THROWBACK THURSDAYS AND OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Four

My Gloria Steinem look, c. 1971 (Photo by Doug Leighton)

Welcome to my past.

I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.

I can’t remember when friends first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays on Facebook.

Before long, readers started telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea, this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color, involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.

I next considered a website, but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.

Since I’ve long been familiar with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing about 20-30 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size as a result of importing material from other sources)

These tales are not in any kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.

Welcome to my past.

(Photo by Laura Goldman)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. GIRLS IN PANTS

2. TALES OF THE SIXTIES—COAST TO COAST

[THE "YOU CANT MAKE THIS STUFF UP" TRILOGY:]

3. GETTIN' LEGAL WITH DR. HIP

4. HANGIN' WITH MR NATURAL

5. GUNS, LSD, AND A BUMPY RIDE

6. BARBARA AND HOWARD: 60 YEARS APART AND TOGETHER

7. OUT OF MY DEPTH WITH JOHN AND TONY

8. MY ONLY APPEARANCE IN LIFE MAGAZINE

[THE "HEY KIDS! LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!" TRILOGY:]

9. KID STUFF

10. THE PORTABLE FOLK FESTIVAL

11. DR. CALIFORNIA'S GOLDEN GATE REMEDY

12. A GENTLE BRUSH WITH HISTORY

13. THE TIME TO THINK ABOUT RETIREMENT, Or,

EVOLUTION OF THE BARN PEOPLE

14. HIJINKS WITH THE GIRLS, OR, YOU GO, GRAMMY

15. ERIC TALERICO LEARNS TO HUG, Or,

THE MAN WITH THE LUMINOUS BRAIN

16. BEFORE THERE WAS TV #1

17. THERE'S ALWAYS A DRAMA BEHIND THE DRAMA, Or, DON'T MESS WITH THE UNICORN

18. A(S)STITCH IN TIME

19. THE ILL WIND: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT OBOEIST

20. THE MADWOMAN AND THE WOLFS

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Bangor, Pennsylvania, 1920s

GIRLS IN PANTS

The "Arnts Girls" (aka my mother and her sisters) were a force to be reckoned with in the small town of Bangor, PA—after all, there were nine of them.


Kathryn, Bobbie, Betty, Virginia, Janet and Jean

The whole crowd

The guy on the left was my lone Uncle, John, who, being vastly outnumbered, was a very quiet man. My grandparents (Clara and Verne, at right) really wanted another boy, and, obviously, kept trying.This might explain why my mom and my Aunt Janet were occasionally dressed like this:

My mother Barbara in knickerbockers at age 13, with her dad, Verne.

"I (Janet) was dressed as a boy from three years old until I went to school at age six. Everyone called me "Georgie," or sometimes 'Gizzy'."

Both grew up to be beauties (Janet can be seen in the top photo, wearing a striped shirt), and apparently neither of them was traumatized by the experience.

#########################

2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center for Experiential Education, Hillsboro, New Hampshire; Salmon Creek Middle School, occidental, California

TALES OF THE SIXTIES: COAST TO COAST

For years after I left my administrative/teaching job at Interlocken (in 1987, to live in California full-time), I returned to its International Summer Camp each year for a week or two as “enrichment staff.”

Thus I happened to be on the scene in 1995 when a number of the older kids (aged 13-14) decided to present a “Jerry Garcia Memorial Morning Meeting.” (These daily 30-minute all-camp meetings were not only occasions for announcements, planning and discussion, but also for songs, skits, and various hijinks, often based on a theme.)

Having lived in the Haight-Ashbury in the era in question, I was fascinated to discover how “the Sixties” played to kids in the 1990s. As I expected, it was sort of a Disneyfied version—Peace, Love, tie-dye, headbands, love beads, bell-bottoms, the Grateful Dead, “flower power,” “Make Love, Not War,” the use of phrases like “Groovy, man,” and much flashing of peace signs.

Participants in the "Jerry Garcia Memorial Morning Meeting," Interlocken, 1995. — with Jen Hein Demause, Kelli Lewis, Joel Crosby, Faran Krentcil, Richard Jay Nessbaum, and Chad Praul.

As I watched the wide-eyed eight-to-14-year-olds in the meeting taking this all in, it was as if they were hearing about a time and trappings as bygone and mythologized as those of, say, the Roaring Twenties, or the French Revolution.

Afterwards, someone, possibly Interlocken Co-founder/Director Richard Herman, must have said to the older kids “Ask Amie about the Sixties in San Francisco; she was there.”

As a result, I wound up offering a class called “Tales of the Sixties” to a group of teens during a multi-evening-activity session, essentially using my own experience of the times to illustrate the history.

I began by asking them what they knew about the era, and proceeded to try to fill in the blanks, describing, for instance, what it had been like to be their age in the conformist 1950s (they were especially amazed that I and my friends had been made to start wearing a girdle under straight skirts around age 14, so boys couldn’t see our heinies moving).

Then, in answer to inquiries, I described the events that had led up to the “question authority” mindset that resulted in the development of a counterculture, touching briefly on the rise of feminism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Beats, the Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam War, the Draft and the Antiwar Movement.

When they asked (of course) if I’d used drugs, I was able to call on my experience as a marijuana test subject (see TBT below), and use accounts of working at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic and Rock Medicine sections to illustrate the perils of drug abuse in a reasonably non-preachy manner.

They were eager for tales of Rolling Stone, hanging out with the Grateful Dead, rock concerts at the Fillmore, the Beatles, Woodstock, and the questions came hard and fast. By request, I wound up offering the workshop several more times in years to come.

Back in 1995 California, I found myself speaking with a teacher from Salmon Creek Charter School, located near the village of Occidental in bucolic Western Sonoma County. She was planning an “activities day” for the school, and was very interested in how it was done at Interlocken.

Hippies, California style. At the Rainbow's End commune in the late seventies. I'm wearing the black hat; with me are (from L.) Coriander Plum (boy), Amarina Kealoha, Anna, Jubilee Seventy-Five, Juanita (holding Jesse) Ethan, John August, Nan (kneeling), Luz Marie.

I used “Tales of the Sixties” as an example, and she asked if I’d be willing to do it as part of the proceedings.

However, it wasn’t until I was actually faced with a roomful of Sonoma County seventh- and eighth-graders that I suddenly realized that this was an entirely different situation.

The majority of these kids came from families that had migrated north from the Haight-Ashbury or arrived from other urban hippie enclaves in the 1970s. Their parents were likely to be artists, musicians, organic farmers, Master Gardeners, acupuncturists or martial arts instructors. The teens here looked, in spite of the absence of love beads and tie-dye, a lot like kids I’d known in the sixties and seventies. And they pretty much had an attitude.

So, changing gears quickly, I started with a different question: How do you think the Sixties have affected your lives? The answers and ripostes were telling:

“My uncle got named Rainbow.”

(“So what? My middle name is Rainbow.” “That’s nothing; my aunt Casey got stuck with ‘Krishna Cornflake.’”)

“I live next door to _______ from the Grateful Dead.”

“My granddad did sound for the Rolling Stones.”

“My mom sings with a band that plays Sixties music.”

(Much spirited discussion on whether Sixties music, “Except for the Dead and the Beatles and the Stones and maybe Led Zeppelin” was or was not garbage.)

“ So-and-so’s dad grows pot.”

(So-and-so replies: “Dude, everybody’s dad grows pot!”)

Which, of course, led to a discussion on other drugs, about which (with the exception of pot and, in a few cases, magic mushrooms), suddenly most of them seemed as innocent as their Interlocken counterparts.

“But what’s it REALLY like to drop acid?” one of them asked, “Did you ever do it?”

I was saved from answering by a sweet-faced little blonde girl who piped up: “Well, it depresses the activity of your cerebral cortex and activates your limbic system,” and proceeded to hold forth on brain chemistry, alteration of perceptions, and induced hallucinatory experience, as we all stared at her.

“How do you know that?” someone asked.

Casually tucking her hair behind one ear, she replied “I learned it from my godfather.”

“How does HE know that?”

She shrugged. He’s Timothy Leary.

Godfather Tim

Class dismissed.

#######################

EDITOR'S NOTE: Inspired by the previous TBT, the following three sections popped out one after the other in sequence, all on a similar theme and from a similar time, so I decided to keep them together in a section I call:

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

################################

THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California, c. 1970

GETTIN’ LEGAL WITH DR. HIP, Or,
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, TAKE ONE

Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D.

Around 1970, when I was working at KSAN-FM, one of the first "underground" radio stations in the country, I encountered one of the icons of the era, Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D., aka "Dr. HipPocrates.

In 1966, Gene began to write a newspaper column, “Ask Dr. Hip,” in which he replied to medical questions considered too X-rated for the average media-medical-advice dispenser to handle.

Witty, erudite, clearly written and immensely helpful on subjects such as STDs, crab lice, birth control and street-drug side effects, the column first appeared in the BERKELEY BARB, gathered a large following, and was later syndicated to a number of forward-thinking mainstream newspapers.

Wikipedia states: “The advice dispensed in the Dr. Hip columns was one of the few sources of medical information the hippie generation, distrustful of establishment sources of any kind, would listen to.

"His books, Dear Dr. HipPocrates; Natural Food and Unnatural Acts; Jealousy: Taming the Green-Eyed Monster;and Dr. Hip's Down-to-Earth Health Guide, had an empowering effect on those people. Dr. Schoenfeld was a pioneering radio personality on Bay Area stations in the 1970s, and subsequent talk show doctors credit him for being a trailblazer.”

The only known photo of Gene and me, at, I believe, a Dickens Fair/Rolling Stone party.

Well, if Gene did any radio trailblazing, it wasn’t due to my efforts. The station paired the two of us for a Q&A show, but my nothing-special voice and his quiet and deceptively low-key manner failed to deliver the requisite on-air pizazz, and we were soon discontinued.

One day at the station, however, Gene asked me if I’d be interested in joining him to participate in a study that his brother Frank, also an M.D., was conducting at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Hospital, on the effects of marijuana. OK, I said.

This conversation was overheard by the station’s news director, the legendary Wes “Scoop” Nisker, who daily delivered the hard news of the world in the form of aural collages that incorporated commentary, music, comedy, sound-effects—sort of Edward R. Murrow meets Spike Jones.

The show’s motto became the title of Scoop’s first book (he’s published seven more to date): If You Don't Like the News, Go Out and Make Some of Your Own. In that spirit, Scoop suggested that I come back to the studio afterwards and be interviewed about our experience. OK, I said.

Scoop

So Dr. Hip and I trundled up to UCSF, where we met up with brother Dr. Frank and a sober-looking parcel of other MDs. We signed waivers, and listened straight-faced to a talk about the kind of effects we might expect to feel while under the influence.

We were then each issued a small marijuana cigarette to smoke (fortunately this was before the evolution of strains of weed that could knock you on your butt with one inhale). Roach clips were not provided.

We were then ushered into a room remarkable for its simultaneous sterility and ugliness—bright fluorescent ceiling lights, unadorned hospital-green walls, muddy-looking linoleum-tiled floors, and two gray metal folding chairs facing an obvious two-way mirror.

An atmosphere less conducive to observing examples of Potheadia stonedouticum in anything resembling native habitat could hardly have been contrived. Or perhaps that was the idea.

As instructed, we sat down in the chairs. Frank went to take his place with the others behind the mirror. We sat.

And sat.

Nothing happened, except for the odd behavior of a couple of the fluorescent lights, which began humming cheekily in two-part harmony.

“What do they expect us to do?” I whispered to Gene. He shrugged. We sat, the air in the room growing more surreal by the minute.

I was just beginning to become fascinated by the linoleum, a kind of restful gray gooped with sludge-green and—ooooh! Flecks of orange!—when Gene turned to me, and said, conversationally but with an air of great seriousness: “You know, I have this overwhelming urge to rip your clothes off.”

Dr. Hip, slightly out of focus.

We both cracked up, and there was a sharp rapping from the other side of the mirror, presumably Frank calling us to (snicker) order. We obediently subsided, and sat.

And sat.

Time flowed.

I believe Gene started making rude faces at himself in the mirror, but I’m not sure, because by that time I was well on the way to becoming one with the linoleum.

Fortunately, Frank came in then, asked us a few questions about time and depth perception (“you’re kidding, right?”), and grouchily released us with a few trenchant remarks, a $15 stipend, and a bodacious legal high.

Gene and I burst out onto the street on a wave of relief, vying with each other to comment on the previous strangeness. Then I remembered my promise to Scoop, and though I did stop on the way to buy a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, I boarded the pre-BART N-Judah trolley car for an amusement-park ride through a series of simulated Sergeant Pepper San Francisco streetscapes to KSAN, where Scoop interrupted the newscast for a special bulletin.

Although my memory of our interchange is hazy, I believe I made several clever rat-in-a-maze references, reinforced by quotes from Rilke, Dagwood, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

But in fuzzy retrospect, it was when requested to describe the quality of the weed currently being pushed by the UC educational system that I really rose to the occasion:

“Fair and full-bodied, with a hint of ennui, saucy top notes of fluorescence and an irresistible undertone of linoleum.”

Or something like that.

You can't make this stuff up.

#########################

4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California, 1973

HANGIN' WITH MR. NATURAL, Or,
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, TAKE TWO

In mid-1973, I met a good-natured folk-club fiddler named Shelley Posen (aka Herschel Posen, M.D.), who was taking a breather after finishing his residency at UCSF med school. No big fireworks, but we enjoyed each other’s company enough to hang out together and go to concerts, hiking on the beach, etc.

One Saturday, when we’d planned to go out for lunch and see a movie, Shelley showed up at my house with a friend in tow, a kind of skinny geeky-looking guy in a suit-and-tie, fedora hat, gigolo moustache and thick glasses; he seemed kind of…familiar.

“This is Bob—I mean Robert” Shelley corrected himself. “We went to high school together, and we haven’t seen each other for awhile. Is it OK if he comes along with us?”

“Sure,” I said, wanting to put this awkward stranger at his ease,

“Do you prefer to be called Bob or Robert?”

“You can call me Mr. Crumb,” he replied sweetly, with a tip of his fedora.

O.M.G.

Here he was, the brilliantly twisted satiric genius of his era, the creator of “Mr. Natural” and the “Keep On Truckin’” meme, the apparently shameless auteur whose album covers, posters, books, and underground comics, rendered in marvelous graphic detail, ranged from the simply hilarious to the mildly disturbing to the sexually explicit near-horrific, sometimes all at once.

I somehow managed not to gape like a groupie; “OK, where shall we have lunch?”

We ate at a Mexican café, hung out, talked about music (Mr. Crumb’s band, “R. Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders,” would record the first of several albums in 1974 with R.C. himself on banjo and mandolin); exchanged high-school horror stories; and made observations about people passing outside of the window, next to which we sat.

It was almost like hanging out with a normal person, except that occasionally Mr. Crumb would make some comment, in his slightly raspy tenor, that was so bizarre that it would stop the conversation in its tracks, and for a surreal moment, I would feel like a background figure in an R. Crumb comic. And no, I’m not going to quote him. You had to be there. Not to mention fairly unshockable.

We went to a Japanese animated film, which Mr. Crumb adored, and then he suggested that we drop into the office of his publishers, Last Gasp, which released many of the classic 1970s underground-comic lines like ZAP! Young Lust, Weirdo, and Dirty Laundry.

Ron Turner at Last Gasp

Presided over by its genial, bearded, and rotund proprietor Ron Turner, the Last Gasp premises acted as a kind of clubhouse for the Bay Area underground-comic elite. Mr. Crumb was greeted like a big event for the guys gathered there; that day they included Spain Rodriguez, Robert English and S. Clay Wilson, all apparently names to conjure with if you were a fan.

We ended up in someone’s kitchen having dinner, and Shelley and I got to be flies on the wall of that particular scene. Later, we returned to my room, and continued a wild discussion of potential tracks for a “Cheap Suit” album.

Now here is where wardrobe details become important: that day I happened to be wearing jeans tucked into my favorite pair of knee-high zip-up brown leather boots. As anyone brave enough to be familiar with Mr. Crumb’s work will tell you, he is a BIG fan of boots.

As they got up to leave, Mr. Crumb said, “Before we go, can I have a ride on your boots?

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You know, like when you’re a kid and your dad lets you pretend you’re an airplane."

I shot an inquiring look at Shelley, who just shrugged, leaving me alone with a delicate social dilemma: what do you say when R. Crumb asks you politely if he can have a ride on your boots?

The ensuing scene was actually both hilarious and playful. With Shelley serving as spotter, Mr. Crumb achieved two seconds of a perfect swan-dive position before we all collapsed in a heap, giggling. Mr. C. unfolded himself up off of the floor, brushed himself off, straightened his glasses and his fedora, and bowed slightly.

Thank you,” he said, “That was very nice.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

##########################

5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Russian Hill, San Francisco, California, 1973

GUNS, LSD, AND A BUMPY RIDE

Or

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, TAKE THREE

Should any of my younger relatives ever beg me: “Auntie! Auntie! Tell us about the wild old days in San Francisco!”, this is one tale I certainly won't trot out.

It all started in the posh lobby of the San Francisco Hyatt Regency Hotel, with a malfunctioning computer and a snooty desk clerk who insisted that my friend, LIFE Magazine writer Karen Thorsen, was not registered as a guest.

Luckily, standing next to me at the desk was an exotic-looking, British-accented fellow named Ernie Eban, a seasoned traveler who stepped in and untangled the problem, with the result that he, Karen, and I spent the next little while conversing, networking, and exchanging contact information.

Ernie Eban reads to me (R) and Karen Lucius on the patio of the apartment Tim shared with actor/artist/writer Roger Steffens. Ernie is sporting a genuine Lyle Tuttle shirt (See TBT Blog #8)

A few days later, I received a phone call from a soft-spoken English guy named Tim Page, who said that Ernie had had a strong feeling that the two of us should get together.

Well, why not? I had business in Chinatown the next evening, not that far from the Russian Hill apartment where Tim was staying, so I arranged to meet him at his place. Russian Hill is a fairly wealthy, well-kept and well-lighted section of SF, so I had no problem with walking the dozen or so blocks to Tim’s address.

Until, that is, while short-cutting on a narrow side street, I was hailed by a male voice from a car that had pulled up beside me: “Excuse me, I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get to North Beach?”

I walked over to the passenger side of the car, a fairly new blue Toyota, and leaned down to speak to the driver. What I saw was an ordinary-looking, well-dressed young man pointing a lethal-looking handgun at me. “Get in the car,” he said.

I must have been feeling both immortal and smartass, because I replied: “Are you kidding? No.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, “Get in the car. I’ve got a gun.”

“What would be really stupid,” I said, making what I thought was a cogent point, “would be to get in the car with you and your stupid gun.”

He was looking at me indignantly, seemingly about to debate the issue, when a large truck pulled up behind the Toyota, which was blocking its passage, and started honking aggressively. The gunman threw the pistol down on the seat, grabbed his steering wheel, and roared off.

Well, I thought, that was really strange, and continued on my way.

Until, that is, as I walked past a row of connecting houses, the Toyota pulled into a driveway/parking space right in front of me, cutting me off, this time with the driver’s side right next to me.

And again with the gun: “Come on, get in the car!”

I said, “I don’t understand; you’re a nice-looking man with a nice car. How come you think you need a gun to get a woman to ride with you?” He seemed genuinely taken aback.

Just then, the owner of the house opened a window above our heads, and started yelling at the guy to get out of his driveway. Once again the hapless gunman dropped his weapon, reversed and went speeding away,

In spite of my bravado, I was getting a bit nervous, but Tim’s place was just around the next corner somewhere. As I race-walked, looking for the right number, I glanced back to see the Toyota just rounding the corner.

Luckily, a woman was just coming out of a nearby apartment building. I ran to her and pulled us both inside, where I explained the situation.

She let me use her phone to call Tim, who showed up a few minutes later, a big shambling good-looking guy dressed like the world’s largest four-year-old in a horizontal-striped T-shirt, big-boy jeans, and bedroom slippers. He seemed entirely unfazed.

As we walked the short distance to his place, he agreed amiably that we should probably call the police and let them know there was a guy with a gun trying to force women into a car. Inside the apartment, he steered me past a room in which I glimpsed a number of people acting rather strangely, and into the kitchen where I made the call.

The police, however, refused to take me seriously unless I’d agree to meet with them in person. I consulted Tim, who said, calmly, “Well, they probably shouldn’t come here.”

“Why not? I asked.

“Because everyone here is tripping on acid.”

“You, too?”

“Well, yes,” he said, grinning with characteristic sweetness.

I was to learn only later about the strange relationship between Tim’s brain and psychoactive drugs. Working as a combat photographer for Time/LIFE in war-torn Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, armed only with a camera, he was renowned for getting photos in places no other camera jocks would go.

Wounded four times, the last time in 1969 when part of his brain was nearly destroyed by a two-inch chunk of shrapnel, he did not, as his doctors predicted, die or become a vegetable or a quadriplegic.

Instead, his neurons began to rewire themselves into a configuration like no other, and by the time of our first encounter, his only outward signs of disability were a slightly drooping eyelid and a near-imperceptible limp.

(Tim would go on to publish nine books of memoir and photography, including the celebrated traveling exhibition Requiem; shoot rock groups for Rolling Stone; work with amputees; and become an unofficial goodwill ambassador to Vietnam and an adjunct professor of photojournalism at Griffith University in South Queensland, Australia.)

Tim (foreground) as a baby war photographer on a day they barely made it out alive (photo by Steve Northup). He left his suburban home in England at 16, got himself to Laos and Cambodia, taught himself to use a camera and started covering the Vietnam war at age 20. Early on, a Laotian shaman had given him an antique tiger-claw pendant, which was said to protect its wearer against bullets. Tim used to observe that, although he was wounded four times, it was never by a bullet, observing wryly: "It didn't do sh*t for shrapnel."

To Tim’s rewired brain, then, LSD provided another perfectly reasonable form of reality, just an interesting change of scenery, you might say. He could drive, shop, photograph, and even sleep under its influence, and very reasonably suggested that we meet the cops at the park at the top of his street.

The two who showed up were clearly not at the top of the SFPD food chain. They told us to get in the back of the patrol car, a move that seemed to delight Tim, although I uneasily noted the absence of inside door handles.

Back then, cop cars were not routinely equipped with grilles separating the front and back compartments. Moreover, protruding into the backseat area was the heavy wooden stock of a shotgun that was (unwisely, it seemed to me) mounted between the two front seats.

I had to keep grabbing Tim’s hand, which was exhibiting a disturbing tendency to keep creeping toward this shiny toy, while I tried to keep cool and credible as I described my would-be assailant: white guy, light-brown hair, blue eyes, blue Toyota, small gray handgun, etc.

The cop in the passenger seat was laboriously writing this down, when suddenly the driver yelped: “There he is!”, and off we went on a wild ride, jouncing up and down the steep streets, screeching around corners to the danger of the populace, me clinging onto Tim in the absence of seatbelts, Tim shaking with silent glee at the turn of events.

By the time we caught up with the car in question (a gray Honda driven by a Chinese woman), all I wanted was to get out of this situation and go somewhere quiet. After a few other false sightings on the part of the driver, the somewhat chastened cops drove us back to the apartment, where people were still behaving strangely.

There Tim made me a lovely cup of tea, and we sat down to get acquainted.

And that, children, was only our FIRST date.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVX834XY7Yc (“You Learn Quickly or You Die”/a Canadian interview with Tim Page in 2019/3:01)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Page_(photographer)

########################

6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, Thanksgiving Day 2017

BARBARA & HOWARD, 60 YEARS APART AND TOGETHER

In late October of 1937, my parents, Barbara and Howard, posed joyfully for their wedding phot.

About 60 years later, during an autumn visit, My sister Sue said something like: "Would you guys stand over there? I want to get a picture of the two of you."

The second photo is what happened spontaneously as the shutter clicked. 60 years. One look. Timeless. Priceless.

Anniversary collage

###################

7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Philadelphia Folk Festival, Summer 1972

OUT OF MY LEAGUE

Here (below) I find myself onstage at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in front of over 20,000 people with the unforgettable John Roberts (right) and Tony Barrand (and with Bob Dylan skulking about backstage).

That afternoon those wild and crazy Brits had discovered or remembered a silly old English music-hall song called "Pennsylvania," not to be confused with the elegiac state song of the same name.

This ditty, obviously written by someone who had never been to Pennsylvania but just liked the sound of the word, had a boom-chucka beat and described a kind of crazy Oz-like land where odd things happened. The chorus:

Some say no and some say yes,
Some say it's an awful mess,
But I confess that my address
Is Penn-syl-van-i-a!

As if the two of them weren't wacky and rollicking enough on their own, they enlisted me to sing a high part, look cute in my Gloria Steinem specs, and bash a tambourine roughly in time.

It was a hit, and the boys used this photo in their publicity brochures for some time after.

By the way, they could also sing songs that brought tears to the eyes, a lump to the throat, and/or a shiver to the spine.

Thanks for the memory, guys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_and_Barrand

####################

8. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California; March 1972

MY ONE AND ONLY APPEARANCE IN LIFE MAGAZINE

This pensive pose appeared in an article on tattooing put together by my friend Karen Thorsen, now an award-winning documentary filmmaker. I'd like to credit the photographer, but have forgotten his name. Taken in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle.

##########################

9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan's Hill, Pennsylvania, c. 1948

PAINT YOUR WAGON

My dad, one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known, was a great believer in child labor. Although we also had plenty of playtime, my early memories often find me up a ladder picking fruit, hunkered in the garden picking vegetables (we grew a lot of our own food in those postwar years), picking stones from freshly-turned soil and tossing them into a cart, or picking up a rake to arrange new-mown grass into rows and piles.

So when my dad scored a rusted-but-perfectly-sound “Radio Flyer” wagon at a farm auction, and had sanded it down, it was only natural for sister Susan (at left, below) and me to tie on our little aprons and get to work under his eagle eye—no unsightly brushlines, skipped spots, or dribbles allowed.

Take it from me: they do go faster if you paint them yourself.

##################

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The next three TBTs are another natural grouping, a trilogy I call:

HEY KIDS! LET'S PUT ON A SHOW!]

##################

10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan's Hill, Pennsylvania, 1950s and early 60s

KID STUFF

"Hey kids, let's put on a show!" And we did. Constantly. For whomever we could rope in to watch us.


Some kind of exotic dance (love the improvised hula skirt over granny panties), with Ronnie Kutza on piano/percussion, and brother David (wearing a mail-order mask from a cereal-box ad) on drum.

With Ellen Shaul for "Old MacDonald" or "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm?"

With brother David, Ellen, and sleepwear for "Mr. Sandman."

The Beatnik

The mah-velous Mrs. MacGillicuddy.

Sister sue doing the Charleston (and ain't she sweet?)

We all grew up, but some of us never got over it.

########################

11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: All over the US and Into Canada, Summer, 1970

HEY, KIDS, LET'S PUT ON A SHOW! (TAKE 2)

In the summer of 1970, the 16 members of a troupe calling itself "The Portable Folk Festival," led by 56-year-old Faith Petric (Indian Earth-mother of the thriving San Francisco Folk Music Club), climbed into a big old renovated school bus and set out to tour the country.

The bus and the whole dang bunch. From Left: Sasha Jako (resident teenager), Cary Lung, Larry Hanks, Ron Tinkler, Ellen Tinkler with King the Dog, Sunny Goodier, Faith Petric and Tanner the Dog, me, Katy Jako, Jim Ringer, Sheila Cogan, Jon Wilcox,Harry Liedstrand (kneeling), Stephanie Meyers, Jon Adams, Mike Cogan. 12-year old Robert Jako is barely visible inside the bus.

The "Portables," consisting of accomplished Bay Area folk musicians and their spouses, kids and dogs, played for lodging, food, gas money, love, fun, and even some actual remuneration. This was all arranged grassroots style, with friends writing to friends and word getting around, and Pete Seeger and other folk royalty serving as eager advocates.

Performing a backyard concert (all photos are from California Living; no photo credits given).

The PFF found enthusiastic audiences at numerous folk festivals on the east coast and Canada, as well as in backyards, community theaters, coffeehouses and college campuses all over the mid-Atlantic states and parts of the Midwest.

Faith Petric and Harry Liedstrand provide a little unloading-the-bus-music.

I joined them mid-tour to write about their exploits in California Living magazine; it was a trip to remember, with boffo performances, wildly enthusiastic audiences, odd encounters (Arlo who?), at least one brush with the law, and all the mini-dramas of life on the road.

Group members performing at Toronto's Mariposa Folk Festival.

We all got older, but some of us never got off the bus...

####################

12. THROWBACK THURSDAY: All Over the US and Into Canada, Summer, 1975

HEY, KIDS, LET'S PUT ON A SHOW! (TAKE 3)

In 1975, inspired by the adventures of the Portable folk Festival, a 12-member circus-vaudeville troupe calling itself "Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy" climbed into a refitted International Harvester school bus and headed cross-country to a full schedule of summer performances.

Clockwise from Bottom L: Sandy (Sando) Counts, me, Amanda Peletz, Sandey Oxenhorn (now Sandey Grinn), Ruth Bienenfeld (Now Ruth Barrett), Billy (William Q.) Barrett, Hillary Carlip, Marque "Q" Siebenthal, Jeff Gluckson (now Jeffrey Briar), Nate (now Nathan) Stein, Lisa (now Elizabeth) Main.

These gigs were, like those of the Portables, arranged through friends and friends' friends coast-to-coast (with thanks to Faith Petric for turning over her lists of Portables contacts), and wound up taking place in the same kinds of venues—from postage-stamp-sized to cavernous, deluxe to muddy, backyards, coffeehouses, folk festivals, college campuses, community theaters—anyplace someone thought we ought to be able to put on a performance.

And did we ever. The majority of the troupe were veterans of the original California Renaissance Pleasure Faires and Dickens Fairs, and/or other varieties of showbiz. We could provide singing (Appalachian shape-note hymns to Andrews Sisters-style harmonies to folk songs to Noel Coward ditties), dancing, juggling, tightrope-walking, fire-eating, stilt-walking, unicycling, playing on stringed instruments and keyboards, stage fighting, knockabout musical/comedy routines, and generally more fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys.

That last metaphor also applied to life on the road, with large personalities rattling around in a relatively small bus-shaped space. We had a Rock-of-Gibraltar driver named John O' Donnell, who kept us moving along and in good repair, and, briefly, an incompatible cook named Daniel, whom we bribed to go home early on.

Another cool-headed guy, who enlisted too late to make it onto the poster, was musician/folksinger Doug Whitney, seen below with a dulcimer-strumming Ruth Bienenfeld.

We traveled the US, (oh, the luxury of watching the country roll by hypnotically as we chilled on a padded and pillow-strewn window-height back platform), almost got busted for indecent exposure in rural Tennessee (on account of newspaper photos of Marque and Nate with their shirts off), camped out in the rain, bunked in the bus, or slept in relative luxury, occasionally got mildly hippie-baited, received standing ovations, played Poughkeepsie five times, taught circus arts at the Interlocken International Summer Camp, and generally invoked wistful pleas of "Can I go with you?" from all and sundry.

(The following photos are our only record of shows before the era of cellphones. They were taken by one of the cousins at an Arnts [my mother's side] family reunion.)

Hillary and Nate pass flaming torches.

Jeff, Doug and Billy

Part of our Finale, a song called (what else?) "Dr. California's Golden Gate Remedy." With Marque, Ruthie, Nate, Doug, Hillary, Amanda, Billy, and Jeff.

My dad (in overalls) and a bunch of Arntses watch.

Jeff, Sandey, and Billy, who performed together at Faires and elsewhere as a troupe called "Cock and Feathers."

Ruthie, Amanda, and Hillary do an Andrews-Sisters arrangement of a song called "Cinnamon Toast." Jeff on keyboard.

The set-up.

Of that talented troupe of twelve plus Driver John, three of us have passed on (sigh), five have changed or slightly altered their names, and a half-dozen or so of us are still in the literature/arts/theater/TV/entertainment biz.

You can take the kids out of the bus, but…

#####################

13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Graton, California, Early 2000s

A GENTLE BRUSH WITH HISTORY

From 2001 to 2007, I shared a house in the tiny Sonoma County town of Graton with its owner, holistic health practitioner Judith Fenley.

Judith saw her clients in a separate building on the property, and was (is) such a warm, caring and outgoing person that they often became long-time friends who tended to pop into the main house for any number of reasons. Needless to say, I met a lot of fascinating people this way.

One day, as I was preparing to leave on an errand, one of those client/friends, a lovely woman named Joan, showed up with a handsome elderly gent whom she introduced as her father, Mark.

After a few minutes of pleasant conversation, I left on my errand, not realizing (until a big reveal in 2005, followed by a book and a major motion picture) that I had been casually passing the time of day with a true enigma: Mark Felt, the legendary Watergate informant previously known to the world only as “Deep Throat.”

Joan and Mark Felt. Mark was portrayed in the 2017 film "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House" by Liam Neeson, Joan by Maika Monroe.

#############################

14. THROWBACK THURSDAY (THINGS FOUND IN OLD ENVELOPES #5): South Woodstock, Vermont; 1970s-Present

THE TIME TO WORK AT RETIREMENT; EVOLUTION OF THE BARN PEOPLE

This advertisement for the New England Financial Company probably dates from the early 1980s, when it appeared in newspapers throughout the northeastern US.

The three young American Gothics posing in front of a vintage barn frame are my brother David Hill, his wife Susan Fuller, and their partner Kenny (my contribution to the photo was the square painting of their logo in the background). In truth, they were probably thinking less about retirement than about the boost of exposure this ad would provide.

David has always been a hands-on kind of guy. After all, he spent his entire childhood in apprenticeship to the master of repurpose and recycle, our dad. Dad was always building something out of something—split-rail corrals out of retired telephone poles; stables from disused boxcars; buildings and walls out of stones pried up from the ground.

David and Dad construct a tongue-and-groove flooring of old boxcar wood atop the stone foundation of a former chicken barn (blown down in a hurricane). This new building served as a stable and hay barn for a number of years, and was then, in the true spirit of recycling, converted by my dad into a rental cottage.

In the early 1940s, he constructed one of his recycling masterworks— a rustically beautiful fireplace nook (see below) from a cracked and blackened railroad tie, some 19th-century bricks, a pile of pine boards and a discarded length of granite curbstone.

My mother and David enjoy the fireplace in the 1960s. Dad also built the chimney, made the woodbox/windowseat and rustic table, and assembled the captain's chairs from a kit. My mother installed the curtains and was responsible for the decor.

So when David graduated from Brown University (with a degree in Bio-geology), it wasn’t terribly surprising to anyone that he headed to rural Vermont, met up with an eccentric but charming guy named Kenny, and started a barn salvage business.

Their approach was fairly ingenious: they traveled the New England countryside in search of tumbledown barns, mills, granaries, etc., that were dilapidated beyond repair and/or slated for demolition. When they found one, David and Kenny would make a deal with the owner: paying a reasonable fee, they would clear away the wreck and any unwanted contents, and leave in its place a clean and empty field.

As the buildings often contained salable antiques, hand-forged hardware, and attractively distressed lumber, they did OK, but soon discovered that the real profit lay in carefully extracting the decrepit buildings’ beautiful (and often well preserved) post-and-beam frames, numbering them, restoring and repairing them when necessary, and reconstructing or combining them into handsome internal framing for homes, restaurants, studios, offices, even, once, a pool house.

Rustic bannisters, balustrade and newel-post on a recycled staircase.

When they tried to think of a suitable name for this aspect of their business, they finally went with what everyone called them anyway: “The Barn People.”

The customers for their barn frames were, a bit ironically, those with enough disposable wealth to afford the luxury of living under beams hand-hewn by 18th-19th-century folks who had labored mightily to build their own barns.

One of David and Susan's designs, incorporating barn framing, local stone, and recycled elements.

Stories on the Barn People’s interesting livelihood began to appear in articles in local and national house/garden/architectural magazines. Unfortunately, after awhile, this publicity began to spawn greedy imitators who paid farmers top dollar to allow them to dismember perfectly sound barns in order to cannibalize the frames, thus destroying beautiful exemplars of rural New England Colonial architecture in pursuit of a buck.

With this as impetus, David and Susan got themselves out of the barn business, and, in 1992, founded David Anderson Hill, Inc., a company which built award-winning custom homes of David’s design (and, frequently, of Susan’s interior design).

Although David never formally studied architecture, as a result of all those years of breathing manure dust, heaving beams around, and deconstructing/reconstructing post-and-beam structures, he’s now considered a foremost expert on timber framing, and on the use of recycled and salvaged materials.

Although the “green building” movement had not yet been officially coined in those early days, this barn reconstruction and adaptive reuse made him an early leader in the field.

Susan earned her B.S. in Housing and Design from the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1975, and did extensive post-graduate work in Conservation and Historic Preservation at UVM, the Smithsonian Institution, Cooperstown Farmers' Museum, MIT, and Boston University.

“Any home we build” David and Susan advertised, “is comfortable to live in, easy to maintain, designed to fit its surroundings, and beautiful.”

Not only that, each home contained as much local building material as possible, showcased the meticulous work of local craftspeople, combined the old with the new in exceptional ways, was designed for the needs of its occupants, and was filled with marvelous examples of recycling. My all-time favorite was the use of an antique dumbwaiter as a combination of firewood vehicle and kinetic sculpture.

One version of that wonderful dumbwaiter application: the firewood is loaded into its compartment in the basement storage area and effortlessly lifted to the fireplace area by the watchable workings above.

Another version of the dumbwaiter app, next to a fireplace.

And, oh, by the way, that retirement thing? Check it out:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/36103144?source_impression_id=p3_1587498204_48fBAgLv8Snv6e4t&guests=1&adults=1

#############################

15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Bangor, PA, c. 1908

HIJINKS WITH THE GIRLS

As a teenager, before she was married, my grandmother Clara Alice Wilhelm worked at the Dennis Millinery Co. in Bangor.

One day, for some reason, the Dennis management decided to get a professional photographer in to capture the loveliness of their young workers. In the top photo, with the girls modeling the templates upon which the fashionable bonnets of the day were formed, Grammy is at the far right looking adorable.

Grammy (second from L) and the girls, posing demurely with...something.

Showing off their literary side (Grammy at left under the X).

In any era, girls just wanna have fun...

#######################

16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center For Experiential Education, Hillsboro, New Hampshire 1980s-90s; New Mexico, Present Day.

ERIC TALERICO LEARNS TO HUG, Or,
THE MAN WITH THE LUMINOUS BRAIN.

It was June, 1984 at the Interlocken International Summer Camp, and the first day of staff orientation. At one point in the late afternoon, I looked up from whatever administrative task I was doing and noticed a figure who had just walked onto the central deck area.

Solemn, dark and goateed, dressed in an immaculate vanilla-ice-cream-colored summer-weight suit and panama hat, he stood out distinctly from the milling crowd of staff members in shorts or jeans and tees. He also looked somewhat stunned.
Later, Eric Talerico was to recall that moment in an interview:

“For me, walking into Interlocken for the first time was like walking into a magic kingdom. It was around sunset, there were about a hundred people on the deck, and [storyteller] Odds Bodkin was sitting on the steps at the entrance with his guitar, practicing a story, which means he was basically talking to the air in front of him about a tree covered with chameleons.

Eric at Interlocken

“And before I even had a chance to put my bags down, [Interlocken co-founder/director] Susan Herman had her arms around me and was hugging me and saying: ‘You finally made it! We’ve been expecting you for days!’

“My immediate response was to be absolutely terrified, because I don’t think I’d been hugged in ten years. My parents never did, so it was an utter shock for a total stranger to come up and hug me. But after I’d been at Interlocken for awhile, I kind of got used to it.”

And how. Once the US Navy vet figured out that Interlocken was more than prepared to embrace his every eccentricity, he opened like the proverbial desert flower and embraced it right back. In the process, he became not only an aficionado of hugs, but a major player (in every sense of the word) in the development of the ISC’s legend.

Unpacking his formidable melange of talents, he sang, played guitar, created art in an array of media and exercised his verbal skills and marvelous imagination to present unique classes; they ranged from obscure painting and drawing techniques to satiric songwriting to an ongoing and indescribable game loosely based on the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. This last invention inspired the following commentary from Interlocken co-founder/director Richard Herman:

“I was showing a visitor around, and we stopped to watch Eric Talerico’s Calvin & Hobbes class. I said: ‘you want to see the spirit of this place? There it is.’ They were having the time of their lives, based on nothing but Eric’s imagination, a bunch of kids, and a funny hat. He had those kids completely involved, and in stitches, and such good energy. They weren’t wondering whether the bell was going to ring soon; it could have gone on for hours.”

Eric also added considerably to Interlocken’s ongoing mythology with the invention and year-to-year narration of the offbeat shenanigans of the “Well Being,” an eccentric and benign spirit with a strangely practical streak, simultaneously an independent entity and a state of mind. The inspiration for it, said Eric, was a dream he’d had.

He also became a genuine kid magnet, especially for the kind of youngsters that student/staff member Abigail Savage called “the alternadudes,” brilliant offbeat students who were into secret languages, obscure mythologies, fantasy and role-playing.

Eric supervises a journal-writing class.

([Begin namedrop] Abby Savage currently plays inmate Gina Murphy in the award-winning TV series Orange is the New Black [end namedrop].)

Eric eventually became an integral part of the Interlocken experience. As one student, Jamie Graves, summed up in an interview: “Eric is a wonderfully nice person who’s not afraid to just let go and have fun, and he has such an insane and funny personality that it affects everybody. He really showed me, through example, that you can be whatever you want, whatever kind of person you want, as long as it isn’t illegal or harmful to other people.”

Eric was born in New Jersey, moved to Germany and graduated from high school there, studied art in Wisconsin, and spent four years in the Navy learning to drive aircraft carriers.

From 1988 to 2003, his non-Interlocken means of support was performing as a busker in Cambridge, MA, holding forth in Harvard Square in good weather, in the subway station in winter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_NyKCcx1I4 (Eric Talerico/”Caledonia”/Harvard Square/5:02)

Now he lives in Arizona, but wherever he is, Eric Talerico creates art constantly, almost compulsively, influenced by the look of landscapes and the fantastic topography of his own dreams, high on creativity, a sweet-natured mystic with a gently luminous brain.

PS: Here’s how Eric currently describes himself on his website:
“I am an artist - full time.. I make images in a variety of media, including oil paintings, watercolors, gouache, intaglio printing, woodblock printing and digital media. I am also a graphic designer.

“My primary focus for the past few years has been a large Illuminated Manuscript that uses a combination of modern and traditional imagery and some pretty wild automatic writing.”

http://www.greenmanwest.com/

Some more Eric.

As I said, luminous.

#########################

17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan's Hill, Pennsylvania, 1940s

BEFORE THERE WAS TV #1

Back in the early forties, my parents didn't have much money, just a lot of land full of decrepit or collapsed buildings, an old stone farmhouse (once they'd taken off a layer of tar-paper shingles), two small children, and each other.

There was no TV, barely radio, a rattletrap car, and no close neighbors, so one of their favorite pastimes was passing an inexpensive camera back and forth to produce these lovely images.

############################

18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York; March, 1963

THERE’S ALWAYS A DRAMA BEHIND THE DRAMA

DON’T MESS WITH THE UNICORN

When I returned to Syracuse University for my sophomore year in 1963, I found that I had been assigned to share a suite with three other women in a re-purposed building called Sherbrooke Apartments.

At that point, one could indicate one’s preferences for housing and roommates, but with no guarantee that they would be honored. My three new suitemates, butch and pre-Goth goth, were, to put it politely, pissed.

They had, you see, expected to room with a fourth member of their gang, a girl named Toby. Toby had been assigned to a suite on the other side of the building, and here they were, stuck with Little Mary Sunshine.

They lost no time in making me aware of just how unwelcome I was. After the third time that I came back from first-week activities to find my suitcases open on my bed and all of my clothes and possessions heaped on top of them, I went to the housing department and suggested that Toby and I trade places.

I was welcomed with open arms by the three sunny-tempered art students in my new suite, who were relieved beyond measure to get rid of Toby, and we all settled in happily.

About a week later, Toby auditioned for, and was accepted to, the Syracuse Modern Dance Company, of which I was a member. She was a very good dancer, probably better than I, in an angular Martha-Graham sort of way.

Thus she was visibly miffed, when it was I, not she, who was asked to choreograph ten dancers in a production of Giancarlo Menotti’s madrigal-opera The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore, to be presented in conjunction with the SU chamber orchestra and chorus as part of the yearly Fine Arts Festival.

Toby was, however, perfect for the part of the unicorn, with the added bonus that many of her appearances throughout were solo. Being no dummy, I let her choreograph her own moves, and amity was maintained.

That is, until the day, shortly before the performance, when I realized (prompted by our faculty advisor) that I had to cut one of Toby's solos in order to to emphasize an essential narrative point. Upon hearing this, she was not a happy camper, but went along with it, visibly seething.

Sometime that night, I woke abruptly to find Toby kneeling astride me on my bed, her hands around my neck, choking me and banging my noggin against the headboard as she hissed out in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of me, my choreographic abilities, and my messing with her solo.

Toby is at Upper Right; I'm at lower left.

Luckily, Joanie, one of my suitemates, a tiny spitfire who weighed in at less than 100 pounds, heard the commotion, and came bursting into my room. She launched herself screeching onto Toby’s back, grabbed two fistfuls of hair and started yanking, dragging my assailant off of me while simultaneously landing strategic kicks to her tender parts.

Toby finally managed to dislodge Joanie, and scuttled out of the room. When things settled down, after a lot of TLC from my suitemates, I was left with a headache, some icepacks, and a dilemma.

If I reported Toby’s assault, she would undoubtedly be suspended at very least, and I, the dance company, the chamber orchestra, the chorus, and our beloved conductor, Dr. Earl George, would be left without a unicorn (no one else in the company knew the role or was up to it).

Without speaking to one another, Toby and I tacitly agreed to behave publicly as if nothing had happened, and work together for the production’s two performances, which were extremely well received by full-house audiences. We then managed to avoid each other until graduation and beyond.

Yes, college life was not always as carefree as advertised, but I still remember the verse that Dr. George composed to go with his bouquet of flowers on opening night:

If it’s good,
We can toot our horn.
If it’s bad,
It’s still unique-corn.

Melting with gratitude,
The Abominable Showman.

Unique-corn, indeed. He should only have known.

CODA: Just for fun, I recently Googled Toby (she has a very unusual last name) She is apparently married, runs an artisan co-op, does acupuncture, and has written three scholarly books about Pocahontas. Go figure.

#######################

19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Santa Rosa, California; May 18th, 1974.

THE ENDS OF AN ERA
Or
A(S)STITCH IN TIME

My friend Roger Steffens snapped the photo below with his ever-present camera on a sunny day at a folk festival in the 1970s. The colorful backside on the left belongs to TIME/LIFE photographer Tim Page, whose beloved raggedy-patched and embroidered jeans were an ongoing work-in-progress for me (I suspect they’re now in a museum somewhere).

Tim's jeans on the left...

...and on the right.

Depending on the faces behind the other two bottoms, I may have had a hand in their repair as well. I treasure the lovingly handmade “Rags to Britches” certificate [below] once presented to me by John O' Donnell, housemate at 885 Clayton St., home of the San Francisco Folk Music Club.

This "3 Bottoms 3" photo recently showed up on The Family Acid Instagram site https://www.instagram.com/thefamilyacid/ curated by Roger’s kids Kate and Devon Steffens, showcasing 50-plus years of their dad’s slide photography.

The site now (4/2020) has around 2,866 posts and 53,800 followers, and Kate and Devon won’t run out of material any time soon. Roger began taking pictures in 1967 for the US Army in Vietnam, and “just got into the habit.” No kidding—the young Steffenses have approximately 40,000 Kodachrome slides and hundreds of thousands of black-and-white and color negatives to choose from.

Self-timed by Roger: me, Tim Page, Clare Francis and Himself in 1974.

The site’s unusual name comes from a remark once made by a visitor to the Steffens’ loving, close-knit, and more than a little smoky-vibe-filled home. “You guys are like the Waltons (the heartwarming family on the long-running TV series of the same name) on acid!”

Roger and Mary today, together and still crazy after all these years.

At that time, the Steffens family (Roger, Kate, Devon and mom Mary, whom Roger claims to have met 35 years ago in a pygmy forest under a full moon on an acid trip) hosted a near-constant stream of writers and artists, as well as musicians ranging from Jamaica’s premier reggae bands to Nina Simone, Paul Simon, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

Devon and Kate with Dad at Halloween

“I got quite used to meeting famous people in my pajamas,” remembers Kate fondly.

Throughout his life, Roger has answered to many designations: musicologist; radio producer and personality; archivist; voice-over, stage, and screen actor; author (the authorized and definitive books on Bob Marley, among others), historian; editor; lecturer and poet.

Now, in his 70s, he’s becoming renowned as a photographer, with pics from three The Family Acid books appearing worldwide in galleries and print, including the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker and Vogue. The first is now a collectors' item retailing on Amazon for upwards of $200; the second and third cover Jamaica and California respectively.

“It’s my accidental second wind,” he said, preparing to fly east to lecture on Bob Marley at the Smithsonian. “Kids. Ya gotta love ‘em!”

Roger’s photo of me as embroidering hippie chick, with Tim Page and his jeans photographing a cluster of musicians, is typical of our activities at the time. There’s also a photo of Tim and me in The Family Acid ’s traveling gallery exhibit, but I’m afraid it’s slightly too outrageous to post here.

####################

20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Wilson Borough Area Joint Junior-Senior High School, Wilson Borough, Pennsylvania, 1960-62

CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT OBOEIST
Or
IT’S AN ILL WIND…

When I was a sophomore at Wilson high school, it was actually very cool to be in the marching band. Under the direction of a deceptively colorless little guy named Paul Filer, the band won competitions, marched in big parades, and put on impressive halftime shows (whatever the fortunes of the football team, the band always knocked your socks off).

All the people I wanted to hang out with were in the band; naturally I wanted to be one of them. Big problem: I had never learned to play a musical instrument.

So I went to the Assistant Musical Director, Ron Sherry, who was due to take over on Mr. Filer’s retirement the next year, and told him I wanted to learn to play something in the band. Mr. Sherry, a symphony-level bassoonist in his spare time, had obviously been waiting for this very moment. Just my luck.

He eagerly pulled out a shiny new hardshell case off of a shelf, opened it to reveal a clarinetty-looking thing, and declared firmly: “This is a beautiful instrument, and you’re going to learn to play it.”

Now, like many other girls in the school, I had a mild crush on the tall-dark-and-kind-of-cute Mr. Sherry, and wanted to please him. I gulped, and said, “Okay.”

To tell you the truth, I had been hoping for something relatively simple—an alto horn to toot on the back-beats, a glockenspiel, even a set of cymbals. What I got was the neurotic prima donna of the western orchestral world—the oboe.

Always front and center. Could I have looked any dorkier? That uniform! That failed pixie cut! Those glasses! (which I thought at the time were the height of cool).

If you’re not sure what an oboe sounds like, just recall the opening bars of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” (perhaps the only time the oboe has been successfully integrated into rock & roll), or the hapless duck in “Peter and the Wolf.”

Bennett Cerf once famously called the instrument “An ill wind that nobody blows good.” Well played, the oboe is heart-wrenchingly beautiful; badly played (and it is so easy to play badly), it squeaks, squawks, honks, and quacks like Peter’s duck in a hissy-fit.

The oboe is so difficult to tune that the entire orchestra tunes to IT. The mouthpiece alone has as many components as some entire instruments—a precisely carved (and easily cracked) double reed mounted on a cork-wrapped metal base and secured with silk cord, wire, and glue. It also requires an excruciatingly precise degree of moistening to play without mishap, and frequent scraping with a reed knife to restore its sound quality.

The diabolical reed

Moreover, there’s a long-standing in-joke among orchestral musicians that “Oboe players go crazy.” This is not only because of the difficulty of playing the thing, but because the buzzing of the double reeds sets up a resonating buzz in the player’s sinuses.

I’ll freely admit that, even at my best, I was a fairly crappy oboe player, although I practiced diligently, subjecting my poor family to a daily half-hour or more of squeaking and honking. (They never complained, bless them, although I ‘m sure they wished I’d taken up the guitar.)

Then I discovered, to my dismay, that the oboe is one of the orchestra’s most-utilized solo instruments, and a person less psychologically equipped to play solos than I would have been difficult to find. Still, I persisted, and due to the rarity of oboe players, made it into the school orchestra.

And then, oh joy, one of the piccolo players in the back row of the marching band dropped out, and I was drafted to fill the spot. Mr. Sherry, by the way, had neglected to tell me that the oboe is emphatically NOT a marching-band instrument (a fact I frequently saw reflected in the faces of other players and judges in band competitions).

The award-winning WHS band; I'm fifth from the left in the first row of standees. I enjoyed the fact that two of our drummers were named Rapp.

However, I somehow managed to play the simple glockenspiel notes while marching in intricate formations, all without impaling my tonsils or knocking out a tooth. That was the year we swept the prestigious competitions, including a first and second place at an international event in Atlantic City.

In spite of my relative lack of musical skill (I still tended to shy like a pony at runs of 16th notes), I was named to the District Band (see also: scarcity of oboe players), and was persuaded by Mr. Sherry to attend Penn State University’s celebrated summer-session Band, Orchestra, and Chorus School. I enjoyed these experiences all the more because I was allowed to settle into 2nd or 3rd chair and leave the soloing to the hotshots.

I spent a lot of my senior year as an exchange student in Germany (no music program in the school I attended), and when I returned in the spring, all the good band stuff was over, and I was left with the orchestra, not the strongest link in the WHS musical chain.

Orchestra. I always got to sit (stand, march) next to adorable little piccolo player Charlie Roth. Mr Sherry is at top left.

When I turned the oboe (now considerably less shiny) into the band room at the end of the '62 school year, all I could feel was relief—no more fussing with reeds, no more sinus headaches, fluffed 16th notes, or terror that someone would ask me to play yet another solo.

The relief lasted only until my parents proudly presented me with a graduation gift—a shiny new oboe.

I hope I convincingly expressed surprise and gratitude, but when I went away to college in the fall, I have to admit that I tucked the instrument into the back of my dorm closet, and never played it in public again. (I did, however, play a bit at home during the summers for my parents’ sake.)

In later years, I started to wonder what kind of musician I would have been had I not been stuck with the “ill wind.” I took up the pennywhistle and simple flute, and discovered that while I may still be a mediocre musician, at least I’m a much, much happier one.

###############

BONUS!. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco and Novato, California, 1970s-1980s

THE MADWOMAN AND THE WOLFS

In 1967, shortly after I started graduate work in the celebrated creative writing program at San Francisco State, I was assigned as an assistant to two English-department professors. One was an undemanding Chaucerian; the other was Dr. Leonard Wolf.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes Leonard:

“Leonard Wolf is a poet, author, and teacher, known for his authoritative annotated editions of classic gothic horror novels, including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde, and The Phantom of the Opera, and critical works on the topic, as well as Yiddish translations of works ranging from those of Isaac Bashevis Singer to Winnie-the-Pooh. He has written, annotated, or edited numerous other books in various genres."

Leonard on the cover

Back in 1967, Transylvanian-born Leonard was the ultimate Hip Professor. Wild-haired, bearded, brilliant and intense, he was one of the first academics to recognize the hippie movement as the social force it was to become, and had firmly aligned himself with it. In fact, the first project I helped him with was a book of interviews called Voices From the Love Generation.

Leonard’s magnetic presence was greatly in demand at teach-ins, love-ins and be-ins, and he had just founded Happening House in the Haight-Ashbury, a kind of alternate university, arts center, and place of learning.

Leonard in a 1970s video

Once I’d recovered from the initial shock of his range of activities (I was fresh from the east coast), Leonard and I got along well. I soon met his wife, anthropologist and author Deborah Goleman Wolf, and eventually wound up babysitting (paid; no exploitation here) their two young children. This was actually a pleasure, as Naomi and Aaron were bright, articulate, and well-behaved.

After earning my degree in 1969 and setting off on new adventures, I saw the Wolfs less frequently, and after awhile, hardly at all. Then one day, almost ten years later, I found myself in their neighborhood, and decided, on impulse, to knock on their door.

It was opened by a beautiful teenaged girl, whom I immediately recognized as Naomi. She remembered me and asked me in for tea, lamenting that no one else was home. As we sipped and talked, I was impressed anew by her poise and intelligence (After graduating from San Francisco’s Lowell High with honors, she would go on to Yale and become a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University).

The young Naomi

It turned out that I had interrupted her work on a paper on Shakespeare. She mentioned that she had gone to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire that previous weekend, and had seen some interesting interpretations; had I ever been?

(At that point, I had been performing at the RPF for almost ten years, the last two—including the current season—in the role of “Mad Maudlen,” a character from a song of Shakespeare’s time.)

I said, actually, I worked at the Faire; I was prepared for the usual "Oh-what-do-you-do-there?/I-play-a-madwoman/Oh really? Do- you-run-around-and-act-crazy?" conversation, when Naomi surprised me.

“Do you know that woman?” she asked eagerly, “Mad Maude or something like that? The one that walks really slowly and seems like she’s in another world? She’s amazing!”

Somewhat at a loss for words, I finally said, yes, I was acquainted with the woman. (I should mention that when talking with Naomi I was dressed more or less conventionally for a job interview, was wearing tinted aviator-style glasses, and had recently cut my hair.)

“I watched her for the longest time,” she said, “And I finally got the courage to go up and speak to her. She seemed so REAL, I mean really mad, not just acting, but also kind of wise and gentle. The things she said to me, it was almost as if she knew me!”

As Mad Maudlen

I should here interject that Maudlen’s—and my—memories tended to the dreamlike and impressionistic, and the many conversations we had over the years often had a blurred quality. For instance, while I suddenly remembered talking with this young girl, I hadn’t recognized her at the time, nor did I remember what was said.

“So what is she like in real life?” persisted Naomi, “I mean, is she like a real person, or is she really a little crazy?”

“She’s a little eccentric,” I admitted, “But no more than you or I.”

“Would you do me a favor?” she asked. ”The next time you see her, would you tell her how much she impressed me, and that I’ll never forget what she told me.”

“Yes, I’ll certainly do that,” I managed, and carefully changed the subject.

The next time I saw Naomi Wolf was in 1991, on the back cover of her best-selling book The Beauty Myth, which a friend had given to me to read.

After doing so, I remember thinking that if I’d read it as a teenager, my life would probably have been completely different. In spite of this, I confess I didn’t really follow the tumultuous trajectory of Naomi’s career in detail, and so have once more relied on Wikipedia:

“Naomi R. Wolf is a liberal progressive American author, journalist, feminist, and former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton.

“Wolf first came to prominence in 1991 as the author of The Beauty Myth. With the book, she became a leading spokeswoman of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement Such leading feminists as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan praised the book; others, including bell hooks, Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers, criticized it. She has since written other books, including the bestselling book The End of America in 2007 and her latest: Vagina: A New Biography.

“Her journalism career began in 1995 and has included topics such as abortion, pornography, the position of women in Fascism and in Islamic cultures, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and ISIS. She has written in venues such as The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian and The Huffington Post. However, Wolf's more recent work has inspired controversy across the political spectrum.”

The Wikipedia article then provides accounts of those controversies, of tangles with fellow feminists, of an alleged sexual encroachment incident at Yale., etc. She emerges as a larger-than-life figure who is apparently "adored by some, reviled by others."

Reading all this, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Child, just what did Maudlen say to you?”

****************************************************************

Naomi and Leonard in 2005

On a tender note, again from Wikipedia: “In 2005, Wolf published The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom From My Father on How to Live, Love and See, which chronicled her midlife-crisis attempt to reclaim her creative and poetic vision and revalue her father's love, and her father's force as an artist and a teacher.”

###################

The End for Now; More to Come...

ALL MY BLOGS TO DATE

MEMOIRS (This is not as daunting as it looks. Each section contains 20 short essays, ranging in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages. Great bathroom reading.

They’re not in sequential order, so one can start anywhere.)

NOTE: If you prefer to read these on paper, you can highlight/copy/paste into a Word doc and print them out, (preferably two-sided or on the unused side of standard-sized paper).

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part One

https://amiehillthrowbackthursdays.blogspot.com/

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Two

https://ahilltbt2.blogspot.com/

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Three

https://amiehilltbt3.blogspot.com/

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Four

https://tbt4amie-hill.blogspot.com/

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Five

https://ami-ehiltbt-5.blogspot.com/

THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Six

https://am-iehilltbt6.blogspot.com/