May 28th, 1967
We leave Philadelphia, Monday, May 22, 10 a.m.—my cousin Feeney, Chuck & I. No emotion, just left. Barely wave goodbye to Mom & Dad in the driveway. Just glad to get away from it all.
Upstate Pennsylvania: Amish farms, strip-mined mountains, tunnels into Pittsburgh. Trip doesn’t become real until Chicago. Take Route 80 all the way.
Then it starts playing on the radio. Every time it comes on we speed up the car & turn up the sound:
If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
We drive in 2-hour shifts. Take naps in back seat. Chuck & Feeney swap front seats at 80 mph.
Breakfast in Iowa: golden-haired girl, just off the farm, can’t add the check right. She adds it again & comes up with the same results.
“I want to marry her!” I’m screaming as we get back in the car. “I want to marry her!”
Blackest clouds I've ever seen across Iowa, then it pours. Plain graveyards on hills, plain stones, simple crosses.
Farms keep getting larger as we head west. The silos, the furrowed land, farmhouses in the distance. Tractors plowing for summer planting. Old buses stand on pilings in fields to act like scarecrows.
Drive through small tornado in Nebraska. Sleep for 3 hours at motel in Kearny, too excited, keep going.
Eating Mom's broiled chicken all the way. Feeney & I much closer now. Talk about family. Bitterness about his father's drinking. Same with Mom for me.
Utah salt flats, then across the desert. Great snow-covered mountains in Wyoming. Illusion of asphalt becoming glass beneath the full moon. My terror of heights & curves at high speeds as we make our descent.
Eat in Reno, play slots. Come down the coast, cross the Bay Bridge, the dark bay beneath us, the hills of the city lit up like a Christmas tree. Arrive 10:30 p.m. Wednesday night. Made it in 60 hours.
We head up Haight Street to the Haight-Ashbury. Hostile reactions by Chuck & Feeney. I came cautious about the movement, already sympathetic.
We find Bart & Jenny's flat on Fourth Avenue. Get stoned, drink wine & listen to "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” In a trance on the floor staring at the ceiling while Ringo sings:
What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Last time I saw Bart he was drunk in a bar in Georgetown, cutting most of his classes & living with Jenny. He worked in a motel in Santa Monica, Jenny drove out, & they came up here.
Got here a year ago. Just a quiet neighborhood. Cheap. Students moved in. Drop-outs. Beats from North Beach. People sharing flats, food, trying to live outside the system.
Jenny works at U.C. Hospital. Bart about to be drafted. Drives around in '55 Ford shooting pictures all day with new Nikon.
I'm so exhausted from the trip I crash on the floor with a lit cigarette in my hand. Bart jumps out of bed & beats the blanket with a pillow.
Diane arrives in the morning with $5, cat & pill collection. Lives on amphetamines & cereal. Staying in commune with 8 people.
She takes us to buy grass. Hippies very friendly, immediately welcome us. First try on hookah.
We go to the Human Be-In on Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. The Grateful Dead playing on flatbed truck. Hippies join in with tambourines & flute, girl dancing with finger cymbals, another girl doing Indian dance with her brown baby.
Big surfer type playing drums. Hell’s Angels. The Diggers passing out free food. Nymphet in black velvet dress, bare feet, rings on her toes. Jerry Garcia watches her, singing:
There’s laughing in her eyes, dancing in her feet
She’s a neon-light diamond and she can live on the street
The Mime Troupe farther down the Panhandle on another stage, political satire in Renaissance costume.