Crater Lake National Park, June 17, 1971

Snow Still Blocked the Road Around the Lake

These stories were part of my first unpublished book from 1971. I long ago lost that handwritten manuscript but I never lost memory of the stories. They were after my childhood, but I'm including them here because they were so interesting to me and you may find them interesting, too. Strangers I met on the road and others I carried as passengers.

It started when I was a very straight and square serious engineering student at Stanford. Passing Ken Kesey's Morris Minor as I crossed over from the Ugly (Undergraduate Library, by a famous Japanese architect--currently torn down) with that psychedelically painted motorcycle and van, sculptures signifying the vagabond style of young people in those days. Hippies seemed to be everywhere. Even on campus, where sometimes passing between the Student Union and Engineering Corner, I would hear the student body president, David Harris, who was later incarcerated and married the older, Joan Baez, speaking to the students in the Fountain Plaza about his resistance to the Vietnam War and the draft.

I would pick hippies up on my way to campus or back and give them a short ride. They were mostly quite young, and seemed rather wanting to catch a quick ride by thumb rather than take public transportation, available, but probably not, convenient. Rides were easy to get, especially for the girls. I recall one time picking up a couple with a dog. I think she sat in the front seat, while he held onto the dog in the backseat. They smelled so badly of body odor I didn't smell the dog at all. Was glad that they didn't ride very far.

In the apartment where I lived, there were a number of stewardesses who seemed to be partying all the time. There was one, older mother hen, who kept the party going. One time when I was in her apartment, a soldier who had re-upped with a bonus of $3500 appeared. The money was burning a hole in his pocket. He wanted to celebrate in San Francisco. But he had no transportation.

I had become somewhat familiar with the hotspots in the City, and volunteered to be his driver and guide on a tour for him and his buddies. Of course, the first place we stopped was North Beach. First, we took in the show at Yvonne D'Angiers's club, and then later, at Carol Doda's, where she did her famous act of coming down from the ceiling dancing topless on top of a grand piano that someone was playing. Her surgically enlarged breasts were unsightly compared to Yvonne's. But Carol started it all, pushing the obscenity rules in the City that spread throughout the country later. And then, we took in Finocchio's, a place that featured female impersonators with a long line to get in every night.

I remember we had a meal in an Italian restaurant along with all of the drinks paid for by the generous soldier. But he and the others were hungry for something more, so I took them off to a district I knew, where three of them went inside a house. One guy who claimed he was engaged and didn't want to upset his fiancée, stayed in the car with me. I'm certainly glad I didn't go in because when they came back out they were ribbing each other about the others' performance. They watched?

Usually, on a Saturday, I would drive up into the City and see more sights that I hadn't seen before and just enjoy the strange ambience that the place had back then. I recall taking two young girls that I picked up on my way north. But only one that I remember well. She looked to be about 14 and I didn't ask. I asked her where she wanted to go, and she firmly told me, "The Fillmore Auditorium." I didn't know where that was, but I was flexible and offered to take her all the way there.

It turned out that the Fillmore Auditorium was on Fillmore Street, a predominately black area. The Black Panthers had an office there. But the auditorium had become famous for rock acts coming to San Francisco. While I listened to all of their songs on my AM car radios and my AM/FM digital clock radio that Sony produced, I wasn't really tuned into the concert scene that young girls, like her, were. I dropped her off and went on to do other things, sometimes waiting in line to go to the Underground Midnight Movies. I still have that membership card.

After a night on the town, sometimes with the Bay Area Singles Club that I belonged to, I would stop at the Red Roof restaurant In the wee hours that was like Denny's to have cheesecake and coffee while watching weird looking, probably actors, people coming and going after their shows, still in makeup and costume.

One day, I remember driving by Panhandle Park. That may have been where I took one of the girls that I couldn't remember. I parked there with my car window down listening to a band that was playing. There was a huge crowd of hippies there. I didn't fit in with the clothes that I was wearing, so I didn't get out of the car to go into the crowd. The band may have been the Grateful Dead, for all I know.

Later, I did go to see the Youngbloods perform their hit, Get Together, in People's Park, San Jose. By accident observed Janis Joplin holding a bottle of Southern Comfort and extolling the virtues of "little blue pills," from the stage. Later, those pills sent a number of the takers to the hospital. Months later, I drove alone back to Pleasanton to the fairgrounds to see headliner José Feliciano and a number of other bands play one weekend. The high point of that day was watching a crowd of young people assaulting the fence to get in without paying. Watching a policeman on a horse unable to stop them and the dust flying as they did. Seemed to have lost that picture, but there was an old guy (center-hands up-dancing) feeling no pain that I photographed, too.

But it was my trips out of town, longer distances, where I found company in hitchhikers. On my first trip to explore Northern California, there was a young guy by the side of the road that looked okay just as I was leaving San Francisco on 101. He immediately introduced himself as, "Jarret Pence, from Indiana, I'm a bum." With some authority.

From his age and his near shoulder length straw blonde hair, I inquired, "You're a hippie?"

"No, I'm a bum!"

"Where are you going?"

"I don't care. Just want to get out of the city for a while."

That settled it. I had never seen a young bum before but San Francisco was crawling with them, old ones, especially down in the Mission District where I sometimes parked to take the cable cars. They panhandled vigorously, but I always ignored them and went on my way.

I had a habit of not asking questions of anyone riding with me. But along the way, Jarret shared with me that he had worked with horses in Southern California for a while, but ended up leaving there to just be a bum. When we stopped for gas, he bought a couple of things, and when we got underway, he opened a can of pork and beans and ate right out of the can. A little way farther on we were in an area where it was all lava from a long-ago flow. He suddenly had to, "Go!"

I pulled over and he wandered off trying to find a place to hide. There wasn't any. Some distance from the car, he squatted down and relieved himself. It must've been the beans. I must have stopped to eat somewhere, but I generally bought only a hamburger, packaged sandwich or a hotdog while getting gas and a cup of coffee. If I bought anything for him, I don't remember.

I do remember we drove down to the coast at sunset. It was really beautiful, deserted and wildly peaceful but cold and windy. We left the coast and pulled off in a little rest or picnic area for the night. I believe we both slept in the car because it was cold by the Pacific. I was on the front seat and he was on the back. There were lights nearby from a house. Suddenly, there was a knocking on my car window and it was the Sheriff. He told us that people nearby were afraid and called him. We told him we'd be gone in the morning. He let us stay there and sleep.

A little farther up the road, I decided to go one way, and Jarret wanted to go another, so he got out and I drove on. Sometime after I got back to my apartment and work, I got a call from him saying that I had his swimming trunks. I didn't know that I had them, but they were in my glovebox. On my next trip to San Francisco, I stopped at the skidrow hotel off Mission Street where he told me he stayed. I checked at the desk and they told me he was out, but I was able to stuff his swimming trunks in his mailbox. He always left me wondering why a young handsome guy like him was bumming. Could've been James Dean. Will never know. I suspected he may have been gay.

During another excursion north over the Easter holiday, I drove as far as Seattle, and then, up around Mount Rainier, my DeSoto slipping and sliding on a very icy road over Cayuse Pass. And then, my way blocked from going east of the mountain because the road ahead to Chinook Pass required chains and I didn't have any. I descended south and ended up in the Avenue of the Giants in Northern California that evening. I slept in the car in a turnout. In the morning, getting up early, I walked down to a stream that flowed nearby. It was like being in a cathedral. High up in the branches, the sun peeked through with beams highlighted by dust motes, like I had seen in barns.

I had all day to get home, so I headed south on California 1. I hadn't gone far when I spotted a boy with his thumb out. I didn't know how old, but he looked to be about 12 and dressed warmly against the cool fog of the morning. He stunk. Rode only about 5 miles, but I learned that he had been herding sheep. Hence the reason he smelled so badly. But I was glad he only rode that short distance.

A short while down the road, there was an older man with a hat and glasses with his thumb out. I had a bit of aversion to picking up old bums, but this fellow was well-dressed, so I stopped.

The man literally surprised me when he opened my passenger door and stuck his hand out. "Hello, I'm Oliver P. Henderson, child psychiatrist. Can you take me to San Francisco?"

I shook Dr. Henderson's hand, he got in and began to tell me his story. He had gone to Vancouver to visit his son who was dodging the draft. The son had the family's Volkswagen van. He wasn't doing well with Canadian authorities after a car accident, so Oliver had taken the bus there to help bail him out. Instead of taking the bus home, he decided to hitchhike. Told me he had some "interesting" rides through Washington and Oregon getting to this place where he had spent some time with his daughter, 17, living in a commune with her boyfriend.

There had been originally about 30 free souls that had left San Francisco to get away from the debauchery going on there at the end of the Summer of Love to live the clean life in the mountains near the sea. Idyllic as it sounded, their crops failed and most left, leaving only Dr. Henderson's daughter, her boyfriend, and another couple lasting through the winter. All they had to eat was cake and potatoes when he got there.

I assume that Oliver took them to a store and bought some groceries. He told me that he wanted her to come home with him, but she had decided to stick it out longer. Telling me he felt assured that she would be home, soon. While there, the other young man had been in jail because he had shot a deer out of season. While in jail he had acquired a bad case of crabs that the good doctor treated and told him how to get rid of. He was rather nonchalant about his daughter, repeating, "She will be home soon."

Down the road there was a little roadside store and he asked me to stop. While there, he bought some Fig Newtons. I remembered eating them as a child. They turned out to be a pleasant snack as we continued on. Oliver told me that Fig Newtons were one of the most nutritious cookies and a nice snack while on the road. He also asked me to stop at a little cove that he knew up ahead. There was a steep trail down to a beautiful beach that wasn't very long between two rocky outcroppings that jutted out into the Pacific.

As we walked along the beach, he continually looked for different shells, described the plant life and generally gave me an education about all the fauna and flora that he knew so much about and I didn't. Rarely being at such a beautiful, secluded place like this, devoid of people but rich in landscape. Dr. Henderson let me know that he knew a lot about coastal life.

Oliver liked my car and told me so. So I told Dr. Henderson about my engine troubles. He then told me that he had a 1953 Studebaker that needed engine work. He was going to take that to go see his son and daughter. But the guy who worked on the engine botched the job. And he said he was suing him. In the meantime, the car was inoperable and that's why, giving up his VW van, he had taken the bus to Vancouver and see his son.

Henderson was actively against the Vietnam War. So active that he told me he had laid down in front of trucks exiting the Napalm Plant in Redwood City and was jailed for doing so. He fasted and sent his son North to Canada so that he wouldn't be drafted. I found a very long article with a very short mention of his name in the paragraph here:

"The headline read, “Human Bulwark Fails to Halt Napalm Truck”.  A photograph with the story is captioned, “Bearded protester Aaron Manganiello, 23, lies in front of delivery truck attempting to enter Napalm factory at Port of Redwood City Monday”.   Manganiello was arrested for creating a public nuisance along with local psychiatrist, Oliver Henderson, a former member of the San Mateo County Health and Welfare Department who had been removed from his position for refusing to sign a loyalty oath.  Confronted by Police Chief William Faulstich and informed that he and his group of protesters were breaking the law, Henderson shouted, “We’re trying to uphold a greater law.”   The police chief made the insightful comment that the incident was a publicity stunt."

But the good doctor's banter stopped when he spotted two girls up ahead hitchhiking. Without hesitation, he told me, "Let's pick them up."

The girls were also going to San Francisco and looked to be about 15. As soon as we got underway, they immediately asked Henderson, "Do you have any weed?" Obviously, old guys like him on the road always had weed for girls hitchhiking. But he told them, "No," telling me later that that happened to him all the time. So many old guys were purveyors of dope of various kinds to get young girls.

Oliver remained quiet until we dropped the girls off in San Francisco. And then, he told me that he was listening intently to their talk the whole time they were in the backseat. As a psychiatrist, he was very interested in what young people were doing and thinking.

By that time I knew that he lived in Palo Alto, close to where I lived in Redwood City, so I took him all the way home. When we got there, I accompanied him inside the house and was quite surprised at the unabashed hugging and kissing his wife gave him! Her first worried question was about their daughter. Once again he reassured her, "She will be home soon." That didn't seem to quell Mrs. Henderson's worry much.

They invited me to dinner and Mrs. Henderson cooked a chicken for us. She told me that she had worked with Stanford drama as a volunteer. I told her that one of my roommates that I couldn't stand, Steve Vickers, was a MFA student in set design. She told me she had worked with Steve. Agreed that he was very difficult. Dr. Henderson also was probably troublesome. Having lost his job, was able to travel and take the time check on his son and daughter. I found no more reference to him on the Internet.

Copyright 2020 © Ronald W. Hull 

6/3/20