Jane: My first semi-erotic experience happened in our sand box, around age ten, when Jane and I were trying to save an injured chipmunk from the neighbor’s cat named Jill. She was always caring for some animal or another and when she bent over the shoebox holding the rodent I looked down her shirt and noticed the nubs of her starter boobs.
Lissa invited me to go skinny-dipping in a little pond near her house behind Lindenwood College under the TV towers at the edge of town. She had that long frizzy hair, a big smile, and cute teenage tits. We floated out in the water holding onto opposite sides of an old tire for awhile as we talked and gazed at each other. (I was so innocent I didn't know what else to do with her.)
Larry Bowers, the production manager, hired my best friend Tim Mills and me to dress up as Revolutionary War soldiers and stand at the door of his house welcoming guests to a cast party for the college production of “1776!” Somehow I found myself on the edge of the large sloping lawn with my face briefly pressed against the bare breasts of a happy drunk college coed. It was a very exciting experience for a high school virgin and for weeks after that I clumsily tried to find her.
Shawn: I guess I could say I was reared in a normal repressed family but that all changed after I met Shawn at a San Rafael onramp also hitching north. He had just gotten out of San Quentin and was heading to Humboldt County.
“I'm heading to Nooning Creek,” he said. “People are living naked on the creek.” He wore an amulet and had two huge army duffle bags. “The trees talk to me,” he said.
There were clumps of campers along the creek, all shameless naked hippies lounging along the beach, sometimes rising and going over to drink from the mossy spring flowing down the nearby mountainside.
Doug: We all went out to the Fourth of July party at Whiskey hill. I had golden seal and cayenne on my face for poison oak. We walked down the trail into a little clearing on the side of the hill and I looked around at these very cool California hippies and just tossed my frisbee into the air where it disappeared into the woods. Doug Green was sitting naked on the hillside with a big smile on his face.
“C'mon you phony hippies!” he said. “Take off your clothes!” I saw Milton high-stepping toward Erica's cabin behind a tall blond woman.
Pam: We hitchhiked to the country retreat in Phoenicia, NY where a sign out front said 'The Center For The Living Force.' A naked volleyball game was happening in the front yard and we joined right in.
Suzy: A couple years later back in Indiana Suzy wanted me to streak the radio station where her boyfriend worked as the DJ. When we got there we stripped down, ventured into the broadcast room, and I announced loudly, “This is a streak to impeach Nixon!” (It was the summer of '74 after all.) The station manager suddenly appeared and it was Larry Bowers again.
Swimming Hole: Living in Whale Gulch in the seventies and eighties was experiencing a culture of extreme openness and honesty. We were all naked at the swimming hole all summer long, the hippies had taken over and there was not a swim suit in sight.
Hitchhiked naked: Everyday all summer in the '70's I'd hitchhike to town, skinny-dip in the river then go to downtown Whitethorn and drink a beer, smoke a joint and jam on the street or listen to the musicians who would show up in the afternoon. One day I hitchhiked to the swimming hole naked and skipped the middleman so to speak. This couple and his brother picked me up, and the brother became psychotic after that.
Massage class: Whenever I'm driving to a big Gulch gathering memories of scenes out there over the years come flooding into my head in a pleasant wave of nostalgia. When heading to Beginnings for Nancy's big 70th birthday party I remembered a massage class that Joan Shirle had lead back around 1975.
Upon arriving at the Tower House, I was surprised to come upon a room of about ten naked people. I recovered quickly and took off my clothes as well.
First I was massaging Star, who was lying on her back, although I was having trouble focussing on her neck, necks can throw me.
Next I was massaging Don Edwards and after a while he said, “Will you stop dripping sweat on me?!”
Ah the old hippies daze, and what a fun party for Nancy's 70th.
Tom Pi: We were all nudists during the skinny dipping hippie era though I never heard those words either, just how it was. We'd go into Whitethorn and splash around the Dump Hole, rows of naked hippies on the rocks and tiny beach.
Once I was undressing and Tom Pi said, “You're wearing jockey shorts!” Indeed I was but didn't realize how uncool that was. After that I didn't wear underwear again, just pulled on my jeans like a real California hippie, boy, was I learning!
Pop: Gotta hand it to my old man. When he came west to visit his skinny-dipping hippie children he joined right in, like “when in Rome.”
Mom: I was taping an oral history with my 84-year-old mother a few years ago and it came up that her family were nudists when she was a kid. They didn't call themselves that, they just didn't see much use in wearing clothes around the house.
Ali: Years later I was talking at the Trade Faire with the daughter of our community photographer, the mother had died recently and the young woman had a box of her photos.
“If you ever run across a picture of me at about twenty dancing naked and playing the flute at a party at Bear Harbor with a naked red-haired girl playing her violin I would really like to see that,” I said. I remember we were dancing around each other by the fire pit. “Well, that was before we became more uptight about our bodies.”
“I'm not uptight about my body,” she said.
“Great,” I said. “Then take your clothes off now.”
(Snarl…)
Sometime the best stories are the ones people tell you. Here’s one from a guy in Alderpoint:
“First time I got to Whitethorn I saw soooo many people sitting on that big stump, by the store, recognized half of them from Marin. I’d wondered where they had all gone. My buddy and I drove to Four Corners, stole a 60 X 8 ft abandoned redwood log, cut it all into shingle bolts, and sold it at the shingle mill in Redway. I made 280 dollars and my buddy made about 600 as he had the chainsaw, tools, truck, and know-how.
We were both very strong young hardworking fellahs, we also had some good crank, took us about a week. Made the most money I ever had in my life, we were sixteen. We also raided a fellah’s pot patch who was squatting on the timber land where we stole the log, and I was finding arrowheads everywhere, very old ones, 3000 years.” GD
Alderpoint Memories (As told by Hugh Duggins, June 6, 2011 at 10:05am)
I came from Wapanuka, Oklahoma and ran the Riverview Inn in Alderpoint, California in the very early 70's. To control the drunken redneck crowd I had a gun behind the bar and, well, I thought I was pretty clever 'cos I loaded it up alternating blanks with real bullets. That's right: one bullet, one blank and so on.
Anyway one night there was another big fight so I took the gun out and fired a real round into the ceiling. Then I turned the gun to the scuffle and fired a blank and, well, that blank hit this chick in the left tit and she set a howling and all hell broke loose: those angry drunk Alderpoint rednecks chased me out of the bar and trashed the place completely.
And that was the end of the Riverview Inn, I went back to Wapanuka promptly.
Jim Dudley
Here’s oner by Bruce McEwen that’s worth repeating, culled from Friday’s comment section. (Also I wish I had saved his comment about trying to get a job in the Independent, from last year.
Bruce McEwen:
Thanks for the Woodrose Cafe piece. I used to be a pearl diver there back when Pam Hansen ran it and she had some dishy waitresses who did very well on tips from the growers and they kicked me down a couple beers at the Blue Room after work. Then I’d hoof it back to Redway and finish the night at the Brass Rail. After dark I could sneak back to my camp in the woods. Then a bully joined our homeless community and we lived in fear and loathing of this person until I hit him behind the ear with a chunk of cordwood for threatening to take over my Boy-Scout clean, tidy and dry little camp. He shook that blow off and beat me up and took my camp so I decamped on down to Ukiah and wert to work for the mighty AVA. But Pam had a great sign in the back from her trip to Woodstock. It said, “Hippies Use Back Door.” And I still believe in fighting bullies even if I lose.
Superbowl Invitation
This is an outrage, this is a crime against sports: We have Carl here, a big sports fan who has humbly just listened on the radio to every 49ers game this year, watches the highlights on his phone, all he wants to talk about is football and the 49ers, and yet he chooses to be in his rehearsal and miss the beginning of our most cherished national holiday, The Super Taylor Swift Bowl!
Yes, Carl, this is your life! This is the theatre stuff you love, these are your people, and who am I? Just your long-time sports buddy, who has taken you to a 49ers and a Giants game, yet you choose this random theatre rehearsal over watching the beginning of The Big Game.
Something you might not know about this “gentle man” is that he loves boxing and unlike me, when a player gets hurt on the football field he always watches the replay multiple times, to gawk at the broken bones, twisted ankles, and grimaces of pain on the faces of the warrior gods writhing on the field, while I always turn my head and cough.
He loves that shit, but he loves you all more, the theatrical process, always seeing the positive and enjoying the adventure of experiencing an act evolve into something a little more than just an attention-getting device, and so he will miss the first quarter of the biggest game of the year, of years, of decades, of the century really.
This cannot stand, this is not right, I’m here to perform an intervention, I ask you theatre people, you amateur actors, to release Carl from this last half hour of rehearsal and let him come down to my nearby house where I have a chicken in the oven, barbecued by god!, with potatoes, sweet potatoes, and squash with mango chutney sauce. You may ask but where are the greens and yes, there will be an all-organic twelve-veggie salad on the side, by god again, with maybe a fancy beer, and then I’ll give him a dark chocolate bar to take to his next stop, watching the rest of the game with his true loves, Susan and Jeannie.
And what are they serving over there? Chips and salsa and cold lima beans from Winco? (Look at him, he loves to be fought over!) They probably don’t even care about the team, just want a glimpse of Taylor Swift, and will distract Carl with all sorts of questions and conversation, when he just wants to watch the game. He will not have that problem at my house, only talk about the game is allowed, as I am an extreme control freak, perhaps why he chose his mommies over me.
I think this man, someone who we used to say resembled Harrison Ford, has made his point: He’s willing to sacrifice his sports joy (though one bad play by Brock Purdy will plunge him into disconsolate darkness) to show that you, his acting family, are all that matters. So please release him for the kickoff, a glance at the cute Taylor Swift with her bright red lips, and the big game.
Lets act together to help Carl overcome his deep feelings of unworthiness, huddling here in your bosom, and show him, tell him, that he is worthy enough to watch the first quarter of the game. Thank you, and Free Carl!