that tight anyway so I gave them my blessing and moved on. At least this dude asked permission before taking my gal. I met Dan, one of those who didn't ask, in Eugene and we proceeded to Yosemite. Richie's friend Brady was a Ranger there. He gave us a personal tour of the Sequoias. Brady suggested we go way up into the White Mountains and see the oldest trees in the world, the bristlecone pines. I was anxious to get back to school. And, for perhaps the first time, I showed caution. It was a mistake. I've always regretted not taking that opportunity as I later discovered that I could have missed the first week of school without a problem. Was I changing? Becoming more responsible? Was it for the better or the worse?

**Chapter 21**

"Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim.

I think it is open to dispute."

Mark Twain, "The Lowest Animal"

I fell back into the routine of Law School. Now in our second year, my fellow law students and I knew the professors and what they wanted from us so it was all much easier now. On my return I had moved out to South Mountain where I lived in the Commons building with no electricity or running water. On days I had to be at school I drove 45 minutes through the Sandia Mountains and the dangerous curves of Tijeras Canyon and on into the city. I took my showers at the university gym and hauled my drinking water from town. I heated with wood and used propane for cooking and lighting. The quiet and isolation met my desire to be close to nature and to explore my spirituality. I took long walks at night under the stars that spanned the sky. I watched a golden eagle teach her eaglets to fly, as one by one they pushed awkwardly off the cliff and fell towards me until they flapped and flapped again and then glided over me and down the valley. On a hike in the flats below the mountain I found a porcupine splayed out in the branches of a large juniper. We eyed each other and then I left him to his nap. My favorite spot on my land was a gigantic boulder that I could climb to the top of and see down the valley out over the plains to the distant purple mountain peaks. I would meditate there and play my recorder. It was most beautiful one Thanksgiving when the huge rock was coated completely with an unblemished coat of snow and resembled something new and soft, not ancient and hard, a pillow for a giant.

My first two legal cases had that most difficult of clients, myself. One weekend I drove up to the Jemez Mountains with a girlfriend and took a short hike in from the highway to Spence Springs. There we found the pool filled with a dozen similar souls all naked and passing joints about. We joined in and the hot waters and fine company soon had us happy and relaxed. Until the Jemez Springs policeman and two forest rangers appeared. The joints disappeared, along with our smiles. The rangers gave us tickets for "indecent conduct." I thought it was their conduct, in interrupting such a pleasant afternoon, which was indecent. As we all dressed I told everyone I was a law student and would see about legal representation. I took all their names and numbers.

The next day I told my criminal law professor about the incident and he began to laugh. I asked him why and he told me that the previous year the town cop had busted everyone and that then too a naked law student had been one of the "criminals" caught in the dragnet. My professor had convinced the state judge to declare the state law void for vagueness and the arrests were nullified. This time the locals were attempting to use the federal statute to criminalize our fun outing in nature. They may have been prudish spoilsports but they were persistent. My prof. sent me to an Assistant United States Attorney he knew. When I met my opponent he too began laughing and I got the feeling he had been to Spence Springs once or twice himself. I was interviewed on the local PBS radio station and the story hit the papers too. The charges were soon dropped, whether by the Ass't US Attorney because he wanted to return to the Springs himself or by the demand of the US Magistrate when he found out 14 crazed hippies were going to appear in his court along with the media I'll never know.

Then came my claim to fame. The book of hot springs in the western US had a footnote to the section on Spence Springs. It set forth the newly instituted Forest Service policy of "Nudes and Prudes", clothing was optional during the week but required on weekends. I had written new law! I had my very own asterisk! Some years later a friend was at a forest service seminar and heard the head of the Santa Fe National Forest boasting how progressive he was in instituting the "Nudes and Prudes" policy in house without any outside pressure whatsoever. My buddy could hardly keep from laughing, as he knew the real story. This was my first taste of bureaucratic, political bullshit. It wouldn't be the last.

I also got my introduction to equal justice under the law. One day on the way to South Mountain I stopped on a city street to pick up a couple that was hitching. As they got into the car I heard a siren right behind me and looked back to see a police car pull up. He came over, looked disdainfully at the three hippies and wrote me a ticket for illegal parking. This was despite us looking at the sign and telling him that as it was before 4 pm I had been legally parked. The couple was so incensed at the injustice that they accompanied me to magistrate's court. I should have known my goose was cooked when the judge came out with a large bandage covering his nose and half of his face. We told our tale but he showed nothing but discomfort and ill humor. He quickly found me guilty. As we got up to leave the bailiff came over and said, "I can't believe you lost." Now bailiffs have seen it all and are pretty cynical and this one had probably never commented on a verdict to an accused before. But even he was appalled at the outcome. It shows the arbitrary nature of justice, it being a crap shoot as to which judge you pull and what kind of day he or she is having.

I often visited Ken at his place south of me in the Manzano Mountains. Once about a dozen of his friends, me included, pitched in to help him add a large, adobe addition to his A-frame. He got a forest service permit and a dump truck. We all went into the forest and cut down the large pines the forest service had tagged. We used my cruiser to drag them out to the road where we loaded them on the truck. It was so much fun gunning the 4-wheel drive with the logs fishtailing behind that I was forced to let others also do the driving. The finished adobe was beautiful with its impressive vegas (roof beams), which we had harvested ourselves.

I had earlier helped, watched is perhaps more accurate, Richie build a handsome cabin of rock with stained glass windows. One day I was sitting in Richie's cabin enjoying the peace and quiet when there was a knock on the door. This was very strange as I was over a mile away by rough, dirt road from the highway, up a side canyon and on top of a hill. You could hear a vehicle a long ways away and I had heard none and no one ever walked up here that I didn't know was coming. When I opened the door, lo and behold, there were two Jehovah's Witnesses. A bear would have seemed more likely than missionaries. They had walked all that way up a rutted road on a seemingly deserted mountain just on the chance someone would be there and would be in desperate need of a copy of the latest Watchtower. I appreciated their gumption and took the magazine. But I preferred my solitude to talk of the Apocalypse and sent them back down the mountain without my soul in hand.

I then met Nancy who lived at Cedar Grove and worked as a waitress at a truck stop in Edgewood. I was instantly smitten. She was a gorgeous blonde with blue-eyes, unblemished cream, colored skin and a statuesque figure. I would see men take a second glance at her as she passed and friends on meeting her would give me a wink. I was so entranced that I never gave a thought to the fact that she had two children, a boy of about 12 and a girl around 8. I thus assumed the role of surrogate father, a role I had no preparation for at all but I was willing to give a try if it meant Nancy came with it.

About this time a Peace Corps friend of Richie's moved into Richie's cabin. It was nice to have someone on the mountain with me and we became good friends. George taught me to cross-country ski on Sandia Crest and we skied and did other fun things together. Eventually, Nancy moved into the Commons with me. Now, I bet you see this coming but I didn't have a clue. A very nice house became available in Cedar Grove and Nancy moved into it, as it was a better situation for the kids. One evening I came over to her house only to find George there and he was not entertaining the children. There was a long and painful emotional scene between the three of us. It ended with me preparing to stalk off. Before I could turn to leave George came up to me and sheepishly asked if I would give him a ride up the mountain! What chutzpah!! Now at this point in most novels the gun or blade would appear. But as I've said, I'm a hippie and true hippies are ever non-violent. Not only did I not just turn my back and leave but I said yes and gave him a ride home, albeit a silent one. George soon left for Colorado and I was so in love that when Nancy came up the mountain to seek to reconcile I was helpless to refuse her. We parted when in my third year of school I became an Editor of the Natural Resources Journal and had to move back into town.

In the fall of 1975 I moved into a house with the Cactus Lady. The nice old woman had a gorgeous adobe with two wings separated by a courtyard with giant fig trees growing in it. I had one wing and she had the other. She also owned the lot next door, which was completely covered by a cactus garden and a greenhouse. She grew just about every variety of cactus known but her claim to fame was peyote cactus. She had pushed through a bill in the legislature, which allowed her to grow it legally. While the other cactus and their blooms were a wonder to behold, like her I was partial to the pink and white peppermint stripe flowers of the peyote. And no I never stole a button.

Spring Break of 1976 the Natural Resources Journal jointly hosted an International Conference on the Gulf of California with a Mexican law school. We flew down to Hermosillo, Sonora and after a memorable traditional steak dinner went on to Bahia Keno on the Pacific coast. I was surprised at the unusual combination of desert with iron trees and saguaro aside the cool blue Pacific. The Seri Indians took us on a boat ride to Tiburon Island, which went from the bleak shore on to the refreshing sea and back onto an island of cactus and rock. We also visited the nesting area of sea turtles and saw them come ashore.

I took the opportunity to fly down to Mexico City to visit a friend from Stanford. His parents were New York Jews who moved there to open a button factory. Steve had dual citizenship and became wholly Mexican to avoid the draft. He grew up playing Little League with Bill Richardson, our ex governor, who Steve said had an awesome fastball. Steve took me to his home in the lovely colonial city of Cuernavaca. Steve's girlfriend Lily took me for a drive out in the country. We went through sugar cane fields and followed the canals that watered them all the way to their source. This was Las Estacas Springs. It was at the center of a resort set in a lush tropical forest. The artesian springs gushed out of the ground and rushed through the jungle before flowing into a canal. It being a hot day we jumped into the large pool formed by the springs and were swept away. There was no need to exert oneself as the water did all the work. We only had to relax and let the water carry us away. There was the jungle canopy above and greenery all around while beneath us the crystal clear water revealed green growth growing below as well. After a journey through this emerald wonderland of at least five minutes the stream dumped us in the canal and you had to swim a hundred yards or so back to the resort's lawn. The water was so cold that, despite the warm sun, we could only do this twice but what an aquatic adventure. After visiting Oaxaca with its ruins, museums and chicken with chocolate and chile, I headed back to law school.

One of my last law school classes was an internship with an attorney doing Equal Employment Opportunity and Labor law. He was a real nice guy, was very sharp, and was about thirty years of age. We met at his very nice office in a large walled adobe in the old part of town. We discussed what we'd be doing and set a date to go visit a client in Questa. Questa is a small town in the Red River Valley of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Taos up by the Colorado border. Lama is located nearby so I was familiar with the area.

It took us about three hours to drive up from Albuquerque. We turned off the main road and followed the Red River into town. The Molycorp molybdenum mine dominated the land and the people. I was to discover that this was a "company" town and that our client, Joe, was one to buck the company. After all, that was why Joe needed a lawyer, make that two lawyers. We found his small home and were welcomed in. Joe looked like your typical northern Hispanic. He was dark and wiry with a Spanish accent and a common Spanish last name. He told us of being discriminated against because of his union work. Then he filled us in on the background to this conflict and we were amazed at the story he told.

Despite appearances Joe's family was not Hispanic, at least to start with. In the 1890's his family had moved to New Mexico from Germany. They settled in Questa and over the years inter-married with the locals and eventually their descendants acquired a fair bit of land in the valley. After the mine opened in the early 1900's they worked there like most everyone else. The mine was not only their livelihood but their nemesis as well. Repeatedly over the years the family clashed with the mine as the mine took land for its operations and they opposed the takings. And repeatedly they lost, were paid a pittance and saw their holdings dwindle. Now Joe was attempting to preserve the people's union rights and the company was retaliating. At the end of this history he mentioned in passing that he knew John Nichols well and that he was the inspiration for the main character, also named Joe, in the iconic New Mexican novel, and movie, "The Milagro Beanfield War." We believed Joe's claim, as it all seemed to fit.

The story of loss told by Joe echoed those of many Hispanic families in New Mexico. A friend of mine once told me of his family losing the land where the Albuquerque Country Club now stands when an Anglo got his grandfather drunk and took advantage of him. I once attended a continuing legal education seminar on land titles. It was a history lesson in all the ways Anglo lawyers perverted the legal system in order to take the land from the Hispanics. Of course the Hispanics had first taken their lands, violently, from the Native Americans who were the only ones not to believe that they could own it since they believed they were only caretakers for the Great Spirit.

Thus inspired we spent the rest of the day with Joe as he took us around to various houses and introduced us to the witnesses for our side. They were mostly union members and all supported Joe's claims of discrimination and retaliation. As we motored between the houses we noticed something rather ominous and obvious. A police car was tailing us. It was a statement by the powers that be that was seen and understood by all. Our last stop was at the local bar. The owner was the most prominent man in the Hispanic community. He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and poured shots for us and for himself. It was impossible to refuse. We weren't drinkers but to not drink would have insulted the most powerful man in the very community who's support we desperately needed. When he downed a shot we had to follow suit, and then do it again and finally again. We got his support but we also got drunk and it was not something we were used to.

It was turning dark as we got into the car for the long drive home. We looked at each other and knew this was going to be a rough drive. I did my best to stay alert and help navigate us home but my life was in the hands of a fellow drunk. We wound down the Red River Valley to the plains below. We were too wasted to figure out that we should stop in Taos for the night and drove right on through. Then we had to follow, in the dark, the twists and curves of the Rio Grande gorge for many miles below Taos. This was the hairiest part of the journey and we were sweating out each bend in the river. It was a little easier when we left the mountains and could follow the wide Rio Grande valley most of the rest of the way home. Again we missed the opportunity to stop in Santa Fe and continued home to Albuquerque with only hangovers for the cost of our ride. It was the scariest drive of my life, even worse than the coast highway in Big Sur in the fog. At least then I was sober. It could have been much worse. For example, what if that policeman had stopped us? My luck had held again.

Several weeks later we returned to get the witnesses on the record and found that no one would talk to us. The police car followed us all day as we recorded failure after failure. With no witnesses we had no case and Joe had to drop the suit. But we were later told that he had his revenge. Years later the company's tailings pond spilled large amounts of toxic waste into the river. The environmental authorities required that the storage system be redesigned with a pipeline to take the waste down the valley to the lowlands. The story I heard was that the only available route for the pipeline was through the last of Joe's family's property and that the family held the company ransom and made a killing. I hope so.

I had known about the history of towns controlled by the mine owners. The turn of the century saw many strikes and much bloody violence in such towns. Outside of Pittsburgh it was in the small coal mining towns in the area where my mother grew up. In Butte, Montana it was the copper mines and their wealth that led to the violence described by Dashiell Hammett in his masterpiece, "Red Harvest." In New Mexico the mining strikes of the 50's had been documented in the classic movie, "Salt of the Earth." But still to see such feudal power exercised before my eyes in the 1970's was shocking. But such remnants of the "Old West" were still common in New Mexico, which only got statehood in 1912. I liked the state because its landscape was still relatively unspoiled and underpopulated but I would come up again and again against powerful institutions that sought to protect the privileged and to exploit the weak. I could only hope for better outcomes in those future battles.

Before I graduated in 1976 with a J.D. and the school's first Certificate in Natural Resources Policy, I had applied for several grants and scholarships. I was lucky enough to receive a teaching fellowship at Northwestern School of Law, Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The school was a beautiful facility and the offices of the Natural Resources Institute were even nicer. We were in isolated trailers whose doors opened up on a 700+ acre State Park. Every day I went to work at a place surrounded by beautiful forest. Among other duties, I prepared and taught a seminar in Public Lands Law.

Portland was a beautiful town that had not yet become overcrowded. From the porch of my apartment I had a majestic view over the Willamette River to Mt. Hood and to the north beyond the Columbia to Mt. St. Helens. That view of St. Helens no longer exists, as after its explosive eruption what is left is no longer visible from Portland. My friend Rose from Anchorage lived in Portland and I spent a lot of time with her. I also sufi danced every week and began sufi initiation classes.

One weekend my boss, Jeff, and I and one of my teaching assistants went up in the Cascades to Bagby Hot Springs. On the way up I opened a can of "magic mushrooms" that a friend had sent from Mexico. My assistant and I had them with cheese and bread. They were delicious and very powerful. By the time we had hiked several miles into the forest the psilocybin had us really blasted. We marveled at the sun glistening off the ice on the tree branches overhead and at all the colors that came beaming out of the icy prisms. When we arrived at the springs the scene was amazing. The Civilian Conservation Corps, a depression-era federal works program, had built a bathhouse there in the 30's. The tubs were huge cedar logs that had been hollowed out. They were fed from the nearby hot springs by a wooden trough on the outside of the bathhouse. One opened and closed the tubs' hot water supply by adding or removing bungs from holes in the trough. You then made the very hot water of suitable temperature by bringing buckets of cold water from the nearby creek and adding it to the tubs. In our state this was all way beyond our ability to comprehend and Jeff had to help us figure it all out. When at last prepared the baths were soothing and relaxing. Unfortunately I heard that some years later the baths burned down. Those people must have really been stoned!!

I sent out numerous applications for overseas adventure for just about everything but the Foreign Legion. And I received back an offer to work for the Environmental Protection Service of the State of Israel in Jerusalem. I quickly arranged to accept this offer. I had to leave for Israel before my actual initiation as a Sufi. I figured Jerusalem would offer plenty of opportunity to complete my spiritual path and off I went to the heart of the Middle East, and some would say the heart of the world.

**Chapter 22**

"Murder Most Foul"

Hamlet, act 1, scene V, William Shakespeare

In August 1978, before I could leave for Israel, several friends wrote or called to tell me that my close friend Prof. Karel deLeeuw had been murdered. At my age I had never had anyone close to me die let alone be murdered. Stunned disbelief would be the closest approximation to my response. I had kept in loose touch with Karel and Peg, who had become Ram and Sita. Again, at that age I supposed that everyone would be around as long as I was. It was a rude awakening to mortality. And a harsh reminder that evil lurks in the unlikeliest of places. It would become even worse as the case became a national media sensation and the worst of our media culture took over and besmirched the reputation of one of the best people to ever walk this earth.

Karel was sitting in his office, at his desk, when he was hit from behind with a hammer and killed. The killer, Theodore Streleski, had been a graduate student for 16 years. His perceived grievance was against Stanford and he decided that his response would be murder as the only way he could get media attention. He had a list of possible victims so that Karel was just unlucky enough to be the one chosen. The choice was apparently based on the fact that Karel was one of his advisors and on Streleski's perception of Karel's casual remarks as being sarcastic and cutting. A prosecution psychiatrist diagnosed Streleski as a paranoid psychotic, so of course no one could anticipate how he would react to anything anyone said. Streleski was convicted of second-degree murder with diminished capacity.

Streleski was freed in September of 1985 after serving only seven years. This was due to a poorly drafted law that was soon amended to avoid such an injustice reoccurring. After his release he said he had no remorse and would do it all over again. As to the future Streleski said, "I have no intention of [murdering again], but I don't promise... [anything]." The media made a sensation of his release. I watched Streleski's appearance on the Phil Donahue Show and was appalled. Phil made no attempt to present the other side of the case and simply let Streleski speak his piece. Streleski's statements made it seem as if Karel was cruel and unfeeling. For anyone who knew Karel these accusations were ludicrous and could have no basis in reality. No one in the media attempted to refute Streleski's story or to interview other students of Karel's.

The above left his widow feeling that Karel's reputation was being sullied. She wrote, "The media, in their eagerness to give Streleski a forum, become themselves accomplices in the murder-giving Streleski what he wanted in the first place." She asked why no students were interviewed. If they had been and the responses aired or printed the picture of Karel would have been much different from that painted by a madman.

I think my roommate Steve Robinson's view of Karel as a teacher and a person would be echoed by all of Karel's students.

Karel: in Remembrance

It was my junior year at Stanford.

I had moved off-campus, to Palo Alto,

And had just settled into a house on Hawthorne

Which I shared with three other students.

Classes had not yet begun.

I dropped in, unannounced, on Rand,

My ex-roommate from Roble,

Who was living in the Trailers on campus.

Rand was readying to go to "Carl's" house,

To break a "key" of newly-arrived "Gold."

He invited me along.

And I accepted.

It was a very nice house,

Located on a suburban street just off campus.

Rand introduced me to Carl,

To Carl's wife, and to Carl's two teenage kids.

In the midst of introductions, Carl handed Rand a joint,

And the three of us got stoned together.

Later, we joined the family at the dinner table

And scarfed-down a huge spaghetti dinner.

I thanked one and all.

And then went home.

I never expected to see Carl again.

But three days later I did.

It was day 1 of Calculus.

We were seated in a small classroom

Waiting for the professor -

A Karel deLeeuw, Ph.D. -

To walk in.

And I about fell out of my seat

When he did.

It was "Carl."

Otherwise, unchanged.

Wearing leather sandals, a white tee shirt

And blue overalls.

Alternately tugging on the strands

Of his long, straggly, grey-streaked hair

Or stroking on his matching beard.

Through his thick, black-rimmed glasses,

Karl looked at me and smiled.

Unsure, I managed to nod in response.

Every day Karel came dressed about the same.

But appearances soon became utterly irrelevant.

Because Karel taught with such sincerity.

Warmth and earnestness

That he emerged as the best teacher

I ever had at Stanford.

I believe I dropped by his office

At the course's end

And told him that.

At least I hope I did.

Because today two Stanford Observer magazines

Caught up with me here in Egypt.

I opened the October 1978 edition,

And immediately flipped to a short article

Title:

"Math Professor Slain;

Assailant Faces Trial."

"Professor Karel deLeeuw,"

The article began,

"was slain on August 18

By a disgruntled graduate student,

As he sat at his desk in his campus office."

I had thought that was as bad as it was going to be. I was wrong. In 2001 a book was published that used Streleski as a case study in how higher education destroys its graduate students. I discovered this book in researching Karel's murder and was shocked by both the contents and it's reception. They vividly illustrated the complete lack of critical thinking and ethics in today's media driven world. "Disciplined Minds" purports to demonstrate "the soul-battering system" of professional education. It met rave reviews, which ranged from, "a valuable piece of writing" by Prof. Howard Zinn of Boston University, to "well-researched" by University of Texas at Austin, School of Journalism Prof Robert Jensen. It was even read on NPR.

I can only speak to the author's use of the Streleski case. The author's thesis is that hierarchy makes conflict inevitable and that graduate schools, at their best, destroy individuality and, at their worst, create murderers. He claims that it was, "the financial and academic pressure which transformed [Streleski] from a gentle person into a sometimes violent one...Stanford had left him with nothing and with nothing to lose." And by Stanford he must necessarily mean Karel, and what Streleki said about Karel. The author accepts unquestioningly the facts as presented by Streleski. There is no attempt to present the other side of the case, only the facts as presented by this "remorseless murderer." And the fact that this man was diagnosed as a "paranoid psychotic" with diminished capacity is never mentioned. In short, there are no facts whatsoever to support Streleski's statements and the gravest reasons to doubt them are suppressed. Yet the author bases his thesis on those unchallenged statements.

From this presentation one would assume that Streleski was unfairly denied a PhD. and therefore had a rational motive for murder. Further, it apparently stands for the proposition that the institution is always responsible for a negative outcome and that the students are always blameless. But this begs a lot of questions. Perhaps this student, and others, may never have had the ability to get a PhD. Perhaps Streleski, and other mentally ill students, may always take anything said in the wrong way and may also take offense at things never said but only heard. So perhaps the paranoid perceptions of a psychotic were not rational and Karel was not cruel and insensitive but trying to tell the truth to a student or trying to be compassionate and humorous and being misunderstood. Leaving Karel aside, did all the professors on Streleski's list commit acts deserving of murder? Or are all the other professors that the author lists as being murdered equally guilty of being uncaring? That is doubtful. There must be some good professors somewhere. Not all graduate students become murderers or lose their souls. Some must like or even love their professors and the institutions they represent. Personally I am a Law School graduate who thought his professional education was a positive experience. I was friendly with many of my professors and am thankful to the University of New Mexico for the opportunities it provided me. But you'll never know the facts if you don't ask what the facts are.

That the author makes no attempt to determine the facts of this particular case while using it to support his arguments casts doubt on everything he says. But of such methods are made an author's success, and book reviewers' opinions. Except in fantasies, there are hierarchies, successes and failures. No one can prevent some students from failing or some of the mentally ill from acting out their delusions. But we can prevent the reputation of the dead from needlessly being attacked or stop a good man from being falsely depicted. The real facts of Karel's life are left in the memories of his family, friends, students and colleagues and they are of a great man senselessly taken from us. The positive sum of his life is in the airy realms of mathematics, through which he will live on in his students, his publications and the Karel de Leeuw Memorial Lecture series of the Stanford Mathematics department.

**Chapter 23**

"When I was a boy I (thought).... the Jordan River was four thousand miles long...Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most cherished traditions of our boyhood.

Well, Let them go."

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

I arrived in Israel in November of 1977 just after President Sadat of Egypt had left after presenting his historic overture for peace to the Israeli Knesset. Both he and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin would pay with their lives for their peace efforts. But at the time there was great optimism and hope. I certainly was full of idealism as I made aliyah. This means "going up" and is the act of returning to the Jewish homeland. Technically this is for those planning on staying and my intent was not wholly clear even to me. But literally, it also means climbing up to Jerusalem and that I certainly was doing. I stayed the first night at an airport hotel. It was really expensive so in the morning I asked the sherut (taxi) driver to take me to a cheaper place in Tel Aviv. The city was bustling and I checked into a very modest, clean hotel in the middle of it all.

After I got settled in I went next door to a bar for a beer. As I sipped on my beer two beautiful young ladies sat down and chatted me up. They were typical Yemenites having dark eyes set in faces with high cheekbones and being tall and slender with jet black hair and cafe au lait skin. Their elders had been rescued in a secret airlift from Yemen several decades before. I soon discovered that these girls, who were second generation and spoke perfect English, were far removed from the tribesmen who lit cooking fires on the floor of the airplanes that were taking them to Eretz Israel. I thought, "Wow! The first Israelis I really get to know and they are drop dead gorgeous." One asked where I was staying and then the other mentioned something about a party. Gradually it dawned on me that these were working girls and they were offering themselves to me, for a price. I was shocked. My vision of Israel did not have hookers in it. To me Israel was the land of milk and honey and the psalms of David, unlike any other modern country. Its women were Deborah and Golda Meyer, not Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I would soon learn that Israeli society was just like any other, with its own gangsters and cheats and fanatics as well as heroes, friends and family. At that moment, however, no matter how attractive and nice these girls were, and they were both, nor how cheap the price, and it was, I wouldn't let my first experience of Israel be that of something so beyond my vision of where I thought I had been going. I politely declined the invitation and that certainly was a change of pace for me.

Why did I have such exalted visions of Israel? My maternal grandfather had founded the conservative synagogue in Danville in which I was raised and Bar Mitzvahed. Some of my first memories are of Passover dinners with my mother's five other siblings and their families. Most of my family on both sides perished in the Holocaust. I was raised on the survivor's stories. My maternal great Aunt Rose's family had a timber business in what was then Poland and is now Belarus. In 1939 the men were in the Polish Army, fought the Nazi invasion and became prisoners of war. While the Nazis took western Poland the Russians invaded and occupied the eastern half. Aunt Rose and the children were considered bourgeois because they had had a business and were exiled to Siberia. At war's end Rose brought the children across all of devastated Russia to Poland. She found out where the men were being held prisoner, got the Russian guards drunk and freed the men. Lastly, she got the family to Vienna and out of the Russian zone and on to Danville. Later two other family members arrived in Danville. They had spent the war in the Polish forest fighting the Nazis and met and married there. Other family members found safety in Israel. For my family Israel is a sanctuary that has been needed and might be needed again.

Israel had been founded as a sanctuary for a landless and persecuted people. The Zionist movement saw what was to come in Europe and in the late 19th century began to fight to return the Jewish people to its homeland where only a remnant had hung on through centuries of strife and turmoil. Mark Twain visited Palestine at that time and found that the province of the Ottoman Empire was an unpopulated wasteland. The Jews legally purchased much of what would be the State of Israel from the Turkish authorities and Arab landowners who thought the rocky hills, swamps and deserts were of little value. The Jews made the land blossom and by 1937 400,000 lived in the now British Mandate. While the Jews fought with the Allies in World War II the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem spent the war in Berlin as a guest of Hitler. After the war Israel became a refuge for the survivors of the Holocaust, which had destroyed 6 million Jews, that being most of European Jewry.

Over the years the Arabs had refused numerous offers of peace from the Jews and had responded to Jewish immigration with terror and murder. After Britain gave up its responsibility for the mess the United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jews accepted this and in 1948 declared Israel's independence. Seven Arab armies then invaded. The miracle of Israel's victory in 1948 was followed by peace offerings, which were rejected yet again. Over 800,000 Jews were expelled from the Arab countries and were taken in by Israel. The Arab refugees from the fighting were never assimilated and became political pawns of the Arab governments. In 1967 the Arabs forced another war and Israel won yet another miracle victory. Israel had pledged to not attack Jordan unless Jordan joined in the war. Jordan responded by heavily shelling Jerusalem. The result was that Israel took control of the Old City of Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan River.

The heart of Israel is Jerusalem. Psalm 137, which Bob Marley made famous, continued on past the rivers of Babylon to say: "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." Many prayers in the liturgy are concerned with Jerusalem, in Hebrew, Yerushalayim: the Abode of Peace. Psalm 122 says, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper that love thee." So not only is Israel idealized but the City of David is too. In Israel the physical locales of the Torah are real. Everywhere are found the actual remnants of the times of the Torah, as well as those of other religions, and of Roman times and the many other occupations and wars. The most visible and the holiest of all sites are those in Jerusalem, which has been continuously occupied for some five thousand years and is sacred to Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews. Israel provides free access to all religions and each controls its own sites.

The day after I met my new Yemenite friends I went up to Jerusalem. I could not see the city as we climbed up over two thousand feet from the plains to the heights. It was a spectacular sight when we finally crested the last ridge and suddenly Jerusalem was laid out before me. The new city is dominated by the ancient walled city. The Old City and its 2½ miles of walls, with numerous impressive gates, is set on a group of hills to the east of the new city. Above the walls rises an oriental skyline, from a thousand and one nights, composed of minarets, spires, towers, and domes. Behind the Old City is the Mount of Olives and beyond that is a spectacular vista across the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea to the Mountains of Moab. I saw all this in the light of the setting sun and instantly became a citizen of Jerusalem.

The new city, by a law dating back to the British mandate, is made of the same stone as the ancient walls. The old and the new turns the same color at sunset and sunrise. This was inspiration for biblical verses as well as a song, "Jerusalem of Gold." The city was all, aglow as I entered Jerusalem for the first time and was truly golden. The song was written just before the '67 War to express the longing for a return to the Old City which had been Jordanian for 19 years and forbidden to Israelis all that time. "Jerusalem of Gold" became the anthem for the war and was sung by the paratroopers at the liberation of the Western Wall, the last remnant of Solomon's Temple. Following the War a joyous verse of return and rebirth was added.

I moved into an apartment of a Professor who was leaving for a month abroad. It faced the Old City, which was an easy walk away. Or, if one went west, the government offices where I was to work were nearby, being just across from the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The Environmental Protection Service (EPS) was in the Ministry of the Interior. It consisted of two Americans who were now Israelis and an American on a United Nations grant. I received the equivalent of about $300 a month to consult. So I was basically a volunteer but had the benefit of being free to take a lot of time off to travel. Israel had no real environmental laws but was now growing rapidly and entering the industrialized phase of development and certainly needed them. So my main job was to assist in drafting legislation and regulations to be put in place. I also assisted in international efforts to protect the Mediterranean Sea.

A few doors down from our offices David, a co-worker, showed me the censor's office. We would sneak in and sit in the back while a bunch of old rabbis watched the new movies and discussed what would have to be cut to meet their standards of decency. This too changed my perception of the Jewish state. It was, and is, at least in part, a theocracy. My friend Steve's story of his night in jail was also eye opening. He got caught with some hashish but managed to avoid more than a night in jail. His cellmates for the night were Orthodox Jews who apparently followed every commandment religiously except for the one saying that thou shall not steal. Who was the more pious in that cell?

When the Professor returned I rented a room in nearby Rehavia, another neighborhood between the Old City and the Knesset. Every day I walked to work past the ancient, walled Monastery of the Cross, which sits in a large open space with an olive grove and a pine forest. Supposedly the wood for the Cross came from this forest. The city was a great place to walk with many parks and groves of pine to wander through.

Jerusalem was truly an international city then. The government office buildings reflected this as each offered a different ethnic cuisine, ranging from Moroccan to German, and all were excellent. Israel's citizens represented almost every country, language and cuisine on earth. My friends included Canadians, Brits, South Africans, and Germans, as well as Moroccan and Yemenite born Israelis.

Jerusalem was also a British colonial city having been taken from the Turks in 1918 with the help of Lawrence of Arabia. English was the common language and I had no need to learn Hebrew to get along. The Jerusalem Post was a great English language paper and there was a fine English language bookstore. Pubs abounded with good English beers as their staple. Concerts ranged from the Royal Shakespeare Company to Nina Simone. The YMCA where I played basketball and table tennis also had a fine old library with lots of original Kipling and Twain, which kept me greatly entertained. This was my only positive social contact with Arabs, the Y being run by Christian Arabs. Despite all this English culture I did get homesick for the USA. An old-fashioned American Fourth of July helped to assuage my longing for America. A friend from the Consulate brought over Oscar Meyer hot dogs and Heinz ketchup. After months of hummus and shashlik, a simple hot dog never tasted better.

Shabbat in Jewish West Jerusalem was a unique experience. Commerce and traffic ceased. The entire new city was hushed and quiet. People strolled on the empty streets and visited friends and family for coffee, cake and conversation. If you wanted to go out you went to East Jerusalem where the Arab businesses were open. The food there was excellent, including pigeon and a new vegetable for me, marrow. In the Old City you could also wander through the vast medieval bazaar or suq. I went into a jeweler's store there and before we could discuss business he sent a boy out for refreshments. The boy came back with a brass tray swinging from chains and holding Turkish coffee. After refreshments we got down to business and I bought a gold Star of David pendant. How could I not? At any time flocks of sheep or herds of camels would come down the streets and make one feel as if one was back in the age of the prophets. One could also wander along the walls of the Old City and enjoy the views. The walls themselves displayed dents in the railings and gouges in the stone from past battles.

But of course the Temple Mount outshone everything else. Here was Mount Moriah where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac and Solomon built his Temple for the Ark of the Covenant. After the Temple was destroyed it was rebuilt and then destroyed again. There remains only the Wailing Wall with a large esplanade in front of it. It is obligatory for a Jew to visit and to put their prayers on a slip of paper and slip it into the stones of the wall. The Orthodox were prominent when I visited and not only did they require the separation of men and women but they practically forced me to put on tefillin and pray. The Torah commands to love the lord and to put those commandments in a box on your door, a mezuzah, and to wear such boxes, tefillin, when you pray.

Above the Wailing Wall is another large open space upon which sits the Dome of the Rock, c. 691, and the Al Aqsa Mosque, early 8th century and the largest mosque in Jerusalem. I was not allowed to meditate at the mosque! Pretty ironic, huh? The Dome is a pilgrimage site on the Haj, being the third holiest site in Islam, and is incredibly beautiful with stunning tile work, mosaics and stained glass. The Golden Dome that covers it is a beacon for the whole city. Most impressive of all is the huge flat boulder which sits below the dome that is considered to be both where Isaac's sacrifice was attempted and where Mohamed rose to heaven on his stead, leaving a hoof print in the stone. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Rock has an incredible spiritual power and I was allowed to meditate on that holy spot. It was a powerful experience.

One of my most memorable walks was on Christmas day. I took a bus in the morning to the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University to do some research. It is on the north end of the Mount of Olives and was the scene of a horrific massacre of doctors and nurses by the Arabs in 1948 and of the worst fighting during the liberation of the Old City in 1967. After an hour or two in the library I began to walk back home. First I went south along the ridge and by the cemeteries where all the Big 3 religions believe resurrection awaits the Last Judgment. I then went down the hill through a Russian Orthodox Church and the garden of Gethsemane to the Old City. I stopped in the suq at a cafe and had a wonderful hot cup of sahleb. It's a custard-like drink made with rose petals and is very tasty.

The most memorable event of my stay in Jerusalem was the 30th Anniversary of Independence. For a month before there was a festival with plays and music. For days before the military practiced for the parade. I would be in the copy room in the basement of my building, which was on the side of a hill, when F-15 fighter jets would come streaking by level with the window! On Independence Day itself the planes went down the valley and then climbed vertically like rockets and disappeared. It was very impressive. But the anniversary concert up staged even that spectacle. It was held not in a mere flood-lit castle but on a stage before the flood-lit walls of an entire city! The stage was at "Sultan's Pool" with David's Citadel in the background. Tens of thousands watched that night as the Israeli Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta performed with Mistislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Leontyne Price and Jean-Pierre Rampal. This All-Star lineup led up to the finale of the War of 1812 Overture with fireworks going off along the city walls and cannon shots resounding off them! Happy Birthday Israel!

My job took me on a tour of the Golan Heights. Here is the highest point in Israel and the mountainous area is lush with many springs and is the source of the Jordan River. The Golan was taken from the Syrians in 1967 after fierce fighting and was the scene of even fiercer fighting in 1973. It is a place of great beauty and of military defenses. We went up to survey the nature areas for the protected wildflowers, which grow there in profusion. There were meadows filled with iris as well as patches of orchids hidden in wetlands. We then went up to the ski area on Mount Hermon. The 1973 war in the North began with the Syrians taking the Israeli held lower slopes of Mount Hermon in a daring helicopter, commando raid. The first Israeli effort to retake it was a bloody failure. The last act of the entire war was an Israeli set-piece attack, which not only retook the Israeli Hermon but went on to take the Syrian summit above as well. The Israeli ski facility that was built here wasn't exactly up to the standards of Aspen. The slope facing the ski lift was covered with bunkers and armored personnel carriers. The lift had a dual purpose. It went to the top of the ski slope and then continued up to the summit where the most vital observation post in Israel looked down on Syria and Lebanon. The soldiers had priority in the lift line.

From Mount Hermon we then went down to the Syrian border and into the Israeli bunkers that looked out over the wide, open plain leading to Damascus. In contrast to their shabby trenches and sandbags a UN bunker nearby looked like a hotel, complete with air conditioning. The tour had shown me the beauty of the mountains but also demonstrated the strategic need for Israel to hold the high ground. I later went up to the Galilee to a National Park. The park protected the wetlands left after most of the Hula swamps had been drained for agriculture. There were more beautiful wildflowers here too. Our guide pointed to the high ground that dominated the Galilee below it. He told us that the Syrian artillery there had often shelled the settlements down below in Israel with near impunity and that his tank unit had once dueled there with Syrian armor and artillery. This Syrian attempt to divert the Golan's water from the Jordan valley of Israel to Syria was stopped cold in this battle. Having seen all this I understand why Israel will never give back the Golan without iron clad guarantees of peace and how everything in Israel ultimately comes back to the sacrifices made for security and the need to ensure they were not in vain. Israel's motto is "Never again!" The Holocaust is still all too threatening given that French Jews are being murdered simply for being Jewish.

My friend Steve and I went down to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth. We went in swimming on our own in an undeveloped area, which was a big mistake. It was wonderful to float effortlessly in water that is so dense you cannot sink. However once we got out the minerals began to burn our skin. We had to run to a settlement, which by chance was not far away, and quickly find a hose to rinse off. We were just in time to avoid any damage but the experience was a painful one. To the west of the Dead Sea hills quickly rise up. In the morning we went into the hills and were the first people to enter Ein Gedi National Park. The rocky hillside where the entrance was located was covered with strange little creatures. Forty or fifty hyrax scattered at our intrusion into their world. The hyrax is the size of a large jackrabbit but has short legs and ears on a thick set furry body like a large marmoset. Strangely enough it is related to elephants. Besides the ubiquitous and obligatory ruins the park is known for its oasis and numerous waterfalls. We had the most amazing time standing in a large pool and alternating between the hot and cold running waterfalls.

Nearby is the UNESCO world heritage site of Masada. On a flat plateau on top of a steep cliff 1480 feet above the Dead Sea Herod built a palace. The Jews revolted against the Romans and seized the palace. It was impregnable for two years until the Romans, in an incredible feat of engineering, built a ramp to the walls of the palace that brought the siege so close that defeat was inevitable. Rather than surrender, nearly a thousand men, women and children committed suicide. It is a powerful symbol of Israeli determination to defend itself to the last no matter what. Soldiers come there for ceremonies to be in solidarity with the martyrs of the past. One can take a tram or come up the ramp but the best way to go up is a long 2-3 hour climb begun at dawn. The view down to the Dead Sea and on into Jordan is spectacular. The palace is impressive, especially the large open cistern built to catch the infrequent rainfall. Jesus Christ Superstar was filmed here. As at the Wailing Wall the orthodox grabbed me again and had me lay tefillin at the old synagogue.

Being an American, with its mixing pot of ethnicities, I had never experienced the feeling of being in a country where everyone was literally a member of the same family. In Israel everyone, from the (Kosher) butcher from Iraq to the (former Viennese) baker, was of the same tribe and I felt a great sense of belonging. I had a lot of family there too. Linda, a cousin from Danville, was working on a Kibbutz in the Galilee. I visited her there and enjoyed the grapefruit just picked in their orchard. Particularly impressive was that the Kibbutz had a canal of geothermal heated water running through it. We jumped in and floated the length of the village. One of our cousins was even the Minister of Culture. Minister Cousin fed us Shabbat dinner, got us great tickets for the symphony and greased our way through security when we traveled abroad. I spent a long weekend in Haifa where some more cousins showed me the sea caves and the Bahia gardens. There were so many cousins running around that one evening crossing the street in Jerusalem I bumped into even more cousins from Danville who were just in country for a week.

I travelled frequently to Tel Aviv to visit friends and family, to swim in the Mediterranean and for concerts and plays. One always took a sherut. And speaking of taxis I must tell another Dad story. My father worked his way through medical school doing many jobs from private detective, trailing a cheating husband, to lifeguard. One of these jobs was driving a taxi. One day his taxi was not running right so he headed back to the garage. There was a large crowd at the Art Institute and a policeman waved him down. The cop said to wait for some passengers and when my Dad tried to explain why he couldn't the policeman turned a deaf ear to him. Then the crowd parted and through the cheering throng came the richest man in Chicago, Cyrus McCormick, his wife and the King and Queen of Sweden! The policeman opened the door and waved the celebrities into the cab. The cop told him to take them to the Palmer House hotel. My father did as he was told but soon could tell that the taxi was failing. He could see the hotel ahead with another crowd in front, held in check by the Black Horse Cavalry. The taxi started to steam and lurch and some ten yards before the hotel entrance it died completely. Mr. McCormick was so outraged he only gave my father a 10-cent tip.

Even though it was one of the most optimistic and peaceful times in Israeli history I was still living in the Middle East. One evening while watching TV with a friend a loud explosion rocked the building. A Katushya rocket launched from the West Bank had landed nearby. We continued our evening as if this was just an ordinary part of living in Israel. Another time I was eating lunch in an Arab cafe in the Old City when a loud boom came from the nearby suq. Soon streams of people were coming past us, some were bloody and with torn clothes, and all were fleeing the scene of a bombing. Then police and troops appeared and began to search the parked cars for more bombs. I showed my solidarity by refusing to let the bastards change my plans and I finished my half-eaten lunch. The bomb had killed a German tourist. Later, after the Intifadas began, bombings became much more common and deadly. One of the worst targeted a nightclub for teens. In response Israel walled off the West Bank and bombings are no longer a problem.

In March terrorists landed by boat and massacred a busload of people on the coast highway. A day later all my male Israeli friends disappeared. Two days later they invaded Lebanon, the source of the terrorist attack. I sat home with their wives and girlfriends and waited to see what would happen. They all returned safely and told of the incredible light show of a nighttime invasion with flares, tracers and explosions filling the dark with color. I felt safer in Israel with armed soldiers everywhere ready to come to my aid then I did walking on the dark empty streets of Chicago. It was different when I drove through Hebron on the West Bank on the only reasonable route to the Negev. We locked the doors, closed the windows and drove like hell. For the most part the possibility of violence faded into the background of my life. I accepted this danger as I felt my presence here made me, in a small way, a soldier for Israel, though one who faced only a fraction of the danger Israelis faced all their lives.

Despite being a bit disillusioned I accepted Israel as my homeland. Though it had imperfections like all other societies it still was a beacon onto the nations. Where else has a country been resurrected after thousands of years of exile and persecution? Where else, in the midst of constant violence and existential threats, has a country managed to hang on to the rule of law and to a democratic process? What other country has taken in its own from every country on earth? As a Jew I had the right to become a citizen under the Law of Return. I seriously thought about staying and becoming a citizen. The violence of the Middle East never really entered into the decision but in the end I decided to return home.

Israel and Jerusalem have both changed greatly since I was there. As in Alaska I had seen the last of the old culture. Jerusalem is no longer the English secular city I loved. It is now populated and controlled by the orthodox rightwing. Israel had been settled and governed by Jews from Eastern Europe with socialistic ideals. Since those days there has been the incoming of the Jews from Arab countries, a huge Russian immigration and an influx of Ethiopians and many other ethnicities as well. The country has become a high-tech corporate culture with perhaps even greater income inequality then the US. The West Bank Arabs have been walled off and replaced by foreign workers from Asia and Africa at the bottom of the labor force. This is not only a self-inflicted wound but also a product of the Palestinian's own political futility. As the saying goes, "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." The right wing settler movement and the orthodox have taken over Israeli politics, even using assassination to keep power.

So what is my take on the current situation? The Arabs still refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist. We cannot return to the pre-1967 borders as they are not defensible, given that the nation was then only some ten miles wide at its narrowest and that the North of the country was dominated from the Syrian held Golan Heights. Israel did withdraw from lands not essential to its defense. But when it withdrew from Lebanon Hezbollah used a pretext to continue the fighting and to amass and fire missiles into Israel. Similarly when Israel withdrew from Gaza Hamas used its freedom, money and building materials not to provide desperately needed help to its people but to buy rockets and build tunnels with which to attack Israel. And when Israel offered a reasonable peace agreement that had been brokered by America Yasser Arafat rejected it. Given all this it is no wonder that Israel has been pushed to the right. To Israelis there does not seem to be a reliable partner for peace on the Arab side and the risks of returning more land seem to be too great.

Israel is now governed by a far-right coalition that does not seek peace, seeks to expand settlements in the West Bank and governs the Palestinians harshly. But Israel, unlike Arab countries, is a democratic state where Israeli Arabs can vote, there are strong protest movements, the Supreme Court often overrules government actions and the government must face elections. Both sides must change for peace to prevail but there is little sign of change on either side. Even a Left wing government will have a difficult time convincing Israelis to take a chance on peace but that is Israel's only path to real security. If only Israel would put the Palestinians to the test and offer to trade, with provisions for land exchanges and security requirements, the settlements for peace? On the broad issue, that being the need to provide a secure homeland for the Jewish people, Israel is in the right and the world community should support the Jewish state while working to change its policies. But Israel can rely on no one else to ensure the continued existence of the Jewish people. Time and again the international community has failed to abide by its promises to Israel, from the British promise of a homeland to the French refusal to abide by contracts to provide armaments to the United Nation's withdrawal that triggered the '67 War.

So I remain committed to a Jewish state and support Israel while acknowledging its shortcomings. I can only hope for peace for all and be glad I didn't stay to be living under the threat of rockets from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and of Iranian nuclear weapons.

**Chapter 24**

"Come up to the mountain of Sinai at dawn"

Exodus 34.2

While in Israel I got the chance to go to Kenya. The flight on El Al (Israel's national airline) followed the Great Rift Valley, which begins near the Sea of Galilee, and continues through the Dead Sea, down the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, across Ethiopia and into Kenya. All that distance one can follow the fault, which is marked by the bodies of water that cover it and is clearly visible on land. Israel had such close relations with Kenya that Kenya had provided assistance in the Entebbe raid. From the time my flight was in handheld missile range Kenyan troops were on the ground all the way to the airport. At the airport they surrounded the plane and guarded the passengers till they reached the street. This is what was required for Jews to be safe traveling in Africa.

Kenya was then the most peaceful country in Africa and Nairobi was a lovely English colonial city. I enjoyed tea in the hotels, beer in the pubs and first run movies in the cinemas. My first safari (journey in Swahili) was within sight of the city skyline. Nairobi National Park was a good introduction to the continent and I saw my only kill there when a secretary bird (it resembles a small ostrich) killed a snake and shook the writhing body high in the air for all to see.

I then went on a long safari with a guide and an Italian couple from Palermo. They were very nice and explained to me that of the eighteen political parties in Italy they were two or three in from the far left, near but not far off from the communists, and had travelled recently to Cuba on a cheap Communist Party tour. We went northwest, first to Lakes Naiwasha and Nakuru, famous for their vast flocks of flamingos. The tropical forest around the lakes was an incredible profusion of colorful birds, butterflies and flowers. A peacock flew up from the bushes to the top of a hundred foot tree and I hadn't even known they could fly at all. Going northeast we came down into the Rift Valley, which again was easily visible as a great divide in the earth. Here, we came to a sign signifying the equator and were excited, for some imaginary reason, when we crossed that imaginary line.

The Samburu Game Preserve was a vast expanse of grassland cut by a large river. On our way to the lodge the driver stopped by the road. There two game wardens waved us over. They were watching several adult rhinos in the near distance while tending to a baby rhino. He was very cute but not too cuddly as he already weighed many hundreds of pounds. The guards told us to approach and then said we could pet the baby! This seemed risky but they were very confident, and armed, and so we petted the baby. His skin was rough and tough, yet warm and lively. The adult rhinos ignored us. At the lodge there was a herd of elephants wandering not far from the huts. We drove around in the afternoon and saw a cheetah feasting on a fresh kill of an ostrich. He left at our approach and we gathered some ostrich feathers. As we left he returned to his snack.

At my room I sat at a desk in front of a window and wrote in my journal. I felt something and looked up. There, with his face pressed against the window, was a baboon! It gave me quite a start. We looked at each other for a moment and, not being much impressed with me, he then wandered off. We had dinner outdoors beneath a thatched roof. One had to take care as monkeys kept coming down from the roof and trying to steal our rolls. We retired for after dinner drinks at the Crocodile bar. It was a terrace by the river. The Samburu rolled by brown and muddy with wide banks and a current that indicated deep channels beneath. By the terrace's low stonewall was a beach of sand. The hotel staked out a large piece of meat on the beach. It was only a few feet away and separated from us by only the foot high wall. Little critters began to sneak out and take some nibbles. A beautiful civet cat with a long tail and wondrous coat chased away the rodent sized animals and then, after a few bites, itself gave way to even bigger predators. Eventually several crocodiles hauled out onto the beach. The giant reptiles claimed it as their own, as after all it was the Crocodile Bar, and waddled toward the free feed. At this we were a little worried since they would soon be mere feet away with no real barrier between us. Suddenly out of the dark waters came the biggest, baddest croc of all and the other crocodiles slithered back into the river. This behemoth dragged himself to the meat and, as was his right as King of the River, proceeded to devour the bloody flesh undisturbed. He was scary and very close but had more than enough to occupy himself with, so we trusted in the lodge knowing what was what and enjoyed our drinks and the spectacle going on at our feet with no further worry.

On our way back south we came down a valley between the Aberdare Mountains, with their namesake National Park, and Mount Kenya. In the Abedares at 5800 feet was the Treetops lodge, rising on stilts high above a waterhole and a saltlick. It was famous for the time in 1952 when Elizabeth went up to Treetops as a Princess and came down a Queen, her father having died that night. We arrived at the trailhead to the lodge and were told to follow, in silence, a guide who carried a large rifle and pointed out the hides we could run too if animals approached us. We safely reached the large wooden structure and had tea on the rooftop veranda with a view beyond the waterhole to Mt. Kenya, 17,058 ft., with multiple peaks and snow clad year round. It was as I envisioned when reading, as a youth, the description in H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines" of the Mountains of the Moon rising above the primeval jungle. We watched for hours as the animals came down to the waterhole and the saltlick below us. This was interrupted long enough for a formal dinner, including delicious Nile perch. I saw herds of elephants, rhinos and buffalo, along with giant forest hogs, genet cats, mongoose and many other magnificent beasts. And all night long I heard sounds of all kinds, from a snort to a screech. I only hope we can preserve some of the wonders I saw in Africa.

My return flight was completely full of Jews fleeing chaos and violence in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and a vision of the same to come in South Africa. Israel was still a sanctuary where Jews would be taken in and protected. Israel still is such a place of refuge as today record numbers of Jews from France and other European countries flee the rising Anti-Semitism there.

The most memorable wilderness trip I have ever taken was my time in the Sinai desert. The Sinai had been governed by Israel since the '73 war but was never considered part of the country. Israel always intended to trade it for peace and, after I left, did so with Egypt, gaining thirty years and counting with no state sponsored violence between the two. Back then there were only a handful of small resorts on the Red Sea coast and only a few tours available inland. In March of 1978 Linda and her girlfriends and I took a tour led by two young, well built Israeli men, IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) veterans, who were to guide the forty some tourists they loaded into a 4-wheel drive bus. Across the desert our ultimate destination was Mt. Sinai, "The Mountain of the Lord", 318 km from our departure point in the Negev desert at the Israeli port city of Elat. Other than in the resorts we saw no other tourists in a week of travel. This was the "great and terrible Wilderness" of the wandering in Exodus and more than lived up to its name. It is also ecologically and historically significant, being the land bridge between Asia and Africa, the route of many animal migrations and human invasions.

At Elat we were at the southern most point of Israel, at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba with the Sinai and Jordan on either side. The center of the Sinai was to the west where the peninsula narrows and becomes a dagger point aimed at the Red Sea. While the Northern Sinai is a plain rising to a plateau to its south, the Southern Sinai is mountainous with its highest peaks in its center. We headed south along the shore of the Gulf. We passed Faroun Island with its impressive Crusader castle who's ruined walls seem to rise up out of the sea. After sixty miles or so we came to Nuweiba, a cluster of huts along the beach claiming to be a resort. There we turned, went off road and followed a wadi, a dry watercourse, inland. The land began to rise and cliffs appeared to our sides as the way became more and more difficult. Finally, we could see the green of treetops ahead and the bus pulled into an oasis right out of the movies. Ain El Furtaga was filled with palm trees and was named for the spring that fed the growth. Here we camped the night and enjoyed the spectacle of a star filled sky in a land with no lights and clear desert air.

In the morning we took another wadi southwest. This came out onto a plain where we found Inscription Rock. It marked the ancient caravan route that led across the mountains to the Gulf of Suez on the other side of the peninsula. Now, New Mexico's El Morro Monument is very impressive with petroglyphs, crosses and Spanish and English inscriptions, all hundreds of years old. But this Rock not only had petroglyphs but hieroglyphs; not only English and French, but also Hebrew, Latin and Greek; and not only crosses but also menorahs. Its history went back not hundreds but thousands of years. Then, came wandering by us a Bedouin woman all in black with an embroidered veil, decorated with silver and enamel medallions, and a headscarf. She came and went on her own following her own mysterious ways. Later we stopped at a Bedouin camp and some paid for camel rides. I thought the beasts too nasty with their spitting and biting and passed on getting aboard them. We continued on to an area of dunes. Here we got out and the guides showed us dunes the consistency of talc with colors ranging from purple to pink. The Egyptians had gathered this powder and used it for makeup, possibly decorating Cleopatra's eyes with it. We rolled down the hundreds of feet of slope. The spinning and whirling lasted what seemed a minute and at the bottom our heads kept twirling for minutes more. What fun! Then it was off to another spring-fed oasis, this one with flowering almond trees amidst the palms, and we camped there for the night.

As forewarned we were awakened at dawn. We hiked the length of the large orchard, enjoying the smell of the almond flowers, and then set forth along the hard packed earth of the plain. As we hiked the distant cliffs edged in and after a couple hours we were no longer on a plain but in a wadi formed by cliffs forty or fifty feet in height. I hung back from the pack and smoked some hashish. I wandered along awhile, particularly fascinated by a circling hawk above in the clear blue skies. When I caught up they were all stopped and looking at a field of giant boulders that filled the width of the wadi. The guides showed us that all around the boulders was deep sand and that we could climb the rocks and slide off the other side without harm. The fall was as much as seven or eight feet but the sand acted as a soft pillow and cushioned the impact. It was great fun to climb, slide and land gently in the sand, especially if you were as stoned as I was. We waited at the end of the boulder field for the guides to catch up. It took them awhile to appear and when they did they were supporting an old woman. She had fallen awkwardly and dislocated her shoulder. She said not to worry it had happened before and she could make it out with some help. We later found out she was a Sabra, a native of the State of Israel and named after a cactus fruit - being tough on the outside and sweet on the inside. The guides said they'd have to help her and was there anyone here who could lead the hike. I looked around at the touristas and quickly concluded that even stoned as I was I would be the only one capable of the assignment. How bizarre was that? When no one else volunteered I raised my hand and became the new leader of the pack, albeit one who had a little trouble focusing on the drama at hand. The guides told me to just stop and wait if I was unsure of the trail and I agreed, hoping to be able to simply stay on the trail and having no confidence in my off trail abilities in a strange and rugged land. I set off with my followers in tow, all completely unaware of how stoned their leader was.

I hiked along, enjoying my buzz and the beauty of the desert. After awhile the wadi petered out at the foot of a mountain rising up hundreds of feet in front of me. I waited for the guides to catch up and they took me to the trailhead and said to meet them at the top. Off I went climbing up the switchbacks till I reached a ridge. The trail led along the ridge and then went up and down, but mostly down, until leading into a crevasse, which split the stone, walls of the mountain. The opening expanded into a large rock basin. I went to the end of the bowl and saw a sheer drop of a hundred feet. After a rain this would become a waterfall. Now I turned back to the pool I had passed in the basin. In March there was still some water left from when the watercourse last flowed down to the falls. I had to wait and it was sunny and hot, probably in the high eighties. So I took off my boots and socks and lay down in the cool water, which completely covered me. I was enjoying my bath when the first tourist came up. He was a Canadian dentist and was dressed in street clothes and street shoes. Obviously he was unprepared for this outing in the wilderness. I watched him go up to the cliff edge and expected him to stop and wait for everyone else. Instead he disappeared around the corner of the dry fall. I shouted, got up dripping water and ran to where he had vanished. I looked on both sides and then down the straight drop to the rocks below. There was no sign of him and nothing I could do for him. I went back to my bath and soon all the others had gathered around me. The guides came up, supporting the old lady, and showed me the trailhead, which led down to the bottom of the cliff. I led us down and we found our forlorn dentist waiting for us. I asked him what had happened and he responded that he had climbed most of the way down when he fell. Luckily he had only a few bumps and bruises. He had no idea how close he had come to filling his last tooth.

From there we still had hours of hiking ahead. The hashish made all seem mellow and I enjoyed the scenery and another bath in a pool that this time had rushes and other plants growing around it. At dusk we reached our goal, an oasis on a plain. I talked to some Israelis who took the same tour, without having to care for a casualty, and it took them from dawn to dusk too. The Israelis took such hard trekking for granted and didn't inform the tourists of what was ahead like they should have. After all, if an old lady in her 70's with a dislocated shoulder could make it without complaint, what was the problem for any tourist at all?

At about 3 am we began our next hike. Our goal was to be at the 7497 ft. summit of Mount Sinai, also known as Mt. Horeb (although most say Horeb is the massif of which Sinai is the peak) or Gebel Musa (the Mountain of Moses), for sunrise. Here, though the evidence is contradictory and slim, was where all three religions agree Moses had his theophany, the appearance of God to man. We would also have our meeting with the divine, if only in the form of a bird's eye view of the wonders of the Sinai. But first we had to work to gain the summit. We went up the easier path of the two, which is the camel path, and by starlight it took over two hours to reach the top. On the way we passed Elijah's cave where there is a well and a few trees in a small valley. At the top we waited by a small chapel and a diminutive mosque for the dawn to come. And when it did the Sinai was revealed in all its rough, hewn glory.

The view stretches from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Gulf of Suez and encompasses the entire range of mountains between. Mt. Sinai fell away to the Horeb massif around it. Below that was the Plain of Rahah where the tribes of Israel camped waiting for Moses to return with the Commandments. To the south is the highest peak in Sinai, Gebel Katarina at 8651 ft. where supposedly the martyred saint's body was magically transported after her death. All this great expanse is seemingly naked rock, uncovered by any living thing, but alive in and of itself. The stone forms all kinds of shapes and figures and is cut by deep valleys and numerous fissures that paint the slopes and summits of its rises with shadow. With the rising sun the mellow morning light seems to make the rock glow softly golden from within. As the light increases in strength green, yellow, orange and pink hues appear in the crystalline purple porphyry and the red granite of the peaks, ridges and inclines that abound all round. Soon all save the shadows is revealed in stunning detail. The mountains seem to go on forever and to be animate as the rock constantly changes shape and color in the ever-shifting light. The view proclaims that surely all the majesty and beauty of this wild scene must have been formed by a force far beyond man's comprehension. One can only then ponder on the question, could this be the face of God? Certainly many have thought so, including myself.

Now it was time to come down, as the day would be getting hot. Over 2300 feet below us, at the foot of 3400 steps, lay the Monastery of Santa Katarina, a World Heritage site. It is claimed to be the location where Moses saw the Burning Bush and the bramble at its Chapel of the Burning Bush is the only one of its kind in the Sinai. Pilgrims to Mt. Sinai have been sheltered at this site since the 4th century A.D. In 537 the Emperor Justinian built a fortress and provided a garrison to protect the monks and pilgrims from bandits. Soon after a magnificent church was built within the walls. The Monastery contains a mosque and was protected from the Arab conquests by a document from Mohamed himself, which is kept to this day by the monks. The isolation of the Monastery protected it from the frenzied destruction of icons that swept the Byzantine Empire. Therefore it has the world's greatest collection of icons. It has been the benefactor of Popes and Czars. Its library of ancient manuscripts is second only to the Vatican. It is the oldest Christian monastic community and the smallest Greek Orthodox diocese in the world. It is protected and served by the local Bedouin tribe, the Jebelliyah, or Men of the Mountain.

Coming down we had an eagle's eye view of the Monastery below. This lonely outpost of man stood at the base of the holy mountain with Mount Sinai's rocky slopes falling down to the very walls of the fortress. Though actually quite large the Monastery looked like a miniature, being dwarfed by the surrounding mass of mountains. Red granite walls 40-50 feet tall formed a square enclosure with wide ramparts and several towers. A labyrinthine warren of buildings of all sizes and types topped with steeples, domes and red tiled roofs lay within. Outside the walls was the only greenery in miles and miles, the monk's garden probably being the oldest continuous one in the world.

After three hours we reached the gates of the Monastery. Previously, when banditry was a constant threat, you entered by sitting in a basket and being hauled up by a pulley. There were no bandits in sight so we could enter through the gates. The inside was like a village from the Crusades with a profusion of courtyards, stairways, balconies, narrow corridors and vaulted passageways, all crowded between, upon and over buildings, most of which had several stories. We were guided through the monastery, including the icon gallery, the Church, the library, and the ossuary. Religious art doesn't do much for me but I was impressed by the Church's granite columns, mosaics and marble sarcophagus. It was the library that fascinated me, especially the story of its greatest treasure, which was, for the most part, no longer there. The Codex Sinaiticus is a 4th Century Greek text, which is the most important New Testament text in the world. It was taken by the Russians in the mid-1800's and later sold to the British Museum in 1933. The Russian agent said he saved it from being burned by the monks but that was a self-serving lie as in 1960 a receipt from him was found stating the codex had been merely a loan. Nevertheless, the codex remains in London. In 1975, during general repairs, a collapsed room was found hidden in the North wall containing more pages of the codex. Other treasures have been rumored to be hidden in the Monastery, from the Ark of the Covenant to just plain gold.

Outside in the garden was the charnel house. There is too little soil for burial so bodies must be reduced to bones and then every five years sent to the ossuary in caves below the Monastery. It is a great honor to be entombed here as Resurrection and Salvation is then ensured. In the ossuary are stacks of hundreds of sand colored skulls in one room with a jumble of the leftover bones in another. Elsewhere some lucky archbishops are stacked whole while two skeletons are left sitting robed with staffs and rosaries in hand to stand guard over them. It was spellbinding, if a bit creepy.

We left the Monastery and made our way back to the Gulf of Aqaba where we spent a night at Dahab. I couldn't take the heat, the flies or the lack of decent food and left the girls on the beach and took the bus back to Elat. I still remember how good the pizza was that I got as soon as I got off the bus. I stayed in a nice, air-conditioned hotel and enjoyed the beach and the Aquarium till the girls returned.

The great and terrible wilderness of the Sinai lived up to its name and certainly was one of the most isolated and barren spots on earth. Nevertheless its pristine beauty had overcome the initial impression of inhospitable danger. One was spellbound and captivated by the divine hidden in the bare jagged stones. The Monastery had been as nearly isolated and unchanged as it had been for over 1500 years. It had survived intact the Byzantine attempt to destroy all icons, the Arab conquest, the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars and much else. Yet neither, the desert or the Monastery, may survive the modern tourist industry of the 21st Century. The Red Sea coasts are now covered with resorts. The Bedouins are no longer undisturbed in their wanderings. There is an airport, a hostel, a tourist village and a hotel nearby the Monastery. There are camel rides to the summit of Mt. Sinai, with 4 or 5 refreshment stands along the way. At dawn the summit is over crowded with people. All of this has happened in little over thirty years, in the heart of one of the last great wildernesses. If as Thoreau said, "wildness is the preservation of the world", then the world is in a precarious position. I am glad I saw the Sinai nearly as it was when the children of Israel crossed its expanse on the way to the Promised Land.

**Chapter 25**

"...we know that when a number of reasonably Christian men form themselves into a gas company they immediately become pirates of the most merciless and extortionate character. Why should we look for better things from the electric light companies?"

Electrical World, March 1, 1890

I returned from Israel in August of 1978 and set up a law practice in Albuquerque. For a year and a half, I handled a wide variety of cases, from real estate to immigration and from criminal to environmental law, while also reporting for my sister's newsletter, the Hazardous Waste Report. I was then hired by a former law school professor to work in the Energy Unit of the Attorney General's office in Santa Fe. The Attorney General of New Mexico (AG) then was Jeff Bingaman and he was a unique politician. In nearly three years I never saw him make a decision based on politics. He acted solely from a desire to do what was best for New Mexicans. This made for a pleasant work environment but one not likely to be repeated often in the realm of public service. My primary assignment was to represent the interests of the ratepayers of New Mexico's largest electric utility, Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), before the Public Service Commission of New Mexico (PSC) and various federal bodies and to advise the AG and the legislature on related matters. I was completely naive in all things political and was being thrown into some of the hottest political fights in the state. The Commission charged with regulating PNM was composed of political hacks with no technical or educational qualifications and these protectors of the people took their marching orders from the most powerful corporation in the state. I had a tall order ahead of me in opposing these interests.

To prepare me for my task I was given a two week summer course at Michigan State University. On my return I continued my education by visiting PNM's operations center. One entire wall was a representation of the entire electrical generating and transmission system. Strings of colored lights linked the power plants and outside sources of power, while nearby displays of data showed such things as the quantity of power being generated and transmitted. The amazing thing was that the system breathed in and out like a living thing. The overall megawatts (mw) on the system constantly fluctuated, say up 5 and then down 5 mw's of the thousands flowing through the wires. One mw is 1,000,000 watts and that's a lot of light bulbs. The numbers displayed also showed the cost of each mw from each generating unit and the costs available outside the system. The company could trade for lower cost energy on an hourly basis. Today the trading would be almost instantaneous.

I worked to limit the company's unfair profits in several rate cases and in a case to determine who would pay for the company's error in building too much generating capacity. During one of these cases, I stood up and said, "I object!" Before I could make my argument the presiding Commissioner roared, "Overruled!" Commission counsel leaned over and whispered in his ear. He must have said, "You have to let him state his objection before you rule on it." This intellectual giant nodded and then looked at me and said, "Please state your objection Mr. Greenfield." I did so and he then immediately and without hesitation, or thought, said, "Overruled!" So much for a well reasoned ruling based on the facts and the law. New Mexico just put in a requirement that Commissioners have minimum qualifications but the legislature forgot to put in a mechanism to enforce compliance so there is still no effective way to try and ensure some level of competency. And believe me this stuff is complicated. What use are expert economists and engineers if the decision makers don't understand, or listen to, a word of it. But then if the decision has already been made to support the utility's position one need not understand any of the facts of the case.

I flew to Phoenix for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing on the licensing of PNM's Palo Verde plant, which was under construction. The company took us on a tour of the nuclear facility just north of Phoenix. They hadn't loaded the fuel yet so we got to go into the reactor core itself and see the pool where the radioactive rods would go and glow. We then went into the control room. And if PNM's Operations center had been a technological wonder, the control room of a nuclear power plant went so far beyond it that wonder turned to horror. How could anyone, or any team, possibly make sense of a giant room with consoles and walls completely covered with dials, switches, buttons, knobs, lights, monitors, bells and whistles all beyond number and representing a nuclear reaction that can spin out of control at any time. As we stood with mouths agape and minds astonished at the complexity of a system seemingly beyond any human comprehension it suddenly all died. The dials swung to zero, the monitors darkened and no light or sound was to be seen. The operators and the tour guide huddled together for a few minutes and then the guide came back over to us and said, "The construction crew cut the power line. But don't worry, a power outage could never happen when the reactor is up and running." Oh yeah? Tell that to the Japanese. I, for one, had no faith in this statement then and have even less faith in nuclear power now. We really don't know what we are doing, we're just monkeys playing with deadly toys (not to mention monkeying with the global climate and much else we don't understand).

Santa Fe, with some caveats, was and is a wonderful place to live. It sits at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with the Jemez Mountains to the west across the Rio Grande. The City Different is centered on its Plaza on which sits the oldest governmental building in the US, the Palace of the Governors. For its size the city has more and better food, entertainment, museums and spiritual gurus than any other. I hiked and cross-country skied the mountains and enjoyed the city's other amenities. My civic contribution was to found a poker game that I later discovered had survived long after I had left town.

One thing Santa Fe does is to attract celebrities. I stood in line behind Marsha Mason and Neil Simon at the Jewish deli and she was gorgeous. I sat next to Jessica Lang and Sam Shepherd at the La Fonda pastry shop and she was to die for. When I took my seat at the Chamber Music Festival next to me was Georgia O'Keefe and her paintings, many of which hang in Santa Fe at her namesake museum, are sublime.

This gives me an opportunity to note some previous celebrity sightings. When I was ten, our family took a trip to California and stopped in Las Vegas for a few nights. After we were settled into our room in the Sands Hotel, Dad went down to the casino while we swam in the pool. After a while we noticed a crowd forming at the large picture window of the casino, so we went over to see what was what. To our astonishment there was Dad sitting at the blackjack table that was drawing all the attention. The dealer was Dean Martin and at Dad's elbow was Lauren Bacall. My Dad was winning big but I was the biggest winner, admiring Lauren from only inches away as she sat on the other side of the window. For me, she was the sexiest of them all. We later were told that the Rat Pack owned a share of the hotel and often played around at the tables.

While I was in Santa Fe I flew out to meet my parents and sister in LA. Debbie insisted on lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. At the table next to us Alan King was feasting with Edith Bunker from "All in the Family." Wandering between tables was a uniformed, midget bellhop I had seen in some of the Hollywood movies. That night we were to meet one of Debbie's high school friends from Danville. We sat in our hotel lobby and waited. He didn't show at ten as agreed. Eleven went by, then eleven thirty. Eventually at midnight a limo appeared and out came Irving Azoff. He invited us to come with him to his home. On the way he apologized for being late but said he had been busy making a million dollars, and he wasn't kidding! Irving was the manager of the Eagles and had been in the studio with them finishing an album. We arrived at his incredible mansion in Beverly Hills; right next door was Ann Margaret's house. At 1 am Irving walked in and immediately began working a bank of three phones. While we contented ourselves with looking at the gold and platinum albums on the walls there was a commotion at the front door. In walked the Eagles! One sat down at the piano and the others picked up acoustic guitars and they began to jam. We sat down and listened in astonishment. Later Irving told us his main job was to keep them from self-destructing on women, booze or drugs. Sounds like a rock n' roll band to me. The next night, compliments of Irving, we sat seventh row center at a Boz Skaggs concert. Last I heard Irving was head of Ticketmaster. Everyone else in Danville who knew him said he was similarly generous to family and friends.

The caveats I mentioned earlier are that Santa Fe has several weird and exclusive sides to it. The city has a gazillion art galleries and artists who can be a bit pretentious. Also once a year the legislature comes to town with all the bizarre shenanigans of politicos in action. And being a small town the numbers of tourists who swarm the city in the summer, and now it seems nearly all year round, are becoming overwhelming. And finally the city is now so expensive that the working class and the middle class can no longer afford to live there and that means that most of the native Hispanics have been priced out of town. The small tight-knit community of old with its unique traditions is fast disappearing.

**Chapter 26**

Save the Jemez

The Jemez is a giant caldera, the remnants of a volcanic explosion some four times larger than Krakatoa, covering hundreds of square miles. The resulting crater's floor is the Valle Grande, an open area of vast grasslands. The forested, mountains of the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument rise over 11,ooo ft. and encircle the valley. The Jemez Pueblo has lived in these mountains for hundreds of years. I've soaked in hot springs, hiked, fished and cross-country skied all through this area. This pristine area was almost untouched until Las Alamos Laboratory was established here in World War II to develop the atom bomb. Outside of Las Alamos the Jemez remained undeveloped when in the early 1980's PNM proposed building a huge industrial development in its heart.

PNM couldn't resist the $50 million grant the Department of Energy (DOE) was offering for a pilot 50mw geothermal power plant to be built in the Jemez. PNM applied to the PSC for permission to build the plant at ratepayers' expense with the goal of building out to 400mw. This would have meant a large industrial infrastructure, including roads and transmission lines, would be built in what the Pueblo considers "a living church with hidden shrines." The drilling and pumping of geothermal fluids and taking of surface water would have also threatened the ground and surface waters of the entire basin. Such a disruption of the water cycle would have been disastrous for the Native peoples. "When the pueblos die, they become clouds, then rain soaks the earth with life, then the mountains generate new clouds in a constant cycle." For them it was life or death.

The DOE said it could re-site the project but would not as it would have meant a long delay. The DOE also said it would consider the religious rights of the Pueblo only if they revealed the sites of their shrines. The Pueblo refused. They had survived the Conquistadors, the friars and the Anglo lawyers by shrouding their religion in secrecy and weren't about to change their ways now. The project managers said they would negotiate the placement of infrastructure but the Pueblo refused to countenance any defilement of the Jemez.

Given these facts PNM proceeded to a hearing on its request. The AG intervened on behalf of the ratepayers. One of our main concerns was that PNM was requesting the ratepayers be on the hook for the project while admitting that the system did not need the additional generating capacity and that it would probably seek to sell at least some of the power out of state. An environmental group also intervened. Public interest was high and "Save the Jemez" became a rallying cry for the growing public opposition to the proposal. The author Martin Cruz Smith compared an industrial park in the Jemez to "a Roman Catholic running a pipeline out of the altar of St. Peters or a Jew razing the Wailing Wall for a gas station." The PSC, anticipating crowds of spectators, had to move the hearings into a large auditorium in an adjacent state building. The public filled the auditorium for the hearings.

The environmental group presented the alternative energy guru, Amory Lovins, as an expert witness. Since direct testimony was in written form the only way to have his live testimony was for me to cross-examine him. Of course this would be friendly cross and the company objected but the PSC had no choice but to uphold my right to cross him. Besides pointing out problems with the project, Mr. Lovins testified in depth as to the available alternative sources of energy that had much less environmental impact.

The most moving part of the hearings was the testimony of the elders of Jemez Pueblo. The old men came into the room in traditional dress and carried a palpable spiritual presence with them. The fact that two worlds were colliding was inescapable. I cross examined them in a friendly fashion and attempted to present their case based on the project's environmental impact and its infringement on their religious freedom. However the elders were extremely reticent about the details of their religion and refused to discuss the sites of their shrines. Despite this their mere presence was a rebuke to PNM and a powerful statement that the despoilment of the Jemez would be sacrilegious and would inevitably lead to the destruction of the Jemez people.

PNM's legal case was shaky but it was the public reaction to its greed and indifference that doomed the project. Loud and vocal public opposition continued to grow. Before a decision was reached PNM withdrew its application. It was a well-won victory but only a partial one as the Republicans refused to allow the Jemez to become a National Park. They set up an administrative structure that had never been tried before and was supposed to pay for itself with multiple use fees. As could have been predicted the experiment was not successful. Valle Grande has recently, and at long last, become part of the National Park Service. It is a Preserve and not a Park in order to allow the continuation of hunting, fishing and grazing. Currently the Pueblo is in Federal court seeking to regain title to the tribe's "spiritual mother." This case was my proudest moment in the practice of law.

Living in the heart of "Indian Country" I've had many other interesting and enlightening interactions with Native Americans. In New Mexico it can happen just driving down the interstate. I once stopped for gas on my way to Santa Fe at the exit to Cochiti Pueblo. To my astonishment I saw an incredible assortment of clowns, mudheads and other kachina figures crossing the interstate and congregating at the gas station. Some were walking and some were on horseback. They were coming from the Sandia Mountains and headed for Cochiti pueblo. Were they men coming from a ceremony on the mountain or were they spirits? Or both?

I once spent the night of a lunar eclipse in Chaco Canyon National Park, which preserves the ruins left behind by the Anasazi. The Anasazi built a great civilization and then disappeared. They are believed to be the ancestors of the Pueblo people. The end of their civilization may have been caused by climate change or by deforestation. We found the Grand Kiva, a huge stone structure specifically built to track celestial events, empty and watched as a shadow passed across the face of the moon. We felt as if we were back hundreds of years ago with the Anasazi helping the stars move through the sky, the sun to shine and the moon to glow.

One spring break my wife and daughter went with me to the Grand Canyon. We were on the Rim right by the main lodge with the Canyon spread out before us. I heard a voice at my shoulder and turned to find a Native American man pointing out to the Rim and saying, "Look over there." We looked where he was pointing. He said, "There is a Condor on that ledge." We had to look carefully but, sure enough, there was a huge vulture like bird perched on the end of a protruding rock. It was a thrilling and totally unexpected sight. I turned to thank my benefactor but he had disappeared. We were in a large open area and it seemed impossible for him to have vanished so suddenly. Yet he had brought his message and then was gone in an instant. We later found out that the California Condor had just been reintroduced to the wild in an effort to preserve the species. I hope it worked.

While living in Santa Fe I went on a pack trip sponsored by the good people at Lama. It was a meditative journey led by an elder of the Taos Pueblo who provided the packhorses. We hiked into the Wheeler Peak Wilderness area and climbed to the top of Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico. It was a very sacred journey highlighted by some Fourth of July hijinks. Someone hiked down to Red River and got some fireworks. We set them up in the middle of a snowfield and safely set the night sky alight.

I've also attended a Hopi Apache dance, intended to ward off their foes, and a Yaqui Pascua (Easter) dance. But I never thought I'd attend a Native American dance in Danville. In the early 90's, on one of my last visits to Danville, I saw a flyer in the Danville Public library advertising an Indian Pow-Wow. I thought this quite extraordinary and so I attended the festivities. I found that the Kickapoo tribe from Oklahoma was hosting the event. It was in honor of their return to their homeland. A monument in a park across the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River from downtown Danville tells the tale. The monument commemorates the Trail of Tears when the Kickapoo tribe was forced to leave its lands and march to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Many other tribes were also so violently displaced. Besides the monument, and the Pow-Wow, the only other trace of the Kickapoo in Danville has been their namesake, Kickapoo State Park.

After I left the AG's office I consulted for the Navajo tribe on energy policy. I was a keynote speaker at a Navajo conference in Scottsdale where the chairman of the tribe offered me a job on the reservation. It would have been a great opportunity career wise and a chance to really get to know Native Americans and their culture. But I felt that the reservation was just too isolated and I turned the offer down. Yet another path not taken.

**Chapter 27**

It's not Paranoia if it's real

From time to time as I fought the powerful corporate interests I had flashes of fear. After all I had already seen the power of intimidation work when Molycorp crushed our attempt to sue them. PNM was even more powerful within New Mexico. I thought, "Would PNM take similar steps? Or worse?" I'd tell myself this was only paranoia but then I'd have another fantasy. Most of my visions were of a "honey trap", one of the KGB's favorite weapons. A beautiful hooker I couldn't resist would turn out to be a corporate agent of destruction. Come to think of it, this might have been wishful thinking as it wouldn't have been a bad way to go. But there was no gorgeous blonde to seduce me, my career with the AG's office ended with an election.

Jeff Bingaman left to become a US Senator. He served New Mexico and the country well for many years and became a leader in shaping national energy policy. Here again was a road not taken but I would have hated DC. Jeff was replaced as AG by the former counsel for the phone company who immediately held a staff meeting and made clear that he was no Jeff Bingaman and that the corporate interests were now in charge. Many people resigned, which was the smart move. I stayed and tried to continue to represent the ratepayers. That became nearly impossible as the new AG simply began to deal directly with PNM. Soon I was presented with a list of purported insubordinations and grounds for dismissal, none of which were true and all but one of which were anonymous. I was then given the choice of resigning or being fired. I asked the chairwoman of the PSC about the truth of the only named allegation and she denied that the source had ever made such a complaint and, further, said he would have been fired if he had. Whether the AG had the power to fire me or whether I was a protected state employee was an open question. Nevertheless I cut my losses and resigned. I spent the next six months traveling around the West and attended the '84 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

While PNM had gotten rid of me, it was not content with this victory. Bruce had been my expert economic witness and had become, and remains, one of my closest friends. He's one of the smartest guys I've ever met. I'm really good at card games and such but I cannot consistently beat him at anything. Don't play poker with him unless you are feeling lucky. Wait, make that: don't play poker with him especially when you're feeling lucky. We were going to a party once and told his wife that people thought we looked alike. She said, "No way!" We walked into the party and someone immediately called me "Bruce." People in the poker room at my home casino, Sandia, mistake us all the time or ask if we are brothers. At least I'm the handsome one.

So it was quite shocking when I returned from my trip to find that Bruce had been arrested for extortion! And of course PNM was responsible for the arrest. Bruce was married with two children. I hadn't known it but when I left Santa Fe the marriage was on the verge of a divorce. As is common, the financial and emotional stress drove Bruce to make a big mistake. He thought he could get some money by offering to quit working for the AG's office. He approached El Paso Electric and they said no way and left it at that. Bruce then went to PNM and they said, "Sure. Sounds like a good idea. Meet us at the public library and we'll give you the money." When Bruce showed up he was met by the FBI and arrested. Two down and none to go.

Now extortion can be a tricky concept. Bruce wasn't offering to do something illegal like steal information from the AG so he thought he was ok. I unwittingly committed extortion once when I told an opposing party I would go to the DA if they didn't pay up. You can't do this. You either go to the DA or not, but you cannot use the threat of a valid criminal charge to get someone to do something. Society makes it illegal to use anything as a threat to force someone to act, and rightly so. In my case, and Bruce's with El Paso Electric, the lack of criminal intent was clearly seen and the offended party chose to ignore the issue. PNM could have also ignored Bruce's offer but instead grabbed the opportunity, perhaps gleefully, to rid themselves of a nuisance and did so without remorse. Bruce served 6 months in a minimum-security prison. Then he came right back to Santa Fe and reestablished his consulting business. He was very successful and eventually got many contracts with the State of New Mexico. Few people could achieve this after such a fall and it is a testament to Bruce's abilities. He just made one mistake and PNM took full advantage.

On my return to Santa Fe I had trouble finding a job as I probably was getting bad-mouthed by PNM. My mother got very ill, a brain tumor, and I decided that since I could get a job in Danville I would move there to help my dad. I packed up all my belongings and was surrounded by boxes, waiting for the movers to come when I got a call offering me a job in Santa Fe. Let's see: Danville. Santa Fe. Danville. Santa Fe. There was really no contest. I unpacked all the boxes I had just packed and went out for some green chile stew. I practiced in Santa Fe for several years before I got a better offer in Las Cruces, New Mexico and moved south.

**Chapter 28**

"Happy is the man who finds a true friend,

And far happier is he who finds that friend is his wife."

Franz Schubert

In 1986 I arrived in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Joe, one of my best friends in law school, had gone there to practice law. I had visited him and his family there often and liked the small town atmosphere. So I had gladly taken the opportunity to move south. Las Cruces is an hour north of El Paso and Juarez and the home of the New Mexico State Aggies. The town is in the Chihuahuan desert, lying at the foot of the Organ Mountains with White Sands Missile Range on the other side of the pass.

The law firm I worked for represented the hospital and numerous insurance companies among other clients. I got on well with the other associates and the partners and I got to travel a bit which I enjoyed. Soon after I started I had to go to Albuquerque on business and one of the partners insisted I stay where he did. I found that the room had an in-room hot tub. I don't know what he did on his trips but I took the chance to call an old girl friend and ask her over. We got stoned, got naked and got into the tub. I thought, "Man, I'm getting laid tonight!" Just then she began to talk about her life changing decision to try to become a lesbian!!! My face and other body parts must have dropped a considerable distance. I thought, "Drat! My best laid plans are foiled again." And to add insult to injury she was a lousy lesbian and was soon back with men but not that night, no, of course not.

I dated an immigration judge from LA a few times and she took me on a tour of the border with the head of the El Paso sector of the Border Patrol. We drove around and he pointed out where people illegally crossed the border. We went to the main inspection station and into the headquarters. It was a bit eerie as last time I had been in such a place, just a few miles away, I had been searched, detained and my car impounded. Now I was an honored guest. As we went down a corridor I began to smell something. As the odor grew stronger and stronger, it became unmistakable. When we came to a door, the head honcho turned to me and said, "Do you know what that smell is?" I quickly answered, with what I hoped was an innocent expression, "No. I have no idea." He smiled and opened the door. There was a vision of paradise. The large storeroom was packed to the rafters with bales of marijuana, in endless rows. The odor was so overpowering I surely was high for hours after. Still I had to maintain my innocence, and my self-control. If only I could have had a taste or two or three... We went out to the main bridge leading over the Rio Grande to Mexico and there, right beneath the Chief Agent of the Border Patrol, people were running illegally across the border. So how come I had had such trouble simply crossing that imaginary line? Karma? Or stupidity?

I once sat second chair in a case representing the hospital. The judge had a reputation for holding in contempt every attorney that tried a case before him. He did this just to show his gavel was bigger than theirs. On the second day of trial the judge suddenly became enraged, over what was impossible to tell as nothing of consequence had occurred, and angrily shouted, " I'm holding you in contempt, Mr. Reeves and you too Mr. Greenfield!" He must have seen the puzzled look on my face as he became quite sheepish. The fact that I had said not a word to date in the trial must have dawned on him. He had realized that it was an impossibility that I could in any way be found in contempt. The judge then said, in a quiet tone, "Well, I mean you Mr. Reeves, not Mr. Greenfield." He was so eager to exercise his authority and continue his string of contempt citations that the reality of the situation had escaped him. But he was right about one thing, I certainly did hold him in contempt.

The most interesting case I had with the firm was one representing the Sheriff's Office. Two deputies were called out to a rural area to investigate a call about suspicious activity. They approached an isolated dwelling and rang the doorbell. The door opened and there stood a man weighing around four hundred pounds, naked, dripping wet and with snot falling from his nose. From under his feet was pouring a stream of water from the lake that covered the living room floor. The deputy asked what was going on and the man replied, "The chickens were on fire and I had to put them out!" He then slammed the door shut. After the deputies had forced the door they found the room empty. They searched and soon found a trapdoor under a rug. Opening it they discovered a room underneath the house with bales of marijuana and the crouching fugitive. They hauled him up with some difficulty and began to handcuff him. Then one Deputy said to the other, "Fred, I think he's dead." And sure enough he wasn't breathing and was turning purple. They looked at each other and then at the disturbing sight at their feet. One said, "You do CPR." And the other replied, "NO, You do it." Then they shrugged their shoulders and went outside to call an ambulance.

The toxicology report showed the cause of death to be a cocaine overdose. The family sued for wrongful death. I got a trip to Atlanta to depose the Medical Examiner there who was one of the country's leading experts on cocaine overdoses. His testimony was that a single dose of cocaine by anyone at anytime could lead to immediate cardiac arrest. I didn't try the case but the Plaintiff's counsel later told me that my depositions won the case for the defense.

After a year or so in Las Cruces I answered an ad for a dating service. This was before such services were common or employed computers. I was directed to a house where a nice, gay Jewish guy interviewed me and had me fill out a questionnaire. He sent me a list of women with some bio and their numbers. My first six dates were all nice women. One date chose the moment I was biting into my veal parmagiana to choose to tell me she was a vegetarian, and that was that. Another date I really liked. She had lived for years deep in the wilderness in Arizona where she had born a child. She was one tough lady. But after a couple of dates she chose to get back with her ex. My seventh date was lucky number 7.

Tessie and I met at a bar for a drink. She was the first Filipino I ever met. Tessie was very pretty and, of course, brown skinned and petite. She worked at NASA's White Sands Test Facility, about ten, fifteen miles out of town, this side of the Organs. She would be there fifteen years, preparing the scientist's data for publication, and receive a Silver Snoopy award for her work, presented personally to her by an astronaut. So, though not quite a rocket scientist, she was sharp. I was her third date. Her first date's only topic of conversation was whether or not she had her citizenship. I must have looked good compared to him so I got another chance. Our next date was at the symphony. The third date was at my house warming, which was kinda awkward as another girlfriend attended also. They met and had an interesting, discussion; centered on the eccentric fool they both knew. Nevertheless I made the cut and we began to date seriously.

I soon learned her story. Tess grew up in Butuan, Mindanao and went to college in Manila. After she got her degree she worked for the Dept. of Labor's family planning division, was a television scriptwriter and founded the Alsa Bulutan Puppet group. However the Philippines was under martial law and Tessie knew she couldn't keep her mouth shut and risked the wrath of Marcos thereby. So she learned German at the German Embassy and flew to Germany, which did not require a visa. Tess lived and worked there for almost three years. She met and married a GI and came to the States where Tess became a citizen. Eventually, they arrived in Las Cruces and were divorced.

We were both approaching forty and had seen it all so we knew right away this was for real. Besides I had no choice but to marry her as I had already assumed responsibility for her life. Her employer, Lockheed, sponsored a day at a waterpark. At one point we went to the back of the water park where there was a large pool and nobody else around. I jumped in and swam across. As I sat on the edge of the pool watching Tessie swim towards me it began to dawn on me that she was in the middle of the pool and beginning to flounder. It was obvious that she wouldn't make it to the side so I jumped in and quickly swam out to her. I got a hold of her and began to pull her along. Happily she didn't struggle and I had no problem bringing her to the side. And now, according to Chinese tradition, I was responsible for her. So we flew back to Danville to see the parents. The first thing my mother said was, "So when are you getting married?" Mom must have subscribed to the theory put forth by our friend Susan Eyre that: "parents used to demand their children marry into the same religion, then it became the same race, then the same sex and finally all they demand now is a grandchild." We were married on February 27, 1988, some six months after we met. We are in our 28th year of marriage with a wonderful 24-year old daughter, Sima. It was well worth waiting till I was 37 to catch and marry my Tessie.

**Chapter 29**

The Dark Side of the Moon

In February of 1987 ghosts from my Stanford days came back yet again as I learned that Allan Cox had died in a biking accident. He was coming down from the mountains and crashed head first into a redwood. I thought, at least he died amidst the forest he loved. Over time I learned the tragic truth behind his demise and there was little solace to be found in it.

Allan was the Dean of the Earth Sciences department. The Vetlesen prize, which funded his purchase of his cabin in the Redwoods he so graciously shared with his students, was one of the most prestigious of scientific awards. The Prize was for his work in paleomagnetism where he was a co-discoverer of magnetic field reversals. His research confirmed plate tectonic theories of sea floor spreading and continental drift. Stanford, the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America all established awards in Alan's memory.

While Allan was well liked by students and staff, he was seen as aloof and few were really close to him. This was probably because of the secret life he led. Allan was gay and "in the closet." An old lover and a close colleague, Clyde Wahrhaftig, had often warned him of the dangers of his fatal flaw, his attraction to young boys. Immediately before his death Allan learned he was under investigation for his relationship with just such a boy. The consensus was that the "accident" was in fact a suicide. "More than 1,000 people came to the memorial at Stanford Chapel."

Some good did come out of all this. Two years later Clyde decided to use the opportunity presented by his being awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the Geological Society Of America. In his acceptance speech Clyde acknowledged that he was gay. In doing so he said he sought to change the attitudes of the profession and people in general. Clyde stated, "And I hope that, by making this revelation here, I contribute in some small way to the creation of a society with a sufficiently intelligent, open, and compassionate attitude toward sexuality that suicides such as Allan Cox's will be a thing of the past." Clyde's brave act was received with tremendous applause.

How many of us have an unseen dark side? They sit unrevealed behind the façade we present to the world. For some, such as Allan, there comes the day of reckoning when the veil is lifted and the community is once again shocked to discover yet another secret life. And we are left to ponder how someone who we had so admired can have held such a secret and to balance the two sides of a man to attempt to reach the sum of his soul. We can only hope that we never have to face such a judgment. As for me, Allan will always be the man who gave me the opportunity to spend so many happy hours sitting on his porch gazing out over the redwood forest, laid out before me in all its beauty and tranquility. I hope he found many moments like that there too.

**Chapter 30**

"A Man of Principle if ever there was one."

Inscription in my presentation copy of

"The Lumiere Affair" by Sarah Voorhees

I just cannot help myself. When it is right or wrong I plunge ahead with what I see is right without even considering the consequences. It's in my genes. My maternal grandfather, Abraham Margolin, was given the nickname of "Honest Abe." And that sobriquet is not given out loosely in the state of Illinois, the Land of Lincoln. My grandfather was 17 and without a penny to his name when, in 1903, he came from Ivye, a small village near Vilnius, Lithuania which then was under Russian rule, to the Pennsylvania coal country. Abe established a successful meat packing business in Mount Pleasant, Pa. The Depression ruined him as it did many others. He moved his wife and six children to Danville where he established a conservative synagogue and yet another meat packing business, one that thrived for some forty years before the large companies drove out the smaller players. He was often pictured in the local paper with the proud 4-H future farmers and their cattle, which he had just purchased.

The best illustration of his character was in a letter I found in an old satchel in my uncle's garage. The banker back in Pennsylvania wrote my grandfather thanking him for his final payment of $13,000.00. This was a huge sum at the time and one Abe could have walked away from. Instead he paid back every penny. The banker, obviously also an immigrant, wrote: "I am very glad this has turned out so good for you because I know you have sweat blood for it for sometime." I only hope I have lived up to at least a portion of my grandfather's standards.

I had chosen law based on the fight for justice as illustrated in the life of Justice Louis Brandeis whose career I studied at LFA. What I didn't realize was that my personality was not a fit for the law. I was not someone who dealt well with the emotions and motivations of others, nor was I, or am I, especially good at controlling my emotions. Give me cold legal analysis and I thrive, but the schemes of unscrupulous actors baffle me. I also did not see that the law was changing greatly. Small town legal practice, like in Las Cruces, used to be a gentleman's profession, as everyone had to deal with the same people over and over. When big city firms took over it became cutthroat. Like society in general as time has passed legal ethics have, by and large, been replaced with simple, or not so simple, greed. Thus I hadn't seen PNM coming to get us, nor the machinations that went on behind the scenes at my law firm.

Just after the wedding, the partners from my law firm who had insisted I invite them, and who had attended the festivities with presents in hand, and who had wished us well, fired me, before we could even go on the honeymoon. I had been the highest billing associate in the firm. My performance reviews had all been stellar. Then one day the billing department made an error and sent me a copy of the month's billing. It showed an irregularity in the hours that the firm was billing in one of my cases. I asked the managing partner to investigate. He said he'd get back to me. I heard back all right. I was called into a partner's meeting. They each went around and told of some flimsy reason why I needed to be fired and fired immediately. One partner had the chutzpah to say I was being terminated because I spent too much time planning my wedding! And he was the one who had insisted I invite the whole firm! And this was a $2000 wedding with maybe 70 guests at the simple reception and with a dinner at a restaurant for 25, not exactly an elaborate, time-consuming affair. The old man who had founded the firm nodded and believed it all. Not long after they threw him out as well. After I got back from my honeymoon and was cleaning out my desk, a partner came to see me. He practically begged me to handle a hearing the next day in the case where the irregularity had occurred. No one else in the firm had the slightest idea of any of the issues or what to do about them. I wanted to tell him to shove it but that would not have been fair to the clients so that was the last work I did at the firm.

**Chapter 31**

"To fall down does not break me or discourage me;

It only enables me to rise to a still higher sphere of life.

Every loss in life I consider as a throwing off of

An old garment in order to put on a new one;

And the new garment has always been better than the old."

Inayat Khan

Despite my law firm's betrayal of me, our honeymoon was wonderful. On our first day on the Big Island of Hawaii, we were wandering about town when I noticed a flyer advertising a whale watch cruise with Paul Winter for the next day. We immediately got tickets. He is one of my favorite artists and is especially loved for bringing bossa nova to the US. Besides whales, Hawaii showed us a lot of volcanic activity. At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park there was a painting of Pele, the goddess of the Volcanoes. Even with black lava for her hair she was a dead ringer for Tessie. After hiking around the crater, and despite warnings to stay away, we went to where the lava from Kilauea was still flowing into the sea. It had swallowed much of a subdivision and mailboxes sat just inches above the cold, hardened lava. We walked out towards the ocean where large plumes of steam rose from the sea. Beneath the cooled rock red-hot lava still flowed and the heat rose up so that our feet got hotter and hotter the nearer we came to the ocean until we had to turn back before the soles of our shoes melted.

I had had another close encounter with Pele on my other post-employment termination trip in 1984. I had been fast asleep high up in my hotel room on Maui when I found myself struggling to get my pants on and get out the door. The entire building was swaying from side to side, as it is supposed to do in an earthquake. Before I got to the stairs it stopped. I waited to see if a tsunami was coming. When none came I continued with my plan to hike the crater of the supposedly extinct Haleakala volcano. I figured Pele had had enough fun for one day and I was going to put that theory to the test.

On the drive up the mountain I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. He too was going to hike the crater so we joined forces. Then we discovered he was also a recent Stanford grad. Sweet! So down we went 1500 ft. on the Sliding Sands Trail. I'm glad we weren't going up, as it was all fine black volcanic powder flowing away from beneath our boots. On the crater floor, ridges towered over us on three sides. The fourth side had been blown away in the eruption and was open to the sky. Solid cloud extended out from the opening and it seemed as if one could just keep on walking across the crater and out onto the clouds. Instead of walking out into the sky we chose to follow the trail across the crater to the campsite where my friend had left his car. It was like walking across the moon, all was bare volcanic rock and sand, except for the silver swords. These are unique to Haleakala and are like tall yuccas with silver leaves. They were spread across the otherwise desolate landscape. After hiking most of the day we arrived back in paradise. Here a stream ran through tropical vegetation and flocks of nenes, rare Hawaiian flightless geese, roamed around the campsite. I returned to my hotel unharmed by the volcano Goddess.

After the honeymoon it was back to Las Cruces and married life. There I discovered not one but two cousins. Both had come for study at the well-regarded computer sciences department at New Mexico State. My cousin Mike was, like me, recently married. Mike may be even smarter than Bruce, having worked at Cal Tech and other prestigious institutions. Mike is not religious and is anything but orthodox, in fact, he's a bit eccentric. Of course that is the pot calling the kettle black, as I'm sure I'm considered at least the second most eccentric family member. After all we both had come out to the wilds of New Mexico. This choice was considered unusual by those family members who thought only the East was civilized. It was enough in itself to brand us different.

Mike had married a girl who was as nearly opposite from him as could be. She was from a wealthy, Orthodox Jewish family who had never been away from her family before. I was once in a similar situation. I was introduced to a gorgeous and very sweet girl from a wealthy, Orthodox Iranian family in LA by her relatives from Danville. I knew how close-knit and conservative this family was and despite how much I liked her I figured it would never work and did not pursue her. Besides, did I tell you? I hate LA!

Unlike me, Mike had chosen to try and bridge such a cultural gap. Here's how that went. Mike and his wife were friendly and seemed to get on well. We spent time with them and enjoyed their company. After we had known them a few months they went back to Detroit for a wedding. Her grandfather was very old but could still get around. He got up at the wedding and played a tune on the violin. Later someone went over to congratulate him. Grandpa seemed to be sleeping. When they tried to waken him it became obvious that he had died. What a way to go, playing a song at your granddaughter's wedding! The family began to sit shiva, seven nights of prayer at the house. By the third or fourth night Mike had had enough davening. He went out with a friend for a beer. End of marriage. Period. The marriage was over before the wedding photos even arrived. Maybe it was for the best I gave up my dreams of love with a Persian princess.

The first Christmas after our marriage we flew to the Philippines to introduce me to Tess's family. Then we went on to Thailand and Hong Kong. In Thailand my wife was often mistaken for Thai. One day she was waiting for me in the lobby of our hotel. A security guard came up to her and began to berate her in Thai. She had no idea what was the matter till someone came over to translate. The translator having heard that Tess was an American guest began to laugh when the guard responded to his inquiry. The translator turned to her still laughing and explained that the guard had been telling her that no hookers were allowed in the hotel. When informed that my wife was no such thing the guard apologized profusely. My wife didn't know whether to be mad or honored as the Thai women, perhaps most especially the hookers, are extremely beautiful.

When my daughter was seven we took my dream vacation, going to New Zealand for a month. In New Zealand we quickly discovered the real reason we had come so far. Tess had two cousins living there. One had been a mail order bride. We stayed at her house an hour south of Auckland. Our first night there we packed to go north to stay on the beach at the Bay of Islands and then went to bed. The husband kept packing while talking to himself very loudly till midnight, then one. Finally, by two am, my very mild mannered wife told him to shut the f up! The next day while driving I commented that there were no shoulders on the New Zealand roads. He responded, "No problem, mate." And proceeded to drive off the pavement and back on to show me what he meant. By the time we got back from that trip we had determined that he was mental. This opinion was affirmed when, on our return, the neighbors told us that he had accidentally once fired a bullet through the side of their house. I wouldn't even stay the night and immediately moved into a hotel. We changed our itinerary, took Tess's cousin and headed off, leaving the husband behind. We now knew that our real purpose in coming to the Antipodes was an intervention to help this couple and that this "kidnapping" of the man's wife was the first step towards that goal.

We had a great ten days as we swam in the largest geothermal pool in the southern hemisphere, saw giant Kuari trees and gorgeous gardens and had a traditional English Christmas with silly hats and horns. The best part was leaving Sima with Tessie's cousin and going to the caves at Waitomo. Walking in, we crossed a stream and could see large fresh water eels swimming below the bridge. Then we climbed down many flights of wooden stairs to the cave floor. Flowing through the cave was the source of the river we had crossed. We boarded boats and drifted out on the water and into darkness. Quickly the darkness became lit with the cold fires of the millions of glowworms attached to the ceiling above. It was like a night sky completely filled with a Milky Way that shone brightly but softly. We drifted in awe until we emerged into sunlight.

We went on to the geothermal wonderland of Rotorua. One night as we were preparing for bed there was a knock on the door. It was the left-behind husband wanting to go dancing. We convinced him to leave us to our rest. An hour later we had a call from the police. He had wrecked his car. The first question the policewoman asked was, "Is he on his medication?" If only. Before we left for the South Island we convinced Tess's cousin that she had to get professional help. It was too bad that I couldn't even converse with the man as he had had a very interesting life. He had been a forester in the colonial service serving on many Pacific islands.

Our trip to South Island began in Christchurch's gardens and went on to the World Heritage Site of Fjordland. The flight from Queenstown to Milford Sound was particularly memorable as we flew between mountain ranges and over large bodies of water. The pilot flew so close to the peaks that the wingtip was literally only a few yards from the hard granite rock. The views were beyond compare. After an overnight cruise on the Sound, we bused to a beautiful lakeside town, Te Anau, and then on to the old university town of Dunedin. One day we drove out from town to a natural area. The guide took us into and along a series of trenches straight from WWI. This allowed us to get to a hidden viewing area. From here we could see the Yellow-Eyed Penguins come in from the sea. They waddled up and off the beach and into the scrub growth to within a few feet of us. Sima was over the moon with being so close to them and with the fact that she not only picked up some feathers but also got to hold a large Penguin egg.

The next day we went out to a headland where we were privileged to see something few people see. The Royal Albatross has a wingspan of over nine feet and spends years at a time at sea. It returns to this spot only to breed. We not only saw them flying but they were trying to land. The young ones had only taken off once and they had never landed before. Their antics were quite comical. They would swoop in and then chicken out at the last moment. At long last they would crash land, tumbling over in the thick green grass before coming to a stop, looking around with a bewildered expression at being back on an unfamiliar earth.

The troublesome husband also came back to earth. His wife got him on medication and they had many good years together after we left. A successful intervention and the trip of a lifetime, together in one memorable time "down under."

Tess and I liked living in a small college town in the midst of a lot of open desert from which rose Sky Islands, mountains with forested summits. I would take Sierra Club hikes around the area. I took my 85 year-old father on one to Lake Lucero on the White Sands Missile Range. Lake Lucero is a dry lake covered with gypsum. The many large crystals rise as sculptured forms that sparkle in the sun and are very beautiful. The wind blows from the west across the lake and deposits the gypsum down wind. Over eons this has been the source of the gypsum that formed the White Sands of the National Monument. I also took a Sierra Club hike into the San Andres Wildlife Refuge, which is closed to the public. The refuge encompasses the mountains south of the Organs and to the west of the White Sands. We went up a canyon that became wetter and wetter and lusher and lusher. That very canyon may have been the site of one of the West's iconic novels, "Fire on the Mountain." The author, Edward Abbey, was one of the leading voices lamenting the loss of the Old West and all it represented. This novel is the story of the taking in World War II of ranches from the original settlers, in order to create the Missile Range. In the novel a young boy learns to love the land and then watches his grandfather's destruction in a vain attempt to save it. Ultimately, in 2014, large parts of the federal lands around Las Cruces were protected by the creation of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.

**Chapter 32**

A snake in the grass

Everyone wants to hear a snakebite story. Perhaps the fascination lies in the fact that the snake is the personification of evil, a la Adam and Eve. At the time of this tale I had lived in the Southwest for some twenty years and always respected but did not overly fear snakes. I had seen many rattlers and even had a couple rattle at me but it was the proverbial snake in the grass that got me. Here is another cautionary tale.

If the Monday Night Football game hadn't sucked I would have had no story to tell. But it did and now I do. And if I hadn't been wearing flip-flops this tale might not have been told. But I was and so now I am.

It was just before dark when I put on my flip-flops, gave up on the game and went into the yard to enjoy the cool air of a balmy autumn evening. We lived on the edge of the desert yet our yard was green and lively with trees and flowers galore. I had just ended my circumnavigation of the yard and was back at my front door where I had begun to prune the jasmine vines. I was facing the alcove of the entrance when something, I know not what, drew my attention to my feet. In the dim light I could barely make out a coiled body with a head, its reptilian eyes coldly staring at me. It was a small to medium sized rattler, yet I had heard no rattle.

Instinctively I jumped backwards, and it was a mighty leap. I don't know if this saved me from a worse bite or caused me to be bit in the first place. But I do believe the snake felt trapped against the building and would have struck in any event. Whatever the case, I was snake bit. I felt a pain in my toe, which almost immediately became overwhelming as it began to travel up my foot. The nerve from my toe to my ankle was now on fire. When I looked back to the doorway the snake was gone. So I limped to the door and leaned on the doorbell to wake my wife.

She was fast asleep and it took what seemed many minutes for her to come. Meanwhile, I hopped on one foot as the pain kept doing what seemed impossible, it kept increasing in intensity. When she finally opened the door, I said, "I've been bitten by a snake. Let's go to the emergency room." No, that should read that I screamed the news in agony. Anyway she got the message and went to get dressed while I called the emergency room and asked what to do. They said nothing except come in.

I hopped to the car and sat with my leg out the car window, as I couldn't bear to have my leg down, since normal blood flow made the pain intolerable. Although the hospital was less than five minutes away, the ride was interminable. At the entrance, I hopped to the nearest wheelchair and then rode to admitting.

My first demand was, "Give me Demerol immediately!" Sorry, that was actually "Give me some fucking Demerol now!!!" Instead, the clerk began to ask me questions. My wife answered for me, as the pain just kept increasing and traveling up my leg. I could barely keep from screaming and again and again politely asked for some narcotics.

I had made enough noise that I was quickly taken to the examining room. Upon examination I had a single pinprick at the end of the second biggest toe on my right foot. They squeezed it and a single drop of blood came out. The pain of that was nothing compared to the application of an alcohol swab. To my dying day I will always shudder at the memory of that pain. It was the red-hot fires of hell along the nerves of my foot and leg.

They asked me if I was sure the injury was a snakebite. The resulting stream of obscenities finally elicited an immediate shot of Demerol, followed by anti-histamines. Then they observed. Over the next hour a series of magic marker marks slowly rose up my ankle and leg. These marks showed the swelling progress till it finally stopped with my leg swollen to double it's normal size from the knee to the toe. They released me with a narcotic prescription and instructions to return in 24 hours. They would then test me to see if the swelling had cut off circulation. If so the muscle sheath would be cut to relieve the pressure and prevent gangrene.

The swelling came partly from an allergic reaction, which the antihistamines treated, but the venom is also hemorrhagic which causes both bruising and swelling. The pain was from a neurotoxin. The twenty-some, other enzymes, proteins and peptides that make up the venom are mostly of unknown effect. A high dose of venom is needed for lethality and usually comes when the venom is injected directly into a blood vessel. Of 8000 venomous snakebites in the US each year only 12-15 are lethal. In 20-25% of bites no venom is injected. I had no luck there. My symptoms were in line with a bite from a Western Diamondback rattlesnake. Treatment is controversial though all agree not to cut and suck and that while whiskey may make you feel a little better it does not counteract the effects of the venom. About 5% of people will go into anaphylactic shock with respiratory arrest. These people get anti-venom. The side effects of the anti-venom are considerable, as is its cost, so its use is limited to such extreme reactions.

Despite the Demerol the trip home was painful, as was the trip from car to bed. I had to have my leg straight up in the air at all times possible because as soon as the leg came down the blood would flow in and the pain would become unbearable. I spent the next 2 weeks in bed with my leg propped up on top of half a dozen pillows. This was punctuated by the torture of hopping, with crutches, to the car in order to go for medical treatment. The treatment was in fact torture right out of a Vincent Price movie and would have been a Nazi's delight. The doctor would prod and poke my leg to ensure there was still circulation. My enthusiastic responses must have been immensely reassuring to him.

When we returned from the hospital my wife called a home health care agency. After she had arranged for assistance, she specified the following: "I want the largest, ugliest nurse you have." The voice on the phone laughed and said that that was not an uncommon request. My helper was very nice but any dreams I might have had of being nursed back to health by a gorgeous, voluptuous angel in white went unfulfilled.

Finally, after 2 weeks the swelling began to subside and I could have the leg lowered for short periods. These gradually became longer till I could put weight on it. Then I walked with a cane. It was nearly 4 months before I could walk normally. It was nearly a year before the leg stopped giving me problems. My last difficulty came during a civil rights trial I tried for a plaintiff. At the end of the first day, which had been long and tiring, the judge got up to leave the bench and everyone stood. Everyone except me. My leg would not cooperate. I could see him scowl at me as he left. In the morning I explained and like everyone else he was fascinated and elicited details of the ordeal, while forgiving me my unintentional transgression. To this day my right leg, the right leg of a right-legged soccer player, is still noticeably smaller than the left. I also have had low back and hamstring problems, which I attribute to having kept the leg elevated for so long.

Yet I'm very lucky. I didn't go into shock. I didn't need surgery to prevent gangrene. I suffered no tissue damage. I can do anything I did before the bite. And the back problems have greatly improved. I can only imagine the results of a bite bigger than a pinprick or one not at the farthest extremity of the body.

A Lakota Sioux healer, who was my masseuse at one time, told me that the snakebite was a blessing given to me by the snake. She was bitten when she was 8 or 9 years old. The snake hung onto her thigh by its fangs till pried loose. A medicine man, a special one who treats only snakebites, treated her for the days she was in delirium. She survived with a massive scar on the back of her thigh. The medicine man said she was blessed and she attributes to this the fact that she has hardly been sick a day in her life since the bite. If only. I must hope that other snake blessings have and will manifest in my life.

That was the first rattler we had seen in our area but it was not to be the last. Construction had begun nearby that was soon to take our house from being on the edge of the city to being in the middle of it. These activities disturbed the snakes. They began to move to seek new habitat and that was often to be our house and yard.

One day I opened the garage door to find the largest rattler I'd ever seen stretched along a table against the back wall. He must have been over five feet long and was thick across the middle with many rattles on his tail which he rattled ominously. I quickly closed the door. I went in and made sure no one would come in through the door from the house. Then I called animal control. When the officer arrived I opened the garage door and no snake was to be seen. The officer took one glance and said, "He's gone." I responded, "No way. The door was closed." He replied, "He went under it." I gaped at him and said, "Impossible. He's still here." He insisted that there was no problem and left. Great. They send me an animal control officer who's afraid of snakes.

I closed the door and called animal control again. I berated a supervisor who then agreed to send another officer out the next day. When he arrived we opened the door to find the reptile again stretched across his favorite spot. This guy said, "He's a biggun." This officer marched right in and stuck out his pole to near the snake's head. He then worked the loop at the end of the pole around the snake's neck, cinched it tight and lifted the snake into a snake proof container. It was a piece of cake. He was a real pro. I couldn't have done it but then I'm not an animal control officer and I hope the first officer wasn't one for much longer.

I have no animosity towards snakes. They are beautiful creatures and a part of nature, which means they are a part of us. We just need to leave them and their habitats alone and to be careful when in their world.

**Chapter 33**

Twelve Things You Never Want to Hear Your Doctor Say

In the memoir of an aged hippie, you should have expected a chapter on the favorite topic of us old geezers, our health, and unfortunately I have a lot of experiences to relate. I'm way beyond the usual list of ten, so here are the top twelve things, in chronological order, I never wanted to hear from my doctors.

#1 "This is the way we do it in this town."

Soon after I had started my own legal practice I began to have digestive problems and abdominal pain. My doctor said I needed a colonoscopy and that they didn't use anesthesia in this community. Like a foolish sheep I accepted her supposed wisdom and submitted to a procedure she couldn't finish because the pain was too severe. When I moved to Albuquerque my new doc said, "No Anesthesia! What was she, a Nazi?" He got my acid reflux quickly under control.

#2 "It's got a name but we don't know what causes it or how to treat it."

One day I was swimming in Las Cruces when I got dizzy. By the time I got home I was flat on my back for three days. I had always been prone to motion sickness when traveling but never anything like this. It persisted and I was diagnosed with Mennierre's disease. (Defined as chronic recurrent vertigo, affecting 2 out of 1000 people or .2% of the population. Aren't I special?) That gave the problem a name but no effective treatment. Over the years I had long periods with no or temporary mild symptoms punctuated by some severe episodes of the disease.

#3 "Sorry I'm not in right now. I'm in jail."

I did find one really good doctor in Las Cruces who was a wonderful diagnostician. One day I read in the paper that he had been arrested for murder! Twenty years before he had gone hunting with his best friend and shot him. It was ruled an accidental death. He moved from the East Coast to New Mexico and married the widow. The victim's family kept on pursuing the case until they finally got evidence and a good prosecutor. My doctor was convicted and sent to prison. Some doctors think they are God and others clearly demonstrate that they are just human, or perhaps less than human.

#4 "You have cancer."

In February of 2006, following the most distinctive digital prostate exam in my doctor's career, I was diagnosed with aggressive Prostate cancer, 8 on a scale of 10. My PSA was not elevated. I was to find that such a diagnosis is not all negative. For one thing it remarkably focuses one's mind and makes clear what is important and what is not. Everyone needs a good kick in the ass every once in a while. My doc says patients react to a diagnosis like this in one of three ways: they ignore it, they fall apart or they ask, "So what do we do about it?" I immediately set out to learn all I could and to take the best actions necessary to defeat this enemy.

#5 "You've been exposed to high levels of radiation."

While I was dealing with my cancer Lynn's wife Monica, who also grew up in Illinois, told me to check the American Medical Association (AMA) website for Vermilion County's exposure to fallout from the open air nuclear testing of the 1950's. Sure enough we had been downwind of the Nevada Test Site. While growing up and drinking our milk like good little boys and girls we had been getting steadily radiated. The resulting uptake of radioactive iodine went to our thyroids. My friend John was at a poker game in Danville where every single person had thyroid problems. The Cold War lives on.

#6 "It's one of the worst cases I've seen in 20 years of practice."

It took me months to get in to see an endocrinologist to get my thyroid checked. When I did he told me I had Grave's Disease and was hyperthyroid. The Doc told me to look at my hands. I had been dropping things but I hadn't noticed the very distinct tremors in my hands. I'd always been high-strung, come on I am Jewish, but my poor family had had to deal with ever more anxiety and nervousness as I had become more and more hyper over the years. It was a relief to know that it hadn't been me but my body going nuts. I had my thyroid nuked and went on artificial hormones. Now I'm back to being my easily excitable self. But the nuclear disarmament movement and the nuclear test ban treaty came too late for me and for many others. These A bomb tests devastated nearby communities and a movie crew that was filming near the Test Site and were probably responsible for John Wayne's death.

# 7 "I can't believe you have two terrible diseases at the same time."

When your old doc who has seen it all tells you your condition is the worst ever and then sympathizes with the fact that you have yet another on top of that one, you know you've hit the daily double of being fucked up.

#8 "I really thought I had gotten it all."

Cancer surgery failed, as did the follow up radiation treatment. My cancer was upgraded to a 9. If at first you don't succeed...

#9 "Your case is so unusual that I want to write it up."

Following anesthesia for surgery for a right inguinal hernia, probably a result of the prostate surgery, I had a severe episode of Mennierre's disease. The severe symptoms had been going on for over a month when I followed a friend's advice and saw Dr. Stephen Weiss, a Board Certified family practice physician, who is also a classical homoeopathist who practices and teaches integrative medicine. I had tried integrative medicine before but the doc had not been a good fit and/or I wasn't ready for alternative treatments yet. Now out of adversity came a gift. I had found the partner I needed to help deal with all my various medical mysteries.

Dr. Weiss later found my Mennierre's so interesting that he wrote my case up:

"His story could probably feature in Ripley's Believe It or Not...I treated him with Cocculus, one of homeopathy's premier vertigo remedies...His symptoms got worse for 36 hours after (simply) holding the bottle of medicine in his hand without even ingesting it and then the symptoms vanished."

Dr. Weiss had never seen anyone so sensitive to a homeopathic remedy before. The "Homeopathic aggravation," an initial worsening of symptoms, had been a positive sign that the remedy was working. Ingestion is the normal treatment modality in homeopathy but I had not ingested any of the remedy. My cure truly seemed a miracle. The few problems I have since had with Mennierre's have also responded to simply holding the bottle for a minute or so. I treat the remedy like kryptonite and keep it far away from me unless needed and then I have my wife handle it. Homeopathy has also been the most effective remedy for me in many other instances.

#10 "No bread for you."

After many years of digestive problems, I was found to be highly sensitive to gluten. The result of going gluten free has been a drastic improvement in my health. I attribute the fact that I was able to write this book, in large part, to this change of diet. But I have to tell you I'd kill for a nice fresh dinner roll, with butter!

#11 "You should have recovered from the surgery by now."

About halfway through the first draft of this book the retina in my right eye tore. Within two hours I was having emergency laser eye surgery to tack the retinal tear back together. The doctor commented that I had the highest pain threshold of any patient she'd ever seen. My response to her was, "Well, I guess practice makes perfect." After a few days, when the resulting double vision did not disappear, the doctor commented how odd this was and began some tests. The tests showed that Grave's disease had attacked and enlarged my eye muscles. I had adapted to this but my adaptation was knocked out by the surgery and the result was double vision.

I turned to Dr. Sam Berne, a holistic optometrist. I had to borrow a friend's four-wheel drive to get to my appointment. Dr. Sam lives outside Santa Fe in the forest at the end of a private road. His office is next to his house and shaped like a yurt. Outside is a compostable out house. Following his treatment, I made more progress in 6 to 8 weeks than many of his patients make in 6 to 12 months. One of the eye exercises prescribed was to look at 3D stereograms. A 3D stereogram is an optical illusion created by the spacing and repetition of forms and colors. Once one focuses properly, by converging or diverging the eyes, a flat picture suddenly appears as if three dimensional and hidden patterns can also appear. I use these images so as to learn to focus my eyes correctly by converging them and to thereby eliminate the double vision. Some other uses for the stereograms are for computer eyestrain, sports and meditation.

A key treatment for my eyes is the use of the Bemer machine from Lichtenstein. This machine uses an electromagnetic pulse to improve microcirculation. This leads to improved functioning of self-regulating mechanisms and a strengthening of the immune system, among other things. For my eye, improved circulation provides hydration and oxygenation. The Bemer has many other benefits, including a clinically proven increase in bone density, alleviation of muscular pains and increased relaxation and sleep. NASA has recently contracted for its use by astronauts. I have immediately noticed improvement in many areas, especially in my hands and feet. My extremities were always cold. They are now near normal temperature and circulation, even though it is winter.

#12 "Your many ailments are so interesting, I'm thinking of writing you up yet again."

Well, at least, I'm interesting because I've also found extraordinary treatments that have been effective. It is amazing to me that I've lived nine years with an aggressive cancer and still have had no metastatic disease or any symptoms of the disease at all. My cancer marker, my PSA level, has been stable for years. Stability is defined as a PSA doubling time of less than a year. Recently the velocity of the rise in the PSA level even fell dramatically, which it had done once before.

If I'd listened to my urologist, I would have been on hormone therapy, otherwise known as chemical castration, for many years now. I did have one dose just before my surgery and suffered terrible hot flashes and, as you may imagine, there are other even worse side effects. I have instead gone down the road less traveled with excellent results. I've been on a low sugar, organic and, of course, gluten-free diet while using reverse osmosis water. Daily I do tai chi, pray, meditate and visualize my immune system killing the cancer. I try to walk on a daily basis and to swim 3 times a week, along with a dip in the hot tub and a steam bath. I have regular massage, chiropractic, acupuncture and ortho-bionomy/cranial sacral treatments. I take close to 50 pills and potions a day. I spend two and a half hours most every evening taking a teaspoon of homeopathic remedy every 15 minutes. I take 25 to 35 grams of Vitamin C intravenously once a week and a 2 gram lyposypheric oral dose daily. Multiple Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling's prescription of Vitamin C for cancer could not be effective until the administration of such high doses of Vitamin C was possible. A side benefit is that I have had almost no viral/bacterial infections since I began IV Vitamin C. I've just added hydrogen peroxide daily through a nebulizer and the Bemer treatment as well. So I hope for even better results in the future. Almost none of these alternative treatments are covered by insurance.

Integrative medicine can be a great alternative, and may be the only alternative, to some medical treatments. I've been lucky to have great practitioners who I also consider partners and friends. The key to success is to find the right practitioners and to keep trying different treatments until you find the right one. When I was first diagnosed, I prayed to live long enough to see my daughter graduate from college. Thank God that prayer was granted. Then I prayed to be able to write this book and, if you're reading it, two down. Now I pray I will be able to write my novel and we'll see about that. I've been extraordinarily blessed to have had such success in learning how to heal my physical body.

**Chapter 34**

Union

"For those who have the eye to see and the ear to hear."

Ram Dass

When you grow old it is comforting and helpful to have a solid spiritual base beneath you. I had continued on my spiritual path while living in New Mexico, which is a truly spiritual place. My wife loved for me to go on retreats. I would return in a calm and meditative state and it would be weeks before it mostly wore off. Yet some remembrance of where I had been and to where I could return always remained.

While I had tried many other paths, Buddhism became the dominant path in my middle years. But Judaism always was there and grew co-equal. It is not uncommon for people, even teachers of Buddhism, to be both Jewish and Buddhist. There is no conflict between the teachings or between any two true spiritual paths.

I have attended several seven-day silent retreats, most notably at Spirit Rock in Marin County, California and at Lama. The most memorable retreat was at Lama with Ram Dass. In my private interview Ram Dass recommended that I abandon the high-energy path of Sufism for the quiet path of Vipassana Buddhism. It was sage advice I've tried to follow. I'll never forget being in the Dome at Lama listening to him spell-bound as he recited from memory for two and ½ hours the Ramayana, flying monkeys and all. It must have been like that in rural Indian villages over the centuries as storytellers passed on the communal wisdom. We were all blessed one night as we stood around a bonfire and began to throw in it all the baggage we needed to rid our spiritual selves of. At the exact moment we did so a shooting star streaked across the heavens over our heads.

After the Ram Das retreat at Lama I meandered east, explored the Red River Valley and came down onto the plains. I checked into a neat old historic hotel on one of the two plazas in Las Vegas, New Mexico to spend the night. I had a wonderful sleep, which is unusual for me. I am very sensitive to noise and this can become a real problem when I'm traveling. (Hey, I'm just a sensitive guy.) So I felt great when I went down for breakfast. I mentioned my exceptionally good night's sleep to the waitress and she was astonished. She told me that there had been a Fourth of July carnival and fair on the Plaza going on under my window till late the night before! I heard nothing. I've never achieved a higher state of consciousness than I did at the Ram Dass retreat. I long to return to that place but at least I know it is there.

I can't go on retreats any more as it is just too difficult and uncomfortable. To illustrate that point there is the following tale. I was coming home from a retreat at Spirit Rock and, as usual, the vegetarian menu had been hard on me. I said to the lady who was giving me a lift, "That vegetarian meatloaf was the worst thing I've ever tasted." She responded, "I thought it was so good I asked the chef for the recipe." Different strokes.

In Las Cruces I began to go to my local synagogue. After awhile I was put in charge of the Temple cemetery. I found out why stand-up comedy is addictive when I made my annual report to the congregation. It consisted of a deadpan, "All is quiet at the cemetery." The resulting burst of laughter from the crowd gave me a high that is still memorable. However, I don't know if other audiences would have been as easy to please. Then I became a Temple Board member. At one Board meeting everyone turned to me and said, "Your It." Given no choice in the matter I became President for two years. Being President of a Reformed Jewish Temple is like trying to herd cats, some of whom wear yarmulkes (skullcaps) and all of whom like to argue. Nevertheless I started a campaign, which resulted in the lovely new Temple on the heights across from my old house. I can now claim to have held high office and to be a politician but given today's climate that is hardly politic.

Whether Jewish or Buddhist, Muslim or Theosophist, we are all united in the infinite light that began with the Big Bang and continues to shine through nebulae and galaxy, redwood and human, without beginning or end, just a brilliantly illuminated now.

**Chapter 35**

Reunion

"Your strength is in your union."

Longfellow, "Hiawatha"

The above is true whether it applies to a marriage, a co-op, a friendship or a family. I was instrumental in reuniting my genetic families and continue to reunite with my spiritual family at periodic reunions of the Jordan House alumni. This book is a reunion of sorts, of my present with my past. And every day is a reunion with the knowledge that I've been all one and will return there. For after every forgetting comes a remembrance and I only need be here now for now is where I always am.

I was a key player in organizing my mother's family reunion in 1999 at a beautiful resort, Seven Springs, in the hills outside Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In 2008 I helped get my father's family reunited. And when they gathered in Chicago a family mystery was at last solved. My paternal grandfather came to Chicago in 1906 from a Hungarian village on the Czech border. My father was three at the time and was later astonished to find out, at the age of 24, that he was not a citizen, his father not having done the proper paperwork. After living his whole life as an American Dad had to go through the naturalization process as if he were a new immigrant. I never met my grandfather and always thought he must have been a son of a bitch and done something terrible as my father never talked about him. It wasn't till this reunion that I heard my grandfather's story.

I began talking to an old man. He told me he was a cousin and had grown up in my father's household as if he had been a brother. When I asked about my grandfather this is what he told me. My grandfather was married with three children when his wife died. According to Jewish law, following what is set down in the Torah, an unmarried sister is obligated to take the dead wife's place and care for the children. My grandmother was in love and hoped to marry another man. Instead she felt compelled by the family to marry my grandfather. However, it may have been better if she hadn't because she married him grudgingly.

Despite all this they had three more children. My grandfather had a successful shoe shop and was a good parent and provider. He was one of the few wise enough to see the Depression coming. He sacrificed his position as an independent businessman and took the lowliest of jobs, as a janitor in the public schools, in order to ensure that he had a steady paycheck throughout the Depression. My grandfather did nothing wrong other than remarrying according to tradition. Ultimately the couple divorced and the children were forced to choose between the parents. Three children went with each parent. My father and his sisters chose their mother. The two sides of the family lived in Chicago for the next sixty years without ever having anything to do with each other. Their descendants were then happily reunited at this reunion and I learned that my grandfather had been an admirable man and not a despicable one.

After Ellen had stayed with me at Jordan House she wrote me the following:

"The Jordan House is beyond my wildest expectations! I hope you have the conviction (and I'm sure you all do) to make it last and be a part of everyone."

Forty -three years later Jordan is still alive and in us all.

Jesse wrote, "Over the years we spawned a 'family' that numbered over a hundred individuals, each amazing in his or her own way." Besides doctors, lawyers, business persons and artists we have Jordanites in government, from the city level to the top of the Obama administration, an architect, an Oxford don, the head of a prestigious scientific institute, the head of an eco-products business in Bali and a consultant to industry in Munich. And now we have their children to add to the mix.

Ron wrote, "..a large part of my role (at Jordan House) was as an observer and admirer of the most concentrated group of fantastic people that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Presumably all of us were influenced-or in my case-inspired by those around us." The inspiration continues as we bring back and rekindle the spirit that was. We've had reunions periodically since 1993, most have been at Stanford Sierra Camp. This is a beautiful conference center southwest of Lake Tahoe at the end of the long and scenic Fallen Leaf Lake. The camp backs up to cliffs that mark the boundary of a Wilderness Area. Our last reunion was in October of 2013 and the fall colors in the Sierra were spectacular. We look greyer in that reunion picture and our hikes are now designed with age in mind but the sessions of playing and singing to the tunes of the Grateful Dead are just as spirited and treasured. We look forward to 2018 at Fallen Leaf Lake.

To be Jordanites we all were and are truly blessed.

**Chapter 36**

"...[T]he Sixties...wasn't the answer.

It just gave us a glimpse of the possibilities."

John Lennon

The Sixties transformed a Midwestern, small town boy into a hippie and my unorthodox ways would carry on throughout my life. I danced to the beat of a different drummer (usually a rock 'n roll drummer). This change of individual consciousness extended to the collective as America's culture was also transformed in a multitude of ways, both positive and negative. Some changes had unintended consequences. For example, the end of the draft divorced the population as a whole from the military and the consequences of any war. The result has been the longest wars in American history. I believe we need to reinstate the draft; along with alternative national service, such as the Peace Corps. And it can all be tied to college financial aid.

Unlike prior generations hippies like me didn't fight a war we fought against one. We didn't end slavery; we sought to ensure the legal rights of the descendants of the slaves, and those of women, gays and other minorities. We didn't explore the wild western frontier; we voyaged into the unknowns of the mind and spirit. We didn't seek to exploit the earth but sought to make us one with the Earth Mother who sustains us all. It was exhilarating and vital. We built a foundation for equality, true spirituality and environmental sustainability that allows for our survival and evolution and must obtain full fruition.

But "whereas for some people the prospect of a transformation of consciousness is charged with delight and excitement, for many the idea of change produces fear." All this change brought about a right wing reaction that put in power old white men who don't believe in science but do believe that corporations are people and African Americans shouldn't vote. They have the power and the money, the religious fanatics and the corporate shills, and the fears of many to feed on.

But demographics and time are shifting power to those with a new consciousness. Many young people are blind to distinctions of race, sex, and religion, and many, like my daughter, are an amalgamation of cultures, races, and religions. We have become globally connected by immigration, by the Internet, and by an interdependent global economy. The environmental movement has therefore necessarily gone global and is stronger than ever. The theory of evolution states that when an organism's environment changes it is an inexorable fact of nature that the organism evolves or dies. The old white men who cling to power are a dying breed. Denying evolution does not stop it and human consciousness will continue to evolve, if only given the time to do so.

An evolution of consciousness can end the separation of each from the other, man from the earth and the material from the spiritual. A new theory in physics is that the universe is holographic. Each is a part of the whole and contains all the information that is contained in the whole. Therefore, no part can be separated from any other part. This interconnection explains psychic phenomenon, such as the ability of separated identical twins to access the same information across distance. Our powers, now, and in the future, may be more than we can imagine.

But for now, industrial growth, not sustainable living, is still the dominant goal of society and the need to quickly act to prevent ecological catastrophe is denied. It is a race against time to achieve a new consciousness that will protect the planet, and with it ourselves, before it is too late. A recent study in the journal "Science" found that four of 9 ecological boundaries are in the danger zone: climate change, loss of biodiversity, improvident land use, and altered nitrogen cycle. The entire planet is at risk of being destabilized. The scientists stated, "We're running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist." Many of us have at least recognized the problem. Solutions, however unpalatable, are still available. The problem is that there is no political will to act. Action can only come from a change of consciousness that runs throughout society; a realization that we are the planet and that in protecting it we protect ourselves. The Sixties have at least given us the hope that we can produce such an awakening in time to avoid a dystopian future at best and extinction at worst.

My exercise with 3D stereograms is an exercise in changing consciousness. You train your eyes and mind "to see in a new way", soft-focused vision. As described in the 17th -century classic Japanese exposition on sword fighting, "The Book of Five Rings", there are two levels of reality. Our normal observation, ken, is of "surface appearances and external movement." Soft focus, or kan, is "the deeper seeing into the essence of things", an expansion of our visual and mental fields. To access 3D images and the deeper levels of reality, one must simply breathe, relax and smile. Can it all be so simple? Was Henry Miller right? Need we only open up and relax?

I find that a soft focus changes my awareness by extending not only my visual field but my mental and spiritual fields as well. With a soft focus, I no longer focus only on what is right in front of me. I am now softly open to all that is around me and my increased visual field allows me to see things never seen before. And then my awareness of being an individual encased in a limited, fragile body, alone with my private thoughts, disappears and I am all I can see and all I can imagine and all of it is myself. My consciousness expands to encompass all of the world and all its myriad forms of fields and fountains, plants and animals, oceans and clouds. Then my mind can go beyond the earth and into space with its multitude of stars in galaxy after galaxy and then on into infinite universes in every dimension. Once fully conscious of this reality humanity will treat all creation not as our own but as ourselves. May it be so.

**Chapter 37**

Conclusion

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought...

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end."

Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

Twenty some years ago I said I was going to write a book. Here it is, though not the one I intended, it'll do. A book could only come when I was physically and spiritually ready and then it would be what it would be. It was its own spiritual force as, over and over, just as I needed a fact or a concept it appeared, whether as a newspaper article or in sleep. It was a compulsion, one that drove me from the first page to the last. And I needed to harness this driving force in order to overcome the many physical obstacles between me and my goal. As promised, the writing of this book has been a healing process.

One day when my father was in his late eighties I took him to a park in the country. We stopped and strolled around a pond. A family with several children was fishing there. The old man of the group saw us and immediately came over to us. He peered at my dad and said, "Doc, Is that you? I thought you were dead." He shook my Dad's hand and thanked him for saving his life. He had been classified as a hopeless psychiatric case and put on the back ward at the VA. My father had seen something in him and had taken on the responsibility of treating him. And now he was at the pond with his grandchildren. It was a moving tribute to my father's life.

The nearest I may get to such a moment is this book. Here my life comes into focus and stands revealed. I can judge only that it was a good-hearted attempt that has left me without real regret and with wonderful family and friends. I find that more than enough for me.

So once the long hair and hallucinogens, bell-bottoms and beads, free love and communes, naivete and youth, had all passed, what remained of the hippie? Could it be someone who still lives on inside of you or me? Or in our children? Does an old hippie never die? Does he just dream away? If so, I've done my dreaming in this book. Now that I've revealed all my foibles and follies, and perhaps also shown more than a few commendable actions, I can now relax in the knowledge that the dribbles, stumbles and forgetfulness of old age makes us all out to be fools. But fools who while alone with their memories can still glimpse the oneness that was and ever is. And my memories are now yours too. I hope you glimpsed herein at least some of the wonders I beheld.

SHALOM

The End

**Endnotes**

 Retrieved from www.webmd.com (2011, June 16).

 Miller, T. (2011, December 19). _Hippies and American Values_. Knoxville, TN: Univ. of Tennessee Press.

 Epstein, J. (2007, July 7-8). Review of the book _Sin in the Second City_ by K. Abbott. _Wall Street Journal_.

 My main sources on the Sixties were: Brokaw, T. (2007). _Boom_. New York, NY: Random House; Unger, I. and D. Unger, Eds. (1998). _The Times Were a Changin ', A Sixties Reader_. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press; and _The Sixties,_ retrieved from www.wikipedia.com.

 Wels, S. (1999). _Stanford - Portrait of a University_. Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Association, p. 100.

 Ibid. p. 99.

 Lattin, D. (2010). _The Harvard Psychedelic Club_. New York, NY: Harper Collins, p. 3.

 _Chicago Tribune_ (2014, May 29).

 _Trad._

 Gross, D. (2009). _The Beatles_. Retrieved from www.wikipedia.com quoting Robert Greenfield, former writer for Rolling Stone magazine.

 Wels, S. (1999). _Stanford - Portrait of a University_. Stanford, CA: Stanford Alumni Association, p. 109.

 Ibid. p. 107-8.

 Ibid. p. 105.

 Retreived from www.stanforddaily.com/2012/01/25/co-op timeline.

 Retrieved from www.stanford.edu/housing.

 Leary, T., R. Metzner and R. Alpert. (1964). _The Psychedelic Experience, a Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead._ New Hyde Park, NY: University Books (Now Kensington Publishing Co.).

 Ibid. p. 13.

 Ibid.

 Bjerklie, S. (2011, July 16). _What are they worth?_ Retrieved from www.metroactive.com.

 For a good history of the environmental movement see _A Fierce Green Fire._ (2014). PBS, American Masters.

 Thomas Traherne, 1637-1674.

 Hillerman, T. (2006, December). Mile-High Multiculturalism. _Smithsonian Magazine_.

 Hillerman, T., Ed. (1976). _The Spell of New Mexico_. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

 _National Park Service_ brochure. (1985).

 Ibid.

 Ibid.

 Twichell, H. (1992). _Northwest Epic._ NY: St. Martin's Press. pp. 43-7.

 Flecker, E. J. _Hassan_.

 _National Park Service_ brochure. (1974).

 Waggoner, D. (1985, September 23). _A Remorseless Murder_. Retrieved from www.people.com.

 de Leeuw, S. (1985, October 5). Letter to the Editor, _Los Angeles Times_.

 I was living in Jordan but often went to the trailers, usually to divide up some grass.

 Karel wrote the Calculus textbook.

 Robinson, S. P. (1978). e-mail to author.

 Schmidt, J. (2001). _Disciplined Minds_. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Roman and Littlefield.

 Ibid. p. 259.

 Cruz Smith, M. (1981, Dec. 6). Defiling A Pueblo "Church" for Profit. _New York Times_.

 Ibid.

 Ibid.

 Kamiya, G. (2013). _Cool Gray City of Love_. New York, NY: Bloomsbury. p. 169.

 Ibid.

 Ibid. p. 170

 Voorhees, S. (2007). _The Lumiere Affair._ New York, NY: Simon & Shuster.

 Weiss, Dr. S. (2012, Sept-Oct). Spin Doctor. _Truly Alive,_ New Mexico Edition. p. 14.

 _The Harvard Psychedelic Club_ by D. Lattin, p. 227. Quoting Ralph Metzner.

 Begun in 1969.

 Retrieved from www.earthweek.com (2015, January 23).

 Magic Eye, Inc. and M. Grossman, O.D, L. AC. (2004). _Magic Eye, Beyond 3D_. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

**About the Book**

In 1968 San Francisco and the counterculture transformed, Rand Greenfield, a naive 18-year old preppie from a small town in the Midwest into a hippie almost overnight. Here are the tales of a time of seeking magic and of the times the author lived through and where they took him, the memories of an unconventional life.

"Rand has led a colorful life (to put it mildly) and writes about it with a warm, compelling tone... It's both a trip down memory lane for some and a travelogue of interior space and exterior beauty... I found myself repeatedly saying, 'Wow, he did that while stoned?'"

\- Idony Lisle, Ph.D., Book Editor

Rand's early tales range from New Year's Eve with the Grateful Dead to an acid trip through the bardos of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; from founding the first co-op house at Stanford with forty other co-ed dreamers to partying with the Mothers of Invention.

After completing his law degree, the law took the author up the Alaska Highway to assist in the Massage Parlor Murder trial and over the seas to help defend Israel's environment. Settling in New Mexico Rand helped save the sacred lands of Jemez Pueblo while sufi dancing with Ram Das at Lama. The author also describes his wanderings in the wilderness from Mt. Sinai to Mt. McKinley and from Glacier Bay to Carlsbad Caverns. Less fortunate happenings include: one friend's notorious murder and another's imprisonment, student rioting and corporate skullduggery and proverbial as well as actual snakes in the grass.

All these memories and more are set forth herein and the author's reflections on what hippiedom wrought and where it has taken him are here as well; so come see how his consciousness, and the country's, changed and perhaps yours may change too.

**About the Author**

Rand L. Greenfield has a BA in English from Stanford and a J. D. with a certificate in Natural Resources policy from the University of New Mexico. He practiced law in Anchorage, Alaska, Portland, Oregon, Jerusalem, Israel, and Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces, New Mexico. He now lives in retirement in Albuquerque with his wife, Tessie, and his dog Buddy. This is the author's first book. He is now working on a novel.
