It was December of 1986. I was 20 years old, in my 3rd year of college at the University of Minnesota and really starting to get into the Grateful Dead. I had only seen them 5 times prior to this but they were quickly becoming a way of life. One day I got a call from a buddy of mine who had seen a couple of Dead shows at Alpine Valley the previous summer and had got all caught up in the frenzy. He had bought a VW bus, plastered it with Dead stickers and suddenly he was a Deadhead. He even went so far as to mail-order for New Years Eve tickets to see the Dead in Oakland before he realized he was not that into it and did not want to “drive all the way to California in the middle of winter to see a couple of freakin’ concerts.” He had scored a pair of tickets for the 12/30 & 12/31/86 Dead shows at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, so he called me up and asked if I wanted them. I hung up and called my buddy Ron ‘The Snake’ Bronson and he immediately said yes, he’s in. We’ll take ‘em! We decided the two of us would drive out there right after Christmas in my yellow ’78 Toyota Celica.
I had been visiting my
parents for Christmas at their house in Waukesha near Milwaukee. With deep and valid concern in my mother’s
eyes as I pulled out of the driveway, I headed up to Minneapolis early on
December 26th to get Ron. I
got there around 11 am and our friend Sean Morrison was at Ron’s house. Sean had nothing to do and thought it would
be fun to visit our friend Reinhart Simpson who lived in Lovington, New
Mexico. He asked if we would drop him
off in Albuquerque on the way to Oakland and pick him up in Lovington on the
way back. Sure! The more the merrier! Wait…I asked him if New Mexico was on the way
to Oakland. “Practically”, he said. He noted that it was a littttle bit farther
south than one would normally be going from Minneapolis to Oakland but that it
was almost as fast if not faster because one would avoid the worst of the Rocky
Mountains in the winter. Fine, no
problem, let’s do it.
I had a small pack with some
underpants, some tee-shirts, the concert tickets, a briefcase full of
cassettes, a camera and about $200. Gas
was still just under $1/gallon so I figured $200 would be plenty to get us there
and back, and any leftover money would be for food. Sean had a small pack, and Ron just brought a
case of beer. We had everything we
needed. The three of us set out from Minneapolis
around noon heading south on I-35 with me behind the wheel, Sean riding shotgun
and Ron in the back.
By the time we had gotten
half-way through Iowa Ron had plowed through half the case of beer and was
puking and obnoxious. By the time we go
to Missouri he had passed out but wet his pants and he was really starting to
stink up my car. I begged Sean to let me
pull over at a rest stop and leave him there.
I rationalized that Ron could hitchhike back to Minneapolis and Sean
could take Ron’s place. The voice of
reason, Sean said no but that we could stop in Kansas City where his mom lived
and get Ron cleaned up. She was a very
sweet, understanding lady who had seen a lot in her days of raising Sean and
his brother. She washed Ron’s pants,
gave us a large plate of Christmas cookies and sent us on our away.
It was about 9 pm and a
blinding ice storm had moved into the area.
Sean was driving now as we continued south towards Wichita and then
Oklahoma City. After an hour we had
finally gotten clear of the Kansas City metro area and into the open plains,
but the ice storm was making the going very slow as Sean slid around on the
highway trying to avoid the ditches on either side. I was up front holding on for dear life while
Ron snored away in the back seat. It was
getting late and Sean reasoned that with all the beers he had drunk there was
no way he was going to make it through the night without some extra help so he
produced a baggie full of mushrooms. He
held the bag up and with a nod motioned me to dig in, but I declined citing the
need for sleep. He placed the bag on his
lap and started munching away while driving.
I fell asleep but at some point during the night was awakened by a large
“THUMP”! We were still moving, but Sean
sadly told me that he had hit a large white dog running across the
freeway. In his hallucinogenic state I
could not be sure if that was true or not, but we had definitely hit something.
I woke up the next morning
and looked out at bright sunny Texas. No
more snow and ice! Sean was still
driving and grinning and said that other than a few fishtail episodes on the
ice, the hassle of avoiding all the cars that were off the side of the road and
the one huge dog he had hit, everything was groovy. We pulled over in the desert, got out and
climbed around. I marveled at all the
cactus and tumbleweeds and lizards and stuff I had never seen before. At a lonely gas station in the middle of
nowhere there was a large cowboy about 20 feet tall pointing a pistol, so I had
Sean pull over and take a picture of me getting shot.
Ron and I eventually realized
that Albuquerque was nowhere near San Francisco, but the three of us finally
got to Albuquerque on the evening of the 27th. We met up with our college buddy Reinhart at
a bar, had a few beers and talked about old times. Then Ron and I continued on into the night
heading for California with Ron driving while I slept. I woke up briefly as we approached Winslow,
AZ and I made Ron pull over and take a picture of me next to the sign so I could
say that I was “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona”. It was, in fact, not such a fine sight to see and not one single girl in a flatbed
Ford slowed down to take a look at me.
I woke up early the next
morning at the California border with Ron stopped at a checkpoint. Huh?
They wanted to know if we had any fruit.
Hell no I thought, but I hope they don’t search us and find Ron’s weed. Nope…we continued on and got to Los Angeles
around 9 am on the morning of December 28th. We decided not to stop in L.A., but just head
straight up to the Bay Area. We could
have taken the faster way on Hwy 5 which is only about 6 hours, but we had
heard how beautiful Hwy 1 is along the coast.
So with me behind the wheel we took the 9 hour way up the scenic winding
coastal highway. It was absolutely
breathtakingly beautiful for a couple of Minnesotans who had never seen the
Pacific Ocean before, but after a few hours it got tiresome…left, right, left,
right, constantly turning the whole way along this never-ending winding
road.
Late in the afternoon we made
it to Big Sur near Monterey. We sneaked
past the checkpoint and went into the Big Sur State Park looking for a free
shower. We hiked around for a bit,
showered, and I called my girlfriend Lona to let her know that I had made it to
California and everything was groovy.
There was a lot of noise in the background and it sounded like she was
having a party. She did not seem interested
in hearing about what a great time I was having so I made it a quick call and
hung up. Feeling refreshed we got back
onto Hwy 1 and headed for Oakland. We
did not have tickets for the Dead’s show that night or any extra money to
spare, but I started thinking that maybe when we got to the H.J.K Convention
Center we could somehow score some free or cheap tickets for that night’s
show. Four out of my five previous
experiences with the Grateful Dead had been at Alpine Valley, so I just assumed
there would be a nice friendly camping area and plenty of extra tickets.
We finally got to the Bay
Area and were heading northing on Hwy 880 around 8 pm on the night of the 28th. Suddenly I saw a large arena off to the right
packed with cars in the lot and I assumed it was where the Dead were
playing. What luck! We had no idea where the Kaiser was, and we
just happened to stumble across it! We
joyously pulled into the parking lot and slowly drove through the rows of cars
looking for a spot. But wait…this was weird. The lot was packed with cars but no people.
Where were all the Deadheads? The
VW buses? The hippies milling around
selling tie-dyes and beers and bracelets?
The loud Dead music with a different bootlegged concert blaring out of
every other car? I realized the show had
already started but the lot was like a ghost town. Maybe they do things differently in
California? Maybe once the show starts
everyone with a ticket goes in and everyone else leaves.
So we parked our car and
headed towards the arena. We could hear
the music playing and we were getting more and more excited as we got up to the
gate. Then…we just walked right in! Nobody asked us for a ticket! Holy crap, we had just gotten into our first
California Dead show for free! We stood in a stairwell near the stage to
check it out and look for open seats, but something was not right. Was that even the Dead? I did not recognize
the song at all. I did not have my
glasses on, but it sure did not look or sound like them. Ron had never seen the Dead and he had no
idea what was going on, so pointing to the stage I asked a guy if that was the
Grateful Dead. He just stared at me,
then slowly shook his head and said:
“No…that’s Huey Lewis and the News.”
Dammit! We were not at the H.J.K. Convention Center…we were at the Oakland
Coliseum.
(Weird side-note: I am typing this here at work on my lunch
break. Just a second ago at the exact
moment that I was on Google getting the correct spelling of ‘Huey Lewis’, the
girl in the next cubicle took her headphones off and I could hear the familiar
sounds of the popular 80’s song ‘The Heart Of Rock And Roll’ playing. Am I mistaken or is that a Huey Lewis
song? Yep…I just Googled the song and
yes it is Huey Lewis.)
Anyways, we sheepishly backtracked out of the
Oakland Coliseum, jumped in the car and headed further north looking for the
Kaiser. After driving around for a bit
we eventually found it right smack in the middle of Oakland. After 63 hours on the road I had finally made
it from Waukesha, WI to Oakland, CA. We
found a parking spot on the road across the street from the park which was
across the street from the Kaiser. For
the next four nights this block on this street would be our home. I will close the story here for now, as the entire story is going to be very
long. This first part is the
intro…getting to Oakland. Part 2 will be
all the stuff that happened in the Bay Area, as well as getting home.
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