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CONTENTS
Through the Looking Glaw
Letters
M a d Wowee
* U n ~
". ..circumstances surrounding the
-.
.
4 hhn Wikon & Ray M u m
6 Kdy,
sndhrnhluth
8 'Wng Lih&kp''
10 l ! b m b n w .
U
8qdtta
19 Clidta--
Portraits: Friends &
20 -'-.
PwasaBad 27 J d ~ i & .
E & W
29 f h d e a *
from ~ p p l e ~ a a 56
y ParlWDark Side of the Iab.wg 3l RanRdkr
Love Poem 33 W a d a h Porehe
Pleasures of the Imagination
)idla
Moroccan S k e t c h h k 36 6Wpbaafhvis
Report from Tahiti -; 40 h n n I&RQO
The Alaska Highway 42 d d b
'
-
--
Mmmlhkr P a Inc., 325
Green Mountain Post No. 5,Spring 1977. Published qccSaig,
co st, Inc. We
Bleecker St., New York, NY 10014. Entire contenb
.mnvbpP if you want
welcome unsolicited words or pictures, accompanied by a
nd mechanicalr
them returned. Publisher: John Wilton This issue was
and
Editor. Our
were made for it in New York by John Witon. Charles
&4b4
s, Karen k g a n , Oakes
thanks for invaluable assistance on this issue to: Christ!!
q,?ks.
l(.h,
and Brian
Plympton, Nick Gunderson, Stan Livingood, Compu aG
C
q
p
Kelly. East Coast Editorial: 325 Bleecker St., # 4
Ork, N Y. 1 14 (El WQ@18. West
Coast Editorial: Sf. Charles Hotel, 8.5 South Washingkm 8 ,&at&!, W r b . ~ l (2061
d 623-5563.
Distribution and business offices: Box 177, Montague, Mass. 01351.(413)863-4754. 'Green Mountain
Post from Coast to Coast' logotype designed by Doug Parker; cover photo by Peter Simon.
P
&
- .
P.a
BACK ISSUES OF
Some back issues of this magazine are still
available, but they're going fast! They are real collectors'
items filled with irresistable writing.
No. 1,The New'Babylon Timer. Features
fust publication afJon Maslow's
Piece," Verandah Porcha's "Letter om a
Foreign City." Steve k m u ' s "Idlewild
,"Ray Mumgo's " A b d u d y
R e nnto~huu,"ooraartbyGbu@me, pbm b PnnSirarm, ut by
by,&
I V ~ I
..
&en am.
"=Zh
T
edd
No. 2, G m m m m P a r t . M a d
from ' T i Betweun." by Pad W
i
Craig Span's "Fomardl," Vet&&
Porche's ''Lament in W m t ~ ARiQbaJ.
~"
O'Donogbw's "Aaack af dm Woe '
Macrobes," axial "A Dsorh in tha P d p n
by Steve Dinmasd, phabar by Petar Sbtm
PndartbyPerslGaulhS3.
THROUGH THE
LOOKING GLASS
No. 3. Ray Mun 0's 'Three Wishes"
s t q . Robert Wifey%"Christmas Memory," man family hotos by C. E. Green,
peter d d s s''Ol~&adl' comics, and
Harve Wasserman talking to Old Man
Thundcbunny; much more! $2.
dortazar," the ScotlandJournal of Thoma
~~,"
and '"fhee ~ o n n ~ c t i &bYhephel
Davis; more. $2
Order back issuesfrom our New York oflces:
Green Mtn.Post, 325 Bleeder St., suite 14, NYC 10014
Enclose your check or m.0.. we pay postage.
This has always been a rather erratic
publication, so it should come as no
surprise that another issue surfaces after
a five year interval. Apparently the
magazine was merely sleeping. We've
all gotten another degree of age, and
now feels like the right time to speak up
again. We're getting a second wind,
more powerful than the first.
Time has widened the scope of Green
Mountain Post's universe. This issue
was ediled over the phone between our
various headquarters. An editorial meeting of our gang took place last May in
Minneapolis, Minnesota-a functioning
middle-point for writers and artists scattered all over the nation. But the people
who bring it to you are the selfsame
maniacs of old.
All the people who've contributed to
Green Mountain Post make up a family of a curious sort-we
don't live
together, after all, but we're never very
far apart. It seems as though this is the
YOU MAY NEVER SEE
THIS MAGAZINE AGAIN
unless you subscribe!
time for the GMP . . . there's hardly
anything out there for stoned heads and
a large, thinly spread audience is waiting, hungrily for Green Mountain
Post. We'll just sent it on out, and see
what happens.
It's difficult to remember the almost
impossible idealism we all had a few
years back. It's utterly incredible to
witness that idealism rising again-as if
all the sheer wear and tear of the
Nixonian epoch hadn't really bumped us
off, but merely whetted our appetite for
the gradual assumption of responsibility
for ourselves and our society. This may
be the only magazine in America in
which you'll read nothing about
politics-but we actually believe that
what you'll find here is more important.
As well as more fun. Issue number 6 is
now planned for winter, so you'll see us
around. Some things refuse to die, and
thank God for that.
Raymond Mungo &John Wilton
Seattle and New York City
April 1977
mUNTAI'N POST SUBSCRIBERS!
HdPY
issues for y w z S4, p~
I
Lbbl8m1~d 'em.
FltEgf
BETWEEN TWO
MOON.? rn - c p
RAYMOND M U N W
w-.
from Rabat Redford md
4
Beaeon Press, $7.50 vb
mQccnMoantrinaolt.
gararr FREE flu snboaibiag
So why delay? Life is too short to miss out cm Lbc cidldm~oa'llfind on these
pages. Fill out the coupon and subscribe WaopI
--
To: Green Mountain Post, St. Charles Hw~,
85 So. Washington St., Seattle, WA 98104
I
I
1
YES! I don't want to miss out on future issues of GMP. Give me
( ) four big action-packed issues for $4; ( ) ten issues for $8; or
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Name:
Address:
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-
Dear Stevanovich,
As was pretty evident I was getting
deeper and deeper into the rut in bonnie
Scotland. The outlook was bleak and the
prognosis was poor. Booze and Banality
had me firmly in their grip and I wasn't
even struggling against it. Just like the
millions who went unquestioningly to their
deaths in the gas chambers I was just
letting it happen without even raising a
little finger against an unkind fate. I got
a letter from Tony which started off "what
the fuck" followed by a great letter from
Chuck and then last but never least,
yourself. And somewhere, I don't know
where, I summoned up enough energy
psychic and otherwise to stick part of one
nostril above the water and take a deep
sniff of life, just as it was about to be
snuffed. I was going down for the third
time. The eleventh hour fiftyninth minute,
fiftyninth second was at hand. Suddenly
Tony's "what the fuck" shone a great light
on my soul and I screamed in one great
Cosmos-rending scream "what the fuck"
this isn't me letting it happen like this and
I took off like a rocket bound for well, shall
we say Venus, being my favourite goddess.
I did everything I could for my mother,
got a housekeeper every other day, had
"meals on wheels" deliver and generally
appraised everyone of the situation that
my departure was impending and I was
gone, bus ride Glasgow to London, slept
one night at Gatwick stretched on a couch
at the airport and left after a late departure
for JFK and arrived after being stacked up
for an hour and a half. I was playing it
strictly by ear. On the flight I was still
trying to make up my mind where to go
on arrival at Kennedy. And there I was
standing in the arrival concourse with plans
none. All of the options were attractive.
I dearly wanted to see the people at Montague. I dearly wanted to have a talk with
you but mostly (I suppose) I just wanted
to breath again and feel the heat of the sun.
And that pressure was west. There is a
cheap night flight to the coast but due to
my swithering and indecision I had let It
go by, so onto the bus and into midtown
Manhattan. From there to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which isn't the savouriest
place late on a Friday night suffering from
a combination of jet-lag, culture shock, and
just plain tiredness but luck was with me
and just two hours later I was aboard a
Greyhound bound for L.A. Seven days
(actually eight) for $76 of unlimited travel.
Went via St. Louis and Albuquerque (that
does look right but you know. where I
mean). Turned out my neighbor was a
twentyfive year old Puerto Rican who since
arranging his own discharge from the army
had been practising the twin trades of pimp
and pusher in the Big A. A rather incredible
character-since he had served in Spain we
found common ground in our bar knowledge in Torremolinos. We became friends
of sorts for the next 24 hours during which
time I got to know ail the details of this entrepreneur. He was actually on his way to
Cincinnatti to pick up seven more girls for
the flesh trade of the big A. After he got off
the bus I lapsed into a contemplative silence
for the remainder of the journey. There was
much to think about. He had spoken of
Guatemalan as against the quality of Colombian and such like. Shafts of light were
striking from all directions. Also footnote
that someone was sitting on it in the big A
and that it was going for from 350 to 500 per
pound. Arrived in LA in the wee hours of
Tuesday morn and sought sanctuary in the
YMCA in Long Beach where the rooms are
clean and cheap, but just mainly wanted to
put my head down and sleep. Awoke after
about twenty hours refreshed and decided
that the next order of business should be to
run up to Vegas and register my car and also try and do something about my driver's
license which had expired and also use up
the remainder of the travel time. Had to sit
out Thanksgiving in Vegas. Sat up all night
listening to lounge rock and dropping the
occasional gin and orange. Presented myself bright and early at the Department of
-
41ex Kelly
was born in
Scotland, has
lived in the U.S.
offand on
for two decades.
He makes his
home somewhere
between our form i
bfossachusetts and
pad in L.A.
He has previously
contributed to
GMP's Minor
Poets' Comer.
Motor Vehichles. Had a hysterical experience with the lady clerk who was assisting
me with the re-registration procedure.
Since the registration was 2 % years old I
had to fill out a form stating that it had not
been in use and two of my neighbours who
could verify this. Since there is a Colonel
Sanders chicken place on one side of the
storage lot and an empty waste piece of
ground on the other i was hard put to come
up with something and since the unforgivable sin is not to answer all the questions
in these little games i wound up simply
putting down Colonel Sanders and in my
tired state my Puerto Rican friend whose
name had been Franco just went down on
the paper and so onto the drivers license
section who said that since my license was
expired I would have to take the whole test
again. Written, visual and driving. Which
was going to be a neat trick considering
I didn't have a car with me. I took one look
at the written exam and just handed the
paper back to them. Not one question rang
any bells in my head.
Someone said
"would I like to read the book?" I said
sure and stuck myself in one corner of the
room and kept the head down for the next
hour and a half. Cover to cover three times,
decided it was then or never and went up
and got the paper back and the answers
just went down. I missed two. The visual
was okay and then I heard the examlner
saying as I hadn't had any driving tickets
or the like in Nevada in the last eight years
I was going to be excused the driving test
and would I please take the papers over to
the typewriters and the license would be
made out. I think I was chuckling maniacally at about that stage of the game and
then onto the next bus back to my hideout
in Long Beach.
I should about this time explain that at
this time I really didn't know for sure that I
still had a car and trailer as I hadn't seen
them since May 1973, (yes 2'/2 years ago
and hadn't sent any money in the interim).
So out to the iast known whereabouts of
said vehicles and there they were, looking
just like things get to look after they have
been sitting six months, let alone that
length of time. The owner said he knew i
would be back for them sometime and
wasn't worried. Even gave me one of the
lads who worked about the yard to assist
me. He took the battery out and put it on
charge and I went for two gallons of gas. I
really felt like we were just going through
the actions prior to writing out the death
certificate but would you believe that thing
started up just like it had been running the
day before. It was not only incredible, it was
pure magic. And so here I sit telling of all
these misdeeds, re-registered, re-certificated. Showered and about to go up to Norm's
and put away a steak, medium rare, two
eggs overeasy and whole wheat toast and
yes I will have the coffee now. So, loved
ones, I h o w to see you all in the near future, just exactly when can't say right now
as a little Mexican trip may come between
that time for health reasons, but worry not
it will be soon. In the meantime my love and
good thoughts to you all and may the good
karma just keep on coming.
Alex Kelly
Long Beach, California
Dear Raymond,
I tried to answer your iast letter when it
came, but letter-writing seems to come and
go of its own inclination rather than at my
will. For the last four months I've been sitting in town, enjoying the sporadic rains,
the swimming pool, a large pile of detective
novels, Sunday mornings in the market
full of beads and bangles, cloth, plastic
and food, leather and basketry, and Ouagadougou nightlife in the form of cheap night-
Hubs full of whores from Ghana and outweously dressed men and boys, their
rlltntight shirts and ballooning bellbottoms
w i n g the ethnic scars on their faces and
thefact that they often do not speak French
at all; soirees folkloriques in the civic auditmium where traditional musicians and
dancers perform for hours; bars, restaura s , streetwalkers, and two outdoor cinamas which specialize in Hindu or gangster
or cowboy films, karate or kung-fu films
' W i n g been banned because Voltaic urban
y w t h were too quick and eager in their
I d t a t i o n of what they saw on the silver
screen. The only real source of excitement
in the last few months was the Muslim
month of fasting, Ramadan, which ended
recently with a national holiday, a day of
prayer and a week of dancing every evening
in the town square. For the duration of the
month gangs of children or adolescents
dress up in masks made of old gourds,
Norman Skougstad lives in
Seattle when he is not in Upper
Volta, West Afica, applying
his monumental education in
anthropologv.
painted and decorated in imitation of
animals, and they wander the streets,
going from house to house fishing for invitations to come in and dance, for which
they are paid. It's something like trickor-treating, but more interesting. At the
end of the month a festival and contest was
held, groups from each quarter of the city
competing, and prizes were awarded the
winners. The losers blew up and tried to
beat up the judges, and a good time was
had by all. There is an uncontainable
vitality here which seems to permeate so
many aspects which seem to be apathetic
repetition of traditional form.
Certain
events or causes capture so quickly the
collective consciousness, while technological development or professional conscience
remain remote concepts.
I've been hiding out on the edge of '
town in a little house in the midst of a
greenerycovered courtyard, sipping my
gin-and-tonics and reading Ross MacDonald and wallowing in relative idleness and
ease. Recently I resumed my language lessons, and I'm slowly remotivating myself to
do another season in 'the field'. But firstfive weeksof vacation. I'm heading for the
beaches of Dakar, and may take a riverboat
trip along the Niger on the way back to visit
Timbuktu and cliffdwellers in Mali. I am a
lazy traveller however and may spend the
whole time on the beach. I'll be back in
time for all the holidays in December--lnde
pendence Day, Tabaski, the Muslim sheep
slaughter, Christmas and New Year's, and
then, should start going out to villages
again, to see who's dancing when. I expect
the remaining six months will yo rather
quickly, in spite of the heat. I should be
back in thestates by late June or early July.
I was glad to get the news from Seattle
and would like to get more. Someone Sent
me a review of your new book that appeared
in the P.I. Congratulations, and I'm glad to
hear how well the bookstore and press are
doing. Hello to one and all and do keep in
touch.
Norman Skougstad
Upper Volta, West Africa
Dear Dan and John and Raymond,
I was very troubled to open a thick parcel from you and find Bloom's journal. I
couldn't read it for a long time and I was
working hard on something thP? tended to
keep me from reading it for a longer time
still, but mostly, I thought, I didn't want to
come to terms with the idea that I might be
highly implicated in Bloom's death. I never
have really confronted my guilt on that
score, certainly not with any of you, who
are, as I look at it now, precisely the people
I ought to have worked that through with.
I was going to read it late one night,
just after Marie went off to New York, but I
felt a presence in the house and felt too
freaked to read it just then. I didn't think
I ' d get Bloom to appear, but I thought I ' d
create a Bloom and spook myself. So I let it
sit.
Then I figured out it was a death announcement and with your brilliantly ironic
sense of timing, you were telling me to get
ready, because it was coming again. So I
just waited. I wasn't surprised to get the
call, I think, in retrospect, I ' d even had a
second clarity before the fact and knew who
it was. Last night I got the call from Muffy
Meyer: Marc Stone did himself in in New
Orleans on 2 December.
So now I' m free to write you.
First off, I have to say that I would do
anything I can to help you in any endeavour
you choose. I totally love the three of you,
separately and together, and I admire your
energy md want to m&e sure it gets realized in thi9 wmtW. 4 doubt I can help you on
this prajact,
i'will be leaving Los
Angeles by 15
m d also, I am not
in the film biz vary muoh nqw, ao b cannot
work al fhs b l I'd flke and.Wwto get
where I want Is t h w h QPoks and very
powerful ~ o u m d s m .I ' m going east to _set1
Jesse Kornbluth is the editor
of Notes from the New Underground, afrequent contributor
to New Times magazine. author
of many scripts and several b w k s
now in production.
my book on Werner Erhard and my tome on
flying saucers, like that. Finally, the documentary people are having a tough time--the Maysles haven't paid their people in
weeks---and you may find it hard going.
Maybe someone like Wolper can help you
there.. .
Assuming you could get it off, I don't
quite see what you want to do with Bloom's
life in its last months-l don't mean the
crass Hollywood "Suicides don't sell tickets," but rather, isn't any suicide kind of a
one liner? At least to my thinking, someone
gets on a suicide program and fits everything into it until helshe gets enough validation and then does the thing. My take on
Bloom was that it was his sexual tension
that did him in; that diary you sent suggests
it was his attachment to the land and his
feeling that everyone around him but Dan
was blind to the truth that it was his, and
their, last stand. Fine. But so what? If that
were to be the POV of your film--if even attempting to answer the question WHY was
the ultimate subject of the film---I think it
might be a very flat, monotone experience....but if anyone can make it not that,
you're the folks.
Jesse Kornbluth
Hollywood, California
1
Vishnu soared above the HaIeakala Crater,
womb of Mother Maui, her lips towering 11,000 feet
above the Pacific..
Below loomed a lunar plain of dried molten lava .
and metallic red, gray and black sand. Haleakala wee
a Martian landscape, a barren monument to the f a
tastic energy blast that created Hawaii a few million
years ago. "We're holding a shitload of that energy
right now," thought Vishnu, and he dipped the Lear
Jet for a last look.
Barn Jeff Rothson, Los Angeles, 1948, Vishnu
took his name in a peak of sexual fury, at the base of
Malri Mountain. He and Marie were trapped in a
scheme to blast holes in their heads.
The plot had succeeded.
Jeff Rothson was a businessman, a dope dealer
turned hip capitalist, with fingers in all the right pies 'Ia
---two rastaurants and a bar in LA, a craft shop in
Santa Barbara, half interest in a health food store in 9
Venice.
The hip revdution was money in the bank. The
bnsinessee made bucks on their own and were ideal
c a d a v e r s for all those years of running marijuana
from Oaxacm and cocain from Colombia.
At 27,Jeff Rothson was one of several thousand .
*
young h e r i m who had made a half-million or
more in the soft dope trade.
The material rewards were generous. The posh
hip homes in Marin, Woodstock and the LA Canyons; the Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes Benzes in
the semi-rural driveways; the stereos, imported
dothes and endless supply of the fmest coke and
weed ...they were emblems of the new American
dream. Jeff knew them all.
He also knew the costs. He'd never killed
anyone, but almost. That was because he'd skirted
the heroin trade, never burned anyone, and avoided
the Mafia like the plague. Two former partners
hadn't, and no longer occupied their bodies.
What had got to Jeff was life on the tightrope.
From age 19, when be began .elbag m m e s
UCLA, Jeff had moved fast. From lids to pounds to
driving campers to m h g ammgemeats to wholesaling to baakrolbg. He made his fifth hundredgrand ercore at % m d then began cleaning up his act
---investinghere and there in hip southern California
businesses, a Topanga home and some cars, all of
which had a good, solid future.
Jeff's line of work was not insured by unemployment compensation.
But if he was in the mainstream of American
consumer patterns, he was also in the psychic mainstream of his generation. Jeff liked money, but it was
,
Maui Wowee
"Maui Wowee" came ta us rhrobgh Harvey
Wassermam, who sent if to u wfthrkis nvre: "Hi kiak.
You'll M M r guen what huppmrd yasrerday. I war
camping in the jungles when thia amazing mcbiitu man
popped urn d r h e v n s . IYr bar m m l k i n ~a d thn A1
went i
W rrauce. Imagine my surprise whm a spirir
identifying h i m F a s Ring W I h o came up witA this
amazing story. Hawaii wifl never seem fhe same!"
b
\
r
t
1I
I
!
k-
a toy to:&. He started dealing to turn on his friends
and hZn@verlost that taste, even when dealing big.
was a source of spiritual energy, a means
t of the American death trap. The more
he more he kYt like a revolutionary. He
w grand to the underground for bail and
born*. Later his donations went to a string of holy
m&fi,$o whom he went unsuccessfully for that one
big Cosmic Hit.
Growing up in LA, Jeff lost his virginity in a
suburban bedroom at 13, par for the Freeway. At 15,
an LSD group fu& on some beach. As a dealer, all
the action possible. Bisexual, homosexual, polymorphous perverse---Jeff's sex life was pure post-scarccity. At 22 he began settling in with Marie, a comfortable companion, a certain commitment to working
things through, but with plenty of room for outside
action. An occasional party scene, a triangle now and
then within the family. But less and less. Jeff was
tired of the chase and-so was Marie. The nose was a
bit worn out from coke. They were thinking about a
kid, but not sure. The revolution was now borin~.
Jeff recognized the symptoms.
An occasiond
tight dole.- ewer close friends. Some paranoia.
Some consel-vatism. Encroaching terminal uptightness.
It struck him that in the society of the young,
marijuana is legal. That made him a merchant.
Just like his father.
It was time to take a break.
So Jeff and ~ & flew
e to Maui, a current high
spot. Jeff took the company plane. Aside from the
waves and the sun, rumors were flying about a fantastic new island weed. Jeff wanted to be prepared.
He wasn't.
The fat ass of the Winnebago was an insult. The
sky was thick grey. They were trucking up the side of
the Haleakala crater in a rented Datsun and were
stuck behind one of those boats on wheels. "Goddam thing must eat a gallon a mile," muttered
Marie. Jeff slammed on the gas. The weak little Japanese beetle sputtered in the thinning air and pulled
alongside the boat to pass.
Suddenly they were in thick clouds. The Colombian joint.hung from Jeff's mouth as the Datsun
struggled to get by. "Fucking Jesus," he mumbled.
"I can 't see a thing. "
Then, abruptly, they hit bright blue sky, headed
straight toward an on-coming car. They were barely
past the camper. Jeff was still floating. Marie
screamed and yanked the wheel sharp to the right.
"Wake UP Godammit !"
.
"Where ARE we, man?"
"We're on the road, Godammit, and you gotta
drive." They passed a sign---8000 feet. Jeff and
Marie realized they were ABOVE the clouds. The sky
was now bright, clear blue, bottomed by a thick carpet of clouds. They were driving up through rugged,
sparsely vegetated terrain. Cattle roamed unfenced.
The fog in Jeff's mind did not clear.
At 11,000 feet they parked and wandered toward
the visitor's shelter. The Winnebago pulled up behind.
At the lip of the crater, Jeff and Marie gasped
simultaneously. Directly in front was a drop of almost 5000 feet onto a harsh lunar surface---rocky lava desert, dried volcanic ash, metallic sand. To the
right, about 3000 feet down, were two gigantic
mounds of metallic red sand, right out of Mars. It
was five miles to the far lip. To the left, a gap in
the crater bowl was plugged by a wallof clouds. Below them, Jeff noticed three hikers making their way
down a steep switchback. "Christ, where are they
going?"
Marie was in a trance. Unthinking, Jeff turned
to get the Nikon from the car and walked smack into
a six-foot four-inch bearded teenager who kissed him
on the lips, grabbed his crotch, and whispered
"Honk if you love Jesus .'I
The elderly couple making their way from the
Winnebago to the Crater rim turned back abruptly.
The teenager was dressed in rags and sandals. He
quickly worked his arms around Jeff until they were
in a lover's embrace. "Prepare to meet the' Lord," he
whispered, and covered Jeff's astonished mouth
with his own in a deep, overpowering kiss.
Behind them a tall, voluptuous blond woman
slipped behind Marie, embracing both her breasts
and pressing her own long,. rich body firmly to
Marie 's rear.
Marie gave a startled leap and then relaxed. She
was enough of a sensualist to accept that the hands
on her breasts felt damn good, and that whoever they
belonged to knew what he or she was doing.
Slowly the tall blonde turned Marie around until the
two were face to face, and deep in embrace. "Do you
love the Lord?" she asked, and then covered Marie's
face with kisses, sending her wet tongue deep into
Marie's willing mouth and maneuvering her lush
body as close as the laws of physics would allow.
Breasts pressed against breasts, arms entwined, the
tall missionary moved her right thigh f m l y into
Sue's crotch, holding her tight with one arm and
moving her free hand inside Marie's blouse and up
1'
he unicorn was a variety of
com that sprouted in a farmer's vegetable garden in
Kansas during the spring
of 1948. The farmer wasn't aware of
it but some of the corn plants in his
garden had arrived from outer space
in a meteorite that had fallen the previous week.
No one had seen the meteorite
land. It had snuck into town, late one
evening, in the back of a Greyhound
bus. ~ o b o d yhad suspected a thing.
When the bus driver had come back
to check tickets, it looked like the
clever ruse was finished. The meteor
huned away from the driver and
stared out the window, slouched low
in its raincoat and wide-brimmed hat.
A stifling smell arose as the cheap
vinyl coat came into contact with the
surface of the meteorite which still
glowed from its recent high-temperature passage through the atmosphere. The bus driver's startled
exclamation caused the meteorite to
turn away from the window. There
was a frozen moment as the two faced
each other in the back of the idling
bus. A. flicker of flame appeared
from under the meteor's collar.
Numbing radiation flowed into the
bus driver's brain through the windows in the front of his head. Instantly his mental slate was wiped
clean. He wondered what had made
him stare at the empty seat in the
back of the bus and returned to his
seat and his driving. The other
passengers discussed the origin of
the delightful smell permeating the
air, and decided it was most likely
roses giving birth in the fields along
the highway.
As the bus rounded the next
corner, the meteorite hit the EMERGENCY =/LIFT
HERE AND
PUSH and sprang as far as it could
into the cool spring night. As it
turned end over end it remembered
its main mission to this planet.
Inside a fireproof inner pocket of the
raincoat were kernels of cosmic corn.
These were removed and flung far
and wide into the freshly plowed
earth of the farmer's cornfield (as the
rock that had sailed across the
galaxy raced to meet its appointment with destiny in the depths of
the duck pond).
The farmer soon noticed that
among the young corn plants in the
fields there were patches of plants
that were much larger and growing
.much faster than the others. They
also glowed--stem, leaf and fruitwith an inner illumination that continued even after the sun had set.
He discovered this one night when
his hounds were creating such an
awful racket that it woke the farmer
from a sound sleep and brought him
racing into his front yard in his
nightshirt, with a boot poised in an
upraised fist. The boot was never
launched but droppedfrom trembling
fitlgers as the farmer looked across
his fields. His young wife was slowly
walking, quite naked, through the
f
2
moonlit plants, which were shining
with a strange yellow light. The
woman moved serenely among the
waist-high plants (carrying out
unconscious acts of pollination). The
farmer's puritanical upbringing was
bludgeoned and violated by the idea
that some of the corn pollen might
gain entrance to the place where his
wife made babies. The mere thought
put him in such a jealous rage that
with a roar he wrenched the axe from
its chopping block and headed for
thefields. Burning images floated in
front of him as he stalked through
the night: children with his name but
wearing cabbage heads, people of the
town laughing at him, the parson of
the local church standing at the gates
of the cemetery and refusing burial to
his offspring, pointing instead to
rubbish bins behind the su
market.
It took less than t h i i seco
for the farmer to reach the cornpatch.
and raise his axe over his
head. She stared through hi
he wasn't there. The mental moviez
ofcut-up pieces of wife mixed with '
corn stalk were replaced with p i e
tures from the opposite pole: &
farmer smiling, standing beside
ribbon-bedecked, giant, glowing ears
of corn as the Governor of Kansas
shakes his hand at the State A d - cultural Fair. The chunks of c m
mixed with wife in his murderous
mind changed to an image of pure
wife. To a soundtrack of bloodcurdling shrieks from the angry
farmer the axe began its fatal descent
towards the naked wife who still
didn't seem to notice. She was pro- .
tected, however, and halfway down it
froze in its arc as the corn made the
farmer hold his hand. He was bombarded with pictures of his wife nude
and angelic, with a halo over her
head and a glowing ear of corn,
wrapped in swadling clothes and
nestled against her breast.
Time passed swiftly after that
day. Spring turned into summer and
the new breed of plant already
stood higher than the farmer's head.
He paid less and less attention to the
rest of the crops. His days were
spent lugging buckets of water to the
cornfield. Whenever the farmer
came within a hundred feet of the
mutant plants, his mind would go
blank as the corn threw up its protective shield. But at night, when he
was far from the cornfield, the farmer
would lie in his bed and alternately
burst into laughter or moan piteously
while tears rolled down hisdcheeks.
His wife was growing along with
the flower buds. By June the bulge
in her abdomen was apparent to all.
She gave up most of her household
chores and spent her time in the field
crooning to the corn. This caused
her husband no end of vexation.
Midnight would find him clenching
his hands as he listened to the continuous snores from her side of the
bed. Occasionally he'd lose his mind
and reach for her neck. The instant
his fingers touched his wife with
malicious intent, cosmic energy
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would beat him on the spine with
baseball bats. He reacted like a cow
who touches her tongue to an electric
fence while standing in water.
His wife slept on uncaring, almost as
if she realized that she was now
meant for greater things than being
strangled in her sleep by a jealous
husband.
The corn in the field knew the
farmer's grief and feIt pity deep in its
mutated genes. So instead of having
to live in his nightmares, he was
moved to worlds of dream-pleasure,
with himself in the starring role, by
a burst of alien plant telepathy. His
heavy panting could be thereafter
heard harmonizing with his snoring
wife.
The farmer was a religious man.
Soon he was removing his hat and
bowing deeply whenever he passed
the cornfield. Ifis wife went him one
better and roiled around on the
ground, pressing her swollen belly
against the roots of the magic corn
plants, which by now were as tall as
the weathervane on the peak of the
barn roof.
Great, green leaves
shaded the smiling woman with her
body wrapped around the leg-thick
staJk.
As the relationship between
woman and plant deepened the farmer regained some of his mental
control and soon was plotting to
remove the devil corn and his demonridden wife. He found he could do
his best plotting in the potato cellar.
The rock walls and ground interfered with the telepathic control
waves and he was able to maintain
a clear vision of a frontal assault
with a bulldozer and gasoline bombs.
Soon he was spending most of the
day in the damp, cool cellar making
fiery anti-corn speeches to an
audience of toads and spiders.
On midsummer night's eve the
farmer decided to make his move.
The significance of the date was not
lost on the man. He actually wished
that he would discover his wife in
pagan rites with the vegetables.
The sooner all traces of the unholy
union were crushed beneath the
treads of his Caterpillar tractor,
the better. Probably the only thing
that kept the man going in his
madness and his slavery was his religion and the time he spent on his
'
knees, praying to sunbeams that
burned through the cracks in the roof
of the root-cellar. The earwigs
who lived in the cellar also appreciated the man's religion. They
would lie in wait on the floor and
when the man knelt to pray they'd
jump on his knees and get a
great short-cut on the long pull up
to the earlobes and into the tunnels
in the side of the great head.
There was a full moon on midsummer night's eve. Faint laughter
could be heard from the cornfield.
The farmer ran to the bulldozer,
wearing a bandelero d Molotov cocktails, and trying to keep his mind
as blank as possible. When he found
The
Unicorn
by Marshall Smith
thoughts leaking out he tried to mold
them into images of himself Eying
quietly in the darkness of his bedroom in his pajamas.
The bulldozer started with a roar
and the farmer threw it into gear
and headed for the garden. Perhaps
the plants were deeply involved that
evening and were not paying attention to the farmer's mental processes, or perhaps they knew of the
plot from the beginning and were
merely playing along, but the bulldozer had crushed the chicken coop
to kindling and had only a hundred
feet to go before the edge of the
cornpatch, and there had been no
mental commands forcing him to
stop. Crouching low like a knight in
a joust, he roared with lust for the
'
kill, and his roar mixed with the
ear-shaitering din of the machine as
the clothesline pole cracked l i e a
bone under the treads.
But all dreams of glory vanished
in an instant as the first tread
touched the the .cornfield and the
engine died in a shattering explosion
of gears, pistons and ruptured cylinders that sent birds of noise
flying away across the hills. At the
center of the vortex a sweating farmer sat silently with his unconscious
thumb pressed firmly against the
DESTRUCT button which had
suddenly appeared on the dashboard.
As far as the man was concerned
it was the end. He sat weeping, praying for the plant to end his misery.
Since the plant had total dontrol
over his mind, he couldn't understand why it was doing this to him.
Why didn't it either make him happy
or take away his mind completely?
There was no answer to his questions
but only blubbering sounds from the
ruins of the tractor and giggling
and cooing from the cornpatch.
Autumn was
approaching.
Harvest time. Also State Fair time.
The corn had grown past its adolescent phase and was approaching
maturity. With its full development
came tremendous powers of magic
and ESP, plus a high-level evolutionary development.
Truly a
transcendental corn.
With the maturity of the plant,
peace had come to the farmer.
He now understood the grand corn
plan and was happy to be a f h y cog
in the machme that would bring the
era of the corn to the planet Earth.
The jealousy he had felt towards
his wife was also a thing of the past.
She was the earth-mother, the keeper
of the Corn to Come. Just to be near
her was an honor. He worshipped his
wife and tho giant corn openly.
Many wilkweeds were ritually
sacrificed on the chopping block.
The farmer no longer wore clothes,
only a loincloth of fallen corn leaves.
The rest of the farm was in total
disrepair. Freed chickens wandered
through the open doors and shatt&ed
windows of the farmhouse. Both the
farmer and his near-due wife spent
all their time in the cornpatch,
carrying buckets of water, tending
the plants, picking up the dead
leaves and saving them to use as highway to get to the State Fair.
blankets against the night chill As they camped at night they could
of the cornpatch.
see the lights of the fair glowing
The plant was bearing fruit. on the eastern horizon like a sun
Man-sized cobs inside the husks. that threatened to rise at midnight.
It took two people to carry one. They would stand under the stars and
A first prize at the State Fair hold each other with one hand while
was a certainty. Maybe the three of their other hands pushed through
them, man, wife, and cob, would the husks and rested on the corn
make the cover of Fanner's Weekly. itself. Energy flowed into them as
These were the soothing sugarplums if they were batteries being rethat the telepathic plants put into the charged.
man's mind to keep him happy.
The trip so far had been hard
They even allowed the man to dream on the expectant mother. The weight
of eventually becoming the Secre- in the back of the pickup was almost
tary of Agriculture with an office too much for its rusty suspension.
in Washington, D.C.
It shook badly, bringing the woman's
The woman's body bulged like destiny that much closer with every
an eggplant. She was almost due. bounce. In addition, there were
Probably about harvest time.
It the long searches for a gas station
didn't bother her husband. Nothing that would take corn in payment
bothered him. The shadow of the for fuel.
corn was upon him and the agony
As they pulled away from a gas
of his ego vanished. His mind was station, the woman observed the
under total control of the corn. scene behind them. The gas station
Finally it was harvest time. The attendant stared mindlessly after
corn informed them when the mom- their exit, one unnoticed hose
ent of complete ripeness had arrived. pouring as into the gutter, several
It was ready to be picked. The farm giant ears of corn rolling over and
had burned d0wn.r They had saved over behind him towards the nearest
only the plant food, letting the rest field, like crocodiles crawling on their
bum, uncaring. As the farmhouse bellies toward the water. The lady
collapsed in upon itself, the man in the front of the truck smiled at
and the woman held left hands and the lady in the rear-view mirror
placed the right ones on the bulge and patted her swollen stomach
in the woman's abdomen, which by as she thought about coming crops.
now had acquired a most peculiar
Finally, after a long and hard
shape. They stood before the giant journey, they reached the neon
corn plants and slowly weaved their gates and turnstiles of the State Fair.
bodies in the golden beams, strong . Wizards of animal husbandry walked
as a searchlight, that were shooting around wearing overalls with wheat
from the shining fruit. Wiling hands straws of little intelligence hanging
met willing stalk and with a crack from the gaps in their teeth. One
like a dry branch snapping, the neck fellow grew a squash so big that as
of the corn plants split asunder soon as they saw it the judges
and the cobs were laid on the ground. ordered it moved from the agriculThe moment of harvest passed. tural pavilion to the sideshow that
The healthy cobs were stacked was part of the travelling carnival
upright, in tight rows, across the bed which played behind the grandstand.
of the farmer's pickup truck. The
The farmer parked his truck in
headless stalks left out in the fields the lot and began to carry the corn,
had already withered and turned to ear by ear, into the center of the
ashes like the ruins of the farm exhibit hall. The smallest of the
buildings. The man fired up the super-cobs was the size of a champtruck engine and drove away, leaving ion watermelon. The other extreme
an area as barren as the desert were cobs the size of oil barrels
planets on the other side of the uni- that had to be rolled along the
verse. Even the road behind the ground. The lady sat at the base of
truck rose up liie a snake charmer's the growing corn pyramid and held
rope and vanished into thin air. her bulge. It was now a matter of
It was a long journey on the days. Whatever it was under the skin
.-
of the belly-mountain threatened to
split the shell of the cocoon. Strange
bumps
and
never-before-seen
shapes appeared all over the egg.
If your ear was placed against her,
you could hear gurglings and guttural
croaks. Occasionally steam issued
from her navel. Black birds and
sparrows hovered in a cloud about
her anticipating leftovers from the
coming event. Weakly she reached
in her purse and pulled something
out which she held hidden in her
hand. The birds hopped close to see
what it was, making big eyeballs and
black, printed question-marks in
the air above their heads. Suddenly
it was upon them, a hand-puppet
scarecrow that startled the feathers
out of them and sent them away in
a flurry of squawks and flapping.
Faint laughter could be heard from
the woman as she wiped the autumn
sweat from her eyes with the cloth
face that covered her hand.
The pyramid grew taller daily.
People had already begun to gather
around the base.
Their mouths
dropped open when they saw the size
of the cobs piled on top of each other.
The strange lights shooting from the
cobs scared them and made their hair
stand on end. Some people made the
sign of the Cross, then were embarassed as their neighbors, not liking
Catholics, shook their fists at them.
Dogs fled with their tails between
their legs.
Babies whimpered
and t i e d to crawl back into their
mommies through the nipples of
their breasts.
Transferal of corn from pickup to
pyramid was almost complete. Lines
and networks of communication
were opening up through the galaxy
and its many planets. Several aliens
landed but were mistaken for hats.
A man in the crowd was losing
his mind. Jealousy stalked through
his sytem, tearing the cobwebs of
his restraint. He had spent twenty
years breeding prize hogs and now
nobody even glanced at their beauty,
as the fairgoers walked liie zombies
past the pig exhibit and answered
the call of the corn. Cold gobs of
cholesterol were gathered in his
extremities and plotted against the
heart. Foam flecked his lips as he
watched the crowds oohing and
aahing. Anger turned him away from
!
I
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d eum. Hatred caused him from the apex of the pyramid, hit it
in his pocket for the key to directly between the eyes. The bolt
e pytamid was almost com'Ijp6 1argest.and
most develbe placed at the apex
pyramid. All circuits on all
would be complete. Green
h h t s would flash, and the
b the Corn would be ushered
a waiting planet Earth.
The lsat ear was moving into
the pile. The crowd
hysterical. Chanting
ecstacy came from h e
people bowed and
foreheads against the
s could be heard and
ongues. A wave
eared over the
ards the fairThe farmer was supervising
-
the placement of the final ear of
corn from the top of the pile. F i s t
the h a 1 ear seemed tiny as if it
d d surely be lost as it passed
horn hand to hand. Then it was a
p a t shape that floated over the
atstretched hands as if they were
the ground crew for a zeppelin. The
laat man to touch the corn before it
went into place saw images of hiself,
hi6 wife, a farm in the country, and
a meteorite wearing a raincoat
mad using a camera to scout locatiom. It had all been leading up to
this moment, the Dawn of Corn.
Suddeniy the farmer's meditatim was broken by screams and
u&s af o.tra&e as a herd of stamping
mvmws hogs hit the back of the
tmwd at the base of the pyramid.
The masses parted in anfusion
Mre the chqgiing swine. In the
pupils of the pigs' beady eyes
were imprinted images of delicious
mrncobs, piied higber than any they
hid ever seen.
The radiant waves of energy
that had been shooting out of the corn
narrowed and intensified into laserlike bursts that zapped the pigs'
brains with radiation. The lead hog
had closed to within twenty feet
of the corn and had dropped its jaw
to reveal a maw the size of a washtub
when suddenly a lightning bolt, shot
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of radiation richocheted around inside the pig's skull and bombarded
the pituitary gland, which absorbed
so much power that it broke loose
from its moorings and began to bore
through the brain like a worm in
an apple. Eventually it reached the
ear canal and little white worms
from the mind's center squirmed
through the tunnel to the outside
world and stood by the opening like
a parachutist at the open door
of a plane. For a moment it paused.
Then as new orders from the corn
arrived, it leapt into the air.
The pigs were all straining
against an invisible force-field as
Marshall Smith Is afreelance w d e r now lir.lng
In San Fmncisco. He recently Bare up a
pmmisitq rm#mus a w i n d o w - w s l v to make
his living writing pkes for -'R
infamous
sand-up comedians. His r r q , 7he U n i m .
isjrorn a forthcomina t d r r $ d r ( M@~?nic
tales which i~ navLwihy@ts p r B K r k t - For
more s m r i ~ contact
.
w.
thu a m threw up its shield and sent
lobotomy beams iato their brains.
Lobotomy is no bsa to a pig, but by
the time the oom reabed this it was
too late. The mindless swine had
broken through the shield and were
into the pik uf fresh corncobs.
The fsrmer was suddenly free.
The baffle with the pigs took every
last bit of the corn's mental energy.
There was nothing to spare to
control people.
'Ik man leapt
£rom the pyramid as the corn ear he
was maneuvekg into p o s i t b was
torn asunder by chomping jaws.
A11 around there was total chaos:
broken bodies of trampled spectators; pig husks with burnt-out
eyes; corn husks oozing corn juice.
The farmer made his way through t h e
mess looking for his wife. He was
still dazed with his renewed power
to think for himself. It hadn't been
this way since the first, tiny green
sprouts had appeared in his cornpatch the previous spring. Freedom
to think for himself! The man drew
himself upright and stuck out his
chest, then slipped on the gore
and whacked his head on the cement
floor of the exhibit hall. He lay on
the floor shocked and stunned.
Tears flowed down his cheeks.
So far, freedom had given him only
a goose-egg on the head in the
middle of a horror show. The chaos
had spread to a circus that was playing in a tent next to the fairgrounds.
Wild animals, crazed with fear,
rushed through the wreckage and
burning buildings of the State Fair.
The trumpetings of bull elephants
covered the sound of the snapping
of necks as liberated gorillas tore
the heads off any survivors in a
blood-frenzy. Geeks from the sideshow slapped their splayed feet
on the slick pavement, laughing
and applauding at the gory details.
Beasts long thought extinct or mythological crawled from dark holes that
had appeared everywhere.
The farmer had left his body
through his nostrils and hovered
three feet above the crowd. From
this vantage point he could see the
crowd pushing forward toward something that was happening at the very
caster of things.
His wife was giving birth.
She arched her ba& as she lay on
the concrete drr<rr and pushed
against the heaving bulge in her
body. Little bell-note cries came out
of her mouth. The astral spirit
of the farmer descended and held her
hand as it happened. To the delight
of the staring crowd she gave birth
and in an instant it was over. Between her legs, m a spreading pool
of quicksilver, stood a tiny white
horse with a long, tapered horn
in the center of its forehead.
As the pool of quicksilver
reached the farmer, he looked down
to see-no longer feet and anklesbut hooves and gleaming forelegs.
In the mirror of the pool, he saw
the woman's eyes and his own billygoat beard on the image of that
creature of endless magic, the
unicorn.
Some Reflections on the circumstances surrounding
le
seizure of the Don Emilio by Alfredo Sandoz
My name is Alfredo Sandoz. Or maybe
that is just what I will tell you my name
is. But it doesn't matter, really. What
matters is that what I'm going to tell you
is true. I am a native of a coastal town in
Colombia, not far from Barranquilla. I
became acquainted recently with two
young American writers when I was
arrested in New York for a suspected
involvement in a cocaine deal. These
two writers have been interested in
illegal drug traffic for some time now, I
believe. They were of great help to me
because they arranged for me to get in
touch with friends in Brooklyn who
secured my release on bail and I was
able to go on my way. In talking to these
two several times, they urged me to
write something about the traffic out of
Colombia. Their interest seemed to
center on the recent seizure-of-all seizures, the Coast Guard apprehension of
the Don Emilio. They seemed to be
thinlung of the enormous quantity of pot
on board as being worth a price of
investment such as an American pot
buyer would pay in Santa Marta. It is
true that the reported weight on board
the Don Emilio ran as high as 160 tons
but as we talked, I realized how little
even these two writers understood of the
Colombian situation. I will tell you
some of what I told them, the personal
viewpoint of mine which apparently
meant a great deal to their understanding
of what is now going on in Colombia.
Most of the leading macho hombres
in my family are smugglers or cocaine
dealers. I myself have two brothers;
Camillo, the elder, is thirty-five years
old. He is nominally a delivery driver
for a hotel service in Bogod but he
works also for Mr. Vasquez, an uncle
through marriage. Camillo has been a
jack-of-all-trades, in and out of the
illegal drug traffic. My younger brother,
Paco, has never known another life than
that of a h u m trafficker. He is now
twenty-two or so but has been running
with the same comrades for years. My
age is now twenty-eight which is
perhaps the right age to tell of the
changes in the life of my family in
connection with dealing in Colombia. I
have been involved at one level or
another with marijuana and cocaine
since I was eighteen or nineteen. I have
been back and forth to New York
several times, sometimes with Camillo
and sometimes with the Hadares
brothers, our cousins.
It can be clearly understood that with
young Colombians migrating to New
York, it did not take long before a few with our family and no one in the family
of them saw that the prices of marijuana ever says a mean word about Paco.
in New York would make a successful Camillo and Alfredo were counseled by
uncles, scolded by our mother, and even
smuggler very weal thy.
When 1 first came to New York I was cursed by our father, but again it is we
with my older brother Camillo, he came who have corrupted or ruined Paco. It is
to collect his share of a cocaine smug- we who are the guilty ones, not Paco.
gling venture. Our cousin Mayo and He is innocent somehow. I believe this
Bianco Hadares were in it with him so also. There is no anger or greed in Paco.
they came with us. He brought me along He is not a macho. He shows no more
for companionship. Camillo I know strain selling pot than if he were herding
well; Camillo really is almost emotion- sheep.
1 know you are anxious to hear about
less at times but there are moments
when he wants a brother with him. And the connection of all this to the Don
no one else. Now I am pretty sure that Emilio, of my family to real internaeven that first time Camillo was working tional marijuana smuggling and profesfor Mr. Vasquez, our "uncle." Camillo sional cocaine smuggling.
became a worker for Mr. Vasquez for
But to understand Don Emilio you
sure when the American buyers left must comprehend what the last ten years
Colombia. Then he no longer freelanced has brought to Colombia. There has
always been interest in cocaine. As long
at all. Paco is another story.
He is a strange kid, really. He is as I can remember, as much as my father
thinner than the rest of the family. A would tell me, there has always been
face like fine sculpted gold, shorter than some form of cocaine trafflc. The
our father, shorter than Camillo or marijuana traffic or h u m traffic, as Paco
myself. But so thin and quick that he caHs it, is really not so old. Pot has
seems taller than everyone at times. We always grown in Colombia. At first,
are a tall family; Paco is the last of all unhappy American dealers of Mexican
the brothers and sisters living and dead. marijuana came to Colombia and bought
He was small and very smart. No one small loads from young men like my
paid him much attention or cared that he brother Carnillo, who bought it from a
was a runt or that he was always missing- trafficker, who brought it to the city
when he was in trouble.
from farmers in the hills. These AmeriEven today he deals precious red-bud cans loaded it on comme.rcia1 planes,
Colombian pot with friends he had as a had their own planes, or took it to the
child; playmates that ran through the coast and loaded it on small boats at
hills ten years ago. Today they g o with night. Row boats and old lifeboats on
burros to collect all the small harvests in the beach in the dark. Soggy bales,
those same regions. Paco never argues molding loads, switches in quality.
Transfer i t to a sailboat or fishing boat
further away from the shore. Not at all
professional or big time.
I was then still tagging along after
Camillo's scene. Everyone in our family
speaks English. My mother and father
were servants in Washington, D.C. for
some time. They returned as small
merchants, not as peasants, and were
always aware of English as a valuable
tool. Around the hotels in Baranquilla
there is much use of English. Camillo
kept me w ~ t hhim aa another ear I think
at iimes. He said to me once, "Alfredo,
when the American 'NoNo Yankees'
see you, they don't worry, you are
younger than they are. You don't even
know what a gun is." He called the hip
young American dealers, "Nono Yankees." I think Camillo was skeptical of
those Yankees. They were not like the
Yankees our parents showed respect for.
He understood they were "outsiders" in
their own country. Many of them got
burned in Colombia. One-time quick
hits. Camillo established very little rapport with any Yankee dealers. I on the
other hand, had some good steady
buyers, a few of whom 1 met during the
first days with Camillo. But I've been
influenced by Camillo, too, and our
uncles.
When the DEA came into Colombia I
was forcCd out of all dealings with
Americans. The whole story changed. I
cursed myself for not having taken more
advantage when I could. Paco again is
altogether different; when I was sixteen
there was no group within Colombia to
sell pot to retail. For Paco selling pot has
not been an occupation that always has
meant dealing with jumpy, anxious
foreigners. Since the DEA came in most
unprofessional transactions between native Colombian independents and independent American buyers have ceased.
But Paco goes on. He treats the young
Americans who come like real comrades, no different than his old childhood playmates. He says that in some
ways he is closer to some of his
American friends than the older generations in Colombia. There is international
awareness of pot smoking and what is at
stake there. Camillo never really
smoked the pot he sold. Paco not only
smokes some of the very best dope I've
ever seen but deals it in large quantities
as well. I found that when I was still
selling to American buyers myself, not
all of them were Insistant on top qualities. Other Colombian middle men
rarely fought for the top qualities. Dealing with the professional huna farmers is
something else. They ask a much higher
price. Most mountain country marijuana
comes from "wild" plants that these
farmers grow almost unattended. The
real artisans who turn out the great
Colombian plants know several things:
when to harvest, how to prepare, and
that their care and attention is not wasted
on marijuana plants. They have a knack,
an ability to make the pot strong.
S o of all of us in the fiunily only
Paco and a cousin his age dared to
defy the DEA's embargo. I t was a
way made for a few. Paco was one of
these. First he was innocent and liked to
smoke pot. The best growers have liked
him and I'm sure some have known him
since he was a child. His English and
youth and openness along with his fine
marijuana rnade way for him to deal
with some good Yankees; people who
could and would pay I-eally high prices,
who can be trusted with a lot of pot, who
will return. Even though I'm closer in
age to Paco than Camillo, I find myself
almost in awe of Paco, in a way. He has
largely avoided the DEA.
The DEA is not like any other drug
police in the world. What those agents
have is really an adventurer's license, a
worldwide all-season license. There has
never been anything like i t . Nixon said
to these people, there is a huge drug
business going on here which is potentially embarrassing, and we get nothing.
We must get control. You as agents
may find that to get control you must
become involved, and here is the cash
money to buy into this action. What he
said between the lines was, "and if you
can make yourself a bundle of money on
the side, go ahead there, too." Some of
it has not even been "on the side." As
one of the two writers I mentioned
called them-and
he's right -they are
"privateers." The few whose crookedness is discovered make out very well,
even when they are thrown out of the
agency, because they know so much
about so many.
So the DEA came to Colombia and
did some buying and busting of American smugglers with Colombian informa-
tion. The prices they offered for information were so high that suddenly
within just a few months everyone was
gettiag busted-which
usually just
means getting robbed. Soon, I had no
buyers, no one to do business with.
Often the agents sold the same pot they
seized, or got the federal police to seize,
to someone, and in turn busted this poor
bastard at another point along the way.
It soon became ridiculous and a hopeless
graveyard for what had become an
immense amateur industry. I saw the
light rather quickly compared to some I
think. Camillo and Mr. Vasquez were
determined that I should get out and stay
out. I didn't have a lot of choice. Paco,
though, has never been broken, has
never really lost a load or hurt anyone
else's pocketbook. Camillo predicted
the very worst for Paco. Even Ramon
Walda, an important cousin of ours, was
calling Paco an arrogant fool.
The marijuana traffic out of Colombia
had become a trade for extremely daring
and clever traffickers on both sides. Few
could stay in business. In the last year
all this is changing again. Once again
Real Agate Gemstones
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You must be absolutely delighted, or your money back.
large loads are changing hands. Colombian middlemen are coming back into
things this year. My recent fiasco in
New York involved cocaine but I would
be eager to do some more pot dealing
now. But it is not the Yankee dealers
who are making out now. They are still
getting taken. You can understand that
the DEA has created a new role in
Colombian society-that of informer.
These informers. some of whom were
absolute
made some fortunes,
enough for lifelong wealth. Some of
these same people would inform now for
nothing, for little more than recognition
of the value of this information. If you
are a Yankee buyer today, you will be
thrown to the dogs in ~ o l o m b i aunless
you know my brother Paco or one of
those few like him. The man who fifteen
years ago would not speak to a Federale
was bought "whole" by the DEA agent
and now will inform to the federales for
a pittance. Most of the Colombian
middle dealers will turn in a foreign
dealer to the police themselves rather
than risk being informed on, then they
get the pot back from the police and
resell it. It becomes the business of
jackals, not a business but a swindle
game. My family was one to go early
into delivering the loads outside Colombia, to try to continue to trade with
reputable American buyers but far outside the Colombian coastal area.
Camillo had retreated to cocaine deliveries for Vasquez, I had soured on the
scene with the DEA, Paco was still
strictly small time with his top cuts. I
had been in Bogoth with Camillo and
when I returned home Paco had a friend
he wanted me to meet, This young Yank
had dealt with Camillo four years before. I had been working with Camillo
then and I remembered him. He had met
Paco also and recognized him at a disco
in Barranquilla. He wanted to do something. What he wanted to do was get
60,000 pounds out of Colombia to the
United states. It soon turned out he had
a very healthy down payment on just
such a load. Paco's eyes were shining.
But the Yank wanted "Gold." And he
wanted it delivered at sea-200 miles
east of the New Jersey coast. But after
all the bullshit we made some sensible
compromises. We had to get Camillo
involved and of course he went to
Vasauez. But the boat was loaded
without trouble and we delivered pot to
a yank far beyond Colombian waters.
Not to New Jersey. This American's
danger from local DEA information was
taken care of in this way. The same guy
is partners with a cousin of mine in a
disco business in Bogoti n w . I was on
board for that delivery of the 60,000
pounds. It went much better than I had
suspected.
Now finally I can tell you something
about the Don Emilio, that freight&
seized north of Haiti not long ago. The
Don Emilio incident is the result of years
now of Colombian smuggling and
marijuana trade. When the DEA came
and made it too hot for American buyers
in Bogoth, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and
Santa Marta, Colombian dealers were
forced to deliver further add further
from Colombia itself. At the same time
the DEA was ripping off and busting
American dealers in Colombia, they
were forcing Colombian dealers and
middlemen to become much more organized and professional. The ones who
had played just to rip off the unsuspecting buyers were out of it. The ones with
security problems and informants were
not popular. The weak were pushed out
by the succeps of the strong. Colombian
pot dealers had become a group of very
young, smart, and hip people who could
cooperate sensibly with each other.
Well the Emilio was the final step you
know. It became so organized and
routine m a way that finally all the eggs
were in m e basket, apparently without
anyone ~ecognizingthe danger. All the
major dealers in that one family paid
their freight and the freight company put
all their baggage on the vessel. Of
course, this freighter's load was not
actually worth the 100-to-200 milliondollars street price the U .S . authorities
estimated. The true value was much
smaller and the real dollar-loss was not
great, because what we didn't have to
begin with we couldn't lose. Colombia
is still here and everyone in Colombia
still grows dope; it will be sent again.
here are other ships.
But what the bust does mean is that
the system of payoffs and gang control
by the DEA did not really work, now
not even that is trustworthy. The
foolishness of this trust may seem
ludicrous now but it is the only way in
the face of the double standard of Lws
and law abiders that there is. As anyone
who has glimpsed the pot trade can see,
there is an awfully large m o u n t of
money involved, the slakes are of the
highest in that sense and there will be
trouble before another arrangement is
worked out. After all the highest levels
of government are involved.
Look, I'm not going to tell you
everything I know about the Emilio, the
details of the trip and so on. But what is
interesting is that all the pot seized on the
Emilio will stilt bc sold in the U.S. Very
little, if any, will be destroyed Certainly in Colombia the same people who
control the Government also control the
marijuana traffic. How close to the
highest levels of government does this
sort of influence go in the U.S.? The
seizure of the Emilio indicates that this
relationship has gone much higher up
than before. It may even be that the
seizure took place because the payoffs
did not yet go high enough up the
ladder. The marijuana traffic may soon
become the realm of State Department
authorities. Perhaps in the future the
President of Colombia and the American
Secretary of State will sit down and
hammer out the details of each major pot
deal.
Certainly the Don Emilio has been
used before. This I know. Even the
voyage which ended in seizure was not
without some initial success because
before the seizure, a considerable tonnage was unloaded at sea onto smalkr
U .S. vessels, which was then successfully smuggled into the Uniled States. None
of these boats were a m e n d e d .
I w d d predict that the Don Emilio
will be used again. Why not? The crew
will not suffer. There will be no real
convictions for them. In fact k t was a
sister ship to the Don Emilio which was
sailingcmly a short time after the Emilio.
This ship was not stopped, but unloaded
everything successfully. But the family
interests, behind the Emilio, were ripped
off in the sense that they undoubtedly
paid very wet1 to guarantee that the
Emilio would go through undetected.
Whoever was paid was crossing them.
The great market for marijuana in the
States will be fed, that one thing is sure.
The smokers may have little idea of just
how big the market they have created
really is, and how high in levels of
government the payoff has gone, but
they will keep on buying smoke and the
trade will go on. The question of who is
in control and who is reaping the biggest
part of the profits will be the hidden
issue. The profits are so high for the
individuals of government and enforcement that they themselves become the
most determined that the trade remain
"il!egaI."
I was being held captive
by a volwptuous Japanese princess
of the 16th century. Herface was
covered with a thin white powder
and her eyes were heavily made up.
I wore only simple shirrs and
trousers, while she dressed in the
most exquisite kimonos embroidered with silver thread.
She allowed me the run of the
palace. free access to all her wealth.
and of course, complete creative
freedom. But still1 was confined
against my will and if I tried to
escape I would be instantly
beheaded.
As the dream began to/ade
the princess and I were lying in
the royal bedroom, beneath a
/lu//y /eather quilt. W e had just
/imsh?d making love and she dared
me to mabo my escape.
Four colossalguards. each with
a drawn sword. hulked about
the dmnuay.
- 4 h u k r Crtnu
Lime Factory
Portraits: Friends & Strangers
Americans in Their Working Environments
By Michael Mathers
Michael Mathers is an Oregon-based photographer who has written and photographed
two books, Riding the Ratla and Sheepherders
(both from Houghton Mifflin Co.) and whose
work is now touring museums in the West.
These photos are from a book-in-progress
of portraits of Americans in their working
Drag Queen and Escort
Sawmill
THE ROYAL ROAD SOCIETY
A FRAGMENT FROM JACOB LIGHT'S LONG AWAITED NEW NOVEL
The story of how these people came
together to form The Rqyal Road Society
tj not mine. I was not there at its inception, nor did I witness these scenes.
Most of this information came to m e over
a three-year period-in fragments from
Daisy Cutler, The Hat, and others,
participles of conversation as always- but
it involved a beautiful piece of human
lace-work, a spider's web, invrjible,
Cosmic, and out there at the straggling
end of a thread-in-p2gress I found myself
inextricably dangling.
But there is a part of the fly's mind
which is drawn to the spider at the center
of the web, compelled to discover death5
mystery with the same magnetism which
draws the moth to extinguish itself in the
flame.
It began with a game of chess, though it
was not a game, nor was it a chess set in
any normal sense of the word. When you
looked carefully at this particular chess
set, the pieces took o n a lifedimensionality which mirrored the Real
Thing in perfection and exactitude.
T h e board was in fact a squared
miniature continent, with plains and
mountains and forests, criss-crwed by
rivers. Yet super-imposed as a dimlylighted grid, were the sixty-four almost
even
squares
of
light
and
darkness-sunshine and moonlight, night
and day, good and evil, yin and yang, fire
and water, earth and air-just call it life
and death.
Whatever person, pawn, knight, bishop
or king, stepped into a dark square, he
f o u n d himself e n c u m b e r e d by t h e
night-while o n the light squares, sunshine prevailed.
The pieces of this unusual set were
constantly in motion, propelled by unseen
hands: when you stared a t it, as you were
carried out their combative manoeuvers, a
constant backwards and forwards battle
was waged, yet neither side would win. En
pnie, en passant, on and on the war; it
was not a chess set to play with.
This remarkable world of miniature
Persian armies, in their perpetual battleballet, could not precisely be called
material, and yet it was no hallucination.
But seeing this magical chess set, just
laying your eyes on it, forced you to leave
yourself, a part of your rational, intellectual mind, behind- and therein lay
the magic of the game as well as the
power of its possessor, the extraordinary
Robin Rothschild.
T h e data of Rothschild's parentage
idwas unknown: from his appearance. the
thick dark Biblical beard hung on the
young but gaunt bony face, the long jet
black hair flowing close to his shoulders,
but offset by a worn Spanish leather coat,
one might have taken him for Greek,
Italian or Jew- any permutation of the
Semitic, mediterranean races. At 18 years
of age (in 1963 when Robin first appeared
in Cambridge), he was clearly a man of
international experience, a citizen of the
world whose passport bore the visa-stamps
of thirty-odd countries like scars on a n
old, embattledstreetdog.
T h e members of his soon to-be-formed
cabal, T h e Royal Road Society, found
t h e i r individual p a t h s t o R o b i n
Rothschild's door, the door of a demure
house o n a quiet, tree-lined academic
street, a New England street not more
than several stone's-throws from the heart
of America's first university.
There, in Rothschild's house, seated
Moroccan-style on large overstuffedcushions covered with exquisitely printed
silks, with shoes off (Rothschild's custom),
this small group of friends, (several of
them Harvard students) would get high o n
ever made its way into the New World.
A special incense burned throughout
the wooden two-storey building, and
Robin Rothschild would ceremoniously
wait for the hashish and the strange
vibratory humming which ran undeniably
through his house, to take effect o n the
guests. T h e ever-moving set of combating
forces glowed in the hashish candle-lamps
and the aura of life's perennial struggles
enveloped the room.
Outside the greying house, the normal
bustle of college-town continued, but
inside Robin Rothschild's domain the
rep'eating w a r p of T i m e - a n d - S p a c e
revealed its mainspring secret-that the
illusion of the chess set was merely a
microcosmic reflection of the illusion of
Life itself-as above, so below. And the
young men and women, clothed, for the
most part, in the expensively-tailored
cynicism of their bourgeois backgrounds,
were blown away.
Robin Rothschild was a born Initiate,
a n exceedingly rare c o n d i t i o ~ ,heir to a
long line of leaders of an ancient mystical
secret society whose existence pre-dated
the Christian era. How and why this
particular spirit should have chosen to
incarnate in the Twentieth Century and
should
appear
in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts in the winter of 1962-63, is
a mystery a n d t h e r e f o r e must b e
dismissed.
T h e first to fall u n d e r R o b i n
Rothschild's magnetic sway was Franz
Mandel, a bright exchange student from
T h e Netherlands who'd come to Harvard
to study international commerce and
finance. Although his father, a Dutch toy
manufacturer, made many business trips
to New York, Franz had never been to
America prior to the fall of 1961, when
he entered Harvard as a freshman.
Franz first met Robin over a game of
Petit Roi: the sandy-haired Dutch student
had been a patron of the place during hi
first two-and-a-half years at Harvard, felt
comfortable with the classical music, the
cappucino, the chess sets which lined the
walls of the coffeehouse, reminding Franz
of Amsterdam. Le Petit Roi was a good
place for foreign students to socialize, and
Franz did well with the Radcliffe types he
met there.
But in his many off-and-on visits to the
patissene, Franz Mandel had never before
seen this bearded stranger. Sitting alone.
sipping coffee, and staring into space with
a predisposed air, something of Robin
Rothschild's vibration struck Franz
Mandel with a jolt. For a few minutes.
Franz tried to ignore Rothschild, tried to
keep his eyes from glancing toward the
stranger's magnetic direction.
It was not Robin Rothschild's outer
manifestation which had ensnared Franz's
attention there in the coffeehouse, though
Rothschild's long hair and his thick
hirsute face were-not quite commonplace
yet in Cambridge in the early fall of 1962
(a year prior to the assassination of
President Kennedy and before the Seatles
made their deadly assault on the
American media-machinery). Europe had
been more than accustomed to- these
outrageous stylistic demonstrations.
particularly Amsterdam, Fram's hometown; but it was an invisible something
which Rothschild radiated as he sat there,
and Franz Mandel, the lanky Dutchman,
found himself walking over toward the
stranger's table, introducing himself, and
asking if Rothschild wanted to go a round
of chess.
They never finished the game that
afternoon.
The foreign student, and the foreign
non-student compared notes: the cities of
Europe, which Fram had visited occasionally on pleasant vacations with his
family, Robin Rothschild knew like the
taut, veined skin of the back of his hands.
The intricacies of European government
and finance, which Franz studied so
assiduously, Robin Rothschiid seemed to
have authored, throwing out complex
quotes and citing figures from internal
European governmental documents about
which Franz had only heard tell, let alone
read. But more important, the young
stranger was blase about his wealth of
information, as if the academic data of
Europe's historial past and future were
already inscribed and therefore of
secondary importance.
It was Robin's non-attachment which
caused Franz to forget the game of chess
and even his cappucino, and concentrate
his full attention on the curiously different
personality of this international stranger.
A week later, after a sumptuous Persian-style dinner, which Rothschild
seemed to have prepared himself, for
there was no one else in his home that
night, Fram Mandel smoked hashish for
the first time and got loaded.
But it was the vision of Rothschild's
magical chessboard, revealed later on in
from Amsterdam to experience an ecstasy
lasting several months and which changed
the course of his thoughts, as well as the
rest of his days.
"I don't believe you guys are stoned,"
J.T. (which was what Jon Truesdale had
been called all the way through his
Indiana High School career and his
younger days at Harvard, before he
became The Hat), J.T. couldn't quite buy
his friends' tales of this wizard and the
chess set which no one ever played with.
When Franz and Chris suggested taking
J.T. with them to visit Robin, Truesdale
balked; in spite of himself, he did believe
their stories possible, and he wasn't quite
ready to confront the whatever-it-was
which had blown the minds of his two
closest companions. Perhaps because J.T.
was so concerned with the theatre,
spending his Cambridge days immersed in
the medium, acting, directing, perhaps
because he knew that something indelible
had clearly occurred to his friends, J.T.
tried to stay clear of the character Robin
Rothschild.
But Cambridge is a small university
town, the streets are thin and narrow.
Trying to avoid someone in Cambridge,
someone who apparently has your
number, is out of the question: sooner or
later your paths will cross.
J.T. was stepping off the curb at Mt.
Auburn Street and simultaneously reading
a piece on Antonin Artaud in the theatre
section of the Sunday New York Times,
completely unaware that he was about to
be run over by a large Cambridge Transit
Authoritv bus.
Suddenly, a strong hand from nowhere
reached out and grabbed h i by the arm,
pulling Jon Truesdale - a fraction of an
inch out of the path of the oncoming
vehicle.
Truesdale, quite surprised and happy to
have been saved from a calamitous
rendezvous with death, turned to thank
the person who'd pulled him out of the
way of the bus. First he bent down to pick
up the newspaper which had fallen out of
his hands, then said "Hey thanks, man,"
and found himself staring into the bright
burning onyx eyes of none other than
Robin Rothschild.
-
-
It is impossible to say that the young
Initiate operated from a set of plans,
though in retrospect this might appear to
have been the case. Ideas were his only
possessions; even the magic of the chess set
was to him just an idea.
In the short span of four or five years in
Cambridge, Robin gathered a tightly-knit
group of twelve people, ten men and two
women, who shared an affinity, a psychic
bond, created and based, in good
measure, on the vision of the primal
chessboard. Within their circle, the
members of The Royal Road Society
developed a sense of cause; that it was
somehow their duty to make manifest the
message of the chess set, the illusion of
life's battles. They would be an in-
of ongoing madness, political strife and
domestic upheaval (and these same
thirteen young people were growing up,
and older, with it), they would work
toward the spreading of cosmic-cannabisconsciousness on a massive scale across the
United States of America.
Their conspiracy was one of concept, a
conspiracy of thought as well as action-the people of The Royal Road
Society, under Robin Rothschild's
direction and advice, would pool their
mrsonal and familial resources into a
wide-spread, organized, revolutionary,
dope-oriented brotherhood, involving
hundreds in the United States and in
many other countries, whose sole mission
was to turn on the green light, turning
people on through every possible
avenue- dispensing the concept as well as
the material herb itself.
Their pyramidal dealing consortium
developed rapidly, with Rothschild subtly
at the helm, organizing the systems and
yet minimizing his own visibility as much
as possible.
A missionary spirit seized the cabal
right at its inception, and as their enterprise began to skyrocket, larger and
larger sums were turned over. Profits from
the cannabis trade were re-invested in all
manner of New Age cultural effects and
efforts- underground newspapers, rock
and roll emporiums, FM radio stations,
cottage industries related to dope
(cigarette papers, hashpipes, etcetera),
films, and hundreds of other unnameable
enterprises which spread the message of
the newly developing cannabis-oriented
culture. Many different levels and personalities of the radical political
movement of the '60's benefited, most
unknowingly, from the invisible (and
therefore tax-exempt) dope-dealing
foundation.
The operatives of The Royal Road
Society were everywhere, hundreds,
perhaps thousands, connected tangentially, although only a miniscule few were
actually aware of the existence of this
secret organization sitting at the peak of
the pyramid. Some had perhaps heard the
name "Royal R o a d bantered about in the
hippest of circles, but with no actual
meaning behind it, just a phrase, a name.
With the certainty of a large, rolling tidal
wave, appearing as a slimspiral ofherbsmoke of the earth, the entire American
value structure began its re-orientation.
Through the stoned-out burgeoning
middle-class youth, a society of its own,
and through the public media, The Royal
Road Society was able to influence the
larger masses. By the Summer of Love in
1967, just before I got into heavy dealing
with The Hat, more than seven million
dollars had passed through the Royal
Road's collective treasury in less than four
years operations. Less than a decade later,
Robih Rothschild and Franz Mandel, as
representatives of the RRS, were permanent board members as well as
principal stockholders of a medium-sized
Swiss bank with assets well over 75 million
Earth Poems
by Charles Heny Miller
Yankee Energy
(for larkie)
Up and up we went, my eager son and I,
in a pine-y water walk
along a rock-raisined brook
in a hemlock-hairy grove
where water leapt over slabs of rocks
past blocky boulders guarding pools and scoops,
Up and up we went beneath the aromatic pines,
spying on nurseries of fingerling trout,
stepping on rocktips over or barely under
the flow (just love walking on water!),
up and up we twisted with the quick brook
that led us to its tiny source on a slope
where bears had tunnelled the briar patches.
Beside wind-sculpted apple trees
and innocent armies of ferns we went
under a puritan sun and lambing clouds
to frown above a regional atomic plant
where it squatted by a Berkshire backroad,
hideously neat, skirted by a charged fence,
armored with concrete and steel,
aiming its invisible arrows
at a suspect future.
A Northern Butterfly
Born from a thawing chunk on my warm hearth
it reconnoitered my room to camp on a south sill;
roosting above a river of register heat,
it folded its wings, this metamorphosed worm.
Here was a visitor a poet could afford,
a speckled bit of flight as calm as a flower
that seemed to live on broken bits of sunbeam--ultra-violet lunch, infra-sunset supper!
My snow-salted pines were gauged by tiny eyes
whose sun-taught body poised for sunny slopes,
denying those drifts (fallen clouds, hard mist?);
but I who happened to be the temporal host,
I waited on pensive wings a week, two weeks,
bringing lettuce, apple and pumpkin rind,
jailing my lonely angelic insect from its faith.
0 airy flesh and wing-toted dreams,
how evilly I kept you here,
secure from your snowscape of belief!
chapter 23 from
Beef fat. At Apple Bay we use
as little money as possible, partly
'cause we never have any, partly
'cause we got something to prove.
We're trying to prove you can stay
dive without being the unconscious
instrument of your own destructionwe'd rather face the wrath of the
ocean than feel responsible for the
fumes of the pulp mill. It's a proud
trip and maybe a doomed one but
in a good cause there are no failures,
we're here to turn the world around,
goddamit you've got to do what you
feel
But fat's a problem. (At least
it used to be before we had a cow.)
You've got a have a certain bit of fat
and oil in your diet, just like protein
and carbohydrates, and our grains,
greens, and an occasional fish diet
has hardly any fat in it at all. (Oysters are quite fatty, but when you
have a million oysters you'd be
surprised how seldom you really
feel like eating some. Once a week
is plenty.) Besides, what you gonna
fry the potatoes in?
So we usually end up buying
vegetable oil-xpensive
stuff,
and almost always highly processed-just like we buy rice and wheat,
in bulk. This year Lyn arranged a
trade of apples for wheat and rice
and oil that gave us almost five
months' supply of staples. But at
'the time of this story we were trying
something else-a bunch of us got
Apple Bay
infatuated with the idea of beef fat.
Carl started it, 1 guess-he's
always been into free meat as a good
hit (like hard cider, and coffee)-the
point being that, when you're trying
to bypass money, living on "garbage"
is an honorable (ecologically sound)
way of getting what you can't grow
or hunt yourself. Our food-gathering
and -growing efforts are closely
defined by the limits of our environment. Once upon a time the Indians
in our waters got oil-for lamps as
well as cooking-from the oolachen
or candlefish, a wonderfully fatty
creature you could reportedly just
run a wick through and light him
up-now completely fished out of
these waters by the white man.
You can't just live l i e the Indians
did, the land's been pulled out
from underneath us.
So Carl went into the supermarket and asked for and was given
maybe a hundred pounds of beef
trimmings, fat the butchers cut off
before offering the meat for sale.
And what you do with this stuff is
you render it, cut it up in chunks
and warm it in a fry pan till it becomes liquid (don't let it overheat)
and carefully pour off the liquid
into canning jars (it's good to put a
fork in the jar to conduct heat-keeps
the glass from cracking) and render
some more. End result is many jars
of clear liquid become white solid
beef fat (good for baking, frying at
low heat, making candles, soap) and
a big stack of beef rinds-"fat
crunchies," we call 'em-good for
the dogs, good for people too if
you're not thoroughly sick of meat
after two days' pungent rendering.
This fat keeps real well-and it's
free for the labor. (Later the SuperValu started charging 4' a pound.)
But meat--well everybody knows
that at rural communes meat's
more controversial than sex.
Hank didn't l i e the smell of
the beef fat. While it was being ren-
dered he just stayed clear of the
galley, but it had bothered him on the
boat with Carl coming back from
town (he later said he came very
close to throwing the stuff overboard)
and then every day when he visited
the galley and there were still boxes
of unrendered beef fat around.
He sincerely believed we were
poisoning hi with rotten fatit was no use trying to tell him that
what smelled was the little bits of
meat still sticking to the fat, which
get fed to the dogs once the stuff
is rendered. Beef fat just gave Hank
the creeps. And he was in a mood
to be at odds with everyone anyway.
Hank at the time was an annoying presence in my lie. About a
week earlier I'd gotten fed up with
the chronically insufficient supply
of stove-wood in the galley-when
there's not enough wood, or it's all
wet and cut too big, etc., all indoor
projects, cooking, canning, making
candles, washing clothes and bodies
and dishes, become twice as timeconsuming and frustrating, no one
feels like doing 'em, no one feels
like doing anything, the galley gets
cold and uncomfortable, but everyone needs something to do, it contributes to the general malaise and
there certainly was a general malaise
at that time. 1 determined that I
would make my bid for improving
matters by building up a sizable
stash of dry wood.
I'd found a pile of f&ly dry logs
in a section of the woods where Carl
I
I bv Paul Williams
had done a lot of thinning six years
earlier (during a stint of forestry
enthusiasm, he had cut down every
superfluous tree in a tight stand
of second-growth fir). I l i e to get
a routine going, steady work high
productivity, I had a sawhorse
out there and Gene would cut off
rounds in the morning (he had just
recently arrived at Apple Bay and
recovered enough from the loss of
his spleen to saw some wood), and
I would come by in the afternoon
and maybe cut off some more rounds,
chop the rounds into thii useful
fir-sticks, and cart the wood by
wheelbarrow loads to the galley.
We were at least a week ahead after
a couple of days, and gaining quickly
(a good goal might be two months
ahead, meaning the wood you cut
today you'll burn two months from
today, since you already have a
woodpile big enough to fast that
long).
Then Hank and Dennis came
back from one of their endless
expeditions to Bent or Vancouver,
and they didn't have any wood to
bum in the tipi. So they took the
rounds Gene and I had cut for galley
wood and chopped 'em up for their
own use. It was a small thing and
would have offended no one were we
all feeling good towards each other,
but that was not the case and I was
pissed off; when it happened a
second time I was righteously angry,
eager for a confrontation, but I
calmed down, poured my energy into
chopping wood and discovered they'd
actually cut the rounds themselves
the second time and let it pass.
But a lot of stuff l i e this was happening.
And then I walked into the
galley with an armload of wood
and somebody told me HanL had a
'
...
bonfire on the beach in front of the
galley (I'd noticed it vaguely) and
was burning the rest of the unrendered beef fat. I was annoyed.
(Hank's a persistent gadfly.)
I
could see his point-nobody had rendered any fat for three or four days,
and it did smell-but why not just
put the stuff in a shed, and at least
save it for dog food? Anyway, I
had been thinking for several days
I would take some of the fat out to
my cabin-where I was spending
a lot of time those days, the galley
was a drag, nobody was happy
and Rebecca in particular was a
constant uptight presence-so 1
grabbed two boxes that hadn't been
burned yet, put them back in the
galley, announced I would bring
them out to my cabii in an hour or
two, and went back to work.
I didn't try to tell Hanlr what I
thought of his bonfire-it
had
gotten to be too painful and pointless
to talk to him about stuff like this,
he would never admit any doubt
about what he did. And the smile on
his face was insulting. I did consider
bringing up the matter at dinner
(we virtually never had formal
meetings of any sort; sometimes
real feelings would be aired at
diiertime, but not often), then went
on with what I was doing.
There was snow on the ground.
I walked back to the galley.
The two boxes I had put inside
were outside again.
Obviously
they were heading for the fire.
Everything moves around around
here. He shouldn't have done it.
I went over the edge.
"Where's Hank?" No sign of
him around the fire. I started off
towards the tipi I was gonna kill
the bastard. I was gonna break his
head. It didn't matter how big he
was, nor how small the straw that
broke me. I'd been pushed too far.
I was gonna kill that bastard.
With my bare hands.
He wasn't in the tipi I ran up
to Stan's, stuck my head in the
cabin: "Is Hank here?" He wasn't.
I must have been a sight, eyes red,
face muscles all distorted with
passion.
I couldn't find h i . He and
Dennis had gone for a walk somewhere. I went back to my woodchopping. The anger drained out
of me.
The day wandered on.
At nightfall I went with Carolanne to do the goats (put them in
the barn, get the evening milk), and
on the way back (there was a moon in
the sky) we stopped in the tipi
Although I no longer felt in the least
l i e throttliig h i , I felt duty-bound
to let Hank know how angry I'd been
at him earlier.
He was sitting around the fire
with Dennis and Sam and visitor
John, Judy's d d boyfriend from
Montreal. He betrayed no emotion.
He couldn't understand why I'd
gotten so angry over beef fat. I
tried to explain how he did, all these
things that were just designed to
piss people off, but he wasn't buying
it: "You must be crazy, man. I
don't want to make anyone angry.
I just want all my brothers and
sisters to be at peace with themselves
and love God" (passing the hash
pipe). I opened my heart to h i ,
continued on page 39
One dark fall night, when the house was W i g
with people eager to warm theii hands around the
fire, we snuck out of the house, Marshall and 1, and
drove away to a small cafe in Millers Falls. It felt
good to both of us to get away from all the people in
the kitchen, just for a while, for a quieter conversation, and a bite to eat.
The town was dark and mostly asleep, but as
we got closer to the cafe we could make out its little
red n w n "OPEN' sign. Marshall had already
drawn out of me all my problems and worries of the
moment, and told me some of his. He was worried
about the draft.
The cafe was empty except for the waitress.
Normally we would sit at a booth, but then, without
discussing it, we sat on stools at the counter. Perhaps Marshall wanted to keep the waitress company. Perhaps it seemed warmer nearer the gnll.
Anyway, it was darker in the corner by the booths,
and the warm yellow tight of the cafe fell mostly on
the end of the counter, where we sat.
We ordered coffee and hamburgers, and Marshall outlined a few new problems that had developed in his draft case. He had been granted C.O.
status, but they were beginning to come down on
him to perform his "alternative service." He had
been unable to find a suitable organization in the
area that would serve as a front for continuing his
normal l i e . No one would write him a letter. It
might involve cutting his hair. It might mean going
back to Denver, to work in a hospital there. Those
were not solutions at all.
I didn't know what to say. I certainly couldn't
t h i of a way out. Maybe it isn't all that senous.
Maybe it will just blow over somehow.
'But that's just the tip of the iceberg,"Marshall said, staring into the m h r on the other side
of the counter.
I thought about that, flipping through the
many possible meanings I could t h i i of at the moment, but soon Marshall was backon the track.
"Dan you know I thinlr, I've been thinking
that my room is a very bad place to store things
that may have any value at all. I mean you just
don't know what might happen. I thii you should
come get your camera and your father's manuscript. I really don't feel very good about them being there. '
'What are you talking about? What's going to
happen?"
"Anything could happen. Anythiig. Thiigs
are very crazy, you know how freaked things can
get."
I had been sort of vaguely looking at $im
through the mirror in front of us, eating my hamburg. Now I couldn't believe my eyes. What "was"
going to happen? I thought of the wotst, but how
could even the worst threaten my camera or the
manuscript?
"Marshall, how is my camera going to disappear? Are you going to vaporize. ..dematerialize?'
1 turned from the Coca-Cola mirror and looked
at Marshall's eyes. They were brilliant, sparkling,
and excited. A faint smile was on his lips.
"Times are bad, maybe they're especially bad
for me. I have to tell you that something could happen, I don't know what it is, but it could happen at
any moment."
Marshall still had his long winter coat on, with
its big fur collar turned up around his crop of curly
hair. I was staring into his face, ready to hear this
message from him if he would just spell it out. The
fur collar looked almost like his hair, and it was
hard to tell where one began and the other ended.
His face was surrounded with hair, and shadows
darkened his face as he moved even slightly.
As if he didn't want me to be puzzled for t w
long, he swung slightly on the stool and the yellow
light of the cafe lit up his face. My fears for Marshall disappeared like an optical illusion, for now
there was only one look in his eyes and it was a look
of complete strength. This man is not some crazed
fanatic unable to take responsibility for his daily
life. On the contrary, he looked more like some kind
of secret agent, prepared to meet all odds in a secret war with an unknown enemy (the dark iceberg
mass below the surface?) and prepared even to use
his own life as a chip in the game.
My mind flashed back to a book I had given him
the week before, qnd a character in it, a London anarchist, who wore a powerful bomb strapped to his
belly at all times. He could detonate the bomb by
squeezing a rubber ball in his pants pocket. It was
the ultimate protection from the police, and gave
the man a unique K i d of confidence. Somewhere
Marshall had discovered a similar source of power.
by Dan Keller
Marshall Bloom was the mad genius who conceived the Liberarion
News Service, a press service for the underground papers back
then, and a focal poinf for resistance to the Vietnam war. He
supposedly killed himself in November 1969, though in Green
Mountain Post Film' Voices of Spirit he said through a trance
medium that he had been killed by hands other than his own.
Love Poem
I.
What died in the wool,
None can tell.
She tunnels into quilts and stiffens,
As slumber lugs her body
To the locker.
Evening's end.
There are no blinds
To close.
Frost casts a smoke screen.
The maples in their gauze
Are mum.
He fashions stairways
Arching into nowhere.
She pictures baby
Happy on the patty chair.
He, insomniac,
As she is numb.
Day breaks into pink
And blue.
v.
11.
By noon sun,
They sweat like icicles,
As brook swell
Widens the bed
And polishes
Their rock-like skulls.
Back in the jungle
The daughter cradles
Her menagerie.
To fickle breast
She takes an ocelot.
The walls exhale
With the squeak of her sucked
Thumb.
In.
Waylaid
Before the French doors
En route to lunch,
She conjures up
A fruit cup,
Which he cannot
Refuse.
Iv.
The voyeuristic dog
Withdraws.
Clandestine as adultery,
Snows cross the windows
In an hourglass.
As winter sheds her artifice,
The wrinkled dress
And trousers fall.
VI.
He shifts the auto into gear
And catches his appointment.
The baby wakes,
They kiss,
She rubs her bottom
With a soothiig ointment.
She holds in her mouth
The pit of a salt
Plum.
Some cavity
Can no longer bear
To be empty.
-Verandah Porche
The What-yon-might-call
Madness
The what-you-might-call madness of a man who survived ten days
without food at the bottom of an
abandoned well was that from then
on he developed a passion for climbing trees.
The Pleasures
of the
by Spencer Holst
There are different kiuds of writing. For
instance, there's the kind of writing where
you wzlk over to the typewriter, sit down,
and write a first line. You go into the
kitchen for a glass of water, light a w e t ,
all the while &inking of what you've
written. You return to the typewriter and
write a second line, then you write a third
line, and oh--all sorts of things happen, and
there-you find you've written the last line,
and if what you've written is any good, why,
it's all of a piece, as if the whole thing
were implicit in the beginning.
As if you put your hand in the water
and catch a fish by the tail.
However, there is a different kiud of
writing: you sit down at the typewriter,
just as before, and write a beginning.
But when it comes to writing more-nothing
happens. Yw have many thoughts, your
mind is aswim with phrases, but your ha&
don't move toward the keys. Finally, you
begin again, and write a new first line.
I have a big old wire wastebasket
which I never empty in which I put things
that I think I might work more on, and over
a number of years it's got chock-full of
begimings, false starts some might say,
failures perhaps--but I've made a book of
them, or what-you-mightcd a book,
of one hundred and one examples of this
nameless genre of writing. And I have
given them names. just as if they were
regular stories.
Sometimes I wonder whether there
are real stories implicit in such first liaesyou might say virtual stories, not unreal
but existing in some never-never realm
not inaccessible perhaps to certain readers
who do themselves indulge in the pleasures
of the imagination...
The Car
If I could ride around a bit,
sitting in the back seat of a great car,
perhaps gliding through the yellow
countryside of Ohio in the afternoon
vn a fine Fall day, or zooming
through through the midnight black
of a New England Summer night
with the rain beating down, drops
The Opera Singer's Vacation
dancing on the highway in the
On her vacations the famous
headlights, or picking our way on
opera singer lived alone in a cottage
a Spring day around Baltimore
on a small island where she practiced
streets in the gay traffic, through
to her heart's delight, and she could
the racket of everyday, moving
be heard at all hours like a faraway ponderously, our dark brown Cadillac
bird by wild animals on the most
purrs, and is stared at by children.
distant shores of the Canadian
lake which lay at the bottom of an
uninhabited valley.
The silence at the center of a
In London
becalmed lake is for her the most
In London yesterday a lorry
beautiful sound in the world.
lunged, sideswiped a fog light and
plunged into the Thames. The
plainclothesman who surreptitiously
was following me broke cover, took
The Arsonist at the Zoo
a whistle from beneath his cloak
and blasted the alarm, rushing to the
The poisonous orange salamander of Peru in its glass cage
embankment, abandoning me in
the yellow fog.
at the Staten Island zoo attracted
the gaze of the arsonist (wearing
blue sneakers and carrying a rope
in his belt) who had broken in at
midnight to start a fire, but had
The Sacred Cow
become distracted from his insane
design by the liveliness of the
The sacred cow stumbled in the
nocturnal animals; not that they
mud, blinded by tropical rain,
were wild or especially noisy-they
lurched forward onto the ooze,
twisting its neck awry as it fell;
were merely awake and alert. The
and one of its long curved horns
great cats were playing with their
slipped between the roots of a tree,
cubs, the raccoons were chasing
each other, the primates played
like a key in a lock, so that when it
lumbered to its feet its horn was held
quiet games, and the place was
alive with moving reptiles. After an fast and its snout pressed down into
the mud; for five minutes it strughour he left without having started
gled and the next morning was
a fire and he never returned to that
scene of what could have been his
found, a great white beast drowned
greatest crime.
in a puddle.
And he never set another fire,
but he became a drunk, closing the
bars each night and staggering
home at dawn.
There is something about us,
The Floodwaters
we who are nocturnal, that nobody
The floodwaters left a ring
can ever understand.
on the outside of the bathtub.
The Fans of Van Gogh
I saw all the fans of Van Gogh,
all past and future ones, all the
millions fluttering about in the air,
making the sky black in back of him,
all trying to get a peek over his
shoulder as he sits there, very
hungry, and looking not unlike a
scarecrow in the sunshine in the
middle of a wheatfield, painting dm
mwa.
The Sunken Subway
On Thanksgiving Day the
subway sank and the holiday riders
stood in water up to their chests
and then-single file-they all
mmagdtu ssaspe up,a ladder
thW&8l d g b l h t let them
al.titlk&+a
hrd~the midst
dthe Hdkby Patade.
- .
*P*-
Bottle Caps
&,fj.btm'&&*tRbf
.%&
m - t i ~ r s e
L ld$ma+aer;e't3I furl mpon
s o m M w r e 56t.it'sb~ack,black,
' blanketig'rkin that greets the visitor
from America.
When will my collection of bottle
caps become valuable?
Five Hmdred Yellow Cabs
The intersection filled with
yellow cabs.
The B e a u t i i Woman
The garage of the cab company
this time choosing the
The benut?&!
was on fire and the news had flitted
&&'I taxi radio to radio and cabs
hmdrcll.aver*
Mde-wrp&&#,&
u8WWkk.
tSWfrom all over the city out of
ed, or the black plaid.
nmdef aqdi@Q: h v e i # ~ d
i and l i e bewildered insects
whdse nest had been destroyed
atdevem&d mmhmakblk,
they gathered and moved around the
and then showered befd-g
huge burning building, blocking
a whirlpool-bath of hypo. M v e r
My Dentist Story
the way of firetrucks, some vehicles
contest it was she was enferkg,
abandoned in the middle of the
she wori it hands-downwhen she
'The book that glitters with
street
as drivers got out and gatherec
submitted
to
the
Photography
Editor
mischief
in groups to chat where they could
' h e writing most sparkling with of the Times,but as fate determines
get a better view, and as two floors
destiny as Luck would have itcollapsed with a tremendous crash
he lost his mind that weekend.
and fire fitued WWmdms with
~~
I
retu~ed*us*W+,
of grease and gasoliiie puts pl~iw
into the stratosphere, the drivers
began to blow their horns as-cab .
e~ r s under~stress have@
#*b
R
~
~
o
W e d E e d r o o m ' t o u n & ~ ~ s , ao', and that mourning rnuiicC$&
I kipsant brass, of f i v e - h i a h d b x i
everywe on earth wakes
1 b r s blowjng their h b mddbe
she goes to sleep,,drunkel
-,a),,$$
k dtm€fmtheriver.
.
'& stood csn the dental chair ard
$Wed in wolrder and triumph
bh*As his co-workers
.dOopsleep, before he left
~ Y M , to vanish into the
1
1
9
'
s
1
in order fhat it be photographed,
it dies.
By beauty's corpse are clues.
Photo flood bulbs.
Her lips half form a name.. .
did she try to say the name of her
lover, her murderer?
Did you know her?
I
A Very Ancient Dwarf
He parted his beard in the
middle, and tied the ends to his two
big toes, but this only a very ancient
dwarf can do.
35
MOROCCAN LaCETCt
-
By Stephen Davis
The Fever
Six o'dock on s warm winter
morning in the mountain village of
Jajouh in the Jebel hills of northern
M o m . I'm sleeping and dreaming
peecutdy; the walls of this house
are three feet thick and the room is
pitch black but for the muted sound
of pheasants crowing to the sun.
Within the space of a single breath
a shaft of light fills my unconscious.
The door has been opened and I
awake to the craggy face of old
Achmed the Cook next to mine. He
waits until my eyes lose their vagueness, then bids me a good morning in
Spanish and Arabic. He has some
bad news. His daughter and her new
infant boy have caught fever in the
night. No good. He bids me to get
together my strange syrups, vitamins
and super-antibioticsand come down
to his iouse and have a look at her.
My generous employer, the Cosmodemonic Foundation, supplied me
with this small pharmacy supposedly
for my own protection in primitive
areas. The result is that I've become
the town doctor since the nearest
real one with a license is 40 kilometers down an occasionally impassable road in the market town of Ksar
el Kebir.
Slip on a loose djellaba to fend
Fresh kif
.
away the fog that climbs the hills
at s u d s e : I follow the gliding
hooded figure of the Cook through
the dewy half-light across pasture
kept clipped by voracious herds of
goats and sheep, past the low rock
wall of the cemetery with its spectral
long view back into time. The older
men of the village are rising now and
are bent over eastwards in the doorways in the quiet gasps of their
morning prayers. Baraka I huj?k...
H 'amdullah...Amin. Through the
Cook's gate into an interior courtyard, two mules, stringy old pet ewe,
cats and chickens scramble. Here's
the daughter's room, a blue-washed
grotto filled with women. The girl
is about 20 and called Turiya. The
week-old baby she is trying to soothe
is her third son. Both mother and
child are flushed with high fever.
I treat the mother to a dose of
St. Joseph's aspirin (wonder what the
choleric- old m o k a d h of the local
mosque would say) and quiclry decide
that this case is beyond my level d
medical competence. I ask the Cook
where Turiya's husband is and am
told he is out of the country; nothing
unusual since many Moroccans work
in European factories sending home
what they can. So we pile the family
in the Land Rover and drive them
down the mountain to the doctor in
Ksar. He can't figure out what's
wrong either and prescribes the
standard placebo, injectible vitamins,
which do little or nothing to help the
patient. The Cook has to drop a
bundle of dirhams at the pharmacy
in town and maintains a bad mood
until we get off the paved road on
the way back and he can have a few
pipes of kif and mull the whole deal
over from a
stoaed attitude:
'god has willed it' be exalts.
When a chid is born in the Jebel
the people don't give it a name until
it has proved it can sunrive for
awhile. The cemetery is chock full
of tiny graves. But a ample of days
have gone by and Tueiya's boychild
has lived to the respectable age of
ten days, so the Cook ckcidea, in the
absence of his sonin-law, to name
the boy and have a seba, a naming
party in his honor. (If the child is
Two Boujelouds
female they don't bother with any
of this.) So one afternoon I and the
two photographers accompanying me
are invited to the Cook's house
for the traditional seba lunch:
couscms steamed in broth, haunches
and joints of fresh goat stewed in
vegetables, and the various digestive
organs of said goat served in a
cherry-red sauce of fresh blood and
olive oil. The three of us and about
20 of the master musicians of Jajouka
are eating in a tiny room and the air
is think with steam and &if smoke.
One of the photographers whips
out his Polaroid and starts snapping
a few of the musicians. Being in the
presence of such a heavy miracle
as the Polaroid always gets the
masters high and fulfills the photographer's power fantasies as well.
One or two don't want their picture
taken and look uneasy. They tell
me quietly that these quick pictures
have to do with the devil and that
there can't be any good in it. I tend
to agree with them but try to keep
them cool. The Cook glides in and
motions us to follow him, especially
the Polaroid. We are led into a room
Copyright 1974, 1975 by Stephen
Davis
[
l
i
1 .
hgirl Turiya and her son, who
k e n named Amin. The Cook
at to make a few fast Ones of
JliM so they can be sent to the
1 ask again where the baby's
rc&
is and in response the Cook
s;
--- 3
politics. But the Cook explains that
the king had to send soldiers to help
Syria for complicated Islamic political
reasons and to save his own face with
other Arab leaders, and that Mustapha was drafted and had to go.
'Look at me' the Cook says, "in
'35 I was sitting up here on the mountain and somehow the tax collector
and Army remiter found their way
up here. The Spanish were running
this part of the country at the
I was drafted, I had to go. I didn't
have any say at all and it wasn't
even my own king I was serving.
I invaded Spain with Franco's army
until the end of the war and stayed
on until 1943. I didn't mind Franco
too badly, but nine years of my life
was too long. So you can see how
himself for a minute and
out of the mom. I look at
and see her fever is gone.
E
w
e m d she lowers her huge eyes
'iud says nothing; it would be poor
for her to say anything to
1.
.a dmmge man. The Cook reenters
L.kIholds a creased black and white
&c40 up to the light. A pair d bard
d s k eyes implanted in 8
,. d gentle-looking f a a ~4 h
d
4 h r c e close-croppedb h k d .
ambat beret bears fhe badge of
Royal Paratroops. The Cook
mces that his son-in-law has
1 Syria for the past year in the
lines of the Golan Heights
-&&ing with the soldiers that King
Eassan has committed for the
defense of Arab lands. He of course
h n e v e r seen his son and the Polamids will be sent to him.
We express our regret at his
, aipece and our general pleasure
at k i n g able to communicate pand c a l l y . An uneasy moment.
i&prbr's it going up there in Syria,
E d the Cook. Achmed grins. The
m m - l a w , Mustapha, writes back to
;gqg that he and his comrades lay
d u s h e s all night and that they're
W g UK Jews lie chickens.
brings an image to mind
pf the way Achmed slaughters a
Ma'irn Berdouz
of pullets for dinner-a prayer,
+ a e s s , the throat cut, the body lucky Mustapha is. He'll be home
flwoff to one side to run down its soon, God Wiling. And if the Jews
&ath throes.. .) But, the Cook goes don't kill him first'
The Cook smiles and offers me
m, if God wills it there'll s o a ~be
pace and Mustapha crm ~ o r r r sb,ejd 8 &e, His k g is milder than most,
t~ Jdouka and look after his d e ood
U U W l M a LftClp
falpay.
s
&
f h e m and a
kss
The two photographers smile black tobacco. He lit a bowl of the
uneasily at each other. The Cook long d s i and exhaled a grey lung#@ms
they are Jews but doesn't ful. He Prrrt haam seen my m M b h
seem to give it a thought, as if he because k~took my brurd; d led
,w& discussing the weather. So I me up .the hi& &gin@
f3m rdbjetd
him what he thinks of the war. to the different ways djehbas are
:, vs been living here for a couple of tailored between the mountains and
m
s but this is the first time the cities and inquiring earnestly
we+ discussed anything close to what I wanted to eat that night.
-
,P
1,g
bb
E
a
P
-
Mutton, I said. Instead we had
the leftover couscous and the remainder of that afternoon's blood
and guts.
BouJeloud
Bodeloud materializes soundlessly behiid me and taps me twice
on the shoulder. I jerk around and
nearly jump out of my skin. BouJeloud lives in a cave up the mountain and doesn't get into the village
too often. He's dressed in rank
shaggy goatskins tied on with
oleander vines and sports a huge
floppy straw bonnet that hides his
He
charcoal-blackened features.
wants tobacco and flashes his even
white teeth. I can tell it's Mohammed playing Bodeloud today.
Yesterday it was the chiefs son Amin
but Amin doesn't smoke anything
and Mohammed is a better dancer.
Today's dance has to be special.
I fish in my pockets to pull
out a pack of Camels. Mohammed
takes one though I realize he'd
rather smoke black tobacco if he's
p i n g to dance; black tobacco gives
energy and blond takes it away.
And the local brand, Kebir, is so
strong that in comarison Camels
taste like burning sage. I light his
cigarette and we sit down on a rock
uniting for the music to start in the
little village plaza below.
Bodeloud shades his eyes and
pcints to the burning sun; "cuilrr
b'zej " he says with some enthusism. Hot day. Sweat. Villagers
aad pilgrims to the shrine of Sidi
&mid Sherk stroll by occasionally
on the way to the plaza. The younger
and high-spirited ones yell &I bess
alik, Bodeloud and pretend jovially
to be afraid of him. The older and
straighter ones look the other way
with sour faces since the lanky goatboy on my right is just too outrageously pagan to be worthy of the
notice ofthe elders, scribes and other
good Muslims. BouJeloud doesn't
care about anything. He just drags
on his Camel and sniffs the wind.
Soon we can hear the flowing
skit1 of rhaita music from the plaza.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
founder of t h e American
Marijuana Industry.
GREEN MOUNTAIN
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of its first volume:
I
THE
SECRET LIFE
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DANIEL SHAYS
A recently discovered, hitherto
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"THOMAS PAINE"
Transcribed and edited by
Harvey Wasserman, this
devastating tale of politics and
sexuality in Revolutionary
America will be the Last Word
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@ $2.95, postpaid.
I Life of Daniel Shays
1
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I
Bodeloud listens carefully for a few
minutes to see who's playing today,
the last day of Aid el Kebir, the Great
Feast that is the major celebratory
holiday of the Muslii calendar.
Quickly he identifies the players,
all his cousins and uncles. Four
rhaitas-Big
Mohammed, Little
Mohammed the younger, Abdullah
and Basheer the boy. Two drummers-Little Berdouz and Bokaazar
Tau. Bodeloud smiles, white teeth
on charcoal black face. There'll
be several hundred pilgrims today
and it's always more fun to dance for
a big crowd. He disappears into
the hmmam to finish his make-up,
and I light a pipe and drift slowly
down to the plaza.
All the musicians today are
younger and so the beat is good
rocking and the rhitas wail in
coiling snake Lines. When the older
masters play the rhaitas, long double
reed wooden trumpets, the music is
more formal and stately and likely
to produce deep and curative trances
for the faithful. The local Muslii
saint's specialities are mental illness and harsh curses so there's
always a strange element hanging
around the village. The primordial
rock and roll is left to the younger
men, and today they are cooking.
Suddenly the air is split by the
cracklig ozone of a long note played
flat-out unison and Bodeloud roars
into the scene, waving oleander
whips and scattering women and
children like so many leaves. Five
hundred voices yell ha BouJeloud h
as he wades through the throng
seated in front of the rhaitas, beating
djellaba-clad forms with his whips
to get himself room to dance. He's
mean as a bull lecher billy goat
and just as quick to kick.
He bows to his cousins and immerses hi head between the bell
mouths of the blaring horns, then
he starts to move, slowly at titst
because the players have modified
their tempo for him slightly. Behiid
his back small children run after him
and try to pull his tail and make fun
of him, because in a sense he's a
scapegoat. The women are packed
together on a hillock in a white
veiled cluster, their heads thrown
back and singing from the gullet,
yodelling a blood-curdling tease
into the air. Now and then the music
freaks out into strident, hysterical
passages as BouJeloud scrambles
into the crowd of women flailing
madly with his oldeander switches.
They say the women Bodeloud hits
are sure to become pregnant withii
the coming year and that as long as
he's around the crops do well and
the flocks are sleek and fat. BouJeloud means "Skin Man" in the local
dialect but an Arabic corruption also
means "Father of Flocks. "
What is clear is that he's the
great god, Great Pan Himself.
And that here in the Jebel is the
last of the old time Panics. BouJeloud emerges from the women
on a dead run and swats me a vicious
blast of oleander on the back of my
head on his way back to the musicians. It's his idea of a little joke
and I'm careful not to let him get
my goat. As he passes I smell the
dank steaming skins mingled with
his sweat and my gorge almost
rises to the occasion, the harsh stink
of centuries.
The music cools down as BouJeloud sways with the beat and the
women regroup to tease him again.
I remember what venerable old
Westermark, an Oxford sociologist,
had written after his visits to the
Jebel and Moyen Atlas ranges
around the turn of the century.
He found Bodelouds dancing in
several locations around Morocco and
thought him to be a survival of the
ancient Roman Lupercalia. This was
a popular festival around the empire
in which young noblemen dressed
in goatskiis and ran around town as
incarnations of Pan, lashiig women
who wanted to be fertile. Their
whips were called februa, from the
Catin verb februare, to fertilize.
The Lupercalia was held in the
second month and the day was
dies februatus; from this we get our
month February. When Westermarck wrote the main body of his
Moroccan texts in the late 1920's
he pointed out that Morocco was
one of the punic colonies of Rome but
also that he surmised that Bodeloud
dancing had died out.
I guess he was wrong. Now the
sun is diving. in a blazing wreck
behind the mountain, the bonfm is
lit and Bodeloud is jumping through
APPLE BAY eatinuedfmm page 31
tiid'ahower. He's joined by a young told him how I'd just been helpless
dressed in frilly women's clothes with fury earlier in the day, told him
J. wnddered shameful for women
I didn't understand it but we couldn't
b c e in public); this is Bou- go on this way. He shrugged it off,
thud's dancing partner, Aisha refused to acknowledge that anyone
a--Crazy Aisha who entices in the community had ever to his
Ctnttrur with lurid promises howledge been angry at him or
a p i d l 6 sex so that his blessing vice-versa, mouthed some more
gMl power remains with Jajouka. platitudes and casually changed
$qt efl she delivers is good music the subject. I couldn't stand it.
mduustion, since she skitters I grabbed him by the shouldersh y giggling every time Bodeloud I had to get through to this dumb-ass
angel-I grabbed him and started
&
., . ready to mount.
C h t y Aisha's got a little bit shaking him-"C'mon,
Hant you
d stme age Astarte in her; if she bastard, listen to mel" Sometlring
.mtnes too close you can show her -@"Hey!" be shoated as I toechsd
pcmt MEe. Iron and metal are the
t d y things she's frightened by. him, as if to say, yoaJve dcme ¶tnow,
Brrt... what's this? It's gGttiag be gratbcd me by the hair imd
dark to see clearly. Mu& so first started r&@ punches on my head,
Mthoohoolr into it. Everythimg b l m . we rolled ammd for a minute, he
&tilelad's face disappears under was much stronger than me and I
& bonnet, his calloused bare feet soon lost interest in fighting back,
Cn6D cloven hoofs. Before me I felt such intense iighteous satis#Wa bl& hole in a straw bonnet faction at having finally gotten
64PDp of r jittery boy's body; every- through to this son-of-a-bitch. It
shimmering, the music gone was all out in the open now. He let
lnad, everyone yelling. Bodeloud go of me, and we just stared hatred
.+hit& 60 invisible legs, flails aloft at each other for many seconds-my
waving. Aiiiwaaa!
glasses lay broken on the ground
The rhuitus crash to a h d t at sow~whsrc-~I just...I fuat dm't
.ace. Bouleloud &sippears hto the anderstand where you*= at, mra..
%omen, taking one of & dmmmem I just don't understand where you're
him. The chw@ of hPmans at, coming in here and laying this
$hms to inhale/erhrEe to the beat physical trip on me while I'm in my
,&.fhe buried irnd muffIed drum. tipi on acid." He started hitting me
*s
panic sex in the air but my again, rabbit punches all around
: h t , Malim Abdsallam Attar, chief my head and neck, I just let it come,
'bfhetribe, beckons that it's time to we went on like that for several
pl I, ask to be permitted a few minutes, him &topping q d trying to
nfbutes more but he laughs and says articulate it and then hitting me
no. "Muhsms, say%" Women Only. again, just unable to contain his
fury. The rest of the people in the
1 look back w e r my shoulder,
tipi protested and tried to hold us
tqhg to pick out Bodeloud amidst
the pulsing women's mystery. apart, finally succeeding as the
impact wore off, I hadn't realized
Btd b's gone.
Later I find his' skins and bonnet
he was on acid but I told myself it
m d e d empty next to the shit didn't matter, Hank takes acid so
hob d the hammam, as if Bodeloud often and is so proud of hi control,
h h e d into the earth and apotheo- "I'm so high and cool." I just sat
.W'hto
pure nature. But I h o w there exhausted and frightened and
Ira'sbnck inhis cave up the mountain hateful and self-satisfied, so relieved
b@n&@nth,probably making tea, that energy wasn't pent up inside
mmeMuit taboo during fhii holiday any more, we've made contact,
'6
Noyone
.
goes to see Moham- it was an awful moment but as I
d wWe he's dancing Bouleloud walked down to the galley with my
&$ he probably won't come back broken glasses I felt great, it was
.*'the dbge until it's time to dance a victory for me, and I felt certain
$@h
and he feels the urge for a things would now change for the
better for all of us somehow.
dppette.
fkflames sending coals flying in a
p
b
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1
I
W h y be cold and wet when you
could be w m and wet?" asks the
American
Express
Company's
Club Mediterrane, or "Club Med,"
as they say on the Islands. "Why,
indeed?" says I.
It wasn't only a travel ad that
convinced me I needed a warm clime.
Everywhere there were signs: I, and
no one else, saw an ad on TY featuring a swashbuckier worrying his
moustache off about how to keep fit
while sailing to foreign lands.
Seems V
i C deficiency was hi
problem, and TANG was the answer.
He didn't say, "if it's good
enough for the astronauts.. ." but
instead hoisted up the mainsail,
dangled from the bow, and, holding
aloft a family-sized jar of the product,
exclaimed, "Now we can make it to
Tahiti!" I deemed it of probable
cosmic significance.
I saw Mutiny on the Bounty, the
original, on the late-late show.
A beautiful gitl gave me a papaya,
and not the least of all this was my
being in Seattle, a great town, but
wet, and I assure you cold enough in
Winter. In Seattle there's an old
saying that I never heard anyone say,
but read in a local journal. "If you
can see .Mount Rainier, it will be
raining soon. If you can't see Mount
Rainier, it's raining. "
Born in the Sun but raised in the
cold, my only other experience with a
sunny situation had been in Spain
five years removed, when I found my
abandoned adobe and a few friends,
having a great time, when the muledriver/owner, now a friend himself,
sort of, began driving his mule by
five, six, seven times a week, with
his friends, and rather than become
mobile 3D-TVs, we left. But it had
been a great Winter, and now I was
on the West Coast and further West
was where I was a-goin'.
Hawaii? Too American. Australia? Too Australian. Tahiti?
Tahiti.. .hadn't I always gotten along
with the French?
My needs were as follows,
an easy place to be. My criteria
little more complex than a spin of the
globe.
My means of transport,
wherever a credit card would take
me. Citing my policy of induced
warmth and lassitude, Tahiti seemed
the place for me.
My plan d action was to work
two months at the salmon can labeling factory in Seattle, secure a
bundle and be off. At last I was free
to fantasize.
Would the Polynesians deal in
shiny red beads? Surely they do,
in exchange for cold cash.
Would I be invited to natives'
homes? I did meet a native in a
sleazy hotel where Matisse once lived
when it wasn't so sleazy. I offered
him a Sherman's Queen Size Cigarettello, very chic. He said, "Is kzj?
Come. "
Could I find work on a yacht? I
missed a job on a yacht by ten minutes, had come by ferry from Moorea
on the advice of a yachtee there, and
the lucky stiff who beat me to it only
had to work eight to ten hours a day,
just keep polishing the brass, for the
fun of it, meals and transport to
where de boss wanted togo.
It o c c u d to me in flee&ingmoments d self-doubt that I was a little
too old for the backpack set, and
I decided on the shoulder-bag
artiste scene to replace it. I had
always wanted to be a beatnik, and
when I found myself incarnated into
the flower generation I couldn't
wait to grow up and get a shoulderbag and otherwise continue to the
same things all flaming youth dream
of doing. I'm 26, kid.
Step number one was to tell all
my friends I was going, and for pride
if nothing else I would go. Step
number two was to read Thor Heyerdahl's Fatu-Hiva, his journeys as a
young man with spouse to that part of
the world, through Tahiti to the Marquesas Islands. I had no spouse and
had not until then even heard of the
Marquesas, but figured I'd meet
someone in Papeete and take it from
there.
Tying up the last odds and ends,
two pair white cotton socks, half a
roll of toilet paper and a mini-tape
deck with, I swear, Elton John,
John Fahey and Olivia Newton-John.
I felt ready. The day arrived.
TAHITI. Isle of Pirates, Gem of
the Pacific. First sighting, a V W
smashes into a Simca. Natives get
out and yell at each other in French.
I arrived in Tahiti at 0900 on a
Sunday after a 16-hour flight via
Honolulu and Pago Pago, having left
Seattle the previous day at 0900, with
a schedule of some reverie behind me
and an anticipated schedule of rest
and recuperation ahead. The old
get-a-hotel, dump the bags, sleep a
few hours and go out for dinner
routine seemed appropriate.
Generally speaking I had the
bum's tour of Papeete for a few days
and even that I quickly and sadly
surmised was costly. The sleaziest
bordello was 14 greenbacks a night
for an inner mom, with neither
window nor services of any kind.
Rule: never sleep near the
Equator with mare than two walls
and don't even t h i i about rooms
without windows. I later found a
slightly cheaper and far superior
room with windows, shower, naked
children and chickens. Many children, many chickens.
A disappointing aspect of Tahiti
and Fmnch Polynesia for the traveler
is the near total absence of a pensioncoasciousness, though as it's French
I had blithely assumed otherwise.
"Arrangements, " a warm Polynesian
word for "reservations," can be had
for quarters run by families on the
"far islands," those being relatively
far from Tahiti, but such quarters can
be little more than a bunk, and it's
wise to ask questions in advance of
arrival.
On Moorea, 12 miles from Tahiti
dank side room of a
@ass-hut-hotels that are
you'd need in a modem
something to write home
, I suppose, is OK
on vacation, but as
guards, much food, games
and the worst giggling
entertainment it has ever
he demonstrates
tie the pareu, the
. Pretty bad music, too.
of booze, at a stiff extra
ut I do love booze so I drank
so, about double the neighSuper-Duper, and fruit is
you plan to pick your own,
on a friend's land, or don't
three bucks, chicken and rice.
steal.
&time
excursions for me
% d o W taking a bus to a swimmable
'W. Just go in the direction
e the bus driver's s u m .
afsume you can't stdm b3t h
Ye W o w of a major hotel, mid his
*&turd orientation will not cumpre:'*h
myldeviation from the ncrrm.
Daily I would walk the yacht
'mmkge to see if I could crew but
&w4g arrived in huricane season
-b
were but slim pickins. The
I
Travel Bureau, they're everycalls it the "Rainy Season,"
through
February.
from a dearth of yacht
' b ~ ~ l lwhich-was
f,
a lazy man's- pur-
&
&
suit, the rain was a pleasant way to
break up the day, usually being only
a few minutes of hard rain, and now
and then a lengthy deluge. After
Seattle you relate differently to rain.
Sipped a fair share of iced tea
in all the better bistros, quaffed a few
quick ones in the .European fashion,
and sampled I fdtget how many
"exotic Polynesian drinks." Hung
around.
The Secret is that on vacation
there's hothing to do, so one creates.
In Polynesia, however, you're in
Paradise so there really is nothing to
do, which isn't easy. Which leads to
my very own Polynesian Theory.
Everybody has one.
There are many theories which
ask where the Polynesians came
from, my*theory asks why they left.
Nobody asks the Polynesians, it is
oft complained. But they left, in,
flimsy craft, to brave an unknown,
unkind sea.
They hud nothing else to do.
They had food and warmth and,
while overcrowding is often cited
as a reason for their exodus, this fails
to convince me of being important
enough to inspire a people toward
incredible feats. Same reason we
put men on the moon. They were
bored stiff.
So my tour of the South Pacific
more or less continued in this vein
and I spent a good deal of my time
sitting around under coconut trees,
very dangerous I'm told, and knocking about in the noggin, that is
thinking about it all, from the sands
to the seas,. from the mountains to
the trees. I +rceived the South
Pacific in the new, new fashion,
lolling about figuring it out. Very
Polynesian.
The perceptions, please.
T&ltlstls ban't redly know what
c
a
~
o
r
~
,
selves as p4aMvs.
I*Wrra*ea.Mme~
nantly W .t h y were 'in no olgr
related to ffie hlwi
h&mi
being "a primitive tribe M New
Zealand. "
The EncycIopedia &t$kmica
claims the Maori originated h Takti,
others say Tahitians and Moatiaas
are the same race, but you can't
believe everything you read.
An interesting anecdote of
Tahitian pop culture is that it is
essentially Tahitian, with the best
music outlets of Papeete having
shelves of Tahitian records and tapes
and a smaller selection of European
classical and a scarcity of rock . or
Western music.
Most unusual.
A Tahitian child taking up an
instrument may view the guitar as
being exotic, as an American child
would view the tabla.
On the other hand, many Tahitians will speak French among themselves, viewing the native language
as primitive.
Tourists with insufficient funds
are more officially frowned-upon
in Polynesia than most anywhere
else. While hotels and restaurants are expensive, a yacht may tie
up in Papeete for a dollar a day,
including water and electricity.
Indigent slaggards are given no
quarter.
Everybody eats there.
Revelation: Tahitians almost
never go swimming. Mothers bring
babes to the water's edge, and
youngsters swim to the occasional
yacht, though more so on the far
islands.
As a rule the Tahitian is used to
water, knows there's nothing out
there, at least not in swimming
distance, and is blank-eyed to see
pink bodies flapping in the sea.
paradise
and it is
~ Tahiti
d b ttuly
b
~
fm
f
h
m
W,
the
forest
still
grows
~
~
*
~
s
Q
f
~
~
aQd
rb
q$cUy
it
represents
an
urban
lblwda,-*llb~dtw
W , ~ ~ ~ r b & vamch
' v p si a ~b for Rpeete. Under control
soh& it taw.
&now.
~
~
t
Fruit fmm the tree, if you're
a
long to^ a h e i d ! & ~native, warmfh for all. It does
a yachtee, but if yba d
"s'bhethhgfat everybody, the Garden
a starving artiste, some kind of after the Sin.
identification will occur and life will
Paradise has its benefits, the
become easier.
Red Sox have Yaztremski, the best
The Tahitians have an identity things in life are free. Next time I'll
problem borne of reference to them- go by yacht.
,a
f someone here in New
Jersey were to ask me
how to go to Alaska, I
would say go to Shelby,
Montana, head north across the
Canadian border to Lethridge, Alberta, keep going north through Calgary
and Edmonton, and then keep truckin
some more. Have a good car, lots
of money, a camera, and take it easy.
The trip is a breeze.
Now go look at a map and see
what kind of a trip I'm talking about.
Notice that the ride takes in quite a
curve of the earth. But hell, I drove
the entire Alaska Highway on three
cylinders of a Triumph TR-3 engine
in a wooden-framed Morgan Plus4
sportscar.
Before I even got on the Alaska
Highway I had to pull a piston in
Grande Prairie, Alberta, and plug
up the oil holes leading into the
piston chamber with bits of wooden
doweling. A Scotsman I met in
Grand Prairie, northwest of Edmonton, did the work in his barn, beneath
a yellow light, one cold night in November, 1964. I had no choice. The
piston arm sheared at the crankshaft
as I was cruising into Grande Prairie.
Powl Wham! Or some damn noise.
And then kerplunk, a plunk. Shake,
rattle and roll. What the hell? I
had only enough money to get to
Fairbanks, and fast. The Scotsman
wanted me to wait for the part from
Montreal. I told him, "Forget it! I
got to roll! "
I watched him extract the piston
in the barn and felt like I was losing
a leg. The engine started up, but I
had to go back to town twice to fix the
head gasket. There was oil splashing
on my windshield from the gasket
leak, the Scotsman having improvised a gasket out of something he
had lying around the barn. The W i d
time out of Grande Prairie, with a
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
escort, I was gone for good.
The Alaska Highway starts at
Dawson Creek, in northwestern
Alberta.
I found the MorganTriumph shook least at 40 miles per
hour, and that's the speed I went the
entire Alaska Highway. I should
have taken another piston out and
42
went on two, the way the engine was
off-balance, running on just three
cylinders. By the time I got inside
the Alaska border, many days later,
all the glass on the dashboard had
shaken out and the heater was out of
commission.
Once, travelling more than I
should have on those roads, my right
rear tire went flat. My tears of pain
froze on my cheeks as I undid the
steamer trunks which I had foolishly
rigged on a metal bar off the outside
rear-mounted spare tire. I heard a
truck in the distance behind me and
thanked God, but I had to keep on
working. I crawled under the Morgan to place the stupid little Britishmade jack under the rear axle. I
contemplated taking the extra, unmounted tires off the convertible
roof, dousing the tires with gas and
setting the tires on fire as the oldtimers told me to do when I was in
trouble on the road. Besides being
unbearably cold and alone, I didn't
know what kind of animals were in
the dark alongside, and I wanted
to make a clear signal for the truck,
which was still a long ways off,
roaring through the hills.
Instead, I worked with my fading
flashlight and put my sawed-off
double barrelled shotgun, loaded
with one round of Double-0 buck
and one round of solid lead, on the
running board close by.
I was
working very slowly in the cold.
My blood must have been like crankcase oil. I had the tire changed
and was re-rigging the steamer
trunks when the tandem tractor-
P
I
I got my tire fixed, let ofF some
heat about the trucker to the garage
owner, who couidn't believe my three
working cylinders, and after shocking
the cafe customers with my good, but
crusty, looks at breakfast, I was gone.
On the other side of Haines
Junction, the most beautiful mountain town I've seen in North America,
the wire-weave fuel line from the fuel
pump to the dual carbs split and I had
to cut the line in two and splice the
plastic spark-plug cover from the
absent No. 4 piston into the line and
lash both ends with wire. The line
still leaked, spraying gas on the
windshield, but I kept the Morgan
going. In Fairbanlrs, the car finally
'
died. I left it in a hotel parking lot,
By Jack Pfanne
where the snow buried the green
monster from head to toe.
I worked at Cleary Summit,
a ski area north of town, running a
rope tow, standing in a hobo shed,
turning the damn engine on and
hauling skiers whenever one of the
crazy fools was dumb enough to ski
down. I borrowed some Army duds
to stay warm, but still my ears,
fingers and toes got frostbitten. I
guess I was the northernmost skilift operator in the world at the time,
being nearly inside the Arctic Circle.
The owner of the ski area was
so cheap he made me pay for my
damn coffee when I came inside
the funky lodge freezing with pain.
pulled to a stop behind me. I took a cup and sat down to drink
;engel:side and it whiie he chewed me up and down
the door . Aah, for not paying the damn dime or
rougbt, here I would certainly find quarter or however much the coffee
and light and fellowship- was. I slept in the boiler mom of
t that sucker wouldn't let me in an apartment house most of the time
r
h cab and told me all he could that winter, cuddling next to the
was the light from his front futnsrce and eating the caribou jerky
Wts. Damn him, I thought. 1di9Epd from the supermarket, and
does he t h i i I am? A damn &Wing beer. In those days I
in the middle of the Yukon?
mp w d t h in &-packs
-1 I figured he had his own gun and kit ertrmw& dch with s b&k
~ ~ s o ~ f l l rith
l the stc:amer of Jeek Daaiel's.
in the Mczgan.
WC -8
ery re:luctmtly, habhahn @g b .Af&&s,
went at 1nY 40 when all the
h m w,
hakin' , ntrap- all the'fumm &w b m p ~ &dl the
ne miles later pollution frinto aptdb ur tiam
:intile Y'ukon, as the hot s€& cdrnm OQt of tbe
: nexf : mcjming
- exhaust-pipe or chlmney into tht d d
air. There, in the winter dark, with
I r cafe.
-
inay6e a kt h u t e s of midday
twilight, ym w&
through fog,
and the lQ#kd
sign on the
comer says 4 0 .dqpek, 4 p.m.,
and the cheery narn k w - a l p s in
the froety windoars of. oozy baq
call you inside. So take a lot of
money if you don't want to work in
Alaska. That's a place where there's
nothing wrong with being a "turista."
Go home via Anchorage and the
car-ferry to Juneau and Seattle for
a mighty fine trip, then cross the Cascades to old Yakima, Washiionwhere I picked apples and worked
running a ride at the state fairand head east through Spokane,
into Livingston, Montana, down
through Paradise Valley into Yellowstone, past the Grand Tetons by
moonlight, east again across southem Wyoming to Cheyenne, and down
to Denver, where I started my
trip to Alaska, leaving college
never to return.
The night I was to leave Fairbanks, I was going to take the 707
coming through from Japan to Seattle
but was drinking all day waiting for
the midnight departure and the Pan
Am counter-clerks detected my
condition and wouldn't let me on the
plane, which led to a fight and to
a jail cell high atop the county
building above sleepy 01' Fairbanks.
I woke up everyone in the cell
block and an Aleut Indian lad and I
swapped stories until we fell asleep,
gazing out the window at the diamond stars. The next morning the
judge fined me $2!5 for being drunk
and disorderly and told me he didn't
want my kind in the state. I said I
was trying to get out of his damn
state when I got in the fight. I paid
my fine and took the next midnight
departure.
Don't let anyone scare you about
.the Alaska Highway. That 01' road
w'rll take you through country where
.the mountains are black, the waters
aq&arine, and where the sky is
pme blue by day and white with
stam by night. Don't worry about a
damn thing. If you got the hankering
d s halfway decent car, go. In
any weather, I know, you'll make
out fine.
'w
MAUI WOWEE
continued from page 9
to the bottom reaches.
Marie let herself go. The thin air, the incredible
crater, the wild energy of the volcanic island---Marie
felt herself collapse into a state of emptiness. She
wasn't about to fight the most spine-tingling embrace she could remember. "Love the Lord." whispered the blonde. "Love the Lord."
Jeff was also floating, but in something less
than ecstasy. From the corner of his eye he saw
Marie being fondled and at the same time the bearded one glimpsed the Winnebago folks retreating in
horror. With one deft swoop he dropped Jeff, dropped his own shabby trousers, and went flying barebotomed toward the terrified tourists shouting
"COME TO THE LORD! COME TO THE LQRD!"
The elderly couple, who were on a retirement
cruise from Des Moines, barely made it into the land
cruiser before the freak began banging on the metal
door "LET THE LORD IN! LET THE LQRD IN!"
The Winnebago rumbled into gear and began
backing up. Jeff watched in trance as Marie and her
blonde assailant continued their passionate embrace.
french kissing and grinding pelvic regions with
heightening fury. The Colombian dope, the high
mountain air, ,the incredible setting, the bizarre attack---Jeff was speechless and immobile.
Unheard, the bare-bottomed wildman inched
back and placed his hands lightly on Jeff's hips,
snapping the trance. "Oh, fuck," he heard himself
yell, and wheeled to face his attacker.
"We're all one. Brother. These bodies aren't
where it's at. Clay on the Lord's pottery wheel.
images on His silver screen. He loves you, man.
Drop it all. Come to me."
The kid was eighteen or nineteen, had a thick
sun-bleached beard and golden complexion. He was
the healthiest speciman Jeff had ever seen. His eyes
sparkled hypnotically with the unbroken penetration
of a speeding Kansas freight train. "My hands on
your carnal body are a cosmic joke," he said.
Jeff could't answer. He was being pulled closer.
The kid slipped his hands around Jeff's ass and
pulled him to his torso, slipping his right hand up the
front of Jeff's loose Hawaiian s h i , carresing his
startled nipples. "I am love," the boy said. "A love
you've always denied."
The kid's wet lips pressed to Jeff's mouth,
snapping the spell. He screamed "HOLY FUCK!
WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT THE GODDAM
FUCKIN HELL ARE YOU DOIN GODAMMIT!" And
began pounding the kid's chest like a frustrated sixyear-old, elbowing his arms free and driving the kid
back toward the pavilion. "WHO THE GODDAM
FUCKIN HELL ARE YOU ANYWAY?" he shouted,
noticing as he did that the kid was no lightweight.
Gracefully maintaining his balance the kid
parried Jeff's wild blowing, m i n g softly "Now,
now, now;Brother, slowly now, slowly. Jesus loves
you, Brother, slowly. now slowly."
From the depths of his confusion Jeff lunged
with a roundhouse right meant to nand the kid's head
on a holy roll to the Paafic. But with the grace of a
ballet master the kid caught Jeff's wrist, dug his
shoulder into Jeff's s t o m a h and sent him high into
the air.
Jeff's visual reality was suddenly the Haleakala
Crater upside down. Stark and powerful it blasted into his mind's eye an image of infmite power. Calm
and serene for that inverted instant, Jeff watched
with indifference as the volcano erupted in a magnificent blast of pure volcanic power.
Then he was on his back, staring into the blinding Cancer sun.
Jeff awoke to find himself driving the Datsun
back down Halealula Road. The tall blonde was
ridimg shotgun, the kid was in back with Marie. Jeff
was hypnotized by his companion in the front seat.
Her body was a lush meadow, with deep soft breasts,
a magnificent Scandinavian complexion and strong
blue eyes. She sat cross-legged in the small seat, her
back straight, hands resting palms up on her gorgeous thighs. Her head was nearly to the roof, so her
field of vision must have been well above the win.
dow. Jeffremarked on it with his eyes, but she looked
back as if to tell him she could see through the roof.
She was, in that position, a good six inches taller
than he. She looked at him and massaged his neck,
ran ethereal fingers through his hair, gently. sensuously stroked his chest, and passed a liquid, enveloping warmth over his erect cock. The Datsun zipped
without guidance past the Silver Sword Inn, named
for a striking mountain flower that grows only in Hawaii and Nepal. Jeff wondered how the car stayed on
the road---he sure wasn't driving it. In the back,
Marie felt strong young hands caressing her breasts,
fmgers running gently over her aroused nipples.
Smoothly, swiftly the kid removed her bikini bottom,
opened her legs as far as the rear aisle would allow,
and buried his head in her crotch, pushing his strong
tongue through her pubic hair, still salty from the
morning swim. To his muted amazement, Jeff tasted
it. "Nectar of God," whispered the kid, and dug his
oral member deep into Marie's cunt, licking with
strong, soft strokes until she was a quivering ball of
ecstasy.
Behind the wheel, Jeff felt Marie's juiczs
running over his avn tongue, tasting them, feeling
her small tight nipples between his fingers, feeling
the tall blonde on his freestanding cock, feeling her
warm, wet tongue on his ball, feeling the car float
down the volcano and toward the busy tourist town of
Lahaina, the lights all turning green, the Datsun
gliding without perceptible guidance to their hotel.
The car stopped. Jeff's body was sweating with
pleasure, and suddenly his mind raced through a
wall of confusions as the momentum of the trip down
the mountain caught up with him. "I don't know
what the fuck is happening," he thought, "but I ain't
about to argue."
He looked at the magnificent blonde in the seat
next to him. She hadn't laid a hand on him, but had
somehow launched him high as a kite. She caught his
eyes, flung her head back and gave a laugh. "That
was good driving, Brother."
"You drive pretty well yourself, Sister." He
heard the reply more than said it. LSD, coke,STP,
THC, Hash, buds--Jeff Rothson had done them all,
but this was a new one. He was half-digging the ride.
The two left-side doors flew open and Jeff and
Marie floated into their hotel, packed their gear,
signed travellers checks at the front desk, and were
back at the car in half an hour. The blonde took the
wheel and Marie rode shotgun; Jeff was in back with
the kid. As they rolled down the street they stopped
two, three, four times for scraggly young freaks who
piled into the front and back seats. But they weren't
hitchhiking. They never stuck out their thumbs. Jeff
wasn't averse to picking up an occasional traveller,
but he'd passed a good ten people standing by Maui
roads staring at him. It was damn eerie.
The kid read his thoughts. "Hitchhiking's illegal here, man. They give you a hundred bucks for
sticking out your thumb. Everybody gets rides by
vibes."
At that the Lst two women they'd picked up--who were crammed into the back with Jeff, the kid
and four others---began screeching hysterically
"Ride by vibes! That's great, man! Ride vibing!vibe
riding!" Everyone but Jeff laughed like crazy. Jeff
himself was hot and crashing, crammed into the back
of a car he was renting, being driven on a weird island to points unknown by two of the most bizarre
people he'd ever met, or not met, since they hadn't
exchanged more than two paragraphs of the weirdest, strangest conversation of all time.
All he wanted to do was scream them all out of
the goddam car and head back to the hotel for a
shower and a drink.
He tried, but he couldn't say a word. The kid
had his tongue.
Maui island is shaped like a giant 8, an infinity
symbol, or a woman's body, depending on your
point of view. The big bottom circle is formed by the
Haleakala Crater and lies to the east; the smaller circle of the Lahaina side lies to the west and is formed
by another inactive volcano.
The island towns are nestled along sandy
beaches at the base of the mountain, and in between
the two circles is a broad, flat plain crammed solid
with sugar cane. In their second year the big shaggy
plants get eight to twelve feet high. The irrigations
water is then shut off and in the stark Tropic of Cancer heat the plants dry and shrivel. Plantation workers then set fire to the fields, making the cane easier
to harvest and making the Maui air smell like pure
dog shit. For a few summer weeks the island has an
air pollution index comparable to Tokyo.
All this is speed-rapped by the kid, to Jeff's increasing disgust. Crashing heavily, he is dazed and
embarrassed by the events of the morning and now
humiliated and impatient at being driven unwillingly
in his own car to another point unknown.
Catching a glimpse of Marie in the front seat,
Jeff is appalled to find her happily rapping away.
She caught his glance and smiled. She was the Capricorn land-base to his flighty Libra. They both had
Taurus moon and Cancer rising, but the relationship
worked because of the delicate balance between
Cardinal Earth and Cardinal Air. Jeff dominated outwardly, leading them on their wild trips of fantasy.
Marie followed willingly but cautiously, grounding
his unstable energy with earthly good judgment. It
wasn't a common match, earth and air, but so far it
was working. If a little freaked that Marie was still
into this trip, Jeff was also reassured. At any rate,
there was no getting out of the car, now barrelling
across the center of the island at 60 miles an hour.
Abruptly they came upon a series of grimy Aand wood-frame houses and shops lining a dusty
street. Jeff blink'ed his eyes. Passing through a row
of down and out bars, junked cars, small groceries,
second-hand stores, and gas stations, Jeff wondered
if he hadn't passed'through another time warp and
wound up in Mexico.
"This is Paia," said the kid. "We're on the other
side of the island."
There was no arguing that. Lahaina was polished and rich, strictly a gringo tourist trip. This town
featured scraggly hippies and locals lounging on the
sidewalks, dogs and dirty-faced kids playing in the
street. It was another world. "We're gonna stop
there," the kid announced. "Everybody out."
The blonde pulled the car into a store marked
only by a large Pyramid. The hitchhikers piled out.
The kid hit Jeff for five dollars and went inside. Ten
minutes later he came out, laden with fruit, bread,
cheese and juice. Abruptly he ordered the blonde intuthe shotgun seat and threw the food in back onto
Jeff's lap. Marie obediently moved into the back
while the kid had words with a few blonde surfer
types at the door of the shop. To Jeff's amazement
they all stared at him and then burst into uproarious
laughter. A big grin on his face, the kid returned to
the car and peeled out of the parking lot.
Jeff was speechless. Almost against his will he
muttered. "What's your name, man?"
"Call me anything you like."
"OK. How about Fuckhead, Fuckhead."
Instantly, the brakes jammed, sending the
Dataun into a screeching, blood-curdling spin that
should have destroyed its cheap tires. The car came
to a halt, turned in the wrong direction. Slowly, with
deliberateness, the kid turned to look straight in
Jeff's eyes. "Matthew will do for you, Brother. This
is Ruth."
lnstanly Jeff's door opened. He was slumped
against it and would have cracked his head on the
pavement if the hitchhiker hadn't caught it on the
way down. "Sorry about that door, Brother. You
headin for Hana?"
"That's right," said Matthew. Get in."
They turned around and pulled out in silence.
abmt
lm years
ago. Wllile
with undying devotion, but the
deviated and worshipped the
Iawaii was a feudal manor. The misdmu overthrew the Hawaiian monih# islands into the American em-
From Christopher Street, a n e w m a g a z i n e styled after t h e N e w Yorker, b u t with
a gay sensibility-obviously. S e n d $2.00 for a s a m p l e c o p y to: 80 W e s t 1 3 t h
St., N e w York, N.Y. 10011. Copyright 1976 b y T h a t N e w Magazine, Inc.
a fantastic course along huge mountain-
e secure lips, some 11,000 feet above, Jeff
41.r rarried a Hawaiian woman. Their children
r r born
~ with midwives because now the other
W..ries
refused them medicine. It was the halfb a d bffspring of this union that imported the first
-nee,
Chinese and Filipino laborers to work the
"WOW," blurted the hitchhiker. "You mean
those missionary bastards brought over the Chinks
art. Matthew was deep in a tense
silence, and Jeff held his breath and was terrified he
would slam the brakes again and send them flying into the Pacific.
"Brother," Matthew said quietly, "you should
beware compounding the evils of the past. The mixing of the great races in Hawaii is what makes this is.
land a focal point for the world's energy. It is the
mixture of these bloods in our veins that gives us our
mission. All o w coven are descended from the first
shipload of Massachusetts Congregationalists, and
our ancestors have mingled the blood of every color
and race that has touched the soil of these fair isles."
Jeff perked up. "Your coven, Matthew? And
your mission? What's your misaion?"
Ruth and Matthew exchanged glances. They
rounded a curve and passed over a miniscule onelane bridge at the inmost point of a spectacular deepocean canyon. On the inland side a magnificent
waterfall dropped white water fifty feet into a lovely
green pool. To the left, fifteen-foot waves vunnelled
into the canyon and broke furiously onto the white
sand beach.
Dramatically. Ruth produced a small traveller's
bag and withdrew a leather pouch. From it she extraded rolling papers and scooped out a joint'sworth of what was obviously finely-ground marijuana. Jeff was definitely up for some reefer. He and
Marie exchanged relaxed smiles. But the hitchhiker
was suddenly bug-eyed and silent.
Ruth rolled thejoint deftly, licked it, placed it in
her mouth and held it there while she ceremoniously
rolled a second stick. This one she placed in Matthew's mouth. Suddenly their eyes glazed, and with
their mouths clamped firmly over the joints they
raised from their bellies a sound that blew Jeff's
mind. "00000000EEEEEEEE00000000EEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM. 0000-
OOOOEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEOOOOOOOMMMMMMM."
The car climbed a mountainside and somehow negotiated another hairpin turn. The chant ceased. Bugeyed, the hitchhiker stmck a match and reached around Ruth's shoulder to light her joint. "Maui
Wowee?" he whimpered.
"That's right, Brother."
"Holy Jesus."
"That's right too, Brother."
Matthew took a light from Ruth's joint. They
inhaled in unison, held the breath and let it out with
a bellowing "Jai Jai Jai Om Mane Padme 00000MMMMMMMM."
Taking another long draw they simultaneously
handed the joint to Marie and Jeff. Exhaling togeth-
na Krishna Hare Hare OOOOOMMMMMMMMM."
Jeff and Marie burst into hilarious uncontrollable laughter. "WOW," yelled Marie. "You guys are
OUT THERE!" Joyously she toked the biggest puff
she could manage. Jeff was doubled on the floor with
hysterics and relief and required a strong effort to
calm down and inhale. Finally, drawing himself up
against Marie's door, he sat straight, pulled on the
weed, and passed out.
A huge silver fish stands silent. With an occasional flip of the tail it holds its position in a fast runningstream.
Suddenly the image disappears in a wrenching
pain at the crown of the skull. Cold water changes to
a gasp of warm air and a chorus of loud shouting, followed by a violent plunge back into the depths. Total
panic replaces the fish. Again a yank into the air, the
voices louder, almost intelligible. BLAM back into
water. This time, no panic. no nothing---a blank. Another yank into the air, and now Jeff feels strong
hands on his trunk, lifting him naked up out of the
pool, his weakened legs feebly scraping hard rock.
The pressure on his skull releases and his eyes struggle to focus.
It's a rock pond with water running swiftly
through. The pool is f i e d with lifteen or twenty people, ail chant&. He hears another splash a n d cry
and turns to see Marie being yanked out of the water, her hair in Matthew's finn grip. She gasps again
and is rammed back under. "PRAISE THE LORD!"
he yells and the crowd answers "PRAISE THE
LORD!" he yells and the crowd answers "PRAISE
THE LORD!"
Yanked up again Marie is lifted into a standing
position. Matthew begins to help her out of the pool.
Dazed, she rubs her eyes and stumbles. Jeff hears
another yell and a splsh, and turns to see the hitchhiker being pulled up by the hair and then rammed
under again. Finally his ducking is over too.
"BROTHERS AND SISTERS" yells Matthew.
"We welcome these three. Let them do the work and
a
his cock. She was seated on the grass in front of him, ,
bent wer at the waist in an impossible yogic p s i -
I
tion, running her hands sensously over his cheat, ex- :
citing his nipples and caressing his face. Jeff '
groaned and bent h i neck backward, looking
straight into the sky.
Without breaking rhythm she gave his cock an- ,
other lingering. moist lick and then quickly pulled
herself up, hand on his shoulders, gently lowering
herself down onto his member. Supporting herself on
his thighs she wed her right hand to guide his cock
slowly into her moist, gaping cunt, moving it up and
'
down, using it like a dildo to excite her clitoris. Her.
moan-chanting increased. As she came down on him
THESE ARE TIMES WORTH CELEshe let out a gasp of pleasure. The circle was dive
BRATING! And at New Age, that's
with couples in various stages of foreplay and interexactly what we do each and every
course, each freely emitting the sounds of Iovemonth. The great fest has begun:
making. Jeff felt himself supremely conscious of .
new milestones, breakthroughs,
each couple's activities, seeing a mind's image of
and pioneers are appearing out of
himself flowing around and around the circle through
nowhere at a faster rate than ever
each couple and himself with growing detachment
before. And New Age is there
and at the same time growing pleasure. " h a a h "
providing provocative, investigachanted Ruth. "Aaaaaaaah, yeessssssssss." Jeff was
.
afraid of coming, but Ruth settled onto him and did
tory, penetrating journalism that
'
not move. "We are indivisible now. There is no fur-supports and celebrates the new
'
ther we can go on the physical plain. It is time to be
good news.
totally open."
We know the world isn't all
Suddenly Jeff felt a blast of white light in the
peaches and cream. But at New
middle of his forehead. He was Ruth. He felt his own
Age, we focus on the thousands of
cock inside hi own a n t . It rested on his swollen diemerging solutions that areworking
toris, exciting it not orgasm but to some new state
of consciousness he'd never known. He was at once
enriching lives, raising Our inman and woman. His protruding cock filled his
dividual and collective spirits,
grasping cunt. His-breasts ached with milk. His body
hopes, awareness, and dignity
was impregnating itself, all its cells simuItaneousIy
making the seventies the best times
dividing, fertilizing, dying. From half-closed eyes he'
yet! And the future looks even betcaught in Ruth an expression of total joy. "Lingamyter. This is the New Age!
oni, Lingamyoni, Lingamyoni" she chanted, and Jeff
NEW AGE SUBSCRIPTION DEPT.
hears the chorus chant coming from the whole circle.
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P.O. BOX 4921 MANCH ESTER, N H 03108
He joined it, "Lingamyoni, Lingamyoni. Lingamyoni". He was whole. Orgasm was not a question. His
fmd the Lord Haole alii no aloha maui wowee."
cock was gone. Ruth's cunt was gone. They were a
"Now," Ruth whispered, "we will become one."
"Haole alii no aloha maul wowee," responds the
single, self contained, post sexual unit, fused into a
she draped her arms over his shoulders, moving her
Congregation. They are all smiles and laughter and
hands to the b a d of his head, her lush body spark- solid state. His mind's eye saw a bright white firebegin climbing out of the pool.
ling in front of him from the cold pool and the soft. ball of electricity flashing around the circle like , a
Marie, Jeff and the hitchhiker are ushered to a jungle air. "Move closer." Jeff slid his bottom dong
supercharged battering ram. His head charged highpatch of grass, given towels. and are rubbed vigorthe grass until his knees touched hers. Slowly she er and higher. This was pure consciousness, pure
energy. soaring higher and higher in voltage until he
ously by three huge men. When dry, they are left
covered his face with warm moist kisses and licks,
was a single synapse in a circular mind. NO deacripstanding, holding their towels. The pool is one of settling in on his lips and mnning her strong tongue
tion fit the energy. and Jeff was not attempting any.
several, fed by a volcanic waterfall barely visible a deep into his mouth, finding his tongue and massagquarter-mile inland. The vegetation is lush with ing it. With a languid precision she lifted herself off He was gone, solid gone, as unconscious of himself
as a copper wire. His brain heated up faster and faspalms, guava, banana and mangoe trees, with wild the ground, spread Jeff's crossed legs and sat hercoleus forming a rainbow hedge, all around the area.
self in the open space between. She pressed her full ter until he felt his hair singe.
Suddenly, there was a hard slap across his
"The seven sacred pools," Jeff whispers to Marie.
breasts against his chest and moved her fmgers up
face. Then another one. Jeff was hack in his body.
"I read about them in the tour book."
and down his spine and finally around his pelvis to
Ruth. still joined to him, wna slapping his face.
"And the seven sacred mind fucks," she re- his growing cock. Expertly she ran gentle fingen,
She wore 8 light smile but she was flush with the
sponds.
through his pubic hair and began to emit soft sounds
same energy as he. "That was ecstacy, my darling.
The Congregation is off to the side, drying off that were a chant or a moan. Tenderly encircling the
NOWWe must clear the camections. Let us fuck."
and dressing in long white tunics. Matthew, Ruth tube of his cock with one hand she embraced his baUs
He Was deep inside one of the most beautiful
and another woman, all dressed in tunics. ap- with the palm of the other and blasted into his forew m e n he'd ever seen, and this was no time to try
p r o a u h bee d u d e e s wi$h robes. Ruth hand- head a sensation of pure pleasure. He came to life.
piecing things together. Around and behind him he
ed Jdhii &I4-W
in his ear "Put this Backing off'from her embrace he glided his right
the sighs and Foans of good old down home
hand around the soft skin of her neck, down the top
on,d.raeiimrto.
sexual internuse, and he wasn't about to hold
of her chest and on to her supple breasts,mnning the
back. Glaring deep into Ruth's eyes he grabbed her
palm and then the back of his hand over her tits,
firm ass and rammed himself deep into her a s hard
feeling the outlines of her body and groaning with
as he could. She gasped in a mixture of ecstasy and
milled quietly, when
pleasure.
pain and was startled to hear him scream "YEEEEHe was not alone. The circle of lovers had behand, announwd "Now we begin the Tantric initiaEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOO"in recome a chorus of grunts and moans. To hi groggy
tion."
amazement, Jeff not only heard them, he FELT leaseofthe fantasticenergy that had buik him up like
Without much fanfare, the Congregation broke
an overcharged battery. Unthinking, he leapt to his
into couples and sat down in a large circle. Jeff no- them. Thesexual charge in his brain was a thousand
tied uneasily that Marie was with Matthew most of times normal. Suddenly, he was on the brink of ex- feet with Ruth still deeply impaled and, holding her
the way around the circle. Ruth broke his train of ploding, and not just with orgasm. Ruth caught his hard against him by her ass, he went wildly spinning
eyes. "It is the working of the Tantra. Feel the circu- with her. He was screaming and yelling like a wild
thought by taking his hand and whispering "Clwe
man, images passing through his mind of lions,
lar energy of pure Love. We have abolished the Misyour eyes."
Jeff complied and his ears filled with a choral sionary position."
dogs, bears fucking, whales slapping together in
wild furry, pigs, snakes, sheep, cattle, fucking like
Jeff felt it alright. He felt hi cock as big as the
"0000000MMMMMMMM" which he grudgingly
crazy, Jeff jumping up and down and letting Ruth
lo Needle. Ruth was gently mnning her forefinger up
joined. The chanting went on for five minutes, when
slide hard against his cock, she alternating her
he felt both hands lightly squeezed, and opened his the frontside of his erect member, and then bent at
screams of pleasure and pain with wild uncontrolled
eyes to see everyone removing their tunics and the waist to take it in her mouth, wetting the head
laughter. The rest of the circle was a bit more subthrowing them into the center of the circle. Jeff with her tongue as she sucked gently up and down
dued, but similar, and amidst an incredible sexual
with her lips, moving her tongue now up and down
quietly joined the group.
,
Celebrate
the Seventies!
-
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~~
.
.
_
rble Jeff leaned back with unaccustomed strength
flung her head back and pumped too, both of
Finally Jeff, folding his
k,dropped Ruth's back to the grass in front,
c laughing hysterically.
- -
.
I
.
-.
he fast Like two crazed jets screaming dead head
1~ in the core of the Haleakala Volcano.
, The dearing was littered with naked young bod-
.,
NUCLEAR REACTION IN WYHL
On February 23, 1975, some 26,000 people marched onto the site of a
proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, West Germany to protest its
construction. Overwhelmed by numbers, the police withdrew; the
demonstrators began an occupation of the site which lasted for months and has
resulted in the halting of construction to this day.
-
c att thew'; voice boomedubrothers and sister,
u was a righteous ruck."
"Right on, "Yowzuh," "Hallelujah" came the
b r formation, hand k hand. Jeff was flying. A
F a n opened the prayers: "We have, Oh Lord.
kle you the offering of our sexual bodies. We
bk you for the energy it brings. We have tried to
This film is a photographic enlargement of a Super-8 home movie which tells
the story of the occupation, and the organization of farmers, workers, students,
and other local people which made it possible.
16mm, Color, 15 minutes, Sale: $1 25.00, Rental: $15.00
(These prices are for non-profit institutions and showings.)
The Congregation laughed appreciatively. Jeff
Ruth. "we have brought three
hpissionaries into our circle. Hopefully they will
MMMMMMMMMVI was a deep, reso-ran the spectrum from heavy male
soprano. 11 chilled Jeff's spine and in
the; the bubble burst. Jeff opened
- -
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apping and hugging each other like
r w i e s who'd just won a nude track meet.
a smile Matthew stood up, took Marie's
tioned to Jeff and the hitchhiker. Ruth
ihand and Jeff noticed for the first time
hiker was with another man. The three
@an walking up a wide jungle path, con-
mission& church built in ~awaii."nlatthew." The original was built by men
~ n i cequipment. The windows were fake.
- .
Raindims and the Hawaiians had imu and knowledge in their command that
-itselfwith
&."
1
I
*Amenn agreed ;he circle.
' h o l e alii no maui wowee."
I 'BAOLE ALll NO MAUI WOWEE."
&and
Released and Distributed by GMP Films
the reawakening of the mys-
lexual exercise is a smaU part of the Feliny, more a symbol than a substance. The
a understood their sexuality and flowed
1
- w
1-
with it. The ancient Indlan masters understood their
sexuality and controlled and channelled it."
"Today civilization imprisons its animal side and
denies the possibilities of yogic control. We are trying to master both.
"Far out," blurted the hitchhiker. "And what
you want us to do is go out and organize circle fucks.
Right?"
"In your case, brother, that is correct. We have
other plans for Jeff and Marie. They have other
skills. Isn't that right?"
"Hmmmmm,"Jeff muttered, pretending to
ponder. "Would that be ...dealing dope?"
"Precisely, Brother, precisely." Leaning down,
Matthew threw a switch that opened panels on a
wall, revealing a psychedelic map of the world. The
hazily outlined continents were floating seas of color.
Hawaii was at dead center. "This," explained Matthew, "is a psychic map of the world. Its secrets were
passed from the lost continent of Mu to two tribal descendants, one in Peru and one in Maui. The Peruvian map was hidden in the Andes and is used by the
White Brotherhood. The Hawaiian map was discovered by the Calvinists and barely salvaged by loyal
alii, who hid it at the lo needle. We are their inheritors."
Jeff and Marie stared at the outlines. The land
masses were shimmering rainbows. but much of the
map was very dark. "From this," Matthew continued. "we can plot what areas need the most work.
where our medicine can do the most good."
"Your medicine?" asked Marie, and instantly
knew the answer.
Matthew pushed another button, and the walls
at the back of the church opened
into a huge
cave, A burst of cold, damp air struck them. ,,This
is an aid in the first stage stuff," said Matthew. "A
door-opener. Later, there's better. You'll have to
come back for that."
Jeff peered in and discerned huge bales of what
could have been hay, but which were obviously mari-
juana. "Maui Wowee?"
"Of course. Now let's see ...Where are you
needed?"
Glancing at the map, Jeff noticed the whole east
coast looked like a giant blood clot.
"How about Ohio?" Matthew asked with just a
trace of timidity."Let 's say ...Columbus?"
Jeff and Marie exchanged glances. "Quaalude
City," shemumbled.
"Well," said Jeff, "It could be worse. It could be
Cleveland."
"Listen," Matthew. "Can you dig a giant puff of
this stuff into Buckeye Stadium some Saturday?"
"Will it make em do what we just did?"
"Eventually Brother, eventually."
A day later Jeff and Marie were in their Lear
Jet holding 200 kilos ofthe soul of Maui. They gracefully circled the Haieakala Crater for one last look.
Swooping toward the lips, Jeff swore he glimpsed
Matthew and Ruth staking out the visitors pavilion,
waiting for the next converts.
Jeff and Marie looked at each 01lher and burst
Out laughing. The plane caught an updraft and soared high towards the sun, banking hard inlo the Pacific trade winds, aiming towards the heart of Ohio.
-
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Was there somcrhing kind offluky about the M Y this COPY
reached you? Think about it, and then think about
subscribing. By sending out lerrers to our dust-covered
subscription list, we acrually got responsesfrom
lhree-quarters of lhem+,ine.tenrhs of whom had moved.
think of those thousands of readers hungrily waiting
for the new issue, and send four dollors for four issrres to
Green Mountain Post. Box 30017. Seanle 98103.
Green Mountain Post
Films Proudly Presents
Em---.SILVER H U M
'2
8?
lwI
- -
H 8 1 PatnWL F4LY
War
MRIW REPIESENTATWE
XlHIGIEOSOIIhVAIO
nEORI-
In the early morning darlmess of February 22. 1974,
Sam Lovejoy went to the site of a needle-thin 500-foot
tower in the woods of Montague, Massachusetts. The
tower was built by the local utility company to test atmospheric conditions in preparation for a major nuclear-power
installation.
Sam f d e d the weather tower by loosening the
turnbuckles. The crash was impressive, but it's only
the begirming of our story. Lovejoy turned himself in
to the police the same morning, announcing that he had
acted in defense of the community, and citing the dangers
ot the proposed nuclear plant-low-level radiation,
possible melt-downs, as well as many other health and
safety hazards.
The court trial which foll~wedbrought in some of
che most kfarmed witnesses d devemciog testimony
against nuclear power pllton ewr raised in public.
lanjoy'a NuJsu War is a one-hour color plus
blaci-and-&- documentary d c h tdls the whde story
up to the judge's decision and b-d
it. It is widely
adaimed as one of the fmest odncarional d s available
h the process of e i b n action against this mld-wide
problem and threat.
Color, 60 minutes, 16mm,
Educational Rental: $50.00 Sale: $600.00
Voices of
Spirit
GMP Film's previous
award-winning prdduction,
is also available.
This man-former schoolbus driver, Pearl Harbor
veteran, a d Yankee farmer-is also a m u r c medium.
He leaves his body and allows different spirit entities
t~ OCCUPY it, to speak to US through his body as if it were
a cosmic telephone.
Voices of Spirit, Green Mountain Post Films';
firat production, is a onehour black-and-white documentarg about Elwood Babbitt and his amazing maace
abilities. We are lnuoduced to the spirits of Wdt Disney.
Mark Twam, Arthur Canan h y k , Jesus Christ. Vislmu,
and Marshall Bloom. The F i is an kpiq into thc
process of spihtual u n f o l b n t , which simultaneously
records the life and times of Mr. Babbitt.
(60 mlnutes, B&W, $50 rental).
I
P.O. Box 177, Montague, Massachusetts 01351
&