Memories of

DROP CITY

The First Hippie Commune of the 1960s and the Summer of Love

A Memoir

by John Curl

Part 1: CURLY'S EXPERIMENT

Part 2: THE ROAD TO DROP CITY

Part 3: THE SUMMER BEFORE LOVE

Part 4: BACK TO DROP CITY

Part 5: GETTING THE WORD OUT

Part 6: THE JOY FESTIVAL

Part 7: LIVING THE REVOLUTION

Part 8: THE COUNTERCULTURE

 © Copyright 2008 by John Curl. All rights reserved.

PART 2




Chapter 4

THE ROAD TO DROP CITY


Three of us were scrunched into an old Dodge with a pile of gear filling the rest of the back seat. The owner of the car was a born again young Republican on his way home for the summer from NYU business college. The plan was that he and I would share the driving in four-hour shifts, straight through. The other passenger was a weaselly little Mormon who didn’t drive. The Young Republican rattled on and on about how everything proved all his opinions; the Weasel explained how it was all prophesied by Joseph Smith. They got into a long debate about Jesus’ opinion about the Mormons’ practice of converting their ancestors postmortem. Teasing the Weasel became tiresome pretty quick, and the Young Republican kept the radio tuned to elevator music. We got through two days without killing each other.

They let me out on a sandy embankment just outside Denver, at the intersection of route 60 heading due south, cutting through the heart of Colorado. It was a chilly dawn. To my east the Great Plains stretched into the horizon, dotted with dry low brush, tumbleweeds, and cattle. To the west, dark trains of clouds rolled slowly over the towering Rockies, a sea of giant frozen waves, a Great Wall dividing the continent. I felt physically and mentally drained. I hadn’t had a shower since I left. My blood had been replaced with gasoline.

I had a few joints with me, in an envelope, that I was bringing as a present to Drop City. I stuck the envelope under a nearby bush. It looked just like a piece of trash. Cars whizzed by but none stopped. After a while I kept thinking about how much more pleasant it would be if I were stoned. I climbed down into a nearby culvert and took a few hits.

Streaked clouds in the distance moved toward me. It started to drizzle. I took shelter under an overpass. The highway patrol checked me out. I told him I was headed north, since I knew it was illegal to hitch here. You had to pretend to be walking in the opposite direction.

Finally a dented pickup stopped. I stowed my gear in the bed, under an old tarp, and hopped into the cab with two Chicanos around my age.

“Where you going?”

“Trinidad. You?”

“Raton, New Mexico. You got family in Trinidad?”

“No.”

“Then why you going? Nobody just goes to Trinidad, unless they got a reason. Nothing there.”

“No work,” the other added.

“I’m not looking for work. Visiting friends.”

He chuckled, “You’re not going to the Camp, are you? Live out there in round shacks.”

Reluctantly I said, “Yeah.”

“They’re your friends?” the other asked. “¿Tus amigos?”

“A couple of them,” I replied.

“People say they’re comunistas.” He chuckled. “And fuck each other’s wives.”

“They won’t admit it,” the driver said. “Crazy people, maniåticos, around here would shoot them.”

They both laughed uproariously. A chill crept down my throat.

“Don’t pay no attention to him,” the other said. “Locals around here don’t hurt nobody. As long as you keep your cool.” He stuck his hand in his shirt pocket, pulled out a joint. “Smoke?”

“Sure.”

“To tell you the truth, people around here don’t give a fuck who you are or what you are, as long as you treat people right.”

“Except a few maniåticos,” the other added.

As we drove past Colorado Springs, a sprawling bedroom community around a huge air force base, I saw the turnoff to Pike’s Peak. I remembered that the peak was once considered about as far away from civilization as anybody could get, and that the view from the top was once the inspiration for ‘America the Beautiful.’ I wondered how the urban blight looked from up there.

 A hundred miles later the driver said, “That mountain up ahead that looks like a model T Ford, that’s Fisher’s Peak. When you see it, you know you’re near Trinidad.”

“Good poaching up there,” the other added. “You hunt?”

“No.”

“They got a fence around the whole fucking mountain, with keep out signs, but nobody pays no attention. Chingados Rockefellers.”

“Rockefellers?”

“That’s their name. Pinche gringos. They own Fisher’s Peak. Don’t let nobody up, but we go anyways.”

“I thought I was getting away from the Rockefellers when I left New York. They own most of New York.”

“Now that’s a laugh and a half. Own most of Colorado too. CF&I. The mines.”

We turned off the highway onto a bumpy dirt road. The dust stormed behind us. Our rear end kept dovetailing back and forth across the ripples in the roadbed. We crossed a small bridge over an irrigation ditch, bounced over a rise and around some trees as the road forked. Suddenly, there was the open latticework of a large dome structure in front of me. It looked like a web of interconnected wheels. Somebody was all the way near the top on the other side, hammering. A hundred yards away, two bright silver metallic domes, one on the top of a small hill, the other in a low area. The lower one had an A-frame attached. They looked like landed UFOs. The sun glinted off their surfaces. A third structure was under construction on a far hill, with a few people working around it.

Near the gate was a roughly painted sign: DROPPERS URGE TOTAL NUCLEAR DEVASTION OF THE WORLD!! BACK LBJ’S WAR POLICY. PROTEST PEACE!! On each of the sign’s legs were lettered, KILL KILL KILL.

I assumed DEVASTION really meant DEVASTATION. They had to have noticed the misspelling but decided to not correct it. I liked them for that.

Most of the land looked barren, cactus, low shrubs and brush. A couple of trees down by the A-frame dome. A few tents and a shed. Some chickens scratching. A dog. A woman with a baby walked down a trail from the dome on the hill, across a narrow bridge spanning a run-off furrow. Looked like Jo. She disappeared inside the A-frame dome.

There were also a few regular houses in sight and a large adobe building directly across the gravel road.

I slung my pack over my shoulder and crossed onto the land near the large open structure.

“Hey!”

I looked up. A guy with no shirt, pudgy, wild kinky hair, sunglasses, about twenty feet above me. It was Curly.

“Throw me up that hammer lying there, okay?”

I slipped through the open struts into the dome.

“Curly! Remember me? Kugo’s friend. We met in New York. I wrote you a letter.”

“I can see it’s you, man. Throw me up that hammer, OK?”

I picked up an old hammer with a cracked and taped handle, and tossed it up. He let it sail past its apex, then snatched it from the air on the way down.

“Good catch.”

“I’m an expert. Now, you see them bolts and washers lying there? Stuff a few in your pocket, grab that socket wrench, come on up here and help me. We got to get this done before dinner.”

I cautiously climbed the structure made from two-by-fours bolted to sections of plastic pipe. I don’t like heights.

“I thought you were coming last week,” he said. “I almost gave up on you, man.”

“It was always my plan to get here about now.”

“Last week, this week. I keep losing track of time. Out here it all fades together into a big pile of time.” He chortled. “Chuck me one of them bolts.”

I helped him align and screw in the struts.

I could see a panorama from the top of the dome. About a half mile away a band of trees snaked through the desert. To the south was a small town, must be Trinidad. The sun slipped beyond the western peaks. The light was fading fast.

“Is that a river?” I pointed

“The Purgatore. Ain’t that perfect?”

“You mean, like Purgatory?”

“That’s really it’s name. Beautiful Drop City, near the banks of the beautiful Purgatore.”

We had a good laugh.

“So who’s living here now?”

“Well, me of course and Jo and the fattest baby you ever seen.”

“I saw Jo carrying her. Congratulations.”

“T’anks,” he replied in an exaggerated New York accent. “And Clard and Lard.”

“Talking about me again?” A voice from below, a thick midwestern twang.

“I always talk about you behind your back, man,” he yelled down. “That’s Clard,” he said to me.

Clard climbed up the dome. A shock of straight blond hair fell across his forehead.

“Anyway,” Curly went on, “the other people here are Miss Margarine and Nani and Rabbit.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “And Poly Ester and the kids.”

“What about Frinki?”

“She’s Miss Margarine now. You got here just in time to see her. She’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Going back to New York?”

“She and the girls got real homesick for her dumb husband.”

Clard made his way up to us. “What lies are you telling about me, Curly?”

“That you’re afraid of everything except heights.”

“That’s true.”

“This dome’s really Clard’s baby,” Curly said. “Those little domes are a cinch. But building on a grand scale, we didn’t know jack shit about it, but he just came out here and started doing it. It was a fucking inspiration.”

“A lot of people can live in this dome,” I said.

“Nobody’s going to live in it,” Clard said. The blondness of his eyebrows made his eyes look small and close to his pinched nose. He had a ruddy complexion and wore cowboy boots. “This is going to be our theater. One big painting inside. Total environment. People are going to be immersed, right inside the painting instead of outside looking in. Strobe lights flashing on revolving paintings, films and film loops projected simultaneously, sound speakers scattered all over. Electronic psychedelics. Cut you off from your conditioning, bump you into spiritual enlightenment. Give you constant orgasm.”

“Constant orgasm!” I exclaimed. “What a concept!”

“It’s not a concept,” Clard replied. “It’s my every day reality. Nobody believes me.”

“This will be our interface with the world,” Curly added. “That’s why we’re building it here next to the parking lot. Most people will just stay here and leave our little domes alone. When the local vigilantes come out wondering what the fuck we’re doing here, we show them the theater, give them a show, they figure we’re just crazy artists and put their guns away.”

“Good plan,” I said.

A gong sounded. I saw Frinki standing inside the screens of the A-frame porch, beating on the gong.

“Chow time,” Curly said.

As we climbed down, I could see people straggling toward the A-frame from various directions.

“Is that the foundation of another dome?” I motioned to a far hill, where there were several posts sticking out of the ground, a pile of two-by-fours and other lumber.

“That’s Rabbit’s dome, if he ever gets it done. Man he’s slow. Don’t like work much. He’s the new guy.” We walked down over a little gully toward the kitchen.

“I’m going to work on his dome tomorrow,” Clard said. “We’ve got to help him get it done before the rains come.”

“It ain’t going to rain again till fall.”

“It was drizzling in Denver,” I put in.

“Anyway, if we don’t do it, it’s not going to get done. Let’s all help him tomorrow.”

“Listen to that guy,” Curly said. “He’s been sleeping in a tent for six months and he’s so concerned that a bozo who just arrived got a dome of his own.”

“They’ve got a kid. Me and Lard’ll build us a dome soon. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.” Clard walked away.

“See that lady, the stringbean?” Curly tilted his head toward a very thin woman with a child, dumping a basin of water outside the kitchen dome. “That’s Rabbit’s wife, Poly Ester. And Kaitlin, her kid. Not by him. Clard and Lard met them in Dallas a few months ago.”

“Dallas?”

“Don’t worry, they’re not Texans. Well, she is. Rabbit’s an Okie. Good white trash. And Texans are just folks too, except for the cowboys. Rabbit’s a writer. They’re both writers, of sorts.”

“What do you mean, ‘of sorts’?”

“Rabbit was writing for an ad agency, ad copy. Poly Ester was a typist there. They both write other stuff too. Mostly porn. They showed me some of it. Not too bad, except it’s got no grammar. Anyway, Clard had some paintings in a gallery. Rabbit and Poly came to the opening. Met Nani there too. Choctaw. Another Okie. Real nice girl.” He blew a little kiss to the clouds. “Unfortunately she keeps saying she’s going home.” He pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. “Now I’m going to show you the most important place in Drop City, the junkyard.”

I followed Curly past Rabbit’s new foundation, to the far corner of the land, the highest point on the property, strewn with piles of old building materials, lumber, plumbing, sculptures, and painted wooden art constructions.

“This represents the secret key to Drop City’s success. We scavenge everything we can lay our hands on. This area’s poor, but the country’s so rich that even here it’s full of stuff that nobody else is using. It you went down to Mexico, you wouldn’t find good junk like this just laying around. And in twenty years you probably won’t here neither. But right now we’re on the great cusp, and there’s grand pickings. Wherever we go we’re on the lookout for it. A lot of people are just glad for us to haul it away.”

On the other side of the junkyard was a barbed wire cattle fence, and beyond that, a farm. All property lines in the region were marked by these cattle fences, which a person could easily cross. It felt weird that they were around Drop City. Yet the fences surrounding Drop City were draped and decorated everywhere with works of art, and the art pieces seemed to create a magical space inside, protected from the outside world.

“Do you get along with the neighbors?”

“Like butter. That white frame house down past the kitchen dome, those are the people we bought the land from. Retired couple. Very Anglo, but okay. She brings us cookies.” He pointed in a circle. “This guy’s Italian. Cattle rancher. A few crops too. Over there’s goat farmers. Make cheese. Got a nice setup. I’ll take you over there some time.”

“How about that big adobe building across the road?”

“El Moro Elementary School. In a weird way, the school’s our protection. The school busses bring the local kids here every morning. When they see us, the kids all flash us V-signs. They dig us. They’re all on our side. And their parents can see we got nothing to hide.”

“How about that little billboard by the mailbox? That sounds pretty provocative.”

“That’s our one overt political statement. They don’t know what to make of it. They just think we’re crazy.”

We started down toward the kitchen.

“The little funky dome on the hill is me and Drop Lady’s abode.”

“Drop Lady?”

“Jo. Drop Lady’s her Dropper name. We all got Dropper names now. Like, noms de guerre.”

“What?”

“That’s French or something. Pen names, stage names, stuff like that. Clard and Lard and Drop Lady and Miss Margarine and Poly Ester and Rabbit and Nani, those are all Dropper names. Everybody’s got one but the kids. We first took on Dropper names when a reporter from the Denver Post showed up. The only thing we had built then was the chicken coop. You see how it looks a little like a space capsule? Well, I had just been reading The Lord of the Rings, so when the reporter asked I told him the chicken coop was a spaceship and that Drop City was a launching pad, that we’re from outer space, here on a mission searching for dwarves and elves. A lot of locals see UFOs out here and are really into it. He asked our names and out of my mouth popped Curly Bensen and Drop Lady. I don’t know where I pulled that Bensen from. Clark said his name was Clard Svensen because Clard sounds like an idiot and Svensen rhymes with Bensen. Richard said his name was Larry Lard, because it rhymed with Clard. Frinki said Miss Margarine, because it’s better than lard. We were all vegetarians then. Before Rabbit got here.”

“He took the name Clard because it sounds like an idiot?”

“Everybody told him he was really dumb when he was a kid. He wasn’t good at anything except painting pictures. Lard says his folks told him the same thing, that he’d have to be really stupid to expect to make a living off painting. That’s what they got in common. Both of their families think they’re idiots.”

“Clard and Lard. Sounds like a comedy team.”

“They kind of take turns being each other’s sidekick. Sidekick to an idiot. Clard’s from Wichita, son of a Mennonite minister. You know, one of them German sects who still live like it’s the eighteenth century, kind of communal, like the Amish but not quite so fanatical. Lard’s a working class stiff from Buffalo, New York. A half-Jew. Dad’s a postman.”

“My dad was a mailman too. And I’ve got some Jew in me.”

“Far out. I took you for a fucking wasp.”

We walked down near a big cottonwood tree, past a chicken coop, rabbit hutches, a goat on a long tether tied to a stake, an outhouse, a little garden in an area that looked flooded.

“That’s the swamp. This whole end of the property is soaked, the other end is desert. Go figure.”

“Your garden’s not looking too good.” A lot of the vegetables seemed dying or stunted.

“I’ll take that for a compliment, man. The garden’s my baby. The trouble is that the ground water here is salt. Nothing edible can grow in it. Just them rushes and reeds.”

“Then how do all those farms survive?”

“There’s a great system of irrigation ditches through the whole area. Cooperative. Set up in the thirties. New Deal. They bring in fresh water from the mountains. But there’s only a certain number of taps, and they’re full up, so we could only have one if we bought it from somebody. Nobody’s selling and we don’t got the bread. We got drinking water, but we can’t use that for gardening. I use it anyway. They’d kick us off if they found out.”

As we walked toward the kitchen I asked, “What’s your real name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“You know mine.”

“Okay. It’s Betnovskovitch, not Bensen. Eugene V. Debs Betnovskovitch.”

“Gene Debs! Were you’re named after Gene Debs?”

“You know who he was? He used to be world famous, but nobody knows his name anymore.”

“I only know because I’ve read some American labor history. My grandpa was a leftist and a union guy, a shop steward, so I wanted to find out what it was all about.”

“My family are old lefties too. So are Jo’s. Both of our families were communists. Russian Jewish commies. Jo was named after Joe Stalin.” He loosed a hearty laugh; his belly bounced.

That blew me away. I told Curly about how, when I was a kid, my grandpa always used to talk about Russia as Uncle Joe. He used to say, ‘Some day Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe are going to be buddies again.’ He didn’t believe all the horrible things they said about Russia.

“Same with my folks,” Curly said. “With all the shit and propaganda, who knew what to believe?”

“Were your families very active?” I asked.

“Nah. None of them were really politicos. Jo’s dad was just an ordinary kosher butcher in Queens. My old man was just a little guy who ran a buttonhole store.”

“A what?”

He chuckled. “A tiny storefront in Brooklyn where he sold buttons and sewed holes. You a union member?”

“I’ve never worked long enough in a place with a union.”

“I belong to the Seamen’s Union.” He pulled out his wallet. “Here’s my seaman’s card. You ever hear of the Ludlow massacre? A famous disaster in labor history. There’s folk songs about it. Just twenty miles from here.”

We approached the kitchen dome with its A-frame porch entrance. I could see its small windows were made out of car glass. I asked, “What’s that little pagoda thing on top?”

“That’s the skylight. See them flaps up there? Look down around the bottom of the dome. Those are flaps too. You open them all up and, presto, you got air conditioning. Hot air rises out the top and cool air gets pulled in the bottom.”

“It really works?”

“Kind of.”

I stopped outside, then walked around the dome.

“Don’t look too close,” Curly said. “We covered this one with plywood. Only we got indoor plywood—didn’t know no better—and it’s peeling like a motherfucker.”

The veneers were coming up in a few places, but the aluminum paint seemed to have it pretty well sealed. “It doesn’t look too bad,” I said.

Near the entrance was a stump used as a chopping block, with an axe stuck into it, a wood pile nearby.

As we entered the kitchen, Jo and Frinki, or, rather, Drop Lady and Miss Margarine, gave me big hugs.

“I’m really glad you finally got here,” Frinki said. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Curly told me.”

Frinki introduced me to the others. We squeezed around a big round table piled with food, everybody talking at the same time. I was ravenously hungry.

I tried to get everybody straight. Larry Lard seemed quiet and sweet, very thin, with long wavy hair, sensitive features, almost pretty. Rabbit was well over six feet, with a bulbous nose, a big mouth that talked up a storm in an expressive face that took up most of his head, and a cowlick that stood straight up in back.

Poly Ester, Rabbit’s wife, skinny as a noodle, kept twisting her hair around one finger, and trying to get her freckled, ten-year-old daughter Kaitlin to sit still. Poly seemed very nervous. She’d start a thought, veer off suddenly in different directions, contradict herself a few times, all in one sprawling sentence. She was smart in an off-center way.

Nani was striking, with smooth olive cheeks, a beautiful chiseled profile framed by straight black hair.

I got bits and pieces of where everybody was from, then after dinner I pulled out my joints and we all got stoned.

It had turned a little chilly, and Lard started a fire in the Franklin stove in the corner. I was surprised they had electricity and running water. I’d expected Drop City to be more rustic. In my grandpa’s little house in New Jersey, where we used to go for the summer, we had kerosene lanterns, got water from an outside hand pump and used an outhouse. At least Drop City did use an outhouse. I hated it when I was a kid, but now I liked the idea, probably because it was so redolent of my childhood, like peeing outside.

There was a tub in the kitchen next to the sink. I asked about taking a bath.

Curly answered, “Too many baths are no good for you.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Drop Lady cut in. “He says that to everybody.”

“You’ve got to take a bath when Curly’s not around,” Poly Ester added, rolling her eyes and twirling a lock of hair. “He keeps records of how many baths you take a week. Which reminds me of something. Whoops, I forgot it again.”

Curly pushed up his sleeves. “Would you like to see our unpaid water bill?”

“What’s Kugo up to?” Frinki—Miss Margarine—asked.

“He keeps saying he misses you.”

“Has he got any new girlfriends?”

“I don’t keep track of what he does.  How did Drop City get started?” I changed the subject.

“Well, Jo and Curly and Clard were all going to the University of Kansas...” Miss Margarine began.

“We always like to say,” Jo—Drop Lady—cut in, “that Drop City dropped out of a window in Kansas.”

“I was studying film,” Curly picked up. “Jo was into social work, and Clard was an art student. Jo went to San Francisco for a few months and I moved in with Clard. We got along partly because we were kind of into the same thing. We were both against history.”

Clard cut in, “He means that we both were trying to derive everything from inside ourselves. That’s where we got the idea of Droppings.”

“We got the name from bird droppings,” Curly said. “That’s where the name Drop City comes from.”

“Bird droppings? Drop City doesn’t come from drop out or drop acid?”

“I swear by my mother’s shoes it don’t. Those expressions wasn’t even current yet when we started. That was 1962.”

“Maybe it was subliminal. In the air,” I said.

“We started by painting rocks and dropping them from our roof onto the sidewalk, which was right downtown. There were always lots of people passing by. Just little rocks. The way we did it, the rocks couldn’t hit nobody. The whole idea was to see how they’d react when they saw a painted rock bouncing on the sidewalk in front of them like it was falling from the sky. Their reactions were part of the whole thing, the dropping.”

“They were events, ideas come true. Art out of galleries and into the world,” Clard said. “We did all kinds of other droppings too. Like we put a plateful of breakfast on the sidewalk and swung a boot on a rope from the roof. Crazy stuff.”

“Anyway that’s where we got the idea for Drop City. Just drop it and see what happens. Originally we planned to start Drop City on a hundred acres of forest. Not six acres of goat pasture. Me and Jo worked, saved a few thousand clams and decided we were going to buy a plot of land at the headwaters of the Nile. Upper Egypt. Nubia. Sudan. This was 1964.”

“Why the headwaters of the Nile?” I asked.

“To get as far away from here as possible. As far away from civilization. Or so we thought. Me and Jo were going to go there and start a whole new civilization.”

“Actually there’s already a whole civilization there,” Drop Lady said, “but we didn’t know that at the time. We thought there would be nobody there. We were really dumb.”

“We thought that Western Civilization was totally worthless, going nowhere, and we didn’t want to be part of it. We were going to start all over from scratch.”

“It was crazy,” Drop Lady said. “The idea was that everybody starts in the world new, like a little kid, before they get corrupted by this civilization.”

“By history,” Curly picked up. “We wanted to be outside of history. Or start history all over again. You got to understand, both of our families were really into Marxism and socialism, all those ideas about history and inevitability, etc, etc. And that was all an excuse, because they didn’t build a decent society in the Soviet Union either, just like we didn’t. The Soviets turned out fucked up in different ways from the Czarists, but still very fucked up. People were oppressing each other and ripping each other off there just like here, only in different ways. So anyway, Jo and me, we were very young and arrogant and thought we could do it better, just the two of us. Granted, we weren’t thinking too clear at the time. Anyhow we never got past Morocco. Everything was so different there, it blew our minds. We could barely communicate with anybody, and you couldn’t even get materials. We realized how dependent we were on all this capitalistic junk. Two Jews from Brooklyn wouldn’t stand a chance there.”

“I’m from Queens,” Jo put in. She opened her shirt a bit and began nursing the baby.

“We met these guys named Captain Hatch and Peewee in Casablanca, who told us that for two thousand bucks we could acquire a pound of Moroccan hash, which sells in London for a clear thirty thou. That made us greedy, it brought out our lower natures. Easy carrots dangling in front of our mouths. We figured that for thirty Big Ones we could buy the grandest plot of land you could imagine. So we forked over the dough and they gave us these big cakes of the best hash you ever smoked. One hit and you’re in Neverland. We stuffed all the hash in our underpants. Man, we were bulging and sweating. Crazy paranoid all the way on the boat to London. Then when we finally opened up the bundles, they turned out to be camel shit. We were swindled! We had just barely enough bucks to limp on back to the States. So we made it back to Kansas from Africa with very little collateral. We realized we had to get together with other people and pool our resources to make something happen. You need other people to have a community and a new society anyway. Just then Clard came to visit us. He was living in Boulder, going to the University of Colorado. We saw that our ideas were moving in the same direction. This was early 1965. We saw that what we wanted to do was almost the same thing as what he wanted to do, and we developed the idea. Clard knew Lard in Boulder, but he wasn’t involved with the project at that point.”

“I’d been having ideas like this for a long time,” Clard said. “When I was a kid my grandparents had this great farm, with a few buildings and barns. I thought I’d inherit it. I had this dream of turning it into an artists’ community. The idea was that we’d also farm it and be self-sufficient. But then the land was sold. I didn’t even get any of the money. While Curly and Jo were in Africa I actually tried to buy a piece of land near Boulder to do it on, but it didn’t work out.”

“None of us had many resources,” Drop Lady said, “but we had the sense that anything was possible, that the potential was unlimited.”

“There were already a lot of Sixties things in the air,” Clard said. “A lot of people were into great exciting things. But we had a sense that Drop City could lead the whole world into new ways of living, a sense of creativity and being on the cutting edge. It wasn’t just Drop City either. We thought of Drop City like kind of a seed of a crystal, the first of a chain of interconnected Drop Cities around the world.”

“We wanted a spiritual place, a big extended family. We still want that,” Drop Lady added.

“At that point we were still talking about building A-frames,” Curly cut in. “We’d buy some land where we could do our art and not have to work. I was already making films by that time. First we considered Montana, but you had to buy a thousand acres and we didn’t have those kind of clams. We went to Boulder and hooked up with Clard. We drove all around Colorado looking for land, but it was really hard to find a nice plot for a few hundred smackers anywhere. By the time we got to Trinidad and talked to the neighbors, this old goat pasture looked really good. He wanted five hundred bucks, but that was almost all we had in the world, so he let us talk him down to three-fifty. This was May, 1965. Clard joined us a couple months later, when he was finished with school. At first we lived in the car. It was raining almost every day. The neighbor let us stay in that abandoned house down the road. As soon as the rains let up, we moved into a tent. Right before we bought the land, Bucky Fuller was lecturing in Boulder, and Clard and Lard went.”

“Fuller blew our brains.” Lard scratched his chin with a fork. “Triangles. Fuller inspired us about triangles. A-frames are triangles. Domes are triangles a lot more advanced.”

“A couple weeks later Curly and I were driving around looking for land,” Clard picked up, “we saw a little dome in a farmer’s yard, climbed over the fence and measured it. That’s all we knew when we built the first dome here.”

“Even now we still barely know what we’re doing,” Curly jumped in, “but back then we didn’t have a clue. We were trying to build a geodesic dome, but we didn’t understand it at all, and we built a dodecahedron instead. That’s the dome on the hill. None of it fits right. We went to a lumberyard near Raton and got all these culls, two-by-fours that were so scruffy they couldn’t sell them for more than a dime apiece. We scrounged some old telephone poles for the foundation posts. We only had one junky old skill saw then. Not that our tools are much better now, due to lack of better fortune. The dome wasn’t even covered yet when we moved in. We just threw an old tarp over the frame for a while. Finally we tacked up some tar paper and chicken wire. We went to all the bars in town and got their old bottle caps. They couldn’t figure out what we wanted them for. We punched two holes in each bottle cap, wired them on to make the chicken wire stick out a little, poured on stucco, painted it with tar and aluminum paint, used old car glass for windows, tires for door hinges. The original shitter was just a hole outside with a couple of boards over it.”

Lard and I washed the dishes, then we all sat around talking until late into the night. Drop Lady showed me her watercolors, cartoons, and children’s stories. She had a pretty good painter’s hand. Curly seemed well balanced by her. She seemed steady, rooted, and straight forward, easily the most mature person there.

One by one people drifted off, Curly, Drop Lady, and the baby, Mae, to their dome; Rabbit, Poly, and Kaitlin to their tent; Lard to his bed in the back of a station wagon parked on top of the hill; Clard and Nani, who sometimes seemed to be a couple, to tents pitched near each other. Frinki—Miss Margarine now—and the girls were sleeping in the kitchen.

I rolled my sleeping bag out on the kitchen floor. Through the tiny windows at the hexagon hubs, I could see stars.

Then Miss Margarine crept over and whispered, “Move over.”

“We shouldn’t,” I said. “Kugo’s my friend.”

“He fools around with other women, don’t he?”

“That’s none of my business.”

“Damn it, I just want to know.”

“You already know the way he is. You know him better than anybody.”

“Yeah, I guess I do,” she said bitterly. “He balled your chick.”

“He did?”

“That’s what somebody told me. It means nothing to him. He don’t care. Anyway, when I get back I’m going to tell him I balled every guy at Drop City, and you too.”

“Don’t tell him that.”

“Why not?”

“It sounds like you just want to hurt him.”

“You don’t know how he’s hurt me.” She squeezed in with me.

Her warm body felt good but also made me nervous. “I’m not comfortable, Frinki. Kugo’s one of my best friends.”

“Look, hold me, will you? I’m lonely. Anyway I’m not Frinki any more. I’m Miss Margarine.”

“Miss Margarine, I didn’t think you were interested in me.”

“I don’t want to fuck you. I just need somebody to hold me tonight.”

A long time later, I whispered, “Frinki, are you sleeping?”

“No. Are you?”

“Is everybody here fucking everybody else?” I asked.

“Not really.” She said nothing for a long time. “It’s funny. I’m not supposed to talk about this. We call it the evil black snake. It just tears everybody apart. But anyway, Curly and Clard claim they’re trying to break down their egos, and part of that is not being possessive about women. I’m not going to tell you who did what with who, or who would barely talk to who for weeks. But I didn’t see too many egos broken down. Rabbit and Poly Ester haven’t been here long enough to get involved with the circus, at least not yet.”

“Are Nani and Clard a couple?”

“She started out as Clard’s woman; Clard wanted her to sleep with Curly, but she wouldn’t do it. He just wanted to control her. Instead, she dumped him and seemed to take up with Lard for a while, but Clard didn’t like that. Now she’s just staying in a tent by herself. Whoops, I better shut my big mouth.”

“Have you really balled every guy here?”

“Of course not.”

“You just told me you did.”

“I said that’s what I’m going to tell Kugo.”

“So you’re a liar.”

“Would you rather I be a whore? The truth is, this whole so-called sexual revolution thing is really just something made up by guys and for guys. It tells women we’re supposed to feel liberated by having sex with all of you. It just doesn’t work like that, at least not for women.”

I couldn’t sleep, haunted by my thoughts. What Frinki said about Patt and Kugo really bothered me. I lay awake for hours, looking at the triangles on the ceiling, and the stars out of the tiny windows near the vertexes. It was making me dizzy. Because the panes were so small, I could actually see the stars moving very slowly across the sky. I remembered that Curly had said, when I first met him in New York, that sleeping in a dome “opens your fucking mind, frees up your inner harmonies. You wake up every morning feeling like a new man.” I wondered if my consciousness was being expanded right then.

I had to pee, got up, and staggered outside. An enormous orange moon leaped off the eastern horizon into a cloudless, star-showered sky. I tripped off the edge of the porch and tumbled sideways into the arms of a large cactus.

With some help from Miss Margarine, I spent most of the night pulling tiny needles from my hands and arms.



* * *



 






Chapter 5

TWO WEEKS IN UTOPIA



That first morning I was exhausted from not sleeping, but also wired from finally being at Drop City. I helped Drop Lady collect the eggs, feed the chickens, rabbits, and goat, and spent a while with Curly weeding and watering the pathetically small lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. After pancakes and coffee, Curly and Drop Lady drove Miss Margarine and the girls off to the bus station for their trip back to New York.

All the other guys went up to work on Rabbit’s dome. It was hard labor, but a real group effort and gratifying, some of the most fun I’d ever had working. Everybody was figuring out things as we went along. When Curly got back he joined us. We finished sinking cut-off telephone poles in a circle in the ground, then leveled them off with string nailed between post tops, and poured concrete around the posts in the holes.

On a break I walked with Clard down to get a drink of water.

“Is it really true that nobody here ever has to go out and get a job?”

“I wish. At one point me and Curly reached rock bottom, so we shoveled manure at a chicken ranch for a few days, then got jobs as construction workers in New Mexico, building railroad trestles. Curly dropped a beam on his foot the first day and left. I worked a month before I couldn’t take it anymore. Hope I never have to do that again. But to answer your question, soon nobody in the world’s going to have to go out and get a job. Not just at Drop City, but everywhere. It’s inevitable. Technology’s creating a world where only a very few people will have to work. Soon everybody will get survival—at least survival—without working. Anything on top of that, maybe you’ll have to work extra for. Then what are most people going to do with their time? Become artists. There’s nothing else. Eventually most people will be paid to be artists. Unfortunately the world isn’t there yet. That’s why it’s absolutely essential that Drop City has the most advanced cutting-edge technology. We’re the transition. As the old system collapses, people will switch over to us. We need to be a hundred years ahead of our time. Then when everybody takes their fair share, they won’t be able to stop us.”

“When everybody tries to take their fair share, we’ll all wind up in jail,” I replied.

“That way of thinking is obsolete. What I’m saying is inevitable. Advanced technology means social revolution.”

“Advanced technology means social alienation. It means they don’t need us. I’m for lower-tech, not higher-tech.”

“Chairman Mao tried to do that in China and started a famine.”

“It probably wasn’t that simple.”

“It’s so clear, why can’t you see it?”

“I guess I’m just an unreformable Luddite.”

Clard chortled. “To tell the truth, I don’t really know that much about technology. Or politics. I don’t have those kind of brain cells. It’s the general concept of technology that I like, particularly since it means I can just paint and not have to work at a day job.”

We finished the foundation by mid-afternoon. Everybody felt a great sense of accomplishment.

Curly, Clard and Lard went off in an old red pickup to get supplies, while Rabbit and I continued working.

“I hear you write,” I said.

“I’m a famous writer,” he grinned. “Well, not yet, but gonna be. If you can’t remember your own name, remember mine. Starting right now, I’m going to sign myself Rabbit.”

“I write too.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he guffawed. “That reminds me, I’ve got to take a leak.”

He walked about twenty paces, pulled out his penis, peed a long parabola into the air against the roots of a cactus.

I’d been writing since I discovered as a kid that a pencil and paper were affordable even when not much else was. I’d thrown out most of my early stuff when I left New York, but carried a few manuscripts with me in my knapsack.

When Rabbit got back he said, “Man, that’s the best part of being out in the country, pissing outside. Makes you feel like a real guy, huh?’

“I haven’t gotten used to it yet.”

“You city boys are weird.”

“I’m not quite a city boy. We used to spend summers in the country when I was little. My grandpa had a place in Jersey. I used to pee outside all the time there, and it did feel more natural than in the city. But that was a long time ago.”

“Jersey? What do they grow there?”

“Corn and chickens. Other stuff too.”

“As for me, I’m from Oklahoma. Best trailer camp trash in Tulsa.” He let loose a snort. “Piss right off the back porch into the Arkansas river swamp. I’ve never got used to pissing in a toilet. Feels perverted. Hey, how about you and me tour the local bars tonight and see if we can hustle up some blow jobs? You look hornier than a hop toad.”

“I’m not into hookers.”

“I don’t mean hookers. Only a fool would pay for it. I mean faggots. You and me could go bar hopping, find the town fags, and have a little party.”

“I like girls.”

“I like girls too. But they’re complicated. You can like girls and still let faggots suck you off. No contradiction. At least not where I come from. Ain’t you never let a guy suck you off? Where I was growing up that’s what we all did. As long as you were the one getting it, it just made you normal.”

“What does Poly Ester think about it?”

“She’s happy if I’m taken care of. I got a joke for you. How do you stop a beautiful woman from giving you a blow job?”

“I don’t know.”

“Marry her.” He guffawed then caught his breath. “What’s the matter with  you? Never been married? Hey, are you a hunter? Do you hunt?”

“We used to go fishing when I was a kid, but I didn’t like to watch them die, so I stopped.”

“You got to blow over that hangup, boy. We need some meat on the table. After lunch I’m going rabbit hunting. I got an extra rifle. Want to come?”

“The only place I’ve ever shot is in amusement parks. I don’t really know how.”

“I’ll teach you. We got to get some meat in this place or I’ll start biting the girls.”

“What about those rabbits in the hutches?”

“They’re just Drop Lady’s pets. She don’t let us eat them.”

He brought out a couple of rifles from his tent, set up bottles on fence posts, and showed me how to shoot. It took me a long time to hit anything. When I finally hit a bottle, he said, “Great. Now let’s go kill us some rabbits.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, walked over to the cactus that Rabbit had peed on, stepped around the other side, and took a long piss. I wondered how the cactus liked it.

We got into a black truck parked on the hill, let it roll down to get it jump started, and began driving along the back gravel roads.

“Watch the bushes. They like to hide. The jacks are the ones with the long ears. The cottontails are smaller but better eating. As soon as you see one running, watch where he goes. Don’t lose him. Stay cool. Before we kill him we got to first apologize to him. If he’s ready to die, he’ll give himself to us for dinner. If not, we won’t be able to kill him, no matter what we do.”

“You mean, he won’t run away?”

“You bet your balls he’ll run away. That’s just part of his game. But if you play your part right, he won’t get away, not with a bullet between his ears.”

We drove a ways but didn’t see anything.

Just then a rabbit dashed across the road in front of the car. Rabbit screeched to a stop. “A jack! Let’s get him!” He grabbed his rifle and jumped out, leaving the motor running.

I picked up my rifle, followed him under the barbed wire fence alongside the road.

“How do we apologize?” I panted. “Do we just say out loud, ‘Rabbit, I’m sorry but will you please let me kill you?’”

“Just say it to yourself. There he is!”

The rabbit zipped from under a bush. Rabbit froze, aimed and fired. “Gotcha!”

It all happened too fast for me. We ran over, but couldn’t find the rabbit anywhere.

“I hit him. I swear it. I saw it. You saw it, didn’t you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Just like I said, when they’re not ready to die, it don’t matter if you hit him. The bullets don’t hurt him, go right through.”

We got back in the truck, drove some more. “There’s another! See him?” Rabbit pointed out into the desert, stopped the car and jumped out.

We did this a half-dozen times, with no success. I fired a couple of shots, but just for effect. I aimed well above the rabbits.

Finally we gave up. On the drive back, Rabbit said, “You fit in real good with the menagerie here. Why don’t you stay and become a Dropper?”

“Maybe I will.”

“I already got a Dropper name for you.”

“What?”

“You look like the happy wanderer type to me, so how about Ishmael?”

“That’s too biblical.”

“They won’t know it. None of these jokers here read anything except comic books and jar labels.”

“I saw some Classic Comics in the kitchen.”

Back at Drop City, the dinner bell was just ringing.

As we entered the kitchen, Poly Ester asked, “How’d the hunt go? Or was that yesterday?” Kaitlin, one front tooth missing, was clinging to her skirt, as she often did.

Rabbit said, “We had amazing luck. This rabbit kept playing hide and seek with us, leading us on. I could tell he wanted to die right then and there. He ran into an arroyo. We followed him. He stuck his head up. He was daring us to kill him. Both of us took aim and pulled the triggers at exactly the same time. Both of his ears blew right off his head. You could see them flying up in the air, spurting blood. Then when we run over, he was gone. Ears gone too. Not even a trace of blood.”

“What happened to his ears?” Kaitlin asked, wide-eyed.

“He grabbed them and took off.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Poly Ester said.

“Swear by my mom’s pants. Ishmael was right there with me.” He turned to me. “Right?”

“I was there,” I shrugged.

Curly made a sour face. “Tell me, Rabbit, why do you get off on killing rabbits?”

“I don’t. I’d rather kill me a deer.”

“Did those poor little guys attack you in a former life maybe?”

“Man is a hunter.”

“I’m a man too, and I’m a vegetable.”

“You be you and I’ll be me.”

Curly turned to Clard. “What do you think, man?”

“I think killing’s sick, you know that. And it makes me sicker to think that somebody from Drop City is doing it. But if Rabbit sees it different, that’s his right. I’ll have to defend him. We can’t force our morality on other people, not at Drop City.”

“Man, that’s rabid,” Curly replied, shaking his head. “Killing rabbits is rabid. Yesterday I thought your Dropper name should be Ravenous, but now I think it’s going to have to be Rabid.”

Rabbit guffawed. “I like that!” He startled me by popping a set of false teeth out of the front of his mouth and chattering them.

Kaitlin jumped up and down, laughing, “Let’s turn on the black light and watch your teeth glow in the dark, Daddy Rabbit.”



* * *



At the end of the day I decided to call Patt. I borrowed one of the trucks and drove to the payphone by the motel, a few miles down the road, almost to town. No answer. Those were the days before answering machines and voice mail, so I couldn’t leave a message. I’d already tried calling her a few times during my trip, but she was never home. I started to get annoyed. I was kind of glad I couldn’t reach her, anyway. I was mad at her because of what Frinki had said. I wanted to let her stew over what was happening with me, maybe sweat a bit, if she cared. I didn’t know what to believe. Really, why did it matter? I started to wonder if she was taking the opportunity to see other guys.

When I got back to Drop City the sun was approaching the western Sierras, refracting reds and purples in the cirrus clouds. I saw Nani sitting on the hill and went up to her. She was sketching the sunset with colored chalk. “Every evening here is beautiful. Join me if you want.”

I stood there awkwardly.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

It was because she was so gorgeous. I sat next to her and said, “I’ve been an American all my life and you’re the first Indian person I’ve ever met. There weren’t any Indians in New York.”

“There are lots of Puerto Ricans in New York.”

“Puerto Ricans aren’t Indians.”

“Then what are they?”

“They’re mixed.”

“I’m mixed. I’m part Irish.”

“I’m part Irish too.”

“It’s a common mix for my people, Choctaw and Irish. We even sent money to Ireland a hundred years ago to help during the potato famine.”

“To Ireland? The Choctaws sent money to Ireland?”

“That’s what they say. Right after our Trail of Tears. Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you know about the Trail of Tears?”

“Kind of.”

“Our first generation in Oklahoma heard that Irish people were starving. So even though we were very poor, we collected money and sent it there to help.”

“For my Irish grandmother, thank you.”

She held up her wrist. “We’ve got a little of the same blood.” She put her wrist next to mine. I could feel her pulse.

Nani added a few strokes to her sketch, suddenly put her chalk down and closed the pad. “The colors keep changing too fast.”

I reached over and touched her hair.

“Don’t try to hit on me. Anglo guys find it so easy to disrespect Indian women!”

I took my hand away. “How am I disrespecting you?”

“You don’t even see it.”

“Besides, I’m only part Anglo. Part Anglos aren’t really Anglo. Irish aren’t Anglo. Neither are Jews. I’m part Jewish too.”

Suddenly she held a finger to her lips. “Did you hear that?”

“No.”

“A wailing sound. I heard it last night too. It’s a banshee. I have to go home and see if my family is all right.”

“A banshee? I’ve never heard a banshee.”

“Maybe there’s too much noise back east. Out here on the plains you can hear things a long ways. When you hear a banshee, somebody in your family might be dying. There it is again!”

I could hear the wind. Then another sound that was riding on the wind.

“I think it’s coming from the old camp,” she said. “It’s a couple of miles across the river. Do you want to see it?”

Nani drove the red truck down the gravel road, across a bridge, down a side track for a couple of miles, then off onto a one-lane rutted trail. All around were grazing cattle. Through a cattle crossing—a break in the barbed wire fence with a few old train rails laid across it into the ground, that the cattle perceive as too dangerous to step over—she drove into the herd.

“See those concrete slabs?” She said, driving slowly in. “What do you think they are?”

Out in the barren field were lines of concrete slabs, some with plumbing pipes sticking up, occasional threaded rods around the peripheries, a few brick chimneys. There must have been a couple of dozen slabs. Every other stitch of building material was gone. A storm was blowing in. Sporadic gusts of wind set the sand and tumbleweeds in motion. Mist hit the windshield. The cattle eyed us suspiciously as we drove slowly among them. They looked nervous. There was something eerie in the air.

“I bet this was a prison,” I said. “The ghosts are still here. I can feel them.”

She pulled up alongside a slab and shut off the engine. Twilight fell heavily over the field. Cattle were all around us, staring at us. “This was a Japanese internment camp during World War II. They relocated whole families here from California. Maybe a thousand people.”

We sat there quietly for a while. I tried to imagine what it must have looked like then. Finally I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

A few days later Nani left for Oklahoma, saying she’d be back and admonishing me to keep my ear to the wind.



* * *



I liked Drop City a lot. I liked the people, the style of working, the constant ferment of ideas, the attitude that everybody should really be equal. I liked the way the guys got so involved with what we were building that we often only stopped when it got too dark to work. I got off on feeding the chickens and tending the rabbits. I grew paternally fond of the stunted carrots. I never bonded with the goat, who was a strange one. I liked the way the Droppers found room for diverse personalities and improvised ways to work out their differences. Curly and Rabbit kept each other at arm’s length, but I thought they respected each other. They were both such characters. Sometimes Curly seemed to be seriously trying to deal with his ego; Rabbit just sprawled all over the place without thinking too much. As long as both backed off, they’d be okay.

Despite all the human activity, there was even some wildlife living on the land: ground squirrels, whose burrows were near the base of cacti and bushes. They came out mostly at night, but occasionally you’d see one make a mad dash across the sand from one entrance to another. Rabbits lived on the adjoining property, but they kept their distance from Drop City. Also the usual assortment of magpies, crows, hawks, and small birds. A few lizards. Strange desert bugs. Big black ants scurrying around anthills the size of hubcaps. Driving, I’d sometimes see antelope and deer. Coyotes and even pumas were said to be around; I saw what I thought were their tracks in arroyos when I went walking on the prairie, and heard the coyotes howl, but I never met any.

Curly was always going around filming everything that happened with his 16 mm camera, and taking stills too. He was documenting Drop City. He’d edited some of his footage into a short, humorous, rapid-cut film that he showed over and over again.

We were busy working on Rabbit’s dome, with Curly sticking a camera into everybody’s face, when Lard said, “Who the hell is that?”

Somebody was climbing up near the top of the theater dome.

“There’s hardly anything holding it together up there,” Clard said.

“If that lunatic falls and kills himself,” Curly said, “the sheriff’s going to be in our face.”

We dropped our tools and hurried over.

“What are you doing?” Clard called up to him.

“This is great! Great!” the guy yelled. “What a dome! This thing is huge!” He spread his arms and shouted, “WAHOO!”

“Come on down.”

“I’m too excited to come down. I need a few more minutes.” He climbed to the very top, started to stand, then seemed to realize how shaky the whole thing was, and gingerly descended. He jumped to the ground and strode toward us, hand outstretched.

“Luke’s the name.” He had a crew cut, about an inch long that stood straight up. “Luke Bear. I can’t tell you how glad I am to meet all you fellow spirits. Down where I live near Albuquerque, nobody understands domes. You need a better joint system. What are you going to cover it with?”

“Plywood, I guess,” Clard said. “When we can afford it.”

“Ever consider car tops? The junkyards are full of them. Nobody knows what to do with them. They’re almost giving them away. Got to cut them out yourself. They’re the perfect cover for domes. I build domes too. Well, they’re not quite domes. I’ve only built one so far, but I’ve got lots of them designed. Not geodesics. Different shapes. Stretched and exploded. Want to see a picture?”

He ran to his car, came back with a portfolio of photos and drawings. They were funny-shaped elongated buildings, with long panels of different geometric shapes.

“They’re beautiful,” Lard said.

“That’s made out of car tops?” I asked, incredulous.

“You better believe it! Do you want to build one here? I’ll build you one! We can put it up right here.”

“Why do you want to build one here?” Curly asked.

“So the world can see it. Nobody’s interested down there.”

“Fine with me,” Clard said. “Me and Lard need a roof. We’ll build it with you.”

“The first one I’ll build down there and just drive it up. You got a deal.”



* * *

 





Chapter 6

THE BEING BAG





I got a letter from Patt. She was behind schedule and wanted to meet me a week later than we’d planned. She sounded very distant, reserved.

The next day I drove into Trinidad with Curly, Drop Lady, and Poly Ester in an old Dodge that barely chugged along at thirty miles an hour. In addition to this classic, Drop City owned a couple of other dilapidated cars, a station wagon, two pickups, and a scooter, some of them working, some not. Legally they were all owned by individuals, but the group used them as if Drop City owned them.

Many of the little kids in town, particularly Chicano kids, flashed us V-signs as we drove by. We flashed them back. I was really surprised, even though Curly had already told me this would happen.

Drop Lady and Poly went into a store while Curly and I walked around. “This town’s a lot less cowboy than I expected,” I said.

“Yeah, Trinidad’s a great place,” Curly agreed. “Not too much bullshit.”

“I can almost imagine living here.”

“Well, why don’t you become a Dropper? I’m serious. Forget about the Coast. Stay here. It’s better out here. Build yourself a dome. Stay as long as you want.”

“I really appreciate that. But I’ve got to go to San Francisco first. I want to see what it’s like. I’m also meeting my girlfriend out there.”

“The old puss call. Well, drag her back with you. Convince her to come. The more the merrier. Bring back a few of the ladies. The single guys have been having a hard time meeting chickadees here; the local beauties are into their own thing. But don’t spend all your coin and come back broke. Plan for being here a long time. That’s what I’m doing. I’m planning on being here a long time.”

“If I do come back, I’ll bring some money. How much really does it cost to build a dome?”

“Two hundred, more or less. I ain’t shitting you. Bring five big ones, if you can. The baby needs protein.”

We stopped at the post office and picked up a package. Inside was a bundle of copies of the East Village Other, the New York underground paper, with a full-page spread on Drop City, from the interview Curly and Jo did when they were back visiting the City in the spring. The article declared Drop City to be one of the avatars of the new underground culture. The Other got distributed in underground enclaves all over the country. This was Drop City’s first national publicity.

I tried calling Patt again, but there was still no answer.

When we got back to Drop City, there were visitors, an artist couple who were living in the hills above Trinidad, Denton and Leeda, and a woman who was staying with them. Denton was stocky, blonde, with a Roman nose and feet planted firmly on the ground. Leeda had searching green eyes and long carrot hair. Clard and Lard had known them in Boulder. They seemed to be a peaceful couple.

“This is our friend Marigold. She’s a painter.” A big-boned girl with a round face, straight brown hair. When she smiled the corners of her mouth drooped. She looked like a sunflower in the rain.

“I think a friend of mine back in New York knows you,” I said. “Her name’s Cori.”

“We’re like sisters.”

Everybody chattered about the newspaper article for a while. Then Clard and Lard pulled out twenty paintings from a lean-to covered with tarps, and spread them out all over. I’d just seen a few of their paintings before. They were all abstract patterns and geometric shapes, molecular or crystalline, in brilliant acrylic colors. They seemed to deal in a mental physics with feelings, and seemed to extend beyond the canvases. Lard and Clard were both painting in a similar vein, but were noticeably different. Clard’s were powerful, full of ideas, replete with dynamic harmonies and discords. Lard’s were flatter and more decorative, but also rich in color. They casually critiqued each other’s work but didn’t seem too competitive.

We straggled into the kitchen.

Denton and Leeda brought out their portfolios. I liked some outdoor pieces they had set up at different depths along the road outside their house so, as you drove past, elements came together into a composition then broke apart again.

“Why don’t you two move down here and become Droppers?” Clard asked.

“Denton’s too anti-social,” Leeda replied.

“I’d like to live around more people,” Denton remonstrated. “But this place is too exposed. I want a hideout on a beautiful mountain.”

“I rather be here in the desert,” Lard interjected. He was stretched out on the floor.

“I agree with Lard,” Curly said. “It’s too beautiful in the mountains. Just all that picture postcard stuff. It’s trite.”

“Why would you rather live in the desert?” Denton asked.

Lard sat up and pulled a little stub of a pencil out from his shirt pocket. “See this nib? People always borrow your pencil and don’t give it back. But nobody ever takes your nib.”

“We’ve been talking about raising money to start another community in the mountains near here,” Leeda said.

“That would be great,” Clard replied. “We need more places to visit.”

“Tat ti tit,” Curly exclaimed.

“What?”

“Tat ti tit.”

“He’s just being the Baron,” Clard explained. “Haven’t you seen The Being Bag ? It’s some kind of obscure allegory about Drop City.”

Clard pulled out a pile of hand-made black-and-white silk-screened comic books, drawn mostly by himself and written by Curly.

“It’s supposed to be the beginning of a series,” Clard went on, handing out the comic. “But we’ve only been able to sell a couple of copies, so I don’t know if we’ll ever do another issue.”

Curly wiggled his eyebrows at Denton. “Maybe you’d like to buy some.”

“Does everybody know Alteresio Smith?” Lard interjected. “He did the screening. He’s thinking of moving here.”

Leeda crinkled her nose. “I know him. He’s awfully moody.”

“You say that about all the guys,” Denton parried.

Everybody sat around reading The Being Bag. It was the adventures of three characters, the Baron, Cleveland Troothsearch, and Ratsy Eatsit, who looked suspiciously like Curly, Clard, and Lard, spiritual seekers journeying through a bizarre geometric landscape, an LSD multi-dimensional domed world, trying to liberate the world’s consciousness. The Baron seemed halfway between a shyster and a guru, the only one with any possibility of answers or elucidations, offered in the mysterious phrase, “Tat ti tit,” which in context seemed to mean something like, “That’s it,” and at the same time became a kind of mantra or magic spell.

“The problem with The Being Bag,” Denton said, “is that it raises all these important questions but doesn’t answer them.”

“That’s the way life is, ain’t it?” Curly replied. “So why shouldn’t a comic book be like that too? Anyway it’s just the beginning of the story.”

“What’s going to happen in the next issue?” I asked.

“Look, the important part isn’t what will happen next,” Curly went on, “The real issue of The Being Bag is: why are these guys traveling together in the first place, since they don’t even know where they’re going? That’s the real issue in Drop City too. We don’t have a clue as to where we’re going or what’ll happen when we get there. All we know is that for some unknown reason we’re all traveling together. A motley brigade of Quixotes. A fellowship without no ring. Psychedelic musketeers waiting for Godot. One for one and all for all! Ain’t that right, me hearties?”

“That’s not how it goes,” Drop Lady said. “It’s ‘All for one and one for all!’”

“That sounds too much like a fraternity,” Clard intoned. “I hate fraternities.”

“Drop City is not a fellowship of just our little group,” Curly went on. “Nobody’s excluded from Drop City. We’re just stand-ins for the whole humanship. The humanship on spaceship earth. But what do we owe each other? Can we trust each other? Will we do right by each other or will we do each other in?” Curly looked around and raised a glass of apple juice. “To the humanship of the Droppers. One on one and all in all!”

I touched my coffee cup to Curly’s glass. Rabbit clinked a jelly jar against the others. Everybody stood, raising up some object, and cried, “One on one and all in all!”

“Tat ti tit,” Curly exclaimed.

Denton pulled a pill jar out of his pocket. “Let’s shake this up to a new level.” He carefully shook out a half dozen small capsules onto the table. “The real thing. I guarantee it.”

“Very smooth,” Marigold said in a throaty tone.

“You’ve tried it?” I asked.

“For most of last week.”

Curly carefully lifted one in two fingers and held it to the light. “Man, I got to work tomorrow.”

 “You’re cautious as a possom,” Rabbit cracked, sidling his elbow onto the table. “It’s all work.” He grabbed a capsule, flicked it into the air, tried to catch it in his mouth, but it bounced off his chin. He grabbed it in the air and triumphantly popped it in his mouth.

“You’re going to be up all night,” Leda said.

Drop Lady shot a disapproving glance at Curly, and turned away. Nani walked out.

Curly popped the cap into his mouth, grimaced, stuck his nose into the air like a heron, and scarfed it down. One by one Clard, Lard, and I followed.

Drop Lady and Frinki slunk off into a corner together and spoke in low tones.

Marigold licked the left corner of her lips, then the right corner, stuck out her tongue very far, placed a cap near the end, let it hover there a moment, then slowly pulled it into her mouth and grinned. She glanced around and looked at me. “Anybody want to go swinging?” She gave a little shrug and disappeared out the door.

I waited a few minutes, then stood. Leeda grabbed my arm and whispered, “Don’t be fooled by her bravado. She’s really hurting.”

I caught up with Marigold near the big cottonwood tree.

“How do you know Cori?” she asked me.

 “Through friends.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Cori’s a resilient girl. She always comes out on top.”

“When we were little she was my best friend in all the world. We were in a play together in second grade, and now she’s a New York actress. It must be the most exciting place in the world.”

“New York is great if you’ve got money.”

“Do you paint too?” she asked.

“I write. How about you?”

“Mostly watercolors. I don’t take it too seriously.”

She climbed onto the swing. “Come on. There’s room.”

We each held one rope and pushed off with our feet.

“You’re staying with Denton and Leeda?”

“Just for a little while. I was sitting in on a class of Denton’s in Boulder. My parents started calling the school looking for me, so I had to get away. That’s why I came down here.”

“You’re hiding?”

“Kind of.”

“You’re not under age, are you?”

“I’m an escapee. From a mental hospital in Michigan. They took away all my rights. My parents sent me there for refusing to be like them. The nurses strapped me to my bed because I wouldn’t take their drugs. You’re from New York, aren’t you?”

“Born there.”

“I’d love to see The City. Are you going back soon?”

“I’m on my way to San Francisco.”

“I have an old friend there too. When you get to San Francisco, check out a place called the Greta Garbo Home For Girls. Kind of a rooming house. Another girl I was real close with in high school is staying there with her boyfriend. She says it’s really cool. Her real name is Sophie but she calls herself Dawnrider now. Me and her and Cori used to be a team. Remember the old joke about whenever three teenage girls are friends they take on roles? Well, Dawnrider was the smart one and Cori was the pretty one.”

“I never heard that joke. What’s the third one?”

“The slut.”

Just then the LSD hit me. I’d almost forgotten I’d dropped. The world was suddenly soft, everything made of clay. For an instant I was alarmed, then realized it was funny.

“Let’s go for a walk.” Marigold’s eyes were clouds at sunset. The colors and shapes in them kept changing in the most amazing ways. She spoke in a disembodied voice, and floated away like a wraith. My mouth was fuzzy and dry. I was very high. Dusk was falling. We strolled, mostly in silence, along the fence draped with art objects circling the land, and wound up in the theater dome. We sat on a mattress piled with a few sleeping bags where visitors sometimes slept. Through the open panels I could see Orion and the milky way.

“Cori gave me something for you,” she said. “If I give it to you, will you come up and visit me at Leeda’s?”

“Sure.” I could barely pronounce the word. “What is it?”

“A hug.”

“She gave me one for you too.”

We wrapped our arms around each other and sank into a sweet kiss.

When I woke it was morning. My head felt filled with sand. I wasn’t sure where I was. Everything was jumbled. I could still taste the LSD. Then I remembered Marigold. I was alone. I tried to piece together what happened. I thought about Patt and began to feel bad. I stumbled down to the kitchen. Marigold, Leeda and Denton were gone.


* * *


My time in Drop City passed before I knew it. I didn’t see Marigold again; I didn’t get up to Denton and Leeda’s place and they didn’t come down again. I never reached Patt by phone, although I tried. It was just as well, since I was wary of getting into a long distance fight with her. I wrote her a stiff letter instead, confirming that we’d meet in San Francisco.

I waited to catch a ride out to the Coast, but none showed up when I was ready to go. Everybody said it was better to start hitching in New Mexico, where the Highway Patrol left you more alone. Then Lard decided to ride the scooter to Albuquerque and invited me to ride with him.

“I got a notice from my Draft Board in Boulder. That’s why I’m going to Albuquerque. I’ve got to change my registration to down there. In Boulder everybody’s trying to get a 4F. Down in New Mexico they’ve got plenty of kids who don’t know how to get out, or even want to go in. It’s easier to get off there.”

So I stayed another few days until he was ready to leave. We made our farewells. I told everybody that I planned to be back in a couple of months, hopefully with five hundred dollars and Patt. I felt like I’d finally found a home in this world.

Lard kicked the scooter starter a few times, the engine sputtered and finally roared. I hopped on.

“DON’T FORGET THE MONEY!” Rabbit shouted over the noise.

Curly pounded his fist. “We’re counting on you, man. Bring home the bacon. This is your family. Vegetarian bacon.”

Lard took off with a lurch. With my backpack and Lard’s bags tied to the scooter, we barely chugged along, swaying dangerously off balance. I looked back and waved, thinking Drop City was the greatest place in the world.

The mountains between Colorado and New Mexico were spectacular, every gust of wind threatening to blow us over the edge. We finally reached the outskirts of Albuquerque after dark and crashed on a rug at Luke Bear’s adobe, frozen and barely alive.



* * *


 


Next: Part 3: THE SUMMER BEFORE LOVE

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