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

PART 5

CHAPTER 12

GETTING THE WORD OUT

Lard and Clard stood in front of the Ultimate Painting, spinning the painting and wiggling their fingers in front of their eyes. When you did that, it was like a strobe, with individual frames standing out and coming alive.

“We’ve got to get this ready to debut at the show next month in Santa Fe.” Clard wiggled his fingers in front of his eyes until the painting slowed and stopped. The Ultimate Painting was becoming very intricate, like a hemisphere with spatial paradoxes everywhere. It was flat but looked spherical. Clard and Lard organized everybody to paint a small part of it. With some coaxing I painted a section about four inches across.

“What show is that?” I asked.

Clard mixed colors on a piece of plywood he used as a palette. “Didn’t Rabbit tell you? This gallery in Santa Fe asked us to do a show next month. You’re supposed to read some poetry.”

“This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

“Rabbit was supposed to tell you,” Lard said.

“Is this another light show?” I asked. We had begun doing light shows with two local garage rock bands at weekend dance gigs, and made a handful of cash at it. The Wishbone and Rangewar were mainly copy bands, playing somebody else’s latest hits, but were pretty good at it and also did a few of their own numbers. We made slides out of different pigments, crystals, and chemicals, using colored liquids that spread and mixed in interesting patterns when you moved them between two pieces of glass. I’d never done this before, but it was pretty easy. We rigged up a couple of overhead projectors, a reflecting multi-faceted sphere that we hung from the ceiling, two movie projectors, a couple of slide projectors, and a strobe. Our light equipment was funky and old but we whipped it into working shape. It wasn’t a bad show, by Trinidad standards.

“No. This is going to be in a fancy-shmancy gallery. The art crowd. Curly and Alteresio are going to show films. Rabbit and you are going to read some poetry, if you want to. The Ultimate Painting is going to be the climax of the show.”

The door flew open and Curly burst in, arms filled with a big machine he couldn’t quite see over and could barely carry.

“Look what fell from the sky!” He plopped it in the middle of the floor. “An old mimeo. One of those crazy Christian rabbis came up to me in town, said his church ladies got him a new improved model, and thought we might haul away this old baby.”

“Did he show you how to work it?”

“A little. Have you ever used one?”

“No.”

“He said it’s easy.”

“Don’t let Rabbit see that,” Clard said. “He’s going to want it.”

Rabbit had made a kind of standoff peace with Curly and Jo and the rest of us, but showed no sign of leaving, and had even come back into the family to some degree.

“The only reason that religious fanatic gave it to me, is to destroy us,” Curly went on.

“You’re paranoid,” Lard said.

“He knew I couldn’t control my packrat nature. The FBI must have told him.”

“We used to want to do a newsletter,” Clard said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“A newsletter,” I put in, “would be all our voices, not just Rabbit’s. That would counterbalance his act.”

“Except that Rabbit would try to dominate it.”

“How could we decide what to put in a newsletter?” Lard said. “We could never agree.”

“Just let anybody put in anything they want,” Clard responded.

“Let’s do a draft,” Curly said, “and if one person really hates it...” He drew his index finger across his throat and whistled.

Outside a half hour later I bumped into Rabbit leaving one of the tents carrying several portable lights.

“C’mon up to my dome,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

I walked with him. “I hear we’ve got a gig in Santa Fe.”

“Yeah. I’m going to read some poetry.”

I waited for him to say more but he didn’t. “We just got a mimeo machine,” I said.

“Really? From where? Does it work?”

“From some minister. It looks like all the parts are there.”

“Great! I’m an expert at mimeos. Used to do a underground newsletter at my old high school. Now we can really get the word out!”

“Yeah,” I said half-heartedly. “What are the lights for?”

“I’m making a movie.”

“I didn’t know you had a camera.”

“Alteresio lent me his. This is my first flick.”

Though Rabbit and Alteresio were back on speaking terms, they kept at arms’ length.

“What’s it going to be about?”

He guffawed, “Poly giving me a blow job.”

He opened the door and we went inside.

Poly was sitting on the bed. There were lights everywhere. “I hope you’re not telling Ishmael about your movie idea.”

“Why not, Bones?” That was his pet name for her.

“If you tell everybody about it, I’m not going to do it.” She began twirling a lock of her hair with two fingers, as she often did when she was nervous.

“Aw, c’mon. I’m not telling everybody. Ishmael’s okay. I just told him. He won’t tell nobody.” He turned and winked at me. “Promise?”

“Mum’s the word,” I said.

“Well, you can just get somebody else to do it.”

“I’m only trying to make you a star,” Rabbit protested.

“You’re trying to make your dick a star. You’re not putting my face in that film. Get somebody else to do it.”

“I don’t want nobody else.” He winked at me again. “Hell, you’re my wife. All they’ll see is your hair.”

She shook her head. “I just don’t understand you guys.”

“Nobody’ll even know it’s you.”

“Everybody will know.”

“I promise, I won’t get your face in the picture.”

“I’m not going to do it.”

“The only reason I told Ishmael is that I might not be able to get a good enough angle trying to film it myself. I want this to be a quality production. We need a cameraman.”

“That’s Alteresio’s camera,” I cut in. “Get him to do it. I don’t even know how to use it.”

“It’s easy. Poly don’t want him involved. She thinks he tells Crayola everything, but I know he don’t tell Crayola nothing except what he wants her to hear.”

“So you want Ishmael to watch me giving you a blow job?”

“Not watching you. You can’t barely see nothing through that little camera hole. He’ll just be filming it. There’s nothing personal about it. This is art.”

“You’re sick.”

I moved toward the door. “See you later.”

“If it don’t work out like this, Ishmael, I’m counting on you.”

Later that day I was chopping firewood when Rabbit came over.

“Cut and print! In the can!”

“Sounds like it went well.”

He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it. “A great take! I’ll show you when it’s printed.”

* * *

In the casual way decisions were usually made in Drop City, we decided to do the newsletter.

The decision-making process at Drop City was haphazard. Ordinarily we didn’t make decisions by voting. We usually just talked things through until either everybody was satisfied or we’d reached a stalemate. Nobody was ever forced to do anything; nobody had things shoved down their throat. There was rarely total agreement about anything; but nothing was considered decided until everybody was at least agreeable to it. That was easy to achieve when nobody was adamantly opposed to some proposal. But it usually took only one person resolutely against something to prevent it from happening. Unless somebody else was just as resolutely determined to do it anyway. Force of personality was often the deciding factor.

Decisions were always up for renegotiation. There really were no rules. At least no fixed rules. Well, maybe a few, like the rule that nobody could declare himself or herself boss. I took to this process immediately. To me when it functioned it was the way a good large family should function.

Patt had more reservations. To her it seemed that by never voting, we often wound up doing what only a few strong-willed people wanted. Drop City was that way too, when it dysfunctioned.

Anyway, although we never made a formal decision to publish the newsletter, everybody knew the decision had somehow been made. Almost everybody said they’d submit something. This was the first time we all worked together on a project since the fight between Rabbit and Alteresio.

Rabbit jumped right into production. To my surprise, he restrained himself from trying to dominate it. His assertive nature was constantly trying to jump out, but before it sprawled all over everybody, he’d rein it back in, leaving room for the other Droppers. I had thought he would not be capable of that. Maybe it was because we did production in the kitchen, right by the sheetrock wall that he and Alteresio had broken fighting. It was never fixed and remained a symbol and a reminder.

* * *

Bear came back to Drop City, bringing his radial arm saw as well as his helper Orval, and within a few days we were cutting two-by-six struts for the new complex.

Bear and Curly went around to the two local junked car lots and talked with the owners. They were full of old cars whose bodies had been stripped, but whose tops were in good shape. Nobody had ever asked to buy them before. The going price was fifty cents apiece.

We sharpened all our axes, filled the pickups with Droppers, and drove over to the first yard. The junkyard dogs growled and tugged at their chains; they didn’t know what to make of us.

“Did everybody bring gloves?” Bear asked. “Careful. The edges get pretty sharp. It’s easy to slip standing on top of the cars. Don’t bring the axe up over your head. Just take little swings. Like this.” He demonstrated. “Work away at it a little at a time.”

The junkyard dealer had gone around and made a mark on every top we could take. We broke into teams.

I worked with Lard. The steel cut easier than I thought it would. With two of us chopping away in opposite directions, we had a top off in twenty minutes. I was surprised at how much variation there was in the gauge of the steel; some of the older car tops were twice as thick as the newer ones, and of course harder to chop.

“Orval’s hurt,” Lard exclaimed.

He was sitting on the ground. I could see blood. Bear was tying a bandanna around his hand while Clard, Curly, and Alteresio watched.

We jumped down and hurried over, just as Orval was standing back up.

“It ain’t bad,” he said. “Just slashed a little. I slipped and grabbed the side of the cut metal. Now my glove’s fucked up. Let’s get back to work.”

By the end of three days we’d cleaned out both junk yards of over eighty tops. We had them in big stacks. Bear bought an electric shears, which made cutting the cartops to size later a comparative breeze.

One night Bear and Alteresio went out drinking in a bar. They came back late with a story that some drunken redneck had provoked them and Bear knocked him out. Bear didn’t get a scratch. He seemed to alternate between being shocked and proud. “That’s the first time I ever got into a fight like that,” he grinned. “What’s amazing to me is how really good it felt to punch out that guy. I’ve never punched anybody in the face like that. You should have seen the way he fell. It was just like in the movies.” He didn’t seem at all remorseful. I was surprised that Bear had this in him.

At night we worked on the newsletter. Everybody was writing or drawing something for it.

Rabbit announced, “I’m writing semi-official biographies of everybody for the newsletter.”

“Am I going to be in there?” Orval asked.

“You bet your big fat butt you are, Orval Teen.”

“What are you writing about me?”

“That you swallow messikins whole for appetizers.” Rabbit used racial epithets casually, to the dismay of some of us.

“You ain’t going to say that, are you?”

“Sure. Our editorial policy is I can say anything I want.” He picked up a sheet of paper and read, “‘No selectivity is exercised by the editors. The Drop City Newsletter is an expression of the individual viewpoints of the residents of Drop City and/or non-resident contributors. Nothing contained in this newsletter is necessarily the viewpoint of Drop City or its residents. The content of the Drop City Newsletter is in no way limited. We welcome contributions of any kind: news, lies, truths, drawings, literature, pornography, nonsense, ultimate realities, ads, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.’”

“Who wrote that?”

“I did. Like it?”

“The money part sounds grubby,” Lard said.

“That’s the best part,” Rabbit responded. “You got to lay it on the fucking line.”

“How about me?” Bear asked. “Are you writing a phony bio about me?”

Rabbit chortled. “I was going to write that your head is shaped like a quartz crystal, but after that fight, I’m going to write that you got the quickest six-gun in the west, with eleven notches on your iron, not counting injuns, messikins and niggers.”

“Don’t talk like that, man. Racist shit like that’s not funny. I don’t like it.”

Bear had to go back to New Mexico again, while we worked on the panels, but planned to be back in a few weeks to start to erect them.

We trimmed the cartops to fit the panels and nailed them down, with two-by-six dividers where they were needed at the joints, shingling all the tops in the same direction with tar in the seams.

* * *

Drop City had become almost entirely vegetarian, partly by choice, partly by necessity. Except periodically Rabbit would show up with a rabbit or two he’d shot, skin them with a few deft slices of his knife, then cook them. We never ate the rabbits we raised. Every time we turned around there were more of them; they were just an expensive hobby. Occasionally Rabbit would go up into the mountains to try to poach a deer. He’d often invite me to come with him, but I always refused. Alteresio was the only one ever willing to go. Though they didn’t seem to like each other, always wary and never chummy, Alteresio and Rabbit bonded over guns. They seemed to find in each other’s perverse side a kindred spirit. I was always afraid that one day they’d disagree out in the woods and wind up having a hunting accident.

With or without Alteresio, Rabbit would leave for the mountains with great fanfare, headband always tied in place around his forehead. He’d always spout the same story he told when I first met him, claiming to hunt by asking permission of the animal; that is, when the deer was ready to be killed and eaten by Rabbit, it would come out of hiding and let him shoot it. This was his version of a Native American custom.

That entire fall he never came back with a deer. Rabbit bemoaned his string of bad luck. No deer seemed ready to die for him.

One day his luck finally broke. He had gone out hunting alone before dawn. Toward dusk he drove back in, honking, yelling “Cacahuate!” out the window, a large animal draped over his fender. It turned out to be a horse another truck had hit down the road a few minutes before he passed by.

In moments of triumph he always yelled, “Cacahuate,” which he claimed was a warrior’s cry that a Taos pueblo man had taught him. I never had the heart to tell him that it means “Peanut” in Spanish.

He rigged up some four-by-fours, hung the horse upside down, slit its throat, bled it, cut off the head, skinned and dressed it, carved it up and stacked it in the freezer. Rabbit never tired of telling the story about the horse who decided to die for him.

* * *

I took the job of helping Jo keep the chickens, rabbits, and goat.

We decided that maybe the rabbits were unhappy in their little hutches, but we couldn’t just let them run wild like the chickens, so we built a big outdoor corral for them, burying the wire fence a foot into the ground. They still had a couple of hutches to hide in, if they wanted to. We worried that dogs, coyotes, or hawks might get them, but they never did.

Our hermaphrodite goat, Tinker, had all kinds of sexual organs, a crazed look in his eye, and used to follow the little kids around and scare them. We decided that maybe his problem was that he needed a friend, and we wanted milk, so we drove to the goat farm down the road and bought a pregnant nanny. Having her around did cool out Tinker.

Our hens usually laid enough eggs for pancakes, but we really feasted only when the egg man dropped by with a big wire basket full of jumbo brown and white corn-fed eggs, which he’d give us as a gift. The egg man ran a chicken farm on the other side of Trinidad, and he regularly had more eggs than he knew what to do with. We’d chat about raising chickens and eggs, and he’d always gave us good pointers. The egg man was about sixty, always wore overalls and a cap, was very proud of his eggs, and had utter contempt for the mass-produced variety. His eggs really were tasty. He would complain that it costs more today to raise a chicken than the price of the eggs. I knew he was right. Yet somehow he continued to muddle along, out of love for his work. His wife had passed on a few years before. He reminded me of my Grandpa, particularly after Grandma died, when he began to feel very alone. Everybody knew the egg man really came over to flirt with the Dropper women, and they led him on a bit and teased him. It seemed harmless enough. He invited them to come over and get eggs any time. At first none of them wanted to go; they were wary of him. One day I drove Patt, Jo, and Crayola over there, and he showed us around his farm. When he and I were alone for a minute, he asked me if I thought any of the women might be interested in him. I felt too sorry for him to tell him the truth. Then he said he had money, which I took as a lead to see if I would pimp for him. I just let it pass. I told the women, who couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or flattered or both. After that, they were never willing to go back to his place. But they didn’t seem to hold it against him, and still joked with him casually at Drop City, on safe ground. When we were low on cash, I’d cheerfully suggest to the women that they make an egg run.

We bought four baby turkeys, with the idea of raising them for the upcoming holiday feasts. A couple of them dropped dead right away; another got killed by a dog. Only one survived. The turkey, Gerald, and I became fast friends. He used to hop on the toe of my boot and refused to get off, so I would walk around like that. Gerald became a pet. However, when he reached puberty he began to terrify the little kids with his fluffed up feathers, puffed out chest and bluff pecking charges. He and Tinker the goat were quite a macho pair. By the time the holidays approached, nobody thought Gerald was cute anymore, but almost everybody felt squeamish about killing and eating him. All our families had always had turkey, and never thought much about it. But now that we actually had to kill the turkey it seemed very different. I decided to try to gather everybody in Drop City to take collective responsibility for his death. Curly, Jo, Crayola and Patt would have nothing to do with it.

The rest of the Droppers gathered around the chopping block.

Gerald, who usually wandered fearlessly around Drop City, sensed something and ran. With some effort, Lard caught him and carried him back upside down, flapping and sweating. “What now?”

“Why are you asking me?” I was trying to wiggle out of the responsibility.

“You organized this.”

Orval Teen grabbed the axe. “I said I wouldn’t before, but now I’m inspired. I’ll do it.”

Gerald was fighting to get away. Lard had difficulty holding onto him, but managed to maneuver his head down on the chopping block. Orval raised the axe, brought it slowly down over Gerald’s neck to take aim, raised it again high above his head. A brief moment of silence.

Orval blurted, “I’m sorry about this, Gerald,” and swung with all his strength. But, just as he swung, Lard lost his nerve and pulled Gerald away. The axe chopped off the end feathers of one wing; Gerald broke loose and flapped away. Lard, Orval, and I chased after him.

Orval finally caught him and brought him back to the block. Rabbit grunted disgustedly, “Gimme that bird.”

He grabbed Gerald’s legs in one hand, stuck his head on the block, stomped between his wings with his boot to hold him down, and with a deft swing, cried, “Cacahuate!” and chopped off his head. Rabbit then let him loose. Gerald’s body scampered headless down toward his old pen, and collapsed near the cottonwood tree. His head lay on the chopping block, twitching and bleeding, his eyes staring blankly into space.

“That’s the way it’s done in Texas.” Rabbit stuck out his false teeth and chattered them.

* * *

Alteresio seemed a little more crazed than usual. He asked Curly to help him shoot a film about hunting crows, which he was going to call, A Sicilian’s Revenge. It was a strange idea because there was no reason to hunt a crow. But maybe that was the point; it was somehow allegorical to Alteresio. He wasn’t much of a talker, and often couldn’t explain why he did things. He had a perverse streak that he barely tried to keep in check. The whole thing was disturbing. I think he thought of himself as the crow and society as the killer. It was a way to purge some darkness out of himself. He also said it had something to do with a chess gambit. He and Curly were chess partners, and spent many hours sitting at the kitchen table staring at the board. Anyway, despite protests, Alteresio organized a group to go crow hunting while Curly filmed it. The only other guy Alteresio could find willing to shoot at crows was Rabbit. I went along, but without a gun.

Alteresio located a flock which hung out by the river. The flock had a lookout in a very high tree, who kept an eye on us and warned the others of our every move with caws. It was a complete bust. Curly filmed Alteresio and Rabbit running around the woods with guns, but they didn’t get near a crow. However, Alteresio was persistent. He watched the crows’ movements for a few days, then noticed that just before sunset the flock would fly to a nesting place, and to do so they had to pass over a certain spot where there was a mound obscuring their view until they were almost on top of it. He had us sneak to the spot from the opposite direction and lie in wait. Suddenly, the crows filled the sky over our heads. Alteresio and Rabbit shot, and a black form plummeted from the sky down to the bank of the Purgatoire. As they ran over to see it, I walked the other way. It was a sad, pathetic day for Drop City.

Curly wrote a song about it, based on an old Irish Republican anthem about political prisoners in an English jail. He played guitar, not too well, and walked around Drop City singing it mournfully:

And the old crow angle
goes jingle jangle
along the banks
of the Purgatoire.

* * *

Meanwhile the Drop City Newsletter was muddling along. Not everybody liked what was happening with it, but we hung with it.

We decided to give each issue a headline. We went around and around about what should be the first headline. The two most popular proposals were PEACE and SEND US ALL YOUR MONEY. The money business was supposed to be a joke, although in retrospect it doesn’t sound very funny.

Curly submitted a humorous piece:

A CHOICE SAMPLING OF CURLY BENSEN’S LEXICON ULTIMATE

PARANOID: A zany virus.
COSMIC FORCES: The total ultimate director of progress and survival.
MONEY: The obsolete system of survival and achievement.
BLOWN MIND: The condition of one’s conscious facilities.
HOARDING: The attitude taken toward one’s possessions.
PSYCHEDELIC: Clard Svensen’s hair.
THE MIDDLE: In Infinity: the position of its parts.
WEIRD: The attitude in which reality is.
SCROUNGE: The manner in which progress is obtained.
CHOWTIME: The spiritual dilemma for daily attainment.
DISCRETION: The insidious form of deception.
OVERLAPPING FRAMEWORK: The immediate relationship of light and anti-light.
MULTI-DIMENSIONAL: The TAO at least.
DROP CITY: To sponsor and create the avant-garde of civilization, utilizing all the remnants, at least of art, science, technology, etc.
DROPPING: An elaborate put-on.
ZANY: Same as psychedelic: see it.

* * *

Always the moralist and social reformer, Clard contributed two pieces:

DON’TS TO ABIDE BY

Don’t be uptight.
Don’t put people on.
Don’t try to make people tense.
Don’t hurt others.
Don’t hurt yourself.
Don’t be afraid.
Don’t make anybody afraid.
Don’t try to be a super hero.
Don’t try to make others into super heroes.

PROPOSAL TO AMERICAN LAWMAKERS

Scientific and technological progress is usually preceded by research & experimentation. Maybe social progress too.

Why not...write up a law that would allow research in experimental “test-tube” societies. As experimental structures they would be inconsistent with the structure of this country. Therefore they would have to exist exempt from the laws of this country. (With one provision, that they may not interfere in any way with the workings of the country and must keep to themselves.) A lot of different structures could be tried to see how they stand up...and to see if any are of any worth.

* * *

Drop Lady drew a map of Drop City and an overhead sketch of the new kitchen complex. She also submitted an actual letter her grandmother had sent her:

dear dear grand sun I love you very much I always think of you I don’t feel very good in my health I hope you are well take good care on your life I hope I will live to see you get married be to you good happy that is my wish pleas ancer me since that makes very happy for me your grand mother wish all very dear and a good health and hapy write me a ancer since me too make love and kiss I wish will see you home soon you could come to see me some time a grand mother make me glad your sent will me happy yours truly grand mother wish me family you regards kiss and love from all wish

Alteresio gave us something about a demon that a physicist named Maxwell used to explain certain subatomic movements:

IIEEEEE am Maxwell’s demon.
IIIEEE am AM MAXWELL
Watch out fer me. Hee Hee Hee.

Poly Ester offered a hot and heavy excerpt from a novel she was writing:

CARLA

But you’re not careless, Carla, he sd pushing on the diaphragm with his finger, then two, I mean, nothing like that would ever happen to you in the course of normal events, you would allow only or maybe not even an uncontrolled comet to pass through your life, though probably controlling it when it got into your sphere of influence, you would never let things get out of hand, go too far, he was sliding his dick into her a little at a time, she was very tight tonight, it’s like a fart has to be smelled by three people before it dies, it lingers a long time waiting off in the distance, but not you, you rush on out there to get smelled by your three so you can turn to something else, he was in now, Carla moaned and gave three strong squirts.

* * *

I wrote a rant:

Pleasure/pain. Western civilization crumbles. The bum: beyond goal consciousness, social achievement. The artist: a bum, but with an added factor—“fucking off” takes the form of art.

The rest of society has stopped singing: money. They pay the artist to sing for them. With societal structure crumbled, everyone will be a bum.

We at Drop City have reconciled the Dionysian in us. We harbor no illusions. 100 years ahead of our time, we are BUMS NOW. The only spirituality left to western man is total sensuality, so we have constant orgasm.

We serve society. We permit it to harbor illusions. We sing its songs. We pick up its pennies. Their food equals our overflow. Our overflow equals their fantasies. Their fantasies permit the obsolete structure of society to overflow with materials. Their waste equals our sustenance. Our material sustenance equals our sensual creative overflow.

We are legs of the great american brontosaur. We are your friend. Uphold us. Or are you we? Cannot be both. Send us all your money or jump in.

Drop.

* * *

We also put in several requests for equipment and donations. One ad offered the Ultimate Painting for fifty thousand dollars. Clard inserted a request for an “Ultimate chick.” Another ad was just a joke:

$5 CHEAP $5$5$5$5$5

10 NUDIE PICS OF CURLY BENSEN

The two most controversial submissions to the newsletter both came from Rabbit. One was a cartoon by a friend of his, of a man who was meant to look like President Lyndon B. Johnson, but his nose was a dick and his jowls balls. Some of the Droppers thought it was too explicit to go in, since they planned to send copies to their families.

The other item was Rabbit’s satirical Dropper bios. Not everybody thought they were funny. Clard was pretty sensitive about the way he was depicted. And, true to his word, Rabbit roasted Luke Bear in language the rest of us found offensive.

SEMI-OFFICIAL DROPPER BIOGRAPHIES

CURLY BENSEN with a lust for the sea was born from the hawse hole of a Norwegian freighter. Her name was Ma Bensen.

DROP LADY was rescued and raised by the pigeons living under the Tri-Borough Bridge.

CLARD SVENSEN grins and shuffles his feet a lot. It has been opined that he is a moron or suffers from a congenital birth defect, but we know better. He sez that the above was written by Rabbit, who is obviously jealous.

LARRY LARD owes it all to his beauty. He often expresses concern over his impending crucifixion.

RABBIT often mutters about sneezes, flowerpots, Mr. Mac Gregor, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

POLY ESTER is linear and elastic. Whoop - Whoop - Whoop.

ALTERESIO is a gangster from Naples who rubs garlic on his dum-dum.

CRAYOLA was rescued from living in the pasture and eating grass. I never dreamed, she has been known to say.

ISHMAEL has a vertically striped face, red purple and gold. He doesn’t have $500, do you have $500?

PATSY PIE QUICKLY is fast, we think.

LUKE COOL has the quickest six-gun in Oklahoma. He’s got eleven notches on his iron, not counting injuns, messikins and niggers.

ORVAL TEEN was dipped out of a slimy dishpan by Luke Cool. He’s as strong as King Kong and carnivorous. “Eat,” he says, “eat, eat.”

* * *

When Luke Bear saw what Rabbit had written about him, he was pissed. “I told you not to spout that racist shit about me, man.”

“Aw, you’re too sensitive.”

“I think it’s racist too,” I said.

“Where I come from everybody talks like that. At least us poor white trailercamp trash. It don’t mean nothing. It ain’t racist. I like everybody.”

“Just don’t publish that about me.”

Bear had to return to New Mexico again, while we worked more on the panels, but he planned to be back in a few weeks to start erecting them. While he was gone we finished the newsletter. Rabbit poopooed the issues of the dick-nose cartoon, the depiction of Clard, and the racist epithets. He insisted that they all stay in. “If some sensitive soul’s offended by my language, they’ll blame me, not you. It’s got my name on it. Here’s our editorial policy, right here, that we all agreed on: No selectivity is exercised by the editors. The content is in no way limited. That means no censorship. Don’t I have free speech as much as anybody else?”

We reached a stalemate. No one wanted to be the one to trash the whole project over it, so, one by one, the rest of us finally relented. We printed several hundred copies and sent them out.

The next day the postman honked by the mailbox. Curly and I went over.

“That mail you sent yesterday, the postmaster’s seized it. They’re pressing charges.”

“For what?”

“Sending obscenity through the mail.”

“What obscenity?”

“That ad for naked pictures and that cartoon of the president with his nose like a dick.” He never mentioned Rabbit’s racial epithets, which must not have bothered the postmaster.

“What about freedom of the press?”

“Don’t blame me, boys. Most everybody else just thought it was a riot. LBJ do have a dick nose, by the way.”

We quickly planned to contact every lawyer we knew and defend our rights. We took the postmaster’s reaction as a compliment, and started plotting the next newsletter as an exposé of the repressive system.

However, the next day the mailman honked again. “The postmaster decided to give you boys a break and not press charges. He sent your newsletters out after all. But he said to tell you to take this as a warning. Gonna seize everything from now on unless you clean it up.”

* * *

Chapter 13

THE ULTIMATE PAINTING

Clard and Lard worked on the Ultimate Painting right up to the night before the Santa Fe show. In the morning they carefully laid it in the packing box, still wet. All the Droppers decided to go except Drop Lady, Crayola and the kids. It was a two-hour drive.

As we squeezed into the cars and pickups, Rabbit waved a film can in my face and winked.

“What’s that?”

“Gonna debut my film.”

“You finished it?”

“Just got it back yesterday.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“Great!”

We were on our way.

Over the previous days I’d looked through all my old poetry and fiction but couldn’t find anything I liked enough to read. I often went through periods like that. In the stack of manuscripts I’d carried to Drop City, besides poetry were a half dozen stories and two novels that I no longer liked. The novels were unpublished, though most of the stories had been accepted by obscure little magazines. When I was packing for Drop City, I threw out a lot of my early writings, but brought these with me. It was upsetting scanning them now as I looked for something to read in Santa Fe. That world seemed so far away.

I decided to write something new, agonized over it for a while, then realized that I was inspired by the Ultimate Painting, so wrote a poem to read while it was spinning.

Tired in our many wanderings
suddenly restless
remembering our mother
and finding ourselves alone
searching wind and cloud for signs
then sensing the direction
we will head upstream
without looking back
and meet in the aspen meadows
that no man owns
in the final hours of night
watch Scorpio sink one last time
beyond the western peak
and listen to the sea,
one thousand miles away,
rise up to meet her lover
then crouch about the dying fire silent
sharing a last loaf of bread
while smoke spirals colors though
the shadows of our minds.

High in the mountains
as dawn rises in the north
and the axis finally shifts
we will look into our lovers’ eyes
and see the forest
look into the forest and see our lovers’ eyes
then look behind her eyes
and see the flames
look beyond the flames and see ourselves
we will take off our clothes
and forget what we were and who we were
forget where our bodies end and the universe begins
step out of our minds
through a secret cave we have always known
and drift into each other
together at last
home again
among the animals
washed in the first drops of the coming rain
we will join the dance

We arrived in Santa Fe and hurriedly prepared for the show. Clard, Lard, and Alteresio filled the walls with their acrylic paintings and Drop Lady’s watercolors. Curly, Patt, and I set up the strobe, slide and movie projectors. Finally we assembled the triangulated two-by-four stand, hooked up the motor, and screwed the Ultimate Painting to its arbor. The gallery was to be open for a couple of hours before the show, so people could look at the paintings on the walls. We were barely ready as evening fell.

Shortly before the opening we all, except Patt, who didn’t indulge, slipped into the back room and got stoned. When I came out, I saw that a handful of people had already arrived and others were coming in the door. Denton and Leeda, dressed in high costume instead of their usual overalls, were chatting with Patt and the gallery owner. With them was Marigold. I sank into the floor. This was the first time I’d seen her since I came back to Drop City.

Marigold planted a wet kiss on my lips. “How did you like San Francisco? When did you get back?”

“The Coast was great. I’ve been back at Drop City since September.”

“Dawnrider wrote me that you had the pad next door to her and Winston at the Garbo. Wasn’t that place wild?”

I quickly turned and introduced her to Patt, who bit her lip. “Where did you two meet?”

“At Drop City last spring,” Marigold replied.

“Marigold was staying with Leeda and Denton,” I added.

“I’m back with them again. Still lying low. My parents still have the psycho squad on my trail. I’ll be around the Drop City area for a while.”

“What have you been?” I asked hurriedly.

“Back and forth all over the place. Just in New York. Our mutual friend Cori says to tell you she misses you.”

“You know Cori?” Patt perked up.

I cut in, “She’s a friend of Dawnrider too. They all went to high school together in Wisconsin. Isn’t that right?”

“Michigan, a little place outside of East Lansing. You’re the same Patt? I can’t believe this! Crazy, how it all comes together. Cori told me all about you.”

“What did she tell you?” Patt didn’t look too thrilled.

“Only good things, of course.”

“How’s Cori doing?” I put in.

“She has a great little part in this great off-off-off Broadway play. You know her friend Kugo, right?”

“Sure” I said.

“Did you meet Frinki, Kugo’s wife?” Patt asked.

“He has a wife?” She wrinkled her nose. “Cori likes complications. Kugo asked me to bring you some mescaline, but I don’t travel holding.”

Denton rescued me with an arm around my shoulder. “How’s the new kitchen complex progressing?” He was sporting a Stetson hat, dark sunglasses, green silk shirt, and leather pants.

“We’ve made a lot of progress. Going to erect it in a month or so. It’ll be a work party. You should swing by. We’ll need all the help we can get. Other than that, we’re working on another issue of the newsletter. How about you?”

“Still talking about starting a new community. I don’t know if Rabbit or Poly have mentioned this to you, but we’ve been discussing buying land together.”

“You and Rabbit?”

“We’ve already started driving around looking. Hopefully we’ll find something in some beautiful isolated place in the mountains near Drop City. We all want to stay in the area.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“The financing’s not in place yet. Leeda and I have lots of contacts in the art world. We know the money’s there. It’s just a matter of approaching them in the right way. We’ve got some feelers out. No firm commitments yet. How about you and Patt? Would you two be interested in coming in with us?”

That took me aback. Patt was still chatting with Marigold. I thought for a moment. “I’m really committed to Drop City.”

Denton slid his sunglasses down his nose. “We’ll need committed people to make the new community work too. Think it over. Anyway, just before you came in Leeda and I were telling Patt about our idea of repainting the Drop City domes. We did some sketches I want you to see. Leeda has them. Come on. Patt, you too.”

He dragged us across the room to a table where Leeda was showing some of the other Droppers drawings of all the domes. Instead of aluminum, each dome was now painted a different matt color highlighted by a contrasting color along the interstices of the panels. They looked pretty subtle. Curly’s dome was now turquoise with black-outlined white stripes around the triangles. Rabbit’s dome was red with black trim; the top of the hole was green, with darker green trim; the old kitchen a yellow background with deep blue stripes.

“Wow, that would really change the flavor of Drop City.”

“They look great!” Rabbit exclaimed.

“I always like stripes,” Polly drawled Texas style. “And dots.”

Curly squished his lips to one side. “Instead of looking like a spaceport, you want us to look like an Easter egg hunt.”

“Droppers,” the gallery owner announced loudly, “Can I corral you all together for a conference?” There was a tone in his voice that reminded me of Otis’ and Giovanni’s gay friends back in New York.

As we moved toward a corner of the room, Patt whispered, “What’s between you and that girl?”

“I barely know her. I only met her at Drop City for a few hours last spring.”

We crowded into a tight circle in one corner, near the buffet covered with white towels, and the unopened wine and glasses for the party that was planned to continue into the night after the show. It looked like there was going to be a good turnout, for what it was. A hundred people would have packed the room, and a crowd was there already.

“Now, you can do the show any way you want. It’s your show. But you’ve got to pull your act together and decide.” He wore a Hawaii shirt with big flowers.

“Is there some problem?” Clard asked.

“Yes and no. You tell me one thing and other people tell me something else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said that Curly was going to do the introduction. Rabbit said that he was going to do it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Rabbit jumped in. “I said I was going to introduce Curly. Where’s the problem? I don’t see any problem.”

“Neither do I,” Curly said, a little glum.

“The other thing is, a friend just warned me that the police might visit us tonight. I don’t want any trouble.”

“Not to worry,” Curly said. “There won’t be.”

By the time we began the show, people were barely able to squeeze in the door. The gallery owner introduced Rabbit, who proceeded to tell humorous stories about Drop City, how it came to be, and what we were going to be showing them tonight. He was really entertaining. He gave Curly a big build up, with a few goodnatured jibes.

Curly finally stood and mumbled, “I think Rabbit already said it all. I got nothing to add. We’re already running a little late. I got a flick to show you.”

He waved for the gallery manager to cut the lights, sat down behind the projector, and proceeded to roll his twelve-minute Drop City silent movie. This was the first time I’d seen it outside of Drop City, and it looked totally different out here. It was really funny, and captured the feeling of the early place better than any words could have. The audience loved it.

A show of Drop City slides followed, with all the Droppers making running commentaries. Alteresio rolled his crow film, complex and disturbing, with existential undertones of sex and angst.

Rabbit read a poem about new rituals filling the world and souls finding recognition and direction in each other. This was the first time I’d heard him read. I suddenly saw him in a light I’d not seen him in for a long time, as I had when I first arrived in Drop City. He was very evocative. His poems seemed to come out of a different place than his everyday personality did. He read a few more poems, which went over well, then said, “I also got a film to show you. My first movie. I got to warn you that anybody who’s not ready to get their mind totally blown away, should split and not see it. Don’t take the risk. But before I drive you away, I know a lot of you came for the debut of the first great group painting in the entire history of the entire world, the Ultimate Painting. Isn’t that right, Clard?”

“Yeah,” Clard said. “That’s right.”

“Anyway, this is a painting that all the Droppers did a little of. We’re going to sell it to one of you tonight for sixty thousand US dollars. Right, Clard?”

“It was fifty thou a few minutes ago.”

“The rest is my commission. Anyway I’m going to step aside, and save my movie for the grand finale of the show.”

The lights dimmed again. Taped music began. Lard flicked on the motor. The Ultimate Painting started to spin. Clard manned the strobe, varying the speed of the flashes, making different vivid spatial and color effects jump out from the painting. The room was mesmerized. I read my poem.

They finally turned the lights back on.

Rabbit stood. “Now is the time, folks. Your last chance to escape before I destroy what’s left of your mind with my new flick. But I warn you, if you do leave, you’ll miss the night when a new star was born. Then we’re going to break out the wine and food and really going to party. Peace, love, joy, all blessings.”

The lights dimmed and Rabbit let her roll. It was jumpy, grainy and out of focus. You could barely make out what was happening.

Patt, who was sitting on the floor next to me whispered, “Is that a dick?”

“I guess so.”

“That looks like Poly!”

“It sure does.”

“TURN ON THE LIGHTS. THIS SHOW IS OVER!” someone shouted.

The lights flashed on. Three big cops in plainclothes stood and waved badges. A commotion.

Despite our protests, they shut us down, briefly confiscated Rabbit’s film, but then returned it and sent us packing.

We stayed overnight at some friends, then drove back to Colorado the next day. Since the Dropper cars were so unreliable, we drove as a convoy. Patt and I rode in the old Pontiac with Curly and Alteresio. Nobody said much. Curly looked more depressed than I’d ever seen him. Every once in a while Alteresio, who was driving, shook his head, let loose a sardonic cackle, and muttered, “It don’t take long to get hip, now, do it?”

We all got back to Drop City at the same time, starving, and unloaded quickly. As we walked through the kitchen door, Drop Lady said, “A letter came from Buckminster Fuller.”

Curly perked up. “What does it say? Where is it?”

“On the table. It’s addressed to you. I didn’t open it.”

He stared at the envelope. “I wrote him, told him what we were doing, how we were the first use of domes to house a community.”

“Well, open it,” Lard said impatiently.

Curly ripped it open. “‘Congratulations. Drop City is the recipient of the Dymaxion Award for 1966, for remarkable initiative, spirit, and poetically economic structural accomplishments. R. Buckminster Fuller.’” Curly waved a check. “Five hundred smackers. Just what we need to finish the complex. Trust the powers of the universe and they take care of you.”

We were floored.

“We’re really having an impact,” Clard said in a small voice.

“Fantastic!” Rabbit shook a fist. “Let’s dash off a newsletter and tell the world! Even more: I’ve got a great idea. Listen to this: let’s have a festival, a big shindig, as soon as the kitchen complex is done, a whole weekend, maybe more—four or five days, a week—invite everybody, do it right, big time, music, films, poetry, multi-media, everything, the hugest cultural bash ever seen in these parts. People will pour in from coast to coast!”

“No way.” Curly cut him off morosely.

Jo folded her arms. “I’m against it.”

Poly jumped in. “Why are you always immediately against anything Rabbit suggests, before you’ve even thought about it?”

Lard broke in, “I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Though it needs some refinement.”

“It wouldn’t work until the weather’s nicer,” Clard said. “If we want to have a festival, we’ll have to wait till spring.”

Crayola sighed. “Let’s take some time to talk about it.”

“We don’t have to decide anything now,” I put in.

“My momma’s coming,” Curly said. “She’s going to be living here. I’m not putting her through that.”

That silenced everyone for a minute.

Finally Lard asked, “When is she coming?”

“In three weeks.”

It was hard to imagine Curly’s mother as a Dropper, but they had always said they wanted it to be a family place.

Over the following week we tossed the idea of the festival back and forth. Curly and Drop Lady remained dead set against it. The rest of us went around in slow circles. We didn’t want Curly’s mother to determine what was going to happen.

Finally Rabbit pushed it to a head. “We been talking long enough. We got to make a decision. Either we’re going to have the Joy Festival—which will become legendary—or we decide to fade back into the woodwork.”

“Me and Jo are still totally against it,” Curly said firmly. “It would suck us dry. It would break our back.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m against it too,” Patt voiced as loudly as she could. She was often not very forthcoming, but made her opinion known about this one. “We already have too many visitors and too much publicity.”

Rabbit banged his fists together. “The festival will turn it to our advantage.”

“We’ve gotten too serious,” I said. “We need a good party.”

“Let’s vote,” Poly interjected.

“No,” Drop Lady said emphatically. “We can’t decide that way.”

“Voting is bourgeois,” Curly chimed in. “We always been beyond voting.”

Rabbit snapped back, “Voting is only bourgeois when it’s the bourgeoisie who’s voting.”

“If you do this festival,” Crayola said with a little whine, “I’m taking the girls to their grandmother.”

“I know we’ve never voted before,” Clard said. “But we’ve got to get this settled. Let’s make this our one and only vote. A straw poll, just to see where we all stand.”

Rabbit banged the table with a spoon. “Okay, everybody who’s for the Joy Festival, raise your spoon.” His own shot into the air.

One by one hands slowly went up, including mine. Only Curly, Jo, Crayola, and Patt remained opposed.

“Now I move,” Rabbit followed, “that we schedule the Drop City Joy Festival for a four-day weekend early in June, 1967. Everybody in favor, wiggle your spoon.”

* * *

Chapter 14

THE LAST PANEL

While the rest of us hemmed and hawed about Denton and Leeda repainting the aluminum Drop City domes, Rabbit and Poly decided to let them paint theirs. Leeda and Denton jumped right in. While the painting was in progress they were at Drop City every day. I worked with them some.

Rabbit was on a ladder, painting the skylight brick red.

“Denton tells me that you’ve been looking for land up toward the national forest,” I called up to him.

“Yeah.”

“In some gorgeous pine forest,” Denton put in, dipping his roller in the tray of red paint. “Mountain paradise.”

“I wish Drop City was in some beautiful isolated place like that.”

“I seen some meadows up there,” Rabbit said, “that would be perfect for growing dope.”

“Wouldn’t you be paranoid?”

“Not if it’s off our land. That’s why we got to border on the national forest.”

“We need to talk more about that,” Leeda cut in, rolling the red paint over an aluminum-colored panel. She and Denton were both wearing old straw hats and paint-splattered overalls.

“How’s the fundraising coming?” I asked.

“Okay,” Denton said.

“We’re engaged in a serious redistribution of wealth,” Rabbit chuckled. “Leeda and Denton got the keys to the kitchen doors of patrons with money up their wazoos.”

“Great,” I laughed, mostly at the way he phrased things.

“It might take some time,” Denton grunted. “We’ve got to get it from a series of sources.”

When Rabbit finished that side of the skylight, he climbed down and went for some water. As soon as he was gone, Denton asked me, “What do you think about Rabbit? How hard is he to live with?”

I shrugged.

“How hard are you, dear?” Leeda interjected.

“I kind of still like him,” I replied. “There are parts of him I like, I mean. He’s a character.”

“What’s the problem between him and Curly?” Denton growled laconically.

“Why don’t you ask Curly?”

Curly had been across the way pulling nails out of a recycled two-by-four. As if he sensed we were talking about him, he set the board down and walked toward us, hammer swinging from his apron and crowbar over his shoulder. Curly examined the paint job up close. “I ain’t no Big Apple art critic, but this snow job don’t look half as bad as I expected.” He stuck a fingertip into the wet paint.

“I got a question for you, Curly.” Denton began.

“The answer’s twenty-four.”

“What do you think of Rabbit? What’s the problem between you two?”

“I’m a painted mule.” He dug the crowbar into the ground.

“What?”

“Did you ever see a trained zebra?”

“In a circus.”

“That wasn’t a zebra. You can’t train a zebra. Rabbit’s a zebra. And I’m a painted mule.”

* * *

Curly’s mother arrived from Brooklyn, with two huge suitcases and a salient Yiddish accent. A couple inches short of five feet, somewhat round, she was a true knaydl. He called her Mommeleh. How Jo, the baby, Curly, and Mommeleh all managed to squeeze into that tiny dome was amazing.

Since social life revolved around the kitchen, she jumped right in. All of the Dropper women and Lard were pretty good cooks, but Curly’s mommeleh raised our gourmet fare to an unforeseen level. Her presence seemed to smooth out the tension between the rest of us and Rabbit and Poly, so they began to join us in dinner more regularly. Lard became Mommeleh’s cooking protégé and he would flash his eyes adoringly as he followed her instructions. She also brought out a bit of the mama’s boy in Curly, something I had never noticed before. During the day she would walk up the hill to where the guys were working, bringing a plate of rugelach or some other snack. We were careful not to smoke dope around her and she pretended not to notice.

One day, while Rabbit and Poly had gone into town shopping for groceries, Mommeleh was cooking up a big noodle kugel with tsimmes, and realized that we were out of vanilla, which she needed for her blintzes. She sent Lard into town to fetch some.

He came back peeved. “I was walking by that steak restaurant on Commercial Street and who do you think I saw sitting there munching on big ones? Rabbit, Poly, and Kaitlin.”

Curly punched his palm. “While we’re eating moldy cheese in our blintzes, they’re sneaking around living the high life!”

“They saw me too, and almost sank through the floor. Those steaks looked really good, with french fries. I should have gone in, sat down and ate my share.”

Rabbit and Poly didn’t get back by dinner time, so we were eating when they finally appeared, carrying bags of groceries. They set the bags down, put a few things away, made up plates for themselves, and joined us at the table.

As they sat down, Curly said, “You got to cut down on that red meat, man. Take years off your life.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rabbit snapped.

Clard jumped in. “I just don’t appreciate you blowing our last few dollars on yourselves.”

“We didn’t spend Drop City money on that restaurant.” Poly twirled a lock of hair on one finger.

“Not to get upset,” Mommeleh cut in. “It’s only money.”

“My ex-husband sent Kaitlin a check.”

“How come when anybody else gets a check it’s Drop City money,” Alteresio grumbled, his mouth full of noodles, “but when you get one it isn’t?”

“Kaitlin has to have her protein.”

“That means you’re taking protein away from the other kids.” Crayola intoned indignantly.

“Why don’t you all just compromise,” Curly’s momma said.

“Stay out of this, Mommeleh,” Curly muttered.

“How long have you been getting checks that you didn’t share?” Alteresio grunted.

“Don’t be so fucking insulting.”

“How can we ever scrape together money to leave if we put every penny into the common pot?” Poly remonstrated.

“So when are you leaving?”

“We don’t know.”

“How do you expect us to trust you?” Alteresio said.

“How do you expect us to trust you?” Rabbit suddenly stood, knocking over his plate, noodles spilling on Alteresio’s lap.

Alteresio took them in his hand, laughed sardonically and threw them back at Rabbit, also hitting Poly and Lard.

Rabbit grabbed a handful off my plate and hurled them at him, also splattering Curly, Clard, and me.

In an instant noodles and vegetables were flying all over the room.

Everybody stopped short.

“It’s only money,” Mommeleh said again.

Curly forced a laugh. “We got to see the humor in this.” He pulled a noodle off his nose.

“Yeah, it’s real funny.” Rabbit tried to guffaw.

“Does anybody want some blintzes?” Mommeleh asked sheepishly.

Everybody calmed down, apologized, and cleaned up the mess.

Two days later Curly and Jo drove Mommeleh to the train station. They were pretty glum.

“No big deal. It just didn’t work out. She’s going to stay with my brother in Cincinnati.”

* * *

I was working with Lard nailing in the two-by-four floor of the kitchen complex, when Patt hurried over, distressed. “There’s an FBI agent here.”

“Where?”

“Near the theater dome, talking to Curly.”

Lard and I rushed over.

A guy in a tweedy suit, bow tie, and narrow-brimmed felt hat, holding a pencil and pad. We came up behind him. He must have seen us in the corner of his eye, because he side stepped to keep us all in view. There was something sleazy about him.

Curly was giving him the usual spiel about us just being an artist colony, putting on his thick Brooklyn accent for effect. “Man, I don’t know what lies they told you about us, but we’re just poor innocent struggling artists, clean like a arrow, straight like a summer day.”

“Don’t try that bull on me. I know a whole lot better. I got a file full of reports that say different. I know you better than your mother does.” He was middle-aged, his suit was worn and shiny at the elbows, his blue tie dirty. I could see the alcoholic veins in his nose and cheeks. He turned to Lard and me. “What are your names?”

“What’s yours?” I said.

“Don’t play games with me. This is serious, boy.”

“Okay. I’m Ishmael and he’s Lard.”

He took notes. “Your full names.”

“Those are our names,” Lard said.

“We don’t bother nobody,” Curly cut in. “We’re good neighbors. Just folks. What do you want with us?”

“We got reports of minors having bad acid trips down here.”

“That’s crazy. We got no drugs. We got nothing to hide.”

“I’m warning you, clean up!”

“We’ve got nothing to clean up.”

“Anytime I want I can send down one of my beatnik finks and bust you. Anytime! Like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I don’t want to have to. I don’t want trouble. I want to help you. You’re in my area, you’re my responsibility. Get clean.”

“We are clean,” I said.

“This place is a known center for criminal activities.”

“We’re artists,” Lard cut in. “Is art a crime?”

“I got reports of drugs, dealers, draft dodgers, deserters, tax evaders, communists, anarchists, troublemakers, and scofflaws of every stripe in this place. You’re a blot on my record. If you keep on like this, we’re going to shut you down so fast you won’t know what hit you, and put you away for a long time.” He pulled business cards out of his pocket and handed them to Curly, Lard, and me. “Selling Food Stamps is a federal offense. Harboring felons is a felony. You can call collect.” He spun on his heel and stomped away.

“We better bury the stash,” Curly said.

Within minutes we were surrounded by the other Droppers.

“Let’s put out a newsletter quick,” Clard said. “Let everybody know we’re being attacked by the Feds.”

After that we were wary of every car that drove past and suspicious of every stranger. We were on the lookout for the “beatnik fink.” We smoked dope very surreptitiously.

Two days later Curly and I were rummaging around the junkyard when a little green coupe scooted into the driveway, a foreign sports car with a nose like a bullet, big round headlights, chrome grill and bumpers, Illinois plates. We watched a young guy in a golf hat climb out, with longish hair and a mustache below a pointy nose. He pulled off leather driving gloves, threw them into the front seat and stood looking around. Then he saw us and started over.

I mumbled, “He looks like a fed.”

“He sure do.”

When the guy was still twenty feet away, he called out, “This place is smaller than I expected. But the domes are great.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m from Chicago. I read about you. Name’s Ed.”

Curly took his hand. “Ed the Fed?”

“What?”

He said he was a designer, had become disenchanted with the whole corporate scene, had read about Drop City in an underground paper, quit his job, and was driving around the country looking for something better. Very warily we gave him the tour.

The word spread around Drop City quickly, and everybody checked him out. He seemed a lot straighter than anybody else, at least straighter than any of the guys. Everybody had an opinion about whether or not he was the “beatnik fink” that the agent had threatened us with.

The conversation over lunch was pretty awkward. Everybody hoped he’d just leave, but he said, “Is it okay if I stay a few days? I’ve got a sleeping bag. I can sleep on the floor. I can help with the work. I’ve got a little money.”

Everybody glanced at each other.

“Sure,” Clard finally said. “Anybody can stay. You can stay.”

Almost instantly he got the moniker Ed the Fed.

That night Clard, Lard, Patt and I were sitting around reading Doctor Strange comics and watching “Star Dreck” (as Curly called it) on TV, when Ed the Fed said, “I’ve got a few joints with me. Anybody want to smoke?” He held several big jays in his open palm.

There was a dead silence.

Clard said, “We don’t smoke dope here. If you’re holding, you better take it off the property.”

“Really? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Patt stood abruptly. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go.” She hurried off.

“He’s not kidding,” Lard said.

“It’s true. We’re totally straight,” I confirmed.

“You’re serious,” Ed the Fed said.

“We never know,” Clard replied, “when some beatnik fink might be coming down here to bust us.”

“You guys are paranoid. I been waiting all the way from Chicago to share this stuff with you. Let’s just smoke it, then it’ll be gone, and there’ll be nothing to bust. It’s great stuff.”

Rabbit came in and walked over.

“No,” Clard said. “You better just take it off the property.”

Fed slipped the joints back into his pocket. “Is it okay if I smoke some in my car?”

“As long as you park it off the property.”

He shrugged. “Okay.” He got up and started to the door.

“I’ll walk you,” Rabbit said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

They disappeared out the door.

“Rabbit wants to get his dope,” Lard said. “He’s going to get us busted.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“I bet he’s taking him up to his dome right now,” Clard responded.

I got up and looked out the door. Sure enough, Rabbit and Ed the Fed were walking up to Rabbit’s dome.

“You’re right. But Rabbit wouldn’t smoke with him. He wouldn’t take a chance like that.”

We sat around for a while watching “Star Dreck.” I kept thinking about that dope and wondering how good it really was. During a commercial Lard walked out. Then a little while later, so did Clard. I was there watching alone for a while, then realized I was bored and decided to step outside.

I looked at the lights in Rabbit’s dome for a few minutes, then ambled up. I heard music and knocked.

A blast of smoke. Rabbit, Poly Ester, Lard, and Clard were all sitting on pillows with Ed the Fed, smiling sheepishly and red-eyed.

Fed held out a joint to me. I took a big hit and sat down.

Ed the Fed settled into the community. After a while we stopped suspecting him of being a Fed, but the Dropper name stuck. He turned out to be a nice guy with the best sense of cynical humor in the place, never hesitant about telling anybody they’re full of shit. He loved the intricacies of the kitchen design and took the job of angle man, running the radial arm saw. Ed the Fed’s Karmann Ghia, kind of a stretched out VW bug, a little car with a friendly face of headlights, long hood nose, mustache radiator grills, and smiley bumper mouth, became a Dropper car, and we felt really cool zipping around Trinidad in it.

* * *

Little by little the panels for the kitchen complex took shape. Bear got back and took charge of the erection process.

Bear brought his friend Stewart, who lived in California and was just planning to start the Whole Earth Catalog. He was also suing the Pentagon for not publishing the first satellite photos of the earth. He thought that the photos were being withheld for political reasons. If people could actually see the earth was one, how could they continue acting as if everything was not connected? Stewart became a regular visitor.

While we were finishing the structure for the complex, we were also laying electrical wires and plumbing underground. We blasted out a big hole for a cesspool. We’d decided that we’d had enough of outhouses and were going to come into the twentieth century with flush toilets.

At Drop City we never got building permits or inspections, we just did it. Nobody from Trinidad ever bothered or questioned us. We were lucky. Later we heard about other communities having all kinds of problems with zoning and building code restrictions. Rural Colorado was just getting zoned, so maybe we were slipping in under the wire. As I understood it, there was a federal order that all America had to be zoned. States not in compliance would lose moneys, so the states in turn required it of every county. It was a big boom for city planners, who ran around like traveling salesmen foisting plans like funny money on credulous small town councils.

We wound up with big stacks of triangles and squares for the kitchen complex zome, with all the sides four feet long, covered with cartops. Finally the big day arrived to raise the structure. Denton and Leeda came (not bringing Marigold, who had returned to Boulder). Several other people arrived: a few folks from around Taos, whom I’d met at the gallery gig; a couple of sensitive mountainmen who worked with Bear in the Albuquerque area, Hickson and Karanga, the latter a Viet Nam vet; and Stewart. They were all talking excitedly about starting new communes and communities.

Above the first ring of cartops we used ropes and pulleys to hoist the big heavy panels into place, but mainly we just got everybody together and relied on humanpower. Even Rabbit came out for this one.

Everything went well and fit perfectly until the last panel at the top of the last dome of the complex. We shook it and banged it, but to no effect. After dark we gave up with the panel half in and half out. We felt gratified that the complex was finally up. Except for that last panel it looked great. The structure kept groaning and creaking.

I came out of my dome early the next morning. It had snowed during the night and there was a thin layer of flakes blowing on the desert sand.

Bear and a few others were standing on the hill looking at the complex. They seemed in awe.

During the night something had popped. The complex was no longer creaking. The last panel had somehow slipped into place all by itself and the structure was perfect.

* * *

We got a lot of responses from our first newsletter. One was a request from a magazine called Inner Space, The Magazine of the Psychedelic Community, to write an article on Drop City. We weren’t sure if this was the kind of underground publicity we wanted, because we had to tiptoe around getting labeled as a drug community. Nonetheless we decided to go ahead, stressing that we were an artist colony. I didn’t have any problem with the group editing my writing, so I wound up writing it. It came out in the same issue as a report on the First Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, a prelude to the upcoming Summer of Love.

In response to Clard’s ad in the newsletter, a letter arrived from a woman in Cincinnati, an artist named Jal, looking for a new home. I assumed that Clard would pick up on her, since he had advertised, but either he got cold feet or something put him off, probably her kid. It was Lard who responded. After exchanging a few letters, she arrived with her ten-year-old son Snoop and they squeezed into the cartop dome.

To everybody’s surprise Lard actually hit it off with his mail-order bride. Jal was smart and nice. She was heavily into the Ba’ha’i religion, a little ham-fisted at times, but managed to restrain herself from pushing it over the top. With her son we were developing a big crew of kids. We had some degree of communal responsibility for them, but there really was not a lot to do, except spend some time with them. The kids were very autonomous, coming and going by themselves.

Jal became the Drop City hairdresser, at least for the guys. Before Jal, some of the dudes seemed to go for days without dragging a comb across their heads. She’d set us down one by one and fuss over our wild locks. The way she did it was very sensual, and made you feel like you were a very important person getting a very important haircut. All the guys became stylishly coifed, if only for a few hours.

Other than Jal, Clard didn’t receive any replies to his ad, but one day he came to breakfast with a pretty girl hanging tightly onto his arm, with long blond braids and a couple of crooked teeth that gave her character. She was a local kid, a young sweet thing, a girl-next-door type right out of Trinidad High School, from a poor uneducated family living in the trailer camp on the other side of town. There wasn’t much extraordinary about Suzie Spotless except her sunny disposition. Before I knew it, she moved in. Clard, Suzie, Lard, Jal, and Snoop were all squeezed into the small one-room cartop dome.

Our second Drop City Newsletter broadcast how we were being threatened by the FBI and attacked by the postal authorities. We announced the Dymaxion Award and the Joy Festival. Although we really planned the Festival for four days, we only put the first three days on the flier, considering that the fourth, Monday, would be a day of winding down.

* * *

Next: Part 6: THE JOY FESTIVAL <>

Return to Red Coral

Buy the book