As I wrote in Part 1 of this
story in my last blog entry, my friend Ron Bronson and I were driving from
Minneapolis to Oakland to see the Grateful Dead at the H.J.K. Convention Center
on 12/30 and 12/31/86. We brought my
friend Sean Morrison with but had dropped him off in Albuquerque, NM on the way
there and would pick him up in Lovington, NM on the way back. After 63 hours on the road we finally made it
to the Kaiser at around 9 pm on December 28th. The Dead were playing that night but we only
had tickets for the 30th and 31st. We parked on the street next to a park which
was across the street from the Convention Center. We excitedly jumped out of the car and headed
into the park where hundreds of Deadheads were milling around, drinking,
smoking, dancing, and selling their wares.
At a Dead parking lot scene you can buy pretty much anything you want
from tee-shirts, jewelry, art and pipes to drugs, beer and food. Speaking of food, we were starving. For the last two days all we had eaten were
Sean’s mom’s Christmas cookies and gas station food. I gave Ron $20 out of the $120 I had left and
put him in charge of getting us some food and a couple of beers while I went
across the street to the Kaiser to see if we could possibly get in…maybe for
free like we had for Huey Lewis an hour earlier. I discovered there was no way of sneaking
into the concert, but there may have been speakers set up outside because you
could hear the music pretty well and there were a lot of people dancing around.
I went back to the car to
meet Ron, but when I got there expecting a veggie burrito and a beer I instead
found Ron carefully picking at a small, round, dark-greenish plant. He looked up, and with a huge smile he triumphantly
produced a tin foil wrapper with five more of the wet greenish-brown
things. “Peyote buttons!” he said
excitedly. What the hell? Ron had used the entire $20 to buy half a
dozen peyote buttons…a golf ball sized psychoactive cactus that contains
mescaline and can produce trippy acid-like effects. Who needs food when you can just trip? Ron handed me one and said we should eat
three of them each. I declined, telling
him I was tired from the long drive up the coast that day and did not want to
trip. Ron ate one button and then we
went back over to the Kaiser and danced outside until the show was over. We hung out in the park for a bit and then
went to our car to sleep for the night with me in the front seat and Ron in the
back.
The next morning, December 29th,
we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided to head over to San
Francisco. They Dead were playing 4
shows this run on the 27th, 28th, 30th &
31st so we had a day off from the Dead. We found a Chinese restaurant just down the
block that sold egg rolls for 50 cents, so after scarfing down a couple of egg
rolls each we drove over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. We went to the Haight-Ashbury district and
took pictures of the signpost at the famous intersection as well as the Grateful
Dead’s old house at 710 Ashbury Street.
Ron got a picture of me doing a headstand on the porch steps. We checked out all the cool shops and the
hippies and then climbed up the hill at Buena Vista Park and hung out for a bit
taking in the sights. It was nice and
peaceful and felt good to just relax and chill up there. Then we walked over to Golden Gate Park and
hung out for a couple of hours. For some
reason we climbed up onto the roof of a building and we could see seals
inside. Strange.
Then we found our car and
headed to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Instead of going over the bridge we pulled off onto a side street under
the bridge near the water. The bridge
towered above us. Ron pulled out a joint
and although I rarely smoked pot anymore, I decided how could I not…I was in San Francisco with tickets
to see two Dead shows! We finished the
joint and then Ron brought out the tinfoil he had purchased the night
before. He opened it up and the five
remaining peyote buttons were now a giant pile of greenish-brown goo. He reasoned that we had better hurry up and
eat them before they got any grosser. I
could not argue with that logic so we hunkered down in my car for a meal. Ron solemnly explained to me that the guy who
sold them to him told him that you cannot just eat the whole button…you have to
carefully pick out the white hairs in the middle because they are poisonous and
you will die if you eat them. Um,
okay. So after spending about a half
hour carefully picking thru the wet gloppy mess we decided that we had removed
every last dastardly hair. Isn’t half
the fun of doing drugs the preparation
of doing the drugs? Then we set about
eating what was left. They were wet,
mushy and very gritty…just horrible, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta
do.
It was now mid-afternoon on a
Monday…normal people were getting off of work and rush hour was just
starting. Dammit, with my low tolerance
that joint had gotten right on top of me and the peyote was starting to kick
in. Coming from the flat Midwest I was
completely dumfounded and amazed that people actually drove cars on these
crazy-steep streets. Ron had a map so he
directed me towards the top of Lombard Street, wanting to go down the famous
curvy street. To get there though we had
to climb up, up, up in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic in my stick-shift
Toyota Celica and I was starting to freak out.
This was absolutely insane I thought.
We were on a 45 degree angle going up with cars right behind me. It was
impossibly steep and I was certain the car was going to tip backwards and roll
end over end back down the street, or at the very least I was going to roll
back and hit the guy behind me.
I was
having a hard time discerning what was real and what were the peyote effects. We would move 5 feet, stop, and I would have
to put on the emergency brake to keep from rolling backwards because my legs
were shaking so badly…all part of the freak-out process. Then the car ahead of me would move a few
feet so I would have to mash down on the brakes as hard as I could, take off
the emergency brake and then floor the gas while my shaky leg slowly let off
the clutch. The car would lurch up a few
feet and die while the cars behind me honked.
I could not do this, but I was not going to let Ron do it. While I was
sweating and hallucinating and freaking out behind the wheel Ron was next to me
laughing his ass off telling me to turn right, left, right, left. The map was upside down and he was clearly
incapable of navigating much less driving.
After what seemed like many
tense hours we were suddenly at the top of Lombard and heading down…holy
sh*t…this cannot be real…this has to be the peyote talking. How do people live like this I wondered? I was really starting to lose it so at the
bottom of Lombard I grabbed the map, shook it violently in front of Ron’s face
and yelled at him to get me the hell out of this goddamn city! Ron suddenly stopped laughing and told me he
knew of some friends in a rock band that lived about an hour or two north of
Oakland. We eventually made it back over
the Bay Bridge to the Oakland side and headed north on the freeway.
It was dark now and I did not care where we
were going. I was just so happy and
relieved to be out of the city and those crazy streets and on a wide open
5-lane freeway. We drove for a couple
hours and then Ron admitted he had no idea of the address or phone number of
these friends of his. I was fine with
that because I was still pretty loopy from the peyote and not feeling very
sociable. So we turned around and drove
the two hours back to the Kaiser. We
found a parking spot on the same street next to the park and went to sleep,
happy that we were going to live another day.
Waking up on the morning of
December 30th we decided to take inventory of what we had in our
possession. We had a pile of dirty
clothes, the concert tickets, the cassettes, my camera, some cookies and about
$90. Figuring gas was about a buck a
gallon and my car got 30 miles to the gallon, we had enough gas money to get us
2,700 miles. After carefully studying
the map we figured from Oakland, CA to Lovington, NM and then back up to
Minneapolis was about 2,650 miles. That
was way too close. Plus that left no
money for food and we were down to our last ten Christmas cookies. What were we going to do for money?! I told Ron I was going to walk around and
think and I would bring back some egg rolls.
When I got back an hour later
I could see Ron standing by my car shouting something. What was he yelling? When I got closer I could see that he was
standing behind a folding card table shouting:
“Tee shirts, cookies, cassettes for sale!” What the hell?! I ran up to him and he was maniacal. He quickly explained that he had found the
table in a ditch and was trying to get us some money. He was frantically trying to sell everything
in my car. “We need money!” he shouted
at me. He had also found a pen and paper
and had everything marked…cookies for 25 cents, cassettes for a dollar and
shirts for $5. I grabbed my shirts off
the table and threw them in the car.
When I went back for my cassettes he had grabbed my shirts from the car
and put them back on the table. We went
around in circles like this for a bit, the whole time him yelling at the top of
his lungs at the people walking by until finally I grabbed the front of his
shirt with two hands and started shaking him.
“Ron! Stop it! Quit selling my sh*t!” “But we need money!” he blurted in rebuttal as he tried to grab the cassettes
out of my hand. He was losing it so I
slapped him across the face and suddenly he stopped…he was calm…everything was
going to be okay.
I handed him an egg roll and
told him I had a plan. I had been
watching the acid dealers in the park and they were selling sheets of acid for
$50. That’s 100 hits, or 50 cents each. If we turned around and sold individual hits
for $2 apiece we would quadruple our
money…we could turn that $50 into $200!
So as evening approached we went into the park looking for some
acid. Before long I saw a guy walking
around quietly and carefully saying:
“Acid...I got sheets…$50.”
Sweet. I pretended to know what I
was doing by asking him what kind, how strong it was and how long before it
kicks in. He told me it was strong white
blotter and he would hang out with me until it kicked in. Well that seemed like an ironclad foolproof
way of knowing it was real. The whole
time he was talking to me though a distressed hippie was standing behind him
shaking his head at me and mouthing the words:
“No, no, no!” Whatever…he
probably just wanted in on my guy’s action…that wasn’t cool. So I handed my guy $50 and he produced a
square piece of paper with 10 rows of indents across and down. Upon first glance it looked real…sort of. The
hippie sadly shook his head and walked away.
I ripped off one little square each for me and Ron. We excitedly turned to each other seeing
dollar signs in our future as we placed the paper on our tongues.
We decided that we would wait
till the acid kicked in, then we would know it was real and we could start
walking around selling as many hits as possible before the concert
started. I turned to ask our new friend
a question, but he was gone. Huh. He must have had to take off. No matter…the acid had to be real…nobody would just walk around selling fake acid. Knowing we had money coming our way we
splurged and bought a couple beers and talked happily about the concert
starting in an hour. It was finally
here…this was what the journey was all about…road-tripping across the continent
to see the Grateful Dead in sunny California!
We finished our beers and I asked Ron if he felt anything yet. “I think so” he said. “You?”
“Yep…it’s definitely kicking in.” I said as I stared at my hand and
waved it around to see if I could see any trails yet. Not yet…but I think it was starting. 15
minutes later and we still weren’t taking off…it had to be soon. We decided to go into the show...we would
sell the hits after the show.
While walking to the concert
we ran across a girl looking for tickets.
We knew we had money coming in so we weren’t interested in selling ours,
but for the heck of it I asked how much she was willing to pay. “I’ll give you $75 for the pair!” she
replied. Wow…we had only paid $17.50
each for our tickets, so that would be more than double our money! I looked
at Ron…we stared at each other for a few seconds and then I shook my head
no. That was a LOT of money, but we came
here for these two concerts. We have to go in. So in we went and found a kickass spot on the
side balcony to the right of the stage.
The Neville Brothers were opening and they were awesome but we were
getting excited for the Dead!
After
awhile though we realized we were not tripping.
Did we just happen to get a part of the sheet that was accidentally not
dipped in the acid? We were grasping at straws,
not willing to believe that we had just handed a guy $50 for a 4”x4” piece of
worthless paper. I pulled the paper out
and ripped off two more squares and we ate that. Looking carefully now at the paper, it was
starting to look more and more like some random piece of thick white paper that
the guy had made little perforation marks on with a paper clip or a knife
point. We got screwed…totally f*cking
screwed and we were down to about $35.
How were we going to get home?
It was a great show and we
had a great time dancing to the Dead…my highlight was the awesome ‘Estimated
Prophet’ into ‘Eyes Of the World’ (“California!
I’ll be knocking on the golden door!”).
Our money problem weighed heavily on us though and was in the back of
our minds the whole time. Should we
still try and sell the acid in individual hits?
It seemed like a dirty thing to do, but we had gotten screwed over and
we needed the money. We decided we could
not sell it there in the park though…after three days these people had become
our family and we could not screw them over.
We decided we would head back over to the Haight-Ashbury district the
next day and screw those people
over. We did not feel good about it, but
we decided we had no choice.
The next day was the 31st. After eating our
daily ration of two eggrolls each we drove back over the bridge to the
Haight. Armed with our worthless little
piece of paper we tried to figure out how to do this. As we had seen done in the park, we stood in
one spot waiting for ‘cool’ people to walk by…hippies, freaks,
long-hairs…anybody that looked as if they might like acid. Then we would mutter “Acid…need any
acid?” After a couple of failed attempts
where people just smiled and kept walking or gave us dirty looks or ignored us
completely, something ominous was coming our way. It was about 6’ 6” tall with a black
tee-shirt, black fingerless gloves, black jeans, black boots and a full black
leather coat that went down to the ground.
He had long black hair on the right half of his head, and the left side
was shaved smooth allowing everyone to see the large black raven he had
tattooed onto his skull and face. He
skin was white as chalk but he had black eye makeup, black lipstick and black
fingernails. “Just ignore him!” Ron pleaded,
but I was desperate and we needed to make some money.
“Hey man, do you need any
acid?” I said, my voice quaking. Raven
stopped, looked down at me and sneered.
He regarded us like two sniveling bugs who had actually dared to talk to him. I think he respected that. He stared into my eyes for awhile and I felt
like he was trying to read my mind. I
was scared shitless. I was thinking
about how to abort this doomed mission when he said that he would love some
acid, but that if it was not real he was going to break all four of our
legs. He said we had to hang out with
him until it kicked in. “Oh my god, we
will not have to worry about our money problems anymore because Raven is going
to kill us.” I thought to myself. He
pulled two dollars out of a wallet that was on the end of a long chain and I
pulled out the little piece of paper. I
ripped off a small piece and handed it to him.
He stared at the pathetic little scrap and said: “This isn’t real…is it.”
“No no, it’s real!” I
protested. “Here…you take the acid and
keep your money, and if you like it, then
you pay us.” I reasoned that if we
didn’t take his money, maybe he wouldn’t kill us. There was no way I was going to hang out with
Mr. Creepy for the next hour though just waiting for the inevitable
beating. Ron and I were small, wiry
dudes while Raven was huge with massive heavy boots…he would never be able to
catch us. We were following Raven down
some street to god-knows-where. When we
got to the corner I motioned to Ron and we both took off running as fast as we
could. “Get back here you little f*cks!”
shouted Raven, but we just kept running for about 10
blocks. When we dared to stop and look
back there was no sign of him. Now we
just had to loop around and get back to our car without him seeing us. We walked back up onto the hill at Buena
Vista Park and hid there for about an hour while keeping a careful
lookout. No sign of Raven, so we walked
back down, took some side streets to our car and took off for our ‘home’ in
Oakland. Just as poor.
We parked on our familiar
block by the park completely dejected and feeling hopeless. Real
home seemed like a million miles away.
Then I remembered seeing a commercial where you could get money wired to
you magically over the phone lines.
Western Union I think they called it.
Should I call my mom and see if she would do that? I did not want to and
I did not tell Ron my idea, but I kept that vaguely possible option in my back
pocket. I tried to make light of the situation
by taking out the piece of paper, ripping it in half and shoving it into my
mouth. “Look! Ron! I
just took 50 hits of acid!” We both
laughed and walked across the street to the park to hang out. We only had about $30 left, but at least it
was New Years Eve and we were seeing the Grateful Dead.
Before long we saw a dude selling his New
Years Eve ticket to somebody. Suddenly
another dude ran up breathlessly and asked if had another one to sell? Nope.
The guy looked sad so I walked up to him. He asked me if I had a ticket to sell. “I’ll give you $200, cash, right here, right
now.” he said hopefully. Holy f*cking
sh*t. $200?! Face value was only $25. With $200 we would have MORE than enough gas
money to get home. We could even buy
some real food…get a good meal and some beer!
Could I really drive over 5,000 miles to see the Dead on New Years and
then sell the ticket though? We were
desperate, and we had already seen them last night I rationalized.
With a heavy heart I
said: “Okay.” He happily handed my $200 while I placed the
ticket in his eager hands. I looked at
Ron sadly and he shrugged and said he would do the same thing. I told him not to bother…we had plenty of
money. We bought a couple beers and
walked around for a bit when suddenly I heard a guy asking if anybody needed a
ticket. “How much?” I asked. “$100.” He said. “I’ll take it!” I shouted. We would still have enough money to get home,
and I would get to go to the concert!
Just then Ron was about 20 feet away talking to a guy. What was he doing? He walked back over with a smile and showed
me a wad of cash. He had just sold his
ticket for $140. “Dude, you didn’t have
to do that…I have $100 and a ticket
now!” A few minutes later though Ron
found another guy selling an extra ticket for $100 so Ron bought that. Suddenly we had $140 more than we had an hour
ago! We were saved!
We went into the show as
happy as could be, excited for the countdown and the concert. We found almost the same spot up in the
balcony just to the right side of the stage and had a blast. David Crosby opened first, and then the
Neville Brothers. Close to midnight Bill
Graham appeared at the back of the auditorium dressed as an eagle. He flew over the crowd tossing down roses,
and then descended to the stage during the countdown. Millions of balloons dropped as the Dead
started the second set with ‘Touch Of Grey’.
The Nevilles sat in with the Dead for a few songs. After the last notes of ‘Brokedown Palace’
drifted away to end the third set we blissfully filed out of the Kaiser. We had a couple of beers in the park and then
went to bed happy. Now for the journey
home.
The next day on January 1st,
we woke up excited for the road trip and happy to be getting the hell out of
Oakland. It was a new day, a new year,
and who knows what 1987 held for us. We
jumped on Highway 5 and zipped down to Bakersfield by mid-afternoon. Taking turns driving we crossed Arizona and
got to Albuquerque in the middle of the night.
We stopped at a rest area and slept until morning before heading down to
Lovington, NM to grab Sean and head back north to home. We got to Reinhart’s place around noon on
January 2nd and it was weird and a little bit disconcerting walking
around in the wide open desert after hanging out in a crowded hectic city for
the last few days.
Reinhart was renting a little
pink house (think ‘Pink Houses’ by John Mellencamp) for $75/month that was in
the middle of effing nowhere. I think he
thought we were going to stay awhile, but after driving an additional 4 ½ hours
south out of our way from Albuquerque to get Sean we just wanted to get back on
the road to home. Plus, sorry Reiny,
Lovington just looks so desolate and boring.
It’s always nice hanging out with Reinhart for a bit and catching up,
but we only stayed for a few hours. We
went to an old Pony Express station not far from his house and took turns
shooting his new .357 Magnum at bottles and cans. That was and is the only time in my life I
have ever shot a handgun…not a fan. We also
went over to his friend Mike’s house for a couple beers and to smoke some
weed. As any normal New Mexican would,
Mike thought Ron was gay because of his short spikey blond hair, his long
trench coat, and his short black boots with heels that zipped up the side. Ron was not gay but he fancied himself a
quirky rock star because he was the drummer in a band called Three-Car
Garage. Mike’s weed turned out to be
strangely dark green and no good. We
left after a bit to go back to Reinhart’s place.
Despite Reinhart’s protests
to stay longer we pulled out of Lovington late that afternoon on January 2nd
and were finally heading home. Within
minutes we were in Texas and not long after that I got pulled over for speeding
through some tiny town. I think I was
going 30 in a 25. The town sheriff took
a long, slow suspicious look at the three of us but without too much hassle let
us go with a $50 speeding ticket. I
never paid that sucker and may still be a wanted man in Texas for all I
know.
Eventually we got to Kansas City
on the morning of January 3rd and instead of continuing on with the
final 6 hours home, Sean took the off-ramp into the city. He informed us that we needed to stop and
collect on a guy that he used to be in a band with. The band had been touring out in California
and the gigs dried up so Sean quit, but the band stole Sean’s guitar and all
his equipment. Sean wanted to find this
drummer and either get a guitar from him or some money or he was going to beat
the guy up. Really? I just wanted to go home but Sean did not
give us an option. We drove around all
day making phone calls and trying to track this guy down. I was getting pissed at the huge delay when
we were so close to home but Sean was determined and finally got an address on
the guy.
It was afternoon and light
was fading. Sean had a grim look on his
face as we pulled into the guy’s neighborhood and parked a few houses down the
street. He told us this shouldn’t be a
big deal, but then explained that if the guy got uppity or had friends with him
he might need some back up. Some
muscle. Me and Ron muscle? I was a peace-loving
hippie and Ron weighed about 100 pounds, but okay…we were Sean’s muscle. Sean knew the guy would not answer the door
if he knocked, so he wanted me to knock on the door while him and
Ron waited in the bushes. Then when the
guy came to the door Sean would appear.
After a minute the guy came to the door wondering who the heck I
was. Sean slowly merged out of the
bushes and you should have seen the look on the guy’s face. He was almost crying as he immediately
started apologizing and blubbering to Sean that he did not have any money or
his guitar and that the band had ripped him
off too.
So after talking to him for
awhile Sean let him off the hook (it’s hard to beat up a whimpering grown man I
guess) and we got back on the road to Minneapolis. We got in late that night on January 3rd. I was exhausted and completely broke but so
happy to be home after 9 full days on the road.
Lona was glad to see me but she was a little pissed off as she had been
expecting and waiting for me all day. I
explained about the delay in Kansas City and then curled up in our bed…an
actual bed instead of the front
bucket seat of a Celica. We had a
fantastic trip to California, but it was just the first of many…
