Voluntary Peasants/Life Inside the Ultimate American Commune: THE FARM

By Melvyn Stiriss

Soon To Be a TV Series
True, far-out 60s stories—cool adventures, good vibes, humor. The psychedelic sixties come alive in this multi-level history/memoir, of a journalist who dropped out to live the times and seek enlightenment.

This is an inside look into The Farm, an amazing 1,500-member hippie commune in the backwoods of Tennessee. Enter what may seem another world—an audacious attempt to create a better way of living—an Earth-friendly, people-friendly, pacifist, eclectic, agrarian, vegan, spiritual community, cannabis church and home-birthing center and a lifestyle the world can afford.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace.”—John Lennon
That was us. We had it going.

Let your head soar free and take a trip—an extraordinary journey from Greenwich Village beatniks in the ‘50s through the psychedelic ‘60s and ‘70s—heady, revolutionary times—times rich in lessons that can possibly help us now.

In the sixties, Melvyn was a UPI wire service reporter and editor. These are far-out adventures coming of age, going with the flow—riding a powerful wave of energy that raised consciousness and shattered conventional paradigms around the world.

After attending Woodstock, Melvyn followed the energy to San Francisco, sampled the spiritual smorgasbord of swamis, yogis, gurus and chose to follow hippie “self-realized spiritual teacher” Stephen Gaskin on a round-the-country, hippie bus caravan. Hop on a fun hippie bus and journey to Tennessee to begin a new life.

The psychedelic sixties come alive in this multi-level history/memoir. Hop aboard a hippie bus caravan around the country—100 multi-colored, refitted buses with 300 settlers on their way to Tennessee to live collectively, build a town and live a fun, peaceful, meaningful lifestyle, simple, close to nature. For twelve years the community grew from 300 to 1,500 as Melvyn learned new trades working as a farmer, carpenter and mason. He built houses, ran the community kitchen and bakery, was a flour miller, telephone repairman, apprentice auto mechanic, gatekeeper, editor of the town newspaper, and a DJ on the community FM-radio station.

Voluntary Peasants conveys sixties energy, vibes, mindscape and philosophy. Beyond sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll—true tales of a remarkable experiment in collective living as thousands of high-minded people join forces, pool resources and attempt to create a gracious, meaningful, sustainable lifestyle.

After a devastating 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, Melvyn worked with The Farm’s hippie Peace Corps, Plenty International and Guatemalan Mayans building schools, clinics and houses in remote mountain villages and a clinic for Mother Teresa in Guatemala City. For this and other humanitarian projects, The Farm was awarded the “alternative Nobel Prize” the Swedish Right Livelihood Award.

Voluntary Peasants takes an up-close look at Counter Culture Hall of Fame hippie guru Stephen Gaskin—dubbed by High Times: “the Gandhi of the counter culture” and examines the author’s remarkable student-teacher relationship, Most Influential Women Hall of Fame midwife Ina May Gaskin and author of Spiritual Midwifery, the whole guru trip and the insidious workings of the phenomenon known as “groupthink.”
Voluntary Peasants is available as a 422-page paperback with 40 photos only at www.voluntarypeasants.com. Voluntary Peasants will soon be available as an audiobook.
Includes the author’s backstory: Enlightenment/What’s It Good For
Voluntary Peasants is also available as an Audiobook at Amazon’s Audible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melvyn Stiriss
• Release date: Sep 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005318369

Melvyn Stiriss

Storyteller, humorist, artist, musician, naturalist, back porch philosopher—Melvyn Stiriss was born in New York City in 1942, raised in Edgewater, New Jersey and attended the University of Richmond. Melvyn worked as a newspaper reporter in New Jersey and as a reporter, editor, and announcer for United Press International wire service in New York and Chicago.Melvyn worked a stint as a Madison Avenue publicist, a “Mad Man,” went to Woodstock, “dropped out” and followed “the powerful mysterious energy of the time”—over the edge, out of the box and into the heart of the cultural revolution—San Francisco,” where the young seeker found a weed-smoking “psychedelic Zen guru,” Stephen Gaskin. Melvyn joined Gaskin’s cannabis peace and truth church and became a founder and long-term resident member of Gaskin’s collective community in Summertown, Tennessee—The Farm.Living at The Farm, Melvyn worked as a farmer, carpenter, mason, vegan chef, miller, head baker, gatekeeper, newspaper editor and worked thirteen months in Guatemala doing volunteer earthquake reconstruction work with a team from the community and Mayans, building rural schools, clinics, houses and a health center for Mother Teresa.After leaving the community in 1984, Melvyn moved to Austin, Texas where he worked as a carpenter, co-director of Casa Marianela refuge, taught vegan cooking and worked in a dozen movies in various capacities—carpenter, set dresser, prop maker, locations, craft service and as an extra. Melvyn now lives in upstate New York, writes, hikes, plays keyboard and speaks around the country.

Book preview

Professional journalists make great effort to keep out of stories we report. Being the only experienced journalist living in our remarkable collective community, it was clearly my karma to write Voluntary Peasants. The purpose of our prologue is to inform the reader both of the historic setting, the times in which the action begins and to give a glimpse of my background, where I am coming from, what I was like before undergoing profound personal transformations in the sixties.

Introduction

For thirteen years, every day, at all times—members of our unique community enjoyed a grand sense of being in on something big—something meaningful and helpful to the world. Every day was filled with fascinating adventure, and, at no time, did life on America’s biggest commune lose it’s sense of adventure and novelty.

The Farm commune was a grand experiment in collective living and demonstrates the power of Human Spirit made manifest through group and individual labor of love. The twelve-year, 5,000-participant-24/7 peace demonstration shows—we the people with little resources can do wonderful things and make the world better. It is amazing and encouraging to see what people come up with when inspired.

Voluntary Peasants, the history of a twelve-year, group labor of love, is my 30-year-in-the-writing literary labor of love—my attempt to report an amazing experience living in a bold social experiment—to convey what it was like to live communally; what we learned and how lessons learned may help us now to achieve peace of mind and create a globally-affordable gracious, sustainable, meaningful lifestyle.

Enlightenment

What’s It Good For

Prologue

Author’s Back Story

This is what Joyce called the monomyth: an archetypal story that springs from the collective unconscious. Its motifs can appear not only in myth and literature, but, if you are sensitive to it, in the working out of the plot of your own life. The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.

—Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss

chapter 1

Greenwich Village Joy Ride

The words of the prophets are written on subway walls.

—Simon and Garfunkel, The Sounds of Silence

CEREBRAL SYNAPSES SIZZLE AND SNAP as half-century-old memories reignite and a crystal clear scene appears in the vast limitless theater of my mind. White clouds race across the face of an autumn full moon high above the well-lit George Washington Bridge. A black souped-up hot-rod Ford convertible, top down, dual mufflers roaring—races across the bridge towards Manhattan.

Zoom in and see a car full of grinning, joy-riding teenage Jersey boys. I see myself in the back seat, chilly autumn wind in my face. Guys, car, bridge, wind, dark shimmering river below, moon, clouds and starry sky above—mindstuff, all mindstuff.

The year—1957. Destination: Greenwich Village. Happily, we hot-rodded down the West Side Highway along the Hudson River. I breathe deeply brackish smells of the river as we pass wharfs and piers and colossal ocean-going ships.

We drop suddenly down a steep narrow ramp. Driver double clutches. Gears slam and tires thump on rough cobblestone, echoing off rock walls. A sharp left and we bounce merrily east on an eerily deserted, history-drenched Canal Street. Another quick left, then Pete Cohon our driver and self-appointed guide to the Village, parks on a dark West Village street.

Pete and I were classmates at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey. A year older, Pete seemed a man among boys, tall and handsome with a deep man’s voice, and he was one of the first in our class to own a car. Pete was a free spirit, artist and musician. He clearly enjoyed his life. Pete’s enjoyment was contagious, and I felt a kind of contact cool just being with him.

You fellas ready? Pete asked. We climbed out onto the street and walked as a posse into what seemed another world. Darkness and silence turned abruptly into full-blown Friday night in the Village complete with cool-looking Bohemians, artists, folk singers with guitars, flutes, bongos and congas all flowing together with wide-eyed tourists. The very air we breathed was charged with excitement and scented with aromas of exotic food, incense and an intriguing sweet smell I could not identify.

The Heat Wave was a two-bit strip joint on West Third. Over Pete’s objections, our gang of six under-age Jersey boys walked in nervous, stood tall and managed, with no IDs, to pass for eighteen. They were not fussy. I had just turned fifteen. A pale woman in a ghostly green spotlight danced and stripped slowly to the provocative drum rhythm and haunting saxophone wailing of Harlem Nocturne.

The bartender was urging us to drink up and buy another round when Pete said to us,

"Come on, let’s get out of here! This place is a tourist trap. I’ll show you the real Village."

That was when our party split in two. Half the guys stayed at the Heat Wave. Pete, another guy and I got back in the car and drove to the Half Note, an authentic cool, out-of-the-way jazz club on Spring Street. Pete explained his wealthy father was a patron to jazz musicians, and Pete knew the progressive jazz greats playing that night—tenor sax men Al Cohn and Zoot Simms and pianist/songster Mose Allison. Man! Those cats could wail, and we got to hang out with them during their break.

That night in Greenwich Village was memorable, fun and mysteriously stimulating, but the mystical highlight for me came unexpectedly in the San Remo bar men’s room. As I stood at a urinal peeing, I scanned the scribbling on the wall in front of me. One message jumped out and grabbed me—seven little words:

What is Truth? A bird sings. Zen!

BOING!!! I had never heard of Zen or pondered the nature of truth, but those seven words set something mystical in motion and rang bells in my head—bells that continue to ring to this day. My whole world seemed to shift on its axis, and I felt an exciting mysterious, indescribable something. I now believe my first whiff of enlightenment resonated something deep within, what Buddhists call bodhicitta—

a spontaneous wish to attain enlightenment, motivated by great compassion for all sentient beings.

[The San Remo was a fifties hangout for iconic beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki. One of those Zen beatniks, or perhaps all three in a drunken round-robin, could have written that free-form haiku koan.]

Turning me onto the Village that night Pete inadvertently led me to my first contact with Zen. Pete Cohon later changed his name to Peter Coyote, became a movie actor, author, activist and Emmy-winning narrator and is currently a Zen lay priest, turning more people onto Zen.

Over the next few years, I returned to the Village whenever I could to escape

humdrum suburbia existence and have little adventures, encounter interesting Bohemians, beatniks, intriguing weirdos and winos and experience a change of consciousness. I felt I just existed in New Jersey but really lived in New York.

I fancied myself not a tourist but a serious explorer of Greenwich Village mysteries—checking out coffee houses and roaming streets: the lively streets—MacDougal, Thompson, Houston and Bleecker; mysterious back alleys leading to new discoveries—rent-raising parties—with whoever showed up with a buck—sitting around dark, dingy pads, drinking cheap Gallo Muscatel and Thunderbird wine, rapping (conversing) against a background of hand drums, flutes, guitars and poetry.

And there was often the sweet smell of marijuana in the air, but having grown up on negative government propaganda, I felt I should never touch the evil weed. Unbeknownst to me however, I was experiencing contact highs. At the time, all I knew was that I felt mysteriously good and different when I went to the Village. In a Bleecker Street book store, I felt drawn to Laurence Ferlinghetti’s book of beat poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind, and I dug how reading Ferlinghetti’s poetry made me feel like I was entering an intriguing portal leading to a deeper life.

chapter 2

Life Before Psychedelics and Internet

This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation, that of space travel.—Rocket scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun

STAND AT DUSK ON THE WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN. Stand by the Hudson River, up on a rooftop, or at a west-facing window. Look across the river towards New Jersey. You see the majestic Palisades—200-million-year-old sheer cliffs running parallel to the river, disappearing into the distance—north and south—casting a growing shadow over the Borough of Edgewater, my hometown.

When I was growing up, Edgewater was a small, blue-collar factory town with a spectacular view of New York City. Now Edgewater is a pricey place to live. In the forties and fifties, I thought I lived in the best location on the planet, the center of the Universe where I enjoyed small town charms, woods, cliffs and the mighty Hudson River where I fished, crabbed, swam and did some boating in friends’ boats—and then there was awesome New York City, a cheap bus ride or hour hike away.

Lying in bed at night, I enjoyed hearing a distant train across the river, racing through the darkness down the track for Grand Central Station. Some foggy nights, I was serenaded to sleep by ship horns of distant ocean liners in New York Harbor. Summer nights, with no air-conditioning and bedroom windows open, I took pleasure hearing happy barroom piano music and singing from the Friendly Tavern down the street, as off-key drunks sentimentally sang, Peg O’ My Heart and That Old Gang of Mine.

I believe I was conceived a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, on or about New Year’s Eve, 1941—a time when my parents likely had a few drinks and got loose and jiggy, because nine months later, I was born—October 3, 1942. That same day, Germany launched the first V2 rocket into space—ushering in the Space Age—making me a true Space Age baby.

I was raised Jewish in an extended family setting. The whole mishpucha (Yiddish: family) lived together in a modest, three-story, seven-unit, gray-shingled, steam-heated apartment house at 1518 River Road, a mile down Fort Lee Hill from the George Washington Bridge.

The family lived in three apartments and rented out the other four. There was Grandma, a nice old, Yiddish-speaking Russian immigrant; an aunt and uncle, the town electrician who had dreamed of being a lawyer until his father made him quit college to work in the family hardware store in Harlem; sometimes another uncle, a Harlem plumber who once secretly boxed, until his father found out and made him quit. Then there was my father, who tried many things but wound up working in a factory; Mom, my younger sister and four cousins.

We ate typical Jewish cuisine: pastrami, salami, gefilte fish; the K-Group: kasha, knishes, kreplach and kishka (stuffed cow intestine); chicken soup, matzo balls, bagels and lox, whitefish, herring and of course highly prized Chinese and Italian food. When I got a little older, I enjoyed sneaking bacon, ham, pork chops and Chinese barbecue ribs.

[Who knew I would become a vegetarian?! A vegan no less!]

I grew up straitlaced but a rebel without a cause. I had a keen sense of being different, because I was one of the few Jews in town. I had chores to perform to earn my dollar-a-week allowance—sweeping, mopping, dusting, raking leaves, shoveling snow, checking the furnace; collecting rent from tenants.

A typical small town American boy of that era—I loved movies, comic books, radio and TV shows. A bit of a nerd, I read books, collected coins, stamps and rocks. I joined the Police Athletic League, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts; enjoyed wearing a uniform, earning badges and rank and aspired to become a military officer when I grew up.

In my teens, I enjoyed low-budget adventures into New York, starting with a walk across the bridge with a buddy, then sneaking under a subway turnstile to save a dime to ride the A train downtown to experience Times Square and Chinatown to eat chop suey and buy illegal-in-New Jersey firecrackers.

I have always been drawn to the far-out. I had a fascination for astronomy, which led to deep thoughts about the universe and God. I enjoyed how it made me feel to contemplate: What is God? What is beyond the Universe? And, what is my significance in all this vastness of infinity?

Whenever I was out of doors at night I was on the lookout for flying saucers and passionately hoped to see one. Just before falling asleep, I conducted mind experiments—self-hypnosis attempts to astrally project—possibly with some success. I wished to travel to the future.

One fateful day, rummaging in the cellar, I found a dusty old book—Cosmic Consciousness by R. M. Bucke—historic cases of people suddenly enlightened by overwhelming mystical experiences that transformed them dramatically into some of the world’s great genius inventors, artists, poets and spiritual masters. Now, at least I thought I knew what to strive for—cosmic consciousness.

chapter 3

My Life in a Nutshell

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities,

we too will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics,but for our contribution to the human spirit.—President John F. Kennedy

CONSIDERING BECOMING A PSYCHOTHERAPIST, I attended the University of Richmond, got bored with psychology after it turned into statistics, and majored instead in English and minored in journalism, speech and dramatic arts.

Starting with bar mitzvah money, I had been saving for college ever since I was thirteen by working summers as a ride operator at Palisades Amusement Park, drugstore soda jerk, darkroom assistant, golf caddy, and I did yard work and odd jobs for neighbors. At that time Richmond cost a stunningly cheap $1,200 a year for tuition, room, board and all fees! Books ran a little more than a hundred a year.

The day I arrived in the old capitol of the Confederacy, the big smelly Greyhound bus lumbered into the station, expelled a sneeze of airbrakes, and the driver announced,

Richmond!

Inside the station, I saw four restroom signs:

White Men, Colored Men; White Women, Colored Women

During the next four years at the then all-white university, the only African-Americans I ever saw were cooking and serving our food and cleaning our rooms.

I enjoyed disc-jockeying on the new campus radio station WCRC. Senior year I landed a job as a DJ/announcer on classical music station WFMV. Growing up, I loved radio and was now thrilled to be on the other side of the mic—cueing records, playing music, reading ads, public service announcements, stock market reports and news.

November 22, 1963—UPI teletype bells were ringing like crazy. I quickly put on a record, ran into the news wire room, tore off a yard of copy from the rapidly chattering printer and ran back to the announcer booth, reading along the way. Stunned, I pulled myself together and read into the microphone the historic sad news—President John F. Kennedy was dead.

The draft was breathing down my neck, and my protective Jewish mother managed to save me from fighting in Vietnam by conniving a letter from our family doctor stating I should not do strenuous activities like running because I had had knee surgery. Got me a 1-Y classification. Thanks, Mom!

A Transcendental Dental Experience, Nirvana in a Dentist Chair

I enjoyed my first surprise, out-of-body, cosmic experience at age 18 in a dentist chair. Our family dentist placed a rubber mask over my nose and mouth, turned on the nitrous oxide and said,

I think you will like this.

I did. Big time. Instantly, laughing gas euphoria filled my entire body, and a rapidly flowing river of images filled the blown-wide-open theater of my mind, and I found myself on an excellent mind journey into Space—soaring away from Earth. It seemed I left my body in the chair at the mercy of the dentist while my consciousness soared freely—passing planets, comets, stars, and galaxies. Suddenly, there appeared—Mickey Mouse. I dug Mickey but wanted to get back to the space voyage. Mickey faded. Space travel continued, and that was when I realized:

I can control what I see with my mind! I soared towards what seemed Infinity and wondered, Now, how did I get to here? What was the logical chain of thoughts that brought me to this point? I struggled to mentally retrace the whole trip and flashed, If I could comprehend the logical chain of thoughts that brought me to this point, I would get the Big Picture, and understand Everything!

[In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James recognizes nitrous oxide to be a way to have a mystical experience. However, caution must be taken.]

Newspaper Reporting

I got my first job after college as a reporter for The Record in Hackensack, New Jersey. The Record was a large daily newspaper with a classic newsroom—bustling reporters, editors, old-timers in suspenders—everyone smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and typing madly on manual typewriters. CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! Classic! I learned the ropes, got good experience and moved to the Hudson Dispatch, in Union City, New Jersey another daily newspaper.

Politics

Hoping to moonlight, I looked into Edgewater politics. I dropped into the Belle Ann tavern, across the street from Borough Hall. Davey O’Shea, the owner, was tending bar. Davey was head of the Edgewater Democratic Club. My parents were blue-collar democrats, and a Democrat mayor helped me get a job, so I thought myself a Democrat and offered my writing service to Davey. He declined.

Just then, Francis P. Mac Meehan, the Republican candidate for mayor, walked in. Mac was a good-looking, likeable, hard-working man from a big Irish family. I had worked with Mac moving furniture and once drove one of his jalopy moving vans for a wink-and-a-nod State safety inspection, while I was an inspector.

Without any reservation, I pivoted on my bar stool and offered to write for the GOP. Mac and I shook hands, and I went to work for the Republicans writing press releases. For the next couple of months, I was wined and dined by campaign people, taken to parties and rallies, and treated as a minor VIP. That year, the whole Republican ticket for councilmen won, and Mac won, becoming Edgewater’s youngest mayor.

Marijuana

Around this same time, I visited Joel, a college buddy. To my surprise, Joel invited me to partake of marijuana with him and his Bronx neighborhood cronies. Joel made it seem fun, and I trusted him, so I decided to have an open mind and try marijuana.

First feelings—subtly pleasant, then very pleasant, then euphoric. I got giddy, laughed a lot and felt good. After awhile, I thought,

"Wow! This is great! This is how I am supposed to feel!"

Marijuana for me was a gateway—not to hard drugs (I never touch hard drugs)—but a gateway to what some call higher consciousness. Suddenly, life was lighter, more fun, more beautiful and vastly more interesting. I found myself returning weekly to the Bronx—buying small quantities of weed in $10-matchboxes.

United Press International

I landed a job as an editor at the then-prestigious United Press International wire service, UPI, and got to follow in the honored footsteps of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid and Helen Thomas.

December 31, 1966—I drove alone to Chicago, rented a small studio apartment and went to work on the graveyard shift, midnight until eight-thirty a.m. With a deadline every hour, I was one of six overnight editors on UPI’s National Radio Desk—writing world, national and regional news in broadcast style for radio and TV stations around the country.

Eight-thirty a.m.—I followed suspendered old-time editors down below Michigan Avenue into the Billy Goat for cheeseburgers and beer and the opportunity to hang with old pros.

January 26, 1967—Approaching midnight, with warrior-like dedication, I braved a raging blizzard on foot, pushing myself through biting wind and snow, determined to traverse over two miles to the office.

I made it and prepared an audio report based on firsthand experience as well as the Reuters wire report and read into the phone a sixty-second blizzard report that went something like,

This is Mel Stiriss, United Press International, in Chicago. A record-breaking blizzard has completely shut down the city of Chicago, O’Hare Airport and most of the Midwest. Thousands of motorists are...

On the other end of that call was an editor in the Audio Department in New York. He, in turn, sent the report out to radio and TV stations around the country, who then played the report on the air.

My career as a broadcast journalist seemed to be taking off. But as luck would have it, I got involved with a woman in the office, and she got involved with a head honcho from New York. I found them together. The creep was married and considered me dangerous to have around.

Next day, at a brief awkward meeting, the boss offered me a job in the Audio Department in New York. I packed up and drove back to New York, found a cheap furnished room in Ft. Lee, near the GW Bridge, and commuted to UPI in the Daily News Building, 220 East 42nd Street.

A typical commute to work. A gray morning. In step with the herd I descend a long flight of steps down to the Bridge Plaza bus stop. A smelly city-bound bus idles noisily at the curb, spewing black exhaust as cheerless commuters board in grim silence. I find a seat in the rear near two African-American women who are talking loud, laughing and having a good time. In this bus full of gray, down-at-the-mouth people, these two jolly women are Christmas lights brightening the darkness. They clearly knew how to enjoy life, and I envy them.

Routinely every morning at UPI soon after I arrived in the office—the phone rang. Only one there, I answered. It was our brave man in Saigon filing his daily report on the war. I record the call, edit out dead spots, tighten it up, cutting tape and letting it drop to the floor. Then I entered it into our hourly transmission to radio and TV stations around the country. Once a week, I stepped into a small booth and recorded a week roundup of U.S. civil rights and racial news for Jo-Bug—Radio Johannesburg, South Africa.

Grateful Dead

June 1—I was handed a tape recorder and assigned to cover the Grateful Dead’s first New York free concert in Tompkins Square Park. I took a cab downtown and found the Dead playing their new California sound for a big crowd, everyone dancing, smoking pot and passing joints—right out in the open!

After the show, I spotted Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh sitting on a rock by himself. When I got about six feet away—BANG! I felt like I had run into a wall—an invisible wall. I sensed this oddity had something to do with California, the Haight-Ashbury love-ins and be-ins appearing on the evening news.

Recently, I learned Phil Lesh hated dealing with the press, and there he was, probably banged out of his head on LSD made by chemist Owsley Stanley, the Dead’s equipment manager, and high on the energy of playing a concert in New York, and here comes this guy in a tie with a tape recorder. Phil was likely vibing hard,

"Beat it! Go away!" or vibes to that effect.

June 12—President Lyndon B. Johnson was in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, and tens of thousands of protesters—both for and against the war—were massing on Park Avenue. Uniformed men with rifles lined rooftops. UPI sent me to cover it.

Park Avenue was jammed with demonstrators, signs, banners, drums, bugles and bullhorns. Hawks waved flags, shook fists and hurled insults at pacifists. Peace demonstrators yelled back. Angry voices roared through bullhorns,

"Hey, Hey, L-B-J. How many kids did you kill today?"

And I was right there in the middle of it all—recording ambient sounds, interviewing people and feeling generally overwhelmed, in over my head, but I was getting bigger assignments and thoughtt I was on a roll as an up-and-coming reporter, so I expected a promotion when the boss called me into his office. This was the same boss I caught with my girlfriend back in Chicago. The prick fired me! I was blown away, but was too naive to fight unwarranted dismissal.

Feeling a victim, I walked city streets aimlessly and found myself in Central Park, where I heard music in the distance. I followed the sound. It grew louder. I broke into a trot, passed a lake, fountains and trees into a clearing with a band shell. And here it was—a genuine happening, a fun-filled bubble of freedom hidden in the trees, right in the middle of Manhattan.

Stony long-haired musicians blasted psychedelic rock and roll through thundering loudspeakers. Hundreds of people—free spirits, hippies, freaks, heads—all boogying, picnicking, throwing Frisbees, hanging out in trees, grooving and smoking pot right out in the open. I took off my tie and jacket, hid them in the bushes, and joined the merriment and realized—I’m out of the box!

chapter 4

Sold American

Madison Avenue and a Gypsy Good Time

And this above all, unto thine own self be true—William Shakespeare

OCTOBER 3, 1967—ON MY TWENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY, I decided to treat myself to a good dinner in Edgewater at Joe and Tess’ Italian restaurant. An attractive young woman and I were the only diners so I invited her to join me to celebrate my birthday. We were both glad for company and hit it off. It turned out Toni was a secretary at a Madison Avenue PR agency, the Rowland Company. I told her I was an out-of-work journalist. She said her boss was looking for someone like me and arranged for an interview.

To my happy surprise, I got the job, and POOF! Like magic, I was suddenly a Madison Avenue public relations man, a publicist. I told friends, I sold my soul. Interesting karma. I lost my job at UPI over a woman and found my next job through a woman.

Like on the TV show Mad Men, the Rowland Company had the American Tobacco Company account. My assignment: go on a national tour for Lucky Strike cigarettes with Lee Aubrey Speed Riggs—the world’s fastest tobacco auctioneer and "the Voice of Lucky Strike, who had developed a unique, melodic auctioneer chant familiar to most everyone in the forties and fifties who owned a radio—a rapid singing chant that ended declaring, Sold American!"

The agency booked Speed on radio and TV talk shows and made all our hotel and flight arrangements. First class all the way. My job was to keep the old boy company, get him to studios and flights on time and be a New York suit.

I met Speed on our plane at LaGuardia Airport. Speed, some called him Lee, was a sixty-year-old, impeccably dressed, important-looking man in a dark business suit. I would soon learn Speed was a convivial, vintage huckster and polished raconteur. This was my debut as a publicist and my first time flying, and I was nervous. Our tour took us first to Providence, Rhode Island.

Speed was a guest on a TV show, and I got to see how he worked on camera. Smooth, slick and entertaining. The old pro had a great country voice and a polished entertaining spiel about tobacco auctioneering and the Golden Days of Radio.

While telling entertaining stories, Speed skillfully slipped in plugs for Lucky Strike cigarettes, even pulling out a pack from his pocket and blatantly pointing it to the camera, having previously removed the cellophane too avoid light glare. At the host’s request, Speed did his famous auctioneer chant, ending with Sold American!

Then it was on to Boston, where Speed appeared as a guest on TV and radio shows. I called the Boston Globe and got them to send a reporter to interview Speed. Next, Detroit where Speed and I shared a TV studio breakfast with hockey legend, Gordon Gordie Howe and upcoming Las Vegas super star crooner, Wayne Newton.

From there we flew to Portland, Oregon, where I found I had free time, so I ventured out to explore—on the prowl for adventure, maybe get laid. That area of Portland was dead. No action. No clubs. A dark alley drew me. Suddenly—a door opened. Light splashed out, and a dark form appeared—an honest-to-God Gypsy woman.

Come in! Come in! You have Gypsy Good Time, she beckoned.

Cautiously, I entered a shabby, dimly lit room. Next thing I knew, two young Gypsy women were playfully coming onto me in a well-practiced grift. There was a third person present. She wore a drab, black, old-time, old-lady dress and looked a lot like a witch.

You want Gypsy Good Time? she asked gruffly. Gypsy Good Time not free!

How much?

Gypsy Good Time five dollars. You want? she demanded.

Five bucks?! That’s crazy! What the hell! I agreed to pay for one gypsy good time.

Which girl? You pick girl.

I picked the one who had lured me in. She took me by the hand, led me to a bed and gestured for me to sit, so I sat on the edge of the bed. She stood six feet away, smiling.

Oh, man! This is going to be good, I thought in rising sexpectation.

Looking into my eyes, the exotic-looking young woman began her dance. Not what I expected. No fiery gypsy dance. No steamy hot hoochie coochie. The woman, fully clothed, was doing a friggin’ vaudeville soft shoe! And as she danced, she hummed. So, here she is—hoofing and humming inanely, and here I am—watching what seems to be a Fellini movie, that I’m in.

The dancing Gypsy asked me, You like?

Yeah. Sure. I like.

You having good time?

Yeah, I’m having a good time, I admitted.

Suddenly she stopped and announced, "That’s it! That’s a Gypsy Good Time."

Wait a minute! You mean…that’s... I sputtered.

"That’s a Gypsy Good Time," announced the older Gypsy.

Too funny to get mad. Well worth five bucks for the entertainment and story.

So I left the gypsy den with no complaint, but halfway down the block something told me: Check your wallet! Damn! Twenty bucks missing! Twenty then was like fifty now, so I headed back. It was a risky thing to do, but I was young, foolish and macho. Adrenalin pumping, ready for action, knowing anything could happen, I banged on the door, until the older Gypsy opened it.

What you want?! she demanded intimidatingly.

I looked her in the eye and declared,

I can laugh for five, but not for twenty-five. I want my money.

She denied she had it. I threatened to get the cops. Then she thrust a twenty at my outreached hand in a tricky way, so the money fell on the floor between us. We stood there awhile, nose-to-nose.

I looked at the twenty. I looked at her. I looked at her cane. I wondered if she was really a man, and I had a strong premonition of that cane coming down on my head if I bent over to pick it up, so I insisted she pick it up, or I’ll get the cops. She picked it up, handed it to me, and I got the hell out of there.

Speed and I rented a car and drove through beautiful Oregon to Eugene and Medford, where Speed appeared on a TV show and a radio show. Alone in my hotel room, from out of the blue, I was seized with a gut-wrenching experience.

Suddenly, I felt overwhelming profound emptiness. This was accompanied by an alarming acute sense that something was missing—something deep inside me was missing, but I had no clue what that something was. The whole experience lasted just a few minutes, but it scared the hell out of me.

Reflecting with hindsight: Alone in that hotel room, I was undergoing a profound life crisis—call it an existential crisis, an identity crisis or a spiritual crisis. I can’t say, but it was, for sure, a crisis. At twenty-five, I was shallow and callow and had no moral compass or ethical concern about the consequences of my work selling cigarettes. Focused solely on my new career, I had been paying zero attention to my spiritual nature—what some call soul.

Every day I heard Speed proclaim on shows,

Sold American.

Now, it seemed I, myself, was quickly becoming a Sold American.

We flew to San Francisco, where the trip got so interesting I forgot all about my identity crisis. After some gigs around the Bay Area, Speed went off on his own, and I was a free bird, staying at the posh Drake Hotel. I treated myself to a fine meal and drinks on expense account in an upscale haute cuisine restaurant, and then decided to go see the hippies. I devised a costume of jeans, t-shirt, the fuzzy liner from my trench coat, and took a cab to the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

Stepping out of that cab was stepping into what seemed another world—the sixties in full psychedelic swing: hippies, heads, freaks, trippers, stoned street people, runaway teens, some Hell’s Angels and orange-robed chanting Hare Krishnas. I wandered around all night, smoked pot and dug a far-out light show, deafening music and free-spirit dancing in the Straight Theater.

Cab back to the Drake. No sleep. Quick change into suit-tie-and-pocket-handkerchief persona. Bleary-eyed, I hailed a cab and got Speed to a TV show, then we raced to the airport, where I found myself in an Admiral’s Club—a secret ongoing hidden-from-the-public party lounge staffed by smiling flight attendants, then called stewardesses, serving caviar, hors d’oeuvers, and champagne.

On to the Santa Barbara Biltmore. I was on a roll of fancy hotels, well-appointed dining rooms and lounges—L.A. and San Diego. I went to a bullfight in Tijuana. Then on to Flagstaff and New Orleans.

On assignment for the Rowland Company, I escorted two Time-Life editors to the WOR Radio studio to appear as guests on the Barry Farber Show. I hung out in the studio and listened to the show while looking through the photos in their book The Hippies and thought, Wow! That looks like fun!

My boss called me in, told me they had gotten as much mileage out of Speed

Riggs as they could, the blush was off the rose, and I was again, out of a job.

chapter 5

Soul Search and Rescue

With each passing moment, a soul sets off to find itself.—Rumi

JOB HUNTING CAN SUCK THE SOUL RIGHT OUT OF YOU. Hope fades. Frustration, defeat and depression set in. I looked for work in area newspapers, radio and TV station news departments, the United Nations, Voice of America and showbiz talent giant, the William Morris Agency. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I decided to get daring and put on my best suit, drove to the NBC Building and applied for a job as a Tonight Show talent coordinator. Nothing came of it but while at NBC I explored studios and noticed they were taping the Tonight Show. I walked closer and was able to stand unchallenged inside the entrance to backstage. And there, not ten feet away, stood comic legend Jerry Lewis.

Johnny Carson himself came backstage to visit a moment with Jerry and then returned out front. There was a man with Jerry, a man wearing a suit much like mine. Jerry straightened the guy’s tie and gave him a couple of playful, stage slaps in the face, and I thought, Ouch! I don’t want that guy’s job.

In his book Critical Path, visionary genius/inventor/author R. Buckminster Fuller suggests everyone take a year off to travel, observe, and remember what it was we really wanted to do before we got stuck in dehumanizing, mind-numbing jobs. The summer of ’68 seemed the perfect time for me to take such a break from the rat race and learn what it really means to go with the flow and see where that takes me. I had cheap rent and some money saved, so I gave up looking for work and entered what seemed the next level in my evolving liberation.

Strange but True

Through a serendipitous connection and strange quirk of fate, the American Psychologists Association hired me to do research in preparation for a debate on New York radio—a debate about LSD with the high priest of acid, Dr. Timothy Leary, who was passionately pro LSD, versus APA spokesperson Melvin Hermann. I was instructed to find studies that said, LSD bad.

chapter 6

Discovering the LSD Portal

The Cat with Mystic Eyes

For many of us, experimenting with drugs was more a matter of covering all the bases in a search for what might be helpful and positive. Getting high or escaping was not the point.

—Mark Vonnegut, Eden Express: Memoirs of Insanity

JAMES WILLETT MOSELEY was the son of U.S. Army General George Van Horn Moseley, former Deputy Chief of Staff to General Douglas MacArthur. General Moseley was a notorious anti-immigrant and anti-Semite. Jim’s mother owned a shipping line and left her son a small fortune.

Jim was a fun-loving weirdo, as opposite his father as he could be. When he inherited his money, Jim dropped out of Princeton University, traveled extensively and became interested in the then-hot field of flying saucers. Jim wrote and published a monthly magazine, S.A.U.C.E.R. News, "the official publication of the Saucers and Unexplained Celestial Events Research Society." Jim was a frequent guest on the popular late night Long John Nebel radio show.

Though ten years my senior, Jim and I were friends, and I attended one of his drinking parties in Jim’s smoky Ft. Lee apartment where I found a dozen strongly opinionated men in the kitchen crowded around the booze. Each man was shouting to be heard over loud recorded Incan music. Everyone was talking, sometimes all at the same time, about flying saucers, ESP, astral projection and other way-out things, while three wives retreated to a corner.

In the living room, guys were around a card table taking turns calling playing cards before they were turned over to test their ESP quotient, and a Jersey City bank teller insisted on teaching me to chant AUM and to practice the Eastern breathing technique, Hong-Sau Breath, both exercises I performed secretly, telling no one, for a few years, because I liked how they made me feel.

One man stood out in the crowd. He was tall, had dark, mystic-looking eyes and a cool Fu Manchu moustache. His name was Jonas, by day a city social worker, but in reality, the man was a Bohemian artist, photographer and free-form performance poet. One look at Jonas told me he knew something. We spoke, hit it off, and Jonas invited me to visit him in the East Village.

Kind of a Bohemian, Jonas lived with his wife and young son in a shabby but comfortable subterranean apartment, down steps from street level, near Tompkins Square Park. Minimal furniture. No TV. Jonas’s colorful abstract pastels and black-and-white street photos covered otherwise dreary walls and improved the vibe of their dark pad.

We smoked a great quantity of marijuana from a Sherlock Holmes style calabash pipe, and I got pretty high. Then Jonas read me one of his way-out poems, Dungaree Thigh and gave me a tour of his darkroom. He taught me to play the ancient board game Go.

During a lull in conversation, I asked Jonas,

What is an existentialist?

Ahhh! Delighted by the question, Jonas lit up, his Fu Manchu moustache framing his smile. Jonas dramatically raised a finger.

"Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Existentialists say, ‘I am, therefore I think.’"

Jonas seemed very pleased with his answer, with his new-found role as my guru, and with life in general.

I left Jonas’ pad feeling mysteriously stimulated. I had waxed philosophical before; wondered about God, the universe, other dimensions and such, but now a powerful energy, a drive awakened within me—a force to be reckoned with. Now, from