Chapter Fourteen
And then there was the summer of Woodstock: 1969...and the lesser Texas Pop Festival in Lewisville, Texas two weeks later on Labor Day weekend.
A film was made of the latter and I've heard I'm in the opening scenes selling God's Eyes, woven Native American Indian symbols.
The film was never released. They ran out of money. It's a pity because the Texas Pop Festival was truly an historic event.
Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, Chicago, Ten Years After, BB King, Sam and Dave, Santana all the great groups of the time were there and most of the groups appearing had been at Woodstock, too. Music went on way into the wee hours of the night.
It was Texas’ Summer of Love. You could buy any type of drug you wanted there, freely, out in the open. Hawkers wore signs advertising what they had and passed amongst the crowd calmly stating their specialty: "Aaaacid!", "Graaaassss", "Mescaaaaline", "Drugs. Getchure Drugs. We got drugs right here". Some medicos had set up "Trip Tents" for those prostrated by heat exhaustion, or overdose or any number of other medical emergencies that might come to pass. Like childbirth. Happy babies.
I got to the Festival by befriending a woman who'd hitched a ride on a private airplane from San Francisco just to attend. She had purchased two tickets expecting to hook up with someone, anyone, when she arrived. She'd hung out at the airport in California and propositioned every private pilot that might be headed to Dallas. One young Doctor exercised the "Mile High Club" membership rituals and the two of them crossed the country in flagrant delicto. Judy was her name.
I was living in "The Oak Lawn House", a two story affair that was converted into a communal-type dwelling, on the corner of Gilbert and Oak Lawn in Dallas. It was a magic house that summer. Everyone had their own room and shared rent and duties. Rent and utilities came to about $100 a month each. I had the whole back porch over the carport...an airy room with nothing but screened windows on three sides: cool and breezy in the Dallas summer heat. Bearable at least on the worst nights, but never anything a fan couldn't alleviate.
I picked Judy up hitchhiking about three days before the festival and, needing a place to stay, I was glad to put her up.
She had shoulder length dark brown hair, a small bust and a well matured set of hips. It seemed I always had a weakness for that particular body style.
We had an instant rapport and did what hippies the world over were doing freely during those days: glorifying in the sexual revolution.
We'd get high and go "tripping" in Riverchon Park about a mile away.
During the Great Depression the Washington administration set up the Works Projects Administration (WPA) around the country to provide work for the unemployed to build necessary structures: roads, public buildings, bridges, even picnic tables and barbecue pits in parks, and cabins at campsites, etc.
Riverchon Park had been the beneficiary of these projects and had an entire picnic site constructed on top of a rather high hill at the Southwestern edge of the park. Over the years it had been overgrown with trees and bushes and was completely invisible to the park’s visitors.
There was no obvious entrance to the area through the bushes; but, if one knew where to look, there were stone steps leading up the hillside (a good 30 feet) to a series of paved trails linking the picnic sites. The trails led up and down and around the hill with little vista points every so often where strollers of an afternoon could pause and sit in niches in the stone wall, or on stone benches constructed for that sort of thing, and gaze out at the landscape...which was now completely obscured by the overgrowth. But everything was well maintained and still functional including the grills. You just had to know it was there and how to get to it.
Judy and I'd smoke grass or drop acid and go there around 1 or 2 am. We'd strip off all our clothes and roam freely pausing here and there for a quickie or to just lie on the stone picnic tables and gaze at the stars undulating in the heavens as if they'd been painted on the graceful belly of a woman breathing slowly, high above us.
We talked about San Francisco and the commune she lived in and all the wonderful things that went on in that great city by the bay. It stirred the wanderlust in me again.
After a few days Judy tired of Dallas and decided to move on: she was bored and didn't want to go to the Festival anymore. She gave me the tickets and wished me well and as quickly as she’d arrived, was gone.
Lewisville is midway between Dallas and its northern neighbor, Denton –my birth city. It's a notorious speed trap. It was also home to the Texas International Speedway: the site of the Texas Pop Festival. Rock and Roll fans from all over the world poured into the area. Cars were parked on the side of the highway for miles around, similar to, but far from the congestion at Woodstock
In those days the phrase "Spare change" was a friendly greeting. People generally handed their change to those asking because they knew the request was genuine. Not everyone could afford the price of the tickets to get in so, in the spirit of Love, money was handed over graciously and generously.
On a lark, I, too, stood at the entrance and panhandled for awhile. I made twenty or thirty bucks in no time. Enough to eat and get high and pay for gas.
Inside I met up with waiting friends who had amazingly made it to the front row! I plopped down and we began a marathon of grass inhalation and musical ablution.
We were drenched in sound and it was as if the outside world had stopped existing. There was no war in Vietnam. There was no draft. There were no bras. There were a lot of no bras. There was nothing negative nowhere. There was only the Texas Pop Festival. And for three days, all was right with the world.
People were into the handmade crafts that many folks had brought to the festival to sell. Some sat passively among the crowd displaying their wares. I got into a conversation with a group who made the God's Eyes: colorful geometric Indian weavings on crossed sticks. They weren't selling so I told them I'd sell them for them. No charge.
I gathered up a handful and wended my way through the throngs peddling the good luck charms to any and all. I sold out in minutes. I brought the money back to the group and was told I could keep it all, they'd make more, I'd gotten their business off the ground for them, it was worth the investment. I enjoyed the selling trip and went in search of other items. I remember selling lots of stuff that afternoon, but I was too stoned to remember what all of it was.
None of it was drugs.
Of one thing I am certain: I never sold any drugs. Never. Not then. Not ever. I'd buy, but I never sold. I figured the constabulary was more interested in dealers than casual users. In my life I was never stopped, searched or arrested for drug activity.
That first night I left tired and proud of myself for having contributed to the betterment of some very nice businesses and their talented proprietors.
Lesson: It doesn’t hurt to build Karma Kredits.
On the way home I picked up a young man hitching back to Dallas. It was 2 or 3 am and the music was still filling the North-Central Texas night.
He kept saying I looked familiar to him. I told him I was selling God's Eyes earlier: he might have seen me then. No, it wasn't that.
"Hey! You were out front panhandling today, weren't you?” he realized.
"Yeah", I admitted.
"I gave you a buck!" he reminded me.
"Oh,yeah? Thanks."
"Yeah, I gave you a buck...and you're driving this nice car?” he was getting wise.
"Do you know what the payments are on this baby?" I rationalized. The baby was a brand new 1969 metallic blue Pontiac GTO! I'd just gotten it and, boy, did I love it.
I said I might have a great car, but I was still broke and needed the money. I told him Karma had brought us together again that day so I could give him a ride home and earn his dollar...for gas.
He bought the reasoning of it. And all was still well in the world.
The second of the three day bash I met a woman there named Bridget. Bridget was alone and hanging out. Literally. She had massive, unbridled breasts that were peeking through her unbuttoned blouse screaming for attention. And getting plenty of it.
Everyone's eyes were on her as she stood alone and swayed to the music. She was beautiful and not wearing makeup, sunshine blond, with her hair cut short barely touching her shoulders. She was the slightest bit plump but not fat. She was a beautiful flower child in her twenties enjoying the music. And she, unbelievably, was alone.
These were days when you "Said it like it was". "Tell it like it is" was the phrase and I couldn't help it. I was smitten; not only by her immediate physical appearance but by her obvious innocence. Her purity of spirit enveloped my being and drew me in.
I watched her awhile. And then I gently said, "Why don't you let them out?"
She looked up at me and our eyes exchanged volumes of greetings and promises and longings, and I smiled at her.
She smiled back.
Silently, she took off her blouse. Her breasts almost smiled in the warm Texas sun. An all but audible appreciative gasp from the surrounding community of both men and women caused a gentle breeze to rush into the vicinity.
If you gave me a million dollars I couldn’t tell you what the music was at the moment but we both danced a little and ended up spending the rest of the day together.
She'd get up and wander off from time to time to get more drugs or a soda. She was never accosted or molested but she did command attention wherever she went.
The business at the photo-button concession multiplied exponentially when she agreed to pose with their customers.
We sat and watched and listened to the festival and all its sounds and made out and shared our philosophies -whatever they were at the moment- and became friends, close and intimate.
I learned her drug of choice was speed and we talked about its evils. I told her she was far too beautiful, both physically and mentally, to rot with speed in her body.
I gave her encouragement about being a woman, not just a body. I told her the baring of her breasts to the world was not so much an advertisement of her sexuality as it was an expression of her personal freedom as a woman. I told her if people wanted to see a "pair of tits" then they'd see a pair of tits; but, if the wanted to see the person she really was, they'd see beyond her breasts and know they'd found a truly beautiful soul, as I had. I wasn’t lying. I didn’t need too.
We were close that night. She came home with me and we slept in each other's arms. She was gone when I awoke the next morning.
Just a note saying "Thanks".
Almost a year later I met the man she married. He’d sought me out.
He said he wanted to thank me for saving her life; that she had completely stopped doing speed after meeting me.
Lesson: Like the wake from a pebble tossed into a calm lake, you never know how the ripples you create in your life might touch someone else.
A month after the festival I was packed and on the road to San Francisco in search of Judy and her magic commune.
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