Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your HairMy experience living on the street has given me a unique perspective on life. You would never know it to look at me now (I don't think), the only outward signs that remain, are a few battle scars.
I can still cuss like a sailor when I forget myself, or get into street mode, which comes over me more naturally then a smile sometimes and I seem to have a sixth sense when police or danger nearby.
Even those remnants wouldn't give anyone a clue as to the far away places I have been.
In the late 80's, I was among the masses of kids below the age of twenty who were wandering the streets of San Francisco and the surrounding areas, panhandling and living in some kind of endless, twisted Summer of Love. I'm sure it's still like that there, although I haven't been underground in a long time. We were the invisible children, an entire sub-culture of young people that for whatever the reason, didn't want to be in the mainstream anymore.
How does a relatively smart, 18-year-old kid from a middle class inner-city neighborhood become voluntarily homeless? I left home for so many reasons. I wanted to be free and unfettered. I didn't want to play by societies rules. I was angry and I needed to run, to keep moving. I was tired of being in school. The January leading up to my graduation from high school, a friend of mine died in a car wreck as he was hitchhiking over Mt. Tamalpias in Marin County, if anything, it felt crucial that I go see what he saw. I think I also needed proof that he was really gone, because I never saw the body. Perhaps part of it was a drug- induced illusion that I could make it on my own in California. At 18, I was fearless, but I didn't have enough sense to find my way out of a paper bag, much less, find my way in the great Wild West.
I was a deadhead. The summer after I graduated, I flew to California, and then traveled to Oregon and Colorado with some friends from high school to go see some Grateful Dead shows. It was love at first sight from the moment I got off the plane. The jutting mountains across the bay, the crazy hills, the atmosphere, it was like paradise. I met a boy that summer, and I latched onto him because he said he would give me a place to stay if I moved out there, so I decided it was fate.
The Christmas of 1987, just a month after my 18th birthday, I asked my Mom for a one-way ticket to California, and amazingly, she complied. I guess she figured if she didn�t get me a ticket, I would have created some other dangerous scheme to get out there. I was determined. Even though I was accepted to University of New Mexico and Savannah College of Art, I felt it was my destiny to make my way to California, not college. Plus, I thought it might be fun to torment my highly educated parents with the idea that I wasn�t going to go to college at all (I was angry, remember). It was most important that I make it to the Grateful Dead shows in Oakland for New Years that year. As my Mom drove me to the airport she seemed to be moving about 20 miles an hour on the freeway.
After a few weeks with the Stephan, who I was staying with in the city, my love light went out for him, so I split. I left San Francisco, and went to go live in Bolinas, a small town in the far reaches of Marin County where the counter culture heart beat echoes loudly. I knew a few people out there, which is a good thing, because the locals there are notorious for tearing down the Highway signs that lead to the town. They didn't like 'tourists' then, and I am sure they still don't. It's a beautiful, romantic place.
My first night homeless in Bolinas I slept in a hearse. It was an unforgettable experience and I remember being so high from some potent weed that I thought I was just going to flip out, and I remember thinking to myself, I have arrived. Life was beautiful. I made friends with many of the Vietnam Vets that milled about the small town, they shared their booze and drugs, and cigarettes and the occasional sandwich. They told me their sometimes gruesome and sad war stories with me and I listened. I got a job once in an art gallery near San Rafael, but I got fired because I wouldn't sleep with one of the owners, I decided it was safer to be jobless. I went to Boulder, Colorado for a time with two girls I ran into and I met a man a good deal older then me who wanted me to stay with him forever. He said he would take care of me, but I was much too restless to be tied down, so I left.
Back in Bolinas, I hung out on the beach drinking cheap booze with my veteran homeless friends and the beach dogs that hung about the place. I made jewelry with an old guy who looked after me and expected nothing in return. I went to many, many Dead shows. I came back home once and bought a van and made my way back out West so I would have somewhere to lay my head. It was my very own lime green 73' Chevy van, with three on the tree that I called Quinn the Eskimo. Most of the time, I didn't have enough money for gas, so I often hitchhiked and walked to get around.
When I landed back in San Francisco from the Summer East Coast tour of 88', me and the crew of lost souls I had acquired over the duration of that journey were completely broke. It took three weeks to get enough gas money to get Quinn back on the road. That was a prime panhandling time, since I was the girl, I would usually do it.
'Spare a quarter'� that was my line. I would make enough money in a day to buy burritos and booze and maybe a little weed for myself, and the three guys I was traveling with. I'm not proud of that, but there it is.
During a 6 week break when it wasn't prime Dead show time, we headed up to Santa Cruz. The rent-a-cops working security on the Mall didn't like the dirty, dread-locked kids that hung out all day making bracelets and playing drums, so we were constantly being run out of there. I lived in a tent for 2 months. Then my boyfriend, a burnt-out acid kid from Delaware I met at a show who went by the name of Cricket, took my van to go on a money making expedition, he was supposed to be back that night, but he didn't show up for a week. I wound up sleeping on the lawn of a church where the sprinklers went off at 5am. That was a low- time, I didn't have enough money for a cup of coffee.
An old wretch from the Rainbow Tribe named Thomas took me in for a bit while I waited for what seemed like an eternity for Cricket to come back. I remember feeling so desperate at that point. I think I didn't eat for the first three days while I waited and waited for Cricket. When I wouldn't sleep with Thomas any more, he booted me off his property. I decided it was safer in Bolinas. Upon Cricket's return, I booted him and the rest of his band of merry gentlemen out of Quinn and headed back down the coast. What comes around goes around.
On the way back to Bolinas I traveled down the winding roads of Highway 1 in the thickest fog I have ever seen. I am surprised I didn't tumble over the mountain myself. At that juncture, I believe I was testing death with a particular fierceness, but I guess it just wasn't my time. I had stopped caring.
Back in Bolinas, I spent a lot of time walking along the rocky beach again, I was mesmerized by the pearly colors of the abalone shells and small jade rocks I found. One day I was climbing over these 6 ft. high rocks and I slipped on one when the tide came in with a sudden rush. My fall lead me to break two fingers, as they slammed against the wet rock. I walked back to town and found two Popsicle sticks and some tape to hold my fingers steady. I was tough. A bunch of us had been living in a house, 20 hippies in a two-bedroom house. At least 15 of us slept on this sectional couch where we pushed all the pieces together and slept platonically like little puppies in a pile. It got to where we couldn't come up with the rent, so we got evicted. Most of my friend's had the sense to leave soon after that. They knew when it was time to go home. I was alone.
It was at this time that I met my menacing looking dog Sheba. She took to me right away. In many ways, I still believe she was sent to me as a guardian. She would come up the mesa every morning from the house where she lived with a friend of mine and visit me in my van where I had it parked. She followed me everywhere I went and hitchhiked with me. She would jump in the car first and then wait patiently for me to get in. We were a good team and no one gave us a hard time.
Later, the transmission in my van died, and I didn't have the money to get it fixed, so I just ditched the van on the side of the road and hitchhiked back to Bolinas with my dog. Later, I gave the van away to someone who could tow it. I was the most unfettered I had ever been, I owned nothing and my friends were gone. It was just Sheba and I, against the world. I remember that it was then that the emptiness ran through my tired bones like a cold wind. I began to feel that nothing mattered. I barely existed, and I was tired and that frightened me, because I wasn't sure I had to energy to survive much longer.
I met a young drunk drifter of a man who might have killed me, but I slipped through the cracks again and escaped him to, but not until later. It was when I was trying to hitchhike back to Atlanta with my dog and the drunk drifter who I couldn't shake, that I finally realized it was time to take my Mom's final offer of a one -way non-refundable ticket back home. She knew better than to keep sending me money.
On the hitchhiking expedition attempt, it took 15 hours to get to the border of the Mojave Desert from San Jose, It was cold and Sheba was pregnant. Mostly I made the call because I was worried Sheba would have her babies in the middle of that desert and I was didn't want us to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere. If it wasn't for her, I might have really attempted a cross- country hitchhiking expedition. I'm glad I didn't attempt it. I've heard that the land out there in Northern California was spirit quest land to the Native Americans who lived there first. Looking back now, I see my time there was merely a sometimes painful yet necessary rite of passage.