Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love-An Encore

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

“Jesus, I never thought I would get here and here I am in San Francisco all in one piece standing at the foot of  Russian Hill where all the ‘hippies’ were hanging out before they went over to Golden Gate Park a few months ago and ‘blew their minds, really blew their minds from what somebody had told him about the trendy electric kool-aid acid tests, taking hits of powerful psychedelics like LSD in Dixie cups filled, for the unwary or those who preferred to pay homage to their childhood delight with name your flavor Kool-Aid, cool, ‘ Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love or Prince, and hereafter so identified reflecting the mania for the sometimes off-the-wall monikers to go with the new sensibilities of the age, to break out of the slave names as some clever wit put it with tongue in-cheek), late of Olde (very old to hear him tell it) Saco (Maine) High School Class of 1967, but just now of youth nation, youth nation descending on friendly, friend-sized, go West young man (and woman), go West, heaven said to his boon companion of three days, Benny Buzz (real name Lawrence Stein, Brooklyn High School of Science, Class of 1967), also currently of youth nation. It was Benny Buzz who, having the vast experience of having been in ‘Frisco for a week now, and having “been up the hill,” a few times already who guided Prince Love to the foot of Russian Hill  in preparation for, well, for his first summer of love experience. No, not the  eternal teen summer of love at some beach, camp or vacationland amusement park where boys ogle girls (and they back, maybe) but the long expected jail break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step of your life world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles.      

Yes, Prince Love, could write the book on hassles, hassles followed by man, or not. Just a few week before he, having just graduated from Olde Saco High, had a “job offer,” a job working as a janitor in Shepard’s Textile Mill, yeah, the ones who make those “boss” cashmere sweaters the girls are all crazy for these days. Crazy for in winter anyway because right now warm suns, California, Denver, hell even Maine suns, require nothing more than some skimpy top, shoulders showing, and a pair of shorts, short shorts depending on the legs or vanity. His father, Prescott, a longtime employee of the mills, the lifeblood of Olde Saco just then, “pulled a few wires” to get him the job for the summer before he went off to State U in the fall. Last year, last year when he was nothing but a raw hang out in front of the Colonial Doughnut Shoppe on Main Street (officially U.S. Route 1) with his boys (and occasionally girls, but only for a few moments while they picked up their orders) he would have jumped with both feet, maybe with both hands and feet, at the job to get some money for college.          

But that was then and this is now, as they say. Now, or rather the now just a few weeks or so before he got to the foot of Russian Hill, he had received word through that mysterious youth nation grapevine that parents, squares, cops, and authority guys were frantic to figure out, but who, in the end, were  clueless  about,  of a “great awakening”  that was going on in ‘Frisco. That news fed, fed deeply, into the wells of the discontent Prince Love was feeling about his own desire to break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan every step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles mentioned before. The grapevine, by the way, was not all that mysterious. Some young, long-haired, wild-looking guy dressed in a blotted multi-colored shirt (later he found out such things were called “tie-dyed,” an interesting process that was popular among the kind of back to nature, and if not back that far then maybe to some simple agrarian society, crowd who were beginning to ad hoc come up with new ideas about how to clothe, feed and transport youth nation and get away from the rat race plan every step ways) from the West Coast had come east to see his grandparents who lived on Olde Saco Beach a few miles down the road and had run into Prince Love at the doughnut shop when he was looking for some joe and cakes to tide him over before a walk on the beach and told him about what was happening on the West Coast. Simple as that, okay.     

That information, those pressing on the brain existential jail-break things that he was feeling press against his brain, and well, the cold hard fact that he had just broken up with his girl, his long time high school honey, Julie Cobb, were what drove him to seek the road west. Simple as that. Well not so simple, really, because, if the truth be known, Julie left him for another guy, an older guy who was already working in the mills (not Shepard’s but Cullen’s, the high society linen-makers), had some dough, had a boss 1964 Mustang and, most  importantly, wanted to get married, and pretty soon too. That was the sticking point between the Prince and Julia, the conventional marriage game thing that had been going on in the town since, since, well Prince didn’t know but it was pretty common. Here was the drill. Graduate Olde Saco, work in the mills, get a couple of bucks, get married, get a tiny house on Atlantic Avenue, maybe,  have two point six children, throw in a dog or two cats, and then finish up whitewashing that picket fence in front of the house with the grandchildren.

No sale, not for Prince Love. He was going to college, leave the dust of that old town behind, and make a name for himself at something before he settled down in not-Olde Saco, maybe, maybe on the settle down part but juts then he had the wanderlust, had it bad. And from what he had heard along the way on his way west, and since he had arrived in San Fran a lot of people were feeling, wondering, groping for some answers just like him. And, yeah, just like them the Prince was looking to try some dope, listen to some far out music, grab some cool chick to shack up with, and really leave that home town dust behind before going back east for the fall semester of school.                

Now you are filled in, a little, on the what and the why of Prince (and Benny Buzz who however had been right then leaving Prince to go see a man, well, go see a man about something, let’s just leave it at that)  being on Russian Hill, that classic San Francisco hill mentioned a while back.  A hill not previously known to first time Frisco Prince, although maybe well-known to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working its way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

I just remembered, you know everything, everything except how Prince Love got here which is not a big deal since he took some dough he had  originally saved up for college and used it for the Greyhound bus fare to get him here. Not for him the hitchhike road like the old time beat “beats” craved to get what they called the feel for authentic America which the Prince just slightly drenched with the end of the “beat” minute had to laugh at since according to guru Jack Kerouac’s book On The Road which he had finally read the previous summer old Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady was blazing about one hundred and ten miles per hour so the whole thing was a blur. Beside he didn’t need the hassles, man, the hassles first of Mother Breslin going crazy over the idea that he son would be some “jungle” hobo just like one of her cousins and didn’t need the hassles from weird guys picking up lone guys in Winnemucca or a place like that and then trying something funny. Not for him either merry prankster buses driven by mad monk zen masters in the heated western night since he had heard of nobody going west like that, heard the yellow brick bus road was mainly a California thing then (although not for long after the news of the summer of love filtered through the grapevine).

But this too Well, come on now, not everybody got every piece of news, especially in Podunk Maine, about the ways west, VW bus west, stick out the thumb west and that there were people, your kind of people, ready to pick you up and take you down the road a piece. Even back up on super-highway interstates to pick up a fellow youth nation straggler left on some desolate stretch fair game for hungry police eyes. Besides, after about a two-day bout with his parents about not taking that summer job, using the dough for college for such foolishness (to quote his everywoman mother), and other assorted arguments, family arguments started back in childhood, he had promised them to take the bus west. Let’s just say hassles, man, hassles and be done with it. Now we are done with the past.

Right then though, after saying a few things in parting with Benny Buzz after Benny had “scored” (you figure out what in summer Frisco ’67) about catching up with each other later, as he started walking up the hill toward the entrance to the mini-“people’s park” that was about half way up Russian Hill Prince spied a tall young man, maybe a few years older than him although such things were always hard to tell with making guys look older beards, the trauma of three-day drug haggards, and glazed looks.  He was, at second glance,  tall but not as tall as Prince, lanky, maybe not as lanky as him either and from the look of him with his drug stews diet having taken some additional pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well,  not really normally lanky.  Dressed, always worthy of description in 1967 ‘Frisco, male or female, in full “hippie” regalia, faded olive drab World War II army jacket, half-faded blue jeans, bright red bandana headband to keep his head from exploding, stripped checkerboard flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, with roman sandals on his feet).

And to draw the eye more fully to the scene this guy is sitting with two foxy looking young women. One, the younger one, maybe a high school student, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, short shorts belying West Coast origin,  and de rigueur practical road-worthy peasant blouse. A poster child for San Francisco summer of love if he ever saw one, and of his own feverish Maine night teenage desire summer or winter of love now that Julia was past. The other women, who called herself  Lupe Matin just then although the Prince found out later from the lanky guy that she had run through several monikers previously, a college student for sure , dark-haired, dark-eyed, slightly voluptuous, seemingly a little out of place with her male companion completed the entourage. (Her real name, Susan Sharp, Vassar College, Class of 1966, and “trying to find herself.”)  

Prince cast several glances at that regal company, nodded slightly, a knowing nod eyes fixed as was the fashion just then, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on the blonde (yah, he had a thing for blondes, see Julia was just that same kind of waspy blonde, minus the tan and year-round sunshine, that he fell for, fell for hard and fast), “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” The male, who Prince would later come to know as “Far-Out” Phil (Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville, Massachusetts, Class of 1964), looked at him in a bemused manner (nice touch, bemused, right).  Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this Prince traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have, thought “Far Out” to himself,  been his  brother, biological brother.

That line, that single Prince Love line, could have been echoed a thousand, maybe ten thousand times that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like-minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin.  And the women, of course.                  

That sense that Far Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred had been based on the way that the Prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Prince spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working-class kid whose  family had worked  the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast for later use after college. Josh, now fully into his Prince Love persona finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies.”

The Prince was just being a little off-handedly flirtatious as was his style when around women, young or old (old being thirty, tops), aiming his ammunition in general but definitely honing in on the blonde, the blonde now identified for all eternity as Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School, California, Class of 1968). (Phil, by the way, never ever said what his reaction to that last part of the Prince’s spiel, the flirtatious part, which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old North Adamsville corner boy Phil menace would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer of love it just passed by like so much air)  Naturally Phil, a lordly road warrior now, on the bus now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited the Prince  to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Prince Love was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.            

And of course, family, meant home, and home for Far Out, Butterfly Swirl, and Lupe Matin meant the now locally famous (West Coast local, okay) yellow brick road bus now known as Captain Crunch’s Crash Pad (after the owner of the bus, and “leader,” whatever that meant, of the expedition). Prince Love, from the first night, not only felt that he had found a home, a home that he never felt he had in Olde Saco but that whatever happened out here he would survive. And as more dope-filled pipes were passed that night, and as the music played louder into the sea-mist bay night, and lights gleamed from all directions the Prince grew stronger in that conviction. Especially when Far Out Phil, acting out of some old testament patriarchal script, came sauntering over to The Prince around midnight and whispered in his ear, “Butterfly Swirl wants to be with you, okay?”         

And that night the Prince and Butterfly Swirl were “married.”