As the summer of 1967 arrived, I became more and more determined that I should have a good experience with LSD. I had become convinced that the reason I wasn’t able to have a good trip was to do with my ego and that I needed to work on myself. So that was my inner dilemma. The particularly bad trip I’d had the previous year at the Fillmore was all about loss of control. I felt I had to hold onto my ability to control and was terrified that it was oozing away from me in dramatically large globules.
Although I was living at my parents’ apartment on Russian Hill in San Francisco’s North Beach, I was definitely becoming more and more remote from them. When I occasionally brought young women home with me, I never introduced them to Blackie and Beth. On one occasion my extreme hippy friend Matt came over to the city and crashed on the floor of my bedroom. I don’t recall the details of his encounter with my mother Beth, but she became very upset by his lack of hygiene in our kitchen. Back in my bedroom Matt said: “I’m sorry I freaked your mother out.” He said this in a way which implied that he had no control over his behaviour. Matt was unable to interact with straight society. His way of life involved smoking marijuana in industrial quantities and only associating with those who did the same.
Although I was steeped in the drug culture, I was still able to socialise with straight people, something Matt was incapable of doing. He was a highly intelligent and articulate individual but made no compromise with society. Jared Dreyfus and I were both very diplomatic people and the fact that we smoked grass didn’t alter that reality. I remember Jar being acerbic about one of my hippy friends whose syntax was littered with phrases like “Oh, man” and “Far out.” He raised a critical eyebrow at such talk and wasn’t timid about sharing his opinions with me. “Myers,” he said. “Are you really spending time with people who speak like that?” Though I was no longer in high school, Jar’s opinion was still important to me and any opportunity to visit the Dreyfus house was always welcome.
While growing up in Mill Valley there were certain buildings that I had loved. The old Carnegie library up on Lovell was a place I enjoyed spending time. A building of solid brick which first opened in 1911, it was a magical place where my siblings and I would spend hours reading or just searching for books of interest. I was not a big reader but I did love books nonetheless, particularly those with illustrations. Up on the top floor was where most adults spent time but down on the lower level was where the children’s books were. There was also a separate entrance to the lower level, with a round-top door and a brick surround which matched it. It was a glorious place to hang around.
The Carnegie Library on Lovell. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
Another venue I spent a lot of time at was the Bus Depot. It was a train station when it opened in 1889, but by the time my family arrived in Mill Valley in 1952, it was the place the Greyhound buses to and from the city arrived and departed from. More importantly for me as a small child was the huge selection of comic books they displayed on their racks. I spent so much time at the Bus Depot that the ladies who worked there, Brun and Margo, got to know me and allowed me to read the comics when other kids were told to put them back.
Several views of the Depot as it was before it was the Book Depot. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
A building I also loved was the Dreyfus house up in West Blithedale canyon. It was a large wooden house which probably dated back to the turn of the century. I never saw anything above the middle floor which contained the kitchen, dining room, living room, TV room and a wonderful glass enclosed porch which overlooked the hill down to the street. The street snaked around the house from the bottom to the top.
After a visit to the Dreyfus house one day, I got a lift downtown in Jar’s silver Austin Healey. He pulled into a parking place on Corte Madera in the shade of the Bank of America building. I was telling him about some person I didn’t care for and suddenly he turned to me and said: “So that bastard is walking around living his life with no problems and Dave is dead.” Dave was his older brother who had been killed in a helicopter accident at the beginning of the year. “That’s god’s justice, John. He’s alive and Dave is dead. Which leads me to conclude that god’s justice is a crock of shit.”
What neither of us could have known at the time was that in the last years of his life, Jar became a born again Christian. It was something which puzzled all of his family. I remember both Barney and Babbie being baffled by Jared’s religious conversion as were his kids Adam, Christian and Kate. Jon Diederich who was a good friend from grade school at Old Mill credited Jar with making him question his Catholic faith at a very young age so for his friend to embrace a branch of the very faith he had earlier mocked, was puzzling. After his conversion, Jar never tried to convert me and the few times we discussed his religious beliefs he respected my lack of belief. I even recall raising the conversation we’d had about Dave in his car and he remembered it clearly.
After leaving Jar I took a Greyhound bus back to the city. If I had a graphics job to complete I would do it at my parents place where I had a big drawing board in my bedroom. So the city was where I worked and Mill Valley was where I would go to hang out with my friends and get high. On my next Mill Valley excursion, having crashed at a friend’s house high up on Edgewood, I awoke to a sunny day and, splashing water on my face, walked down the road to Molino and took a left on Mirabelle. I continued onto Ethel past a few barking dogs until I came to the steps behind Brown’s Department Store where I descended to Miller Avenue. Suddenly I found myself downtown on a beautiful summer’s day. I wandered up past Mens’ Mayer’s and Meyer’s Bakery then crossed the street.
The depot was still the Bus Depot with Greyhounds coming in and out of town on the hour. I sat on the bench by the taxi rank and watched the world go by then glanced up at the old clock to see it was almost 1pm. Hunger beckoned. I walked up past Pat & Joe’s and Redhill Liquor to Sonapa Farms just below the Sequoia building to have one of their delicious sandwiches.
Sonata Farms, a deli just below the Sequoia Theatre on Throckmorton. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
I sat in the window facing Throckmorton while eating my roast beef on rye in a basket with a big dill pickle. The thing about sitting in the window at Sonapa Farms was that you got a panoramic view. The hill which exists at that end of Throckmorton could be properly appreciated from the top to the bottom. A steady parade of Chevies, Mustangs and VW’s ran up and down to and from East Blithedale. The pedestrian traffic was interesting too. Most were faces I didn’t know but one person stopped and turned to look at me. A broad and engaging smile told me it was someone I knew. It was Tom Connell. Tom was a person I had known for years through the Dreyfus family but I hadn’t seen him in a long while.
Tam High photos of Dave Dreyfus and Tom Connell who, along with Abby Wassermann were in the class of 1958. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
He was older than me and had a passing resemblance to the film actor Robert Vaughan although unlike the Man From U.N.C.L.E., Tom had blond hair. He’d been in Dave Dreyfus’s class at Tam High and was what I guess you would call an entrepreneur. Tom always had a money making scheme in progress. Every winter he would run a Christmas tree lot and as kids, my brother Jim and I worked for him, finding ourselves in freezing caravan trailers at various locations around the county. The Dreyfus’s had a beach cabin out at Stinson which Tom used to make use of for what Jared referred to as scenes, or in other words amorous encounters with young women. It seems that every person I knew through the Dreyfus family was smart and articulate and Tom was no exception. So he came in and sat down. He’d heard about my poster work at the Fillmore, probably from Jar, and was interested to hear more.
I told him that since I’d stopped working for Bill Graham that poster commissions were thin on the ground. He listened to me with an impressive intensity. He wanted to know about what the work of producing a poster entailed. He offered to drive me back to San Francisco if I’d buy him some gas for his sports car. I was rather charmed by his candour, coughed up for a visit to the gas station and off we went across the Golden Gate Bridge.
As we drove into the city, Tom was thinking out loud of how a business could be built around my ability to produce posters. It was a seductive idea. He found a parking place on Union Street near my parents’ apartment. Unlike my hippy friend Matt, Tom was charming to my mother Beth and had a nice chat with her before coming into the workplace in my bedroom. I showed him samples of original artwork and the finished printed product. He suggested that I produce a logo of my signature in much the same way that Walt Disney’s supposed signature was the trademark of the Disney Corporation.
Tom’s idea, which was evolving conversationally, was to produce posters on a variety of themes and sell them. He encouraged me to get on with the signature logo and said that he needed to speak to someone about finance before we could go ahead. It was an interesting idea and I felt excited by it.
I got word that brother Jim was being posted to Korea which sounded better than Da Nang. He would be stopping over for a few days in Seattle and wondered if I’d like to fly up for a visit. It seemed like a good idea so I booked a flight. At this time I had pretty long hair and bushy sideburns. I was, at age 20, unable to grow a full beard. I could manage a moustache, sideburns and the area around my neck but there were no whiskers between my chin and lower lip so I had to wait a few years to be fully bearded.
My flight to Seattle was without incident and when I disembarked I came across members of the Jefferson Airplane being mobbed by autograph hunters. It was very odd to see them in a totally different context to the Fillmore where such a thing would never happen. It was also interesting to see how famous they were becoming. Marty Balin was dutifully signing his name and nodded hello as I walked past.
Jimmy met me at the gate in his army uniform. We went off for lunch where he was surprisingly talkative. He told me about basic training which he didn’t enjoy at all and found himself regretting his enlistment. He also told me about some of his colleagues, one of whom bragged of a gay relationship he’d had with a famous Hollywood movie star complete with photos of him with the actor. Hardly the stuff of discretion. He told me too of another soldier who, while stationed near Death Valley, would stamp on and kill tarantula spiders whenever he encountered them, which was often.
Jim and I didn’t share many interests while growing up in the Myers family. I was a year and a half older than him but he outgrew me at age five which erased any possibility of physical bullying on my part. His height and angular handsome face was in contrast to my diminutive stature. I was a remarkably tiny child and though good looks seemed to run in our family, Jim was always the handsome one while I was the little cute one. By the time I was ten I’d developed a passion for MAD Magazine, comic books and horror movies. Jim studiously avoided expressing interest in anything I felt passionate about and therefore began collecting baseball cards. Oh he read my comic books and MADs but quietly without fanfare.
One thing we did share was a sense of humour. Many times we’d find ourselves in hysterical stitches at the Sequoia Theatre while a Road Runner cartoon unspooled or at certain scenes in a Jerry Lewis movie. Yet neither of us could tell a joke properly. We’d start giggling about the punchline before we got to it. Our teddy bear collection as young kids, known to us as Bearville, was a unifying experience as was our cat Totem when the family moved from Seymour Avenue down to Catalpa Street. Just as we had invented voices for all thirty of the teddy bears, we would talk for Totem in a funny voice which amused us no end. However, if there were no teddy bears, cat, or road runner cartoons involved, Jim and I went separate ways.
So it was surprising to me to find him so animated as we talked over our lunch. He had gone from living at home to being in the army which must have been a hell of a shock. I remember, at age eighteen, getting very emotional on the bow of the ship Torvanger as it sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on its way to Japan. I was leaving home in a life changing way and, alone on the bow of the ship, I burst into tears and sobbed for some time. I don’t know that Jim had a similar experience but it must have been a tough moment for him, leaving the nest.
So Jimmy and I had a good visit. I stayed the night in his hotel room. He took photos of me wearing his uniform which was odd as my hair was long and I had bushy sideburns. The next morning after breakfast we saw a bit of Seattle, said our goodbyes and then I was off to the airport.
My flight back to San Francisco was early afternoon. As I have mentioned previously I had long hair and sideburns. I was dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, a white shirt and a black leather vest (or waistcoat). I looked like a hippy. There was a huge stigma in American society about long hair on men. In 1967 it was fine for male pop stars and Hollywood actors but in general society such an appearance attracted unwanted attention. “Are you a boy or a girl?” was a phrase regularly shouted by men at other men with long hair. Whenever I worked as a ship’s clerk on the waterfront, my father Blackie insisted that I cut my hair as this intolerance was so prevalent on the front.
I boarded my flight to San Francisco and as I turned right to enter the cabin I saw that practically all the seats were occupied by uniformed soldiers. I immediately felt panicked. The prospect of wading through this potentially hostile crowd in such cramped conditions filled me with dread.
To be continued…
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Miller Avenue Musings 