the pondering pig

By 1967, the original hippies were already raising their kids in the Haight. Here’s documentary proof. While the Summer of Love was going bonkers on Haight Street, two blocks away Bill and Barbara Laird were cutting cake and dishing out cherry vanilla ice cream for their four year old’s birthday bash. That’s the Pondering Pig wondering what’s become of his shoes while his erstwhile wife Linda Lovely decides whether to stick him with her fork. The blondie in the flowered dress with her back to the camera is our daughter Jenny - already four years old.

Yesterday while foodling on the Internet I discovered a retired police detective in San Francisco has been creating Google My Maps of all the San Francisco murders, year by year.  Great Murders of 1933, Baffling Murders of 1943, Drive-By Shootings of 1953 - you get the idea.  He doesn’t seem to have gone beyond the Fifties yet.  This is helpful data for a novelist.  And I can learn what neighborhoods not to move to if I go back in time.  I hope he reopens and then solves all those cases now that he’s retired.

My grandfather also was murdered (this is true), and it had a huge impact on the family right down to today.  Everybody knew who murdered him (it was his business partner) but the guy got off scot free.  The D.A. who prosecuted him later went to San Quentin for accepting bribes.

This happened in roaring LA in the 1920s.  My grandfather was a man in his forties with a young family - on his way up.  Here’s a picture of him in 1922 standing by one of his oil wells.

He was a wheeler-dealer, a millionaire on paper, but he’d built a house of cards only he knew how to hold together.  So when the crash came, the family, including all the country cousins who came out from Kansas to work for him, were back on the street - figuratively speaking.  We couldn’t even pay the property taxes on our Pasadena mansion.

Over the years I’ve thought of writing a book about the whole sordid story.  It has the makings of a bestseller and it would satisfy my itch to know.  The shock waves from the murder reverberated through my childhood even though my grandmother and mother would never talk about it.  But it’s pretty rough stuff too and I would have to face issues like - was my grandfather a crook like his business partners? I don’t think he was, but what if?  Do I want to know?

Once I went to Los Angeles, spent a couple days there reading the newspaper accounts of the 1924 murder and trial in the public library, I went to the Hall of Records and found the will of the man who shot Grandpa down, I went to the morgue to see if they still had a file on the case.  They did, but it contained only one sheet of paper.

But I ultimately decided I didn’t want to spend the next five years in the company of some unpleasant people who thought about money all the time while I wrote a book about them.  I moved on to the next subject - a strawberry ice cream soda at the Colorado Street Creamery.

I’d still like to read that book if somebody else would write it.  Aprilbaby would be a good choice, she needs a new bestseller.  But all in all I think I’m glad I moved on to the trippy hippie stuff.  My memories are lot more fun.

Footnote:  There seems to be no way to link directly to a My Maps map.  To see the murder maps, click on my link, which will bring you to Google Maps for San Francisco. In the left-hand column, click on the My Maps tab. Now drag down to ‘Featured Content’, then check the box at ‘Popular user-created maps’.  That will bring up a lot of content - drag through it and you will see links to the murder maps.

In the summer of 1962 I took a course in photography at San Francisco State from Jack Welpott, a modernist photographer of renown.  He said my stuff was sentimental.

His words cut like a knife.  Me?  Sentimental?  No way!  I was bad as they come.  Look at this guy!  That’s me, the very summer of my mortal wound.  I knew the streets.  I knew grifters.  And I knew what sentimental meant.  It meant cheap emotion manufactured to give the viewer a cheap thrill.  Oh, look at the cute little kitten and the big dog is carrying it so gently.  Isn’t that sweet?  Pictures like that were sentimental and I had nothing to do with sentimentality.

Could I help it if every time I looked through my viewfinder there was a sad-eyed vulnerable waif looking lost and forlorn?

I wasn’t taking pictures for a cheap thrill.  I was taking pictures of my friends,  the girl variety to be exact.  That’s how they looked.  So beautiful my heart ached and I wanted to give them to the world forever.  Which I now do.

I wasn’t sentimental like that Walter Keane, the laughing stock of the baby beatnik world.  He and his wife ran an art gallery on Broadway above a topless bar, and sold his  sadeyed waifs with huge eyes to tipsy tourists who stood in line to see.

Bleaah!  Sickening!  Me and Linda Lovely and Sheila Clark and Sneaky Pete and all my way out friends laughed cynically as we passed the Keane-bound crowds on our way to an important meeting standing outside the Jazz Workshop to listen to John Coltrane because they wouldn’t let us through the door.  Tourists!  My pictures were nothing like his paintings.

Oh why, ye gods?  I go forth to capture the true nature of the human heart, and, in particular the true heart of my various girl friends and what do I get?  Your stuff is sentimental!  By a big time modernist like Jack Welpott who must know.  I was crushed.

Even when I went forth to shoot approved modernist subjects like severe nudes with no heads, weathered barns in the gold rush country or Edward Weston barnacled rocks looming out of Pacific tidepools, I got ruined castles, I got broken dreams, I got enchanted princesses in long gowns and wimples sleepwalking though haunted landscapes.

Botheration!  I give up!  I’m a stoopid romantic!  I’d better not tell anybody.

Of course what I didn’t know is that the modernist fever was breaking.  Within a couple years young barbarians would be ransacking junk stores looking for Maxfield Parrish prints, and new poster art would be created by artists who cut their teeth flame-painting ‘49 Mercs.  And not a minute too soon for me.  Eat your heart out, Jack Welpott.

“A transfer, please”, he asked so nattily
that I, (bemused and nodding)
could scarcely bring reply.

He said,
“By gum, your customers are cool.” (By
that he meant his own svelte self, and
none of his rat-tailed neighbors, harboring their
hatreds on every handy stool.)

“Now look at him, now look at her,” he
pointed at his nestling neighbors, “think
what a difference a hob-nailed boot,
a flying foot,
a rooty-toot
would bring to those ruddy faces (faces? farces!)
But No! they’d rather flap,
and overlap
than wear the cap I recommend.

Dish-tailors all!
Well, leave them to their sorry fate,
no time to wait,
I’ll duplicate, not implicate.”

and fingering his green lapel,
a gesture that we knew too well,
he flapped his tail and left us
in a cloud of perfumed bells.

contributed by Beatitude Tutman

Even since we announced casting had begun for the film version of our unfinished novel, The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship, our office has been deluged with Hollywood agents. They’re camping in the front office while messenger boys rush in with fresh portfolios and sample reels. We think Kurt Cobain has Walrus Pemmican sewed up - although we’re not sure about the blond hair. Other than that, he’ll make a believable Walrus.

But Sylvie Potemkin, there’s another story. The novel clearly indicates she is barely eighteen, hardly touches make-up, has long straight chestnut hair, and is a big girl, zoftig. Not obese, you understand, not at all - just a big girl. Mama Cass Eliott auditioned of course, but she was just too big, and she looks too experienced. Chelsea Clinton showed up in her eighteen year old guise, and she was great, but just wasn’t right for the part. Next Drew Barrymore sent in her resume and a clip of herself driving a VW bug while rolling a joint. She’s a good actress and we think she’ll end up with the part, although she’ll have to do something about all that makeup. Feel free to submit suggestions, we’re still looking.

Wait, here’s a messenger just arrived with a new photo of Drew taken for our casting session. Much better, Drew. You’ve got the part!

Sylvie Potemkin is the story’s second lead character. She grew up in a faux French Provincial home with gardens in Hillsborough, a wealthy San Francisco suburb. Her neighbors included Bing Crosby and the chairman of the California Republican Party, Caspar Weinberger. Sylvie attended Crystal Springs School For Girls, where she met Patty Hearst, who is a few years younger.Sylvie’s father is a successful wholesale liquor distributor. Her grandfather started the family business as a bootlegger and rumrunner. Papa Potemkin is still alive, lives with and advises the family on business matters. The Potemkins still maintain mob connections, although Sylvie is not sure how deep they go. Truth is, Sylvie wants nothing further to do with that life. She loves her family but wants to be an artist one day, when she gets around to it. For now, she lives in a dark old flat on Page Street with the rest of The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship, at the start of her life and eager for everything it could possibly hold. One more thing: Sylvie does not yet understand the depth of her character, but her courage and resourcefulness in danger will be the Syndicate’s greatest asset.

I’ve been perfectly content here in my little pigpen in the north, gazing out the window at the little robinses pulling their worms and typing away at chapter 38 of the Longest Novel Ever Written, The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship. Trouble is my no good pals from the Twelfth Street Gang keep throwing pebbles at my window. They want me to come out and show them card tricks.

So, in an effort to quench their card trick ardor, I’ve agreed to post a post. And since I can’t think of anything much beyond the Syndicate of Eternal Friendship, here is a bit of casting for the movie version of the novel:

Kurt Cobain as Walrus

Walrus Pemmican (not his real name, of course) is an All-American kid, except he’s Canadian, from Salt Spring Island off the coast of Vancouver. His folks run a little resort up there, and he grew up teaching sailing and sea kayacking to the guests and lifeguarding for them during the summers. Gulf Islands Consolidated High School won the provincial basketball title both years Walrus played forward for them. When he was sixteen, he rebuilt a 1950 500cc Norton and roared up and down the logging roads of the island for something to do. After graduation, his folks sent him to his Dad’s alma mater, Reed College in Portland. He lasted two years before dropping out to thumb back and forth across America seeking the meaning of life. In November of 1964, he landed in San Francisco’s burgeoning Haight-Ashbury district, where he has lived for the last four months with a group of friends known to local freaks as The Syndicate of Eternal Friendship. When you’re 22, four months is plenty long enough to form eternal friendships.

Desist from whatever you are doing and go to my friend Hector Diego’s music blog site The Walrus Speaks. There listen to what is possibly the most moving pop song yet written about the death of princes - Abraham, Martin and John, recorded in 1968 by Dion, of all people. It’s about Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John and Bobby Kennedy.  They rose to glory long ago and Dion rose to glory on this song about them.

Here’s a poster Alton Kelley (and Stanley Mouse) did for Bo Diddley, the pioneer rocker who followed Kelley into the great unknown yesterday. Bo Diddley was already legendary in 1966, one of the legends of our youth. He invented the bo diddley beat. It sounded so simple when you listened to it, but it was hard or impossible for aspiring rockers to pull off — that relentless driving cross the night.

I was still in high school in 1959 when my more intelligent Palo Alto girl friend introduced me to its grinding, insinuating rhythm, although we were sitting in her parent’s living room with all the lights on. She flipped on her new LP and swung it into “Hey, Bo Diddley”, then the one I couldn’t get out of my head for weeks, “Diddley Didlley Diddley Diddley Daa-aah-die”. Bless you, girl. By 1966, when he appeared at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, he’d already finished his first brush with fame, and was on the comeback trail. Actually, Bo wasn’t particularly rave among the hippies and promoter Chet Helms took a chance by booking him. But the Paul Butterfield Blues Band had blown the hippies away when they arrived in San Francisco the preceding spring. The Chicago masters soon followed in their wake - Muddy Waters and James Cotton became San Francisco regulars, and an unknown named Steve Miller (The Steve Miller Blues Band in those days) showed up a little later. So by the time of this July concert the pump had been primed to go beyond Chicago blues…and into the Chicago bo diddley beat.

It’s hard to know exactly what Alton Kelley did all those years. It’s not that he wasn’t productive. He was wonderfully so. But nearly all of his most famous work - the Grateful Dead’s skeleton and roses logo, the Zig-Zag man, were done in collaboration with his long-time partner Stanley Mouse. Together with contemporaries Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, and Rick Griffin (and scores of nearly forgotten others) , they visually defined a way of being.

Which notes did Mick write? Which notes did Keith contribute? What about John and Paul? It’s same with Kelley and Mouse. Maybe they remember, except Al is gone.

Here are some Kelley-Mouse images from the summer of 1966. They’re from my personal collection. I’m putting them up in their yellowed glory, keystoning and all - just as I shot them.

I don’t know who owns the copyright to the images, but these photographs of the posters were created by me.

Sad news, Pig People. Alton Kelly, creator of so many of the posters that defined my generation’s style, passed away at his home this morning.

Fare you well, master. Say hello to Chet Helms and Allen Cohen and Rick Griffin and all the rest of the heroes when you get to their big party in the Elysian Fields. Just turn right at the rainbow till you see some pearly gates. Then look for the Baby Jesus.

When you see him, don’t be afraid.

Ask him to shut your mouth and open your mind forever.