The Night
Captain Crunch Cashed His Check-With Jeanbon Kerouac In Mind
By Bradley
Fox
It was a
dark, drizzly night the night in October, 2015 when Bart Webber and Sam Lowell
heard from their old on the road friend from up in Maine Josh Breslin that
Captain Crunch had cashed his check (for those not in the know that was an
old-time 1950s and 1960s expression among hipsters, be-boppers, beats and along
the edges of hippie-dom to say that somebody had passed on to the great beyond
just like among the hobos, tramps and bums out in the great railroad “jungles”
of the West the expression that some compadre had “caught the freight train
West” meant the same thing). That night, or whenever the old gang still left
heard about his demise, there must have been consideration gnashing of teeth
among guys, gals too, in places like Sam and Bart’s Carver, Josh’s Olde Saco,
North Adamsville, Riverdale, Steubenville, Ohio, Omaha, Saint Louie, and a
thousand other places where those who knew the Captain in his prime and their
primes wound up. Maybe wept a tear for their lost youth when everything was
possible and knowing the Captain made you believe that hard fact even in the
face of contrary evidence as the decade of the 1960s moved along. Yeah, that’s
it, maybe wept a tear for their lost youth.
See Captain
Crunch, real name Jonathan Fuller, Yale Class of 1957, but always Captain
Crunch to all who knew him in that time when everybody and the uncles and aunts
were shedding their real names and reinventing, or trying to reinvent
themselves, in many cases that was a close thing, had caught the fever caused
by the stir of Jeanbon Kerouac’s classic 1950s road novel On The Road (although the events in that book had actually occurred
in the late 1940s the vagaries of the publishing industry and Jack’s hubris
combined to delay the news of the new dispensation much to his chagrin). That
novel had come out the year the Captain had graduated from Yale and having been
foot loose and fancy free coming from an old moneyed family and thus unlike
many others who graduated that year not in need of a job to set himself up the
world headed out to San Francisco to check out the scene there. Took the train
out if anybody was wondering if he followed Jack’s hitchhike trail to breathe deeply
of the American night.
The scene
that was happening in that town, its doings, and its characters would
eventually be widely called the “beat generation.” (The genesis of that term
“beat” has a checkered history since both John Holmes who used it in an article
in the later 1940s and Jack who personified “beat” claimed fatherhood to the
idea but in any case Jack made the term more widely known and more
interesting.) The Captain had landed in Frisco in late 1957 and headed straight
to the City Lights bookstore over on Columbus run by the poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and a couple of other associates to see what was what. One day a
few months thereafter he had met Kerouac who had just come off one of his
famous, or infamous, three day drunk-doped up-sexed up binges and looked like
hell but who answered his questions about his take on the scene. Jack had told
him all the media stuff was all bullshit, all bullshit now not when the events
depicted in the novel occurred and that the so-called hipster beatnik clowns (his
term according to the Captain) running around with beards, berets, and bennies were
all fakers and punks although the girls, especially those all dressed in black
including their lingerie and wearing black eyeliner, who were willing to go
down for him, or on him, just because he was famous now was okay as long as
they didn’t expect anything of him except to get laid. The Captain (who had not
taken on that persona then that would come later when he drew his own acolytes
around him like Bart and Sam) hung around that scene, the edges of that Frisco beat
scene for a few years until it kind of petered out of its own inertia.
The Captain
had said later when a new generation familiar with On The Road and not much else began to ask questions about what
happened then that he had learned a lot from the beat poets, artists and
performers no question. Knew many of them who were already famous or who would
become famous in the folklore of the town Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso, Snyder, and
Cassady or have a local fame like Jake Arbus, Dixie Davis, and Guy Daniels. But
as that that movement drifted into dust he had become more interested in
expanding his self-consciousness, his karmic being, when he fit in the universe
and so he slowly drifted south to La Honda where Ken Kesey was putting together
a new dispensation around Jack’s on the road idea and the serious use of drugs
to create a new consciousness (or as Kesey would say with some candor before he
himself got famous just to get through the fucking horrible day).
The biggest
thing that the Captain picked up though as the 1950s drifted forlornly into the
1960s since the drugs could only take him so far was the idea of the road, the
road constantly travelled, in the end the idea of being “on the bus” that he
grabbed straight off from Kesey and his Merry Pranksters about 1964, 65.
Kesey’s bus, a converted real live yellow brick road school bus, the Further On
was a combination floating commune for the aimless homeless young who could not
deal with the nine to five world, a moving concert hall complete with state of
the art sound system that could handle the explosive new music coming out of
the Bay area (the uprisings of the Doors, the Dead, Jefferson Airplane and a
million other acts which the impresario Bill Graham put on at the Fillmore West
and other locales), a dope-infested caravan with every kind of dope from LSD to
horse to grass to bennies and back, and a free-lance free sex sex parlor. That
idea or series of ideas attracted the Captain and after a short stay on Kesey’s
bus he broke out on his own like a lot of people were starting to do and put
together his own bus. Whereas say in 1965 Kesey’s bus would have been subject
to talk by hipsters and gawks by the tinny tourists by the time the Captain put
his bus together named Jade Karma there were many roaming up and down the Coast
highway looking, well looking for something. That was the time, after he picked
a few acolytes, a few fellow-travelers if you like, grabbed a girlfriend,
Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Bryn Mawr Class of 1960, who gave him all the
trouble of heart and mind he ever needed since she was truly a free spirit and
free with her love, Jonathan Fuller one night, one laced LSD night, transformed
himself into Captain Crunch.
This is
where Bart and Sam (and later others from Carver, Josh from Olde Saco, the late
Pete Markin from North Adamsville and many others) enter the story. They like
half their freaking generation were restless, bored with what was ahead for
them in the nine to five world, worried about draft status and the social
situation and decided mostly from what they read in Kerouac, mostly On The Road and Big Sur and what they heard
was happening on the West Coast to hitchhike out. Sam and Bart had gone out together
after Frankie Riley also from Carver and a friend of theirs had gone out and
had met up with the Captain and the bus in Golden Gate Park one summer day in
1967. So they had gone out, hitched themselves to the bandwagon and travelled
with the Captain up and down the coast.
During that
Frisco time they had met Josh up on Russian Hill when he came by after
hitchhiking from Maine and asked for a joint. Somebody gave him one and that was
that. Later Pete Markin came and for a while Bart (known as the Lonesome Cowboy),
Sam (Mister Moonbeam), Pete (known as the Scribe), and Josh known as the Prince
Of Love) showed up and for a while formed a core of guys who kept things somewhat
stable as a ton of other people from all over who would get “on or off the bus”
at various points. Of course they all imbibed in the “drugs, sex, rock and
roll,” consciousness and some the political stuff although that tended to be
discouraged on the bus-the idea being that the nine to five world was there and
politics should be left at that door and the denizens of the bus were here so they
were on two different universes.
Bart had not
stayed on the bus long, just the summer since he realized after few months of
travelling and all the other things that went with it was not for him (he had a
girl, Betsy Binstock back in Carver who he eventually married), that while he was
not a nine to five guy (then) still he was not built for the road. Some others
would follow that same path and eventually all but a remnant would be left to
carry on as the 1960s drifted into the ebb tide of the 1970sand the road back
to “normalcy.” Sam had stayed longer, a couple of years, had a slew of
girlfriends, the longest one an ex-surfer girl Butterfly Swirl that every guy
took a shot at, and lovers, did his fair share of dope, learned about lots of
things, mind things, dug the music but eventually he saw something coming that
looked like a drag, looked like the end of the brave new world experiment they
were trying to work out. He would go back East, go to law school and prosper.
Josh had stayed even longer about four years since along the way he had
realized that he had a writing talent that he could exploit while on the road,
got several of his pieces published by the explosion of small and alternative
presses created out of the need for their “people of the light” to know
something other than the mainstream media pabulum put out daily. Eventually he
too saw the writing on the wall and that as the 1970s started drying up everything
worthwhile from the 1960s the audience he was trying to reach was disappearing,
was going back to whatever they had fled. He would continue to write for small
journals and other publications and survive pretty well.
In a lot of
ways though the case of Pete Markin kind of wrapped up the ebb tide of the
1960s with a big bow, kind of put a bummer edge on everything since he had
stayed on the road the longest, had the most invested in seeing the great
generational experiment succeed. He had been bitten hard, had had the Captain’s
confidence, had stayed with him for lots of reasons some personal some to have
a place to stay against the storms of his life but in the end he too got off
the bus. Got off the bus but that is where his childhood growing up wanting
habits that had been held in check fell apart. He had been writing but the
market for his stuff dried up quicker than Josh’s and he had no backup. No
back-up except to get involved in the international drug trade, got involved
with the evolving cartels raising their ugly heads down south of the border.
Had been blown away by some nasty gunman down in Sonora after some misdirected
drug deal went awry. Had as far as anybody got the story right tried to rip the
cartel off, go independent. Got a couple of slugs and a potter’s grave in
Sonora for his efforts. Josh said he did not know about the others stories, about
what happened later to many of those on the bus for a longer or shorter periods
of time, how they turned out but probably not much different that the stories
he knew, the stories of the ups and downs, the promises and failures of his
generation.
As for the
Captain, well until the news came that he had cashed his check he had kind of
fallen under the radar, had gotten lost in the mist of time for the Sam, Bart,
and Josh. When they had a memorial service for the Captain down at Pfeiffer Beach
at Big Sur where he had more or less stayed the last several years of his life
and later when some whizzbang kid did a documentary about the Captain it turned
out that he had stayed on the road the longest, never really got “off the
bus.” Could be seen driving up and down
the Pacific Coast Highway with his increasingly bizarre-looking and funky bus
with a couple of graying acolytes and his old-time girlfriend Mustang Sally
periodically looking, looking for something. Some of the young who were clueless
about what the bus experience meant would come by when they were parked at some
campsite and ask batteries of questions about what had happened and sat in awe as
the Captain patiently gave them some answers. Yeah, wasn’t that a time though,
wasn’t that a time. Captain Crunch, RIP.
