In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

By Stark Hunter

17 minutes... so much can happen to a person in 17 minutes... ones life can dramatically change during those one thousand and twenty seconds of inexorable time... In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by the Iron Butterfly was blasting away on Teresas little brown stereo when it happened... a swelteringly hot July afternoon in 1969, and for 17 year old Stark Hunter, life would never be the same... 17 minutes... and the entire decade of the 1960s is painstakingly revisited and remembered. Do you remember when it happened to you for the very first time? Fasten your seat belts... its going to be a very strange ride...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 6, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462824601

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Copyright © 2001 by Stark Hunter.

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Contents

I.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

II.

The Tower By The River

III.

The Pillar Of Blood

IV.

The Ocean Of Grass

V.

Dead Man On The Highway

VI.

Steel Wheelchair In The Shadows

VII.

Three Roses For Miss Annie

VIII.

Can’t Never Did Anything

IX.

Footprint On Pilgrim Way

X.

You Could Hypnotize Someone

XI.

Tales Of Naked Boys In The Locker Room

XII.

Clair de Lune in July

XIII.

Shug Shug

XIV.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

This novel is

respectfully dedicated

to all those persons,

alive and dead,

named and described

within these skinny covers.

Let it be known that most is true concerning the events and people described subsequently in this work. Just a few stretchers have been thrown in, which is always the prerogative of the writer when mere memory ultimately fails. Nevertheless, in attempting to maintain as much veracity as possible, I deliberately used the real names of real people; however, to protect the less than innocent, some names have be changed. Including my own.

S.H.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida written by Doug Ingle; C. 1968, Atlantic Recording Corporation, New York, NY.

I.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

First let me say that if I were to tell you that the State of Utah is currently six feet beneath the surface of the state of California, would you believe it? Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I. But I’m here to say that this is an absolute fact. How? . . . shhhh. . . . listen . . .

. . . It was a green stucco house; a one story green tract house only a couple miles from my pad on Hoover street. She lived below the tracks in the section of town inhabited primarily by middle class whites and Mexicans. She, herself, was a 17 year old Mexican with big brown eyes and skinny brown legs that kinda turned inward at the knees.

Hers were legs that definitely looked better in nylons, at least I thought so at the time. Back in the summer of 1969 all the chicks my age wore nylons and loud flowery dresses of lime green, strawberry red and psychedelic orange. And their hairdos all kinda looked the same-like Marlo Thomas in That Girl . . . perky, shoulder-length and curled at the ends. Some chicks wore their hair long and straight way past their mid-backs like wet vines in some exotic jungle. And those nylons were in reality panty hose, a relatively new invention that covered everything from the tip of all ten toes up to the waist, shielding arcanely, the lower portion of the female anatomy that all guys my age longed to see and perhaps touch.

That summer, I, too, was 17 with a smattering of pimples on my face, recurring daydreams inside my psyche, mediocre muscles on my 125 pound frame, annoying cavities undermining my bicuspids and an insatiable desire to find out what exactly happens when a boy has sex with a girl.

I recall the days of that long ago summer in LA were awfully hot and smoggy. Three thousand miles away, Nixon was in the White House promising to end the Vietnam War with honor. Yet, in the meantime, guys not much older than I were getting blown away in Asian jungles everyday all because we Americans didn’t agree with the political philosophy of the North Vietnamese. Ronald Reagan was up in Sacramento running California like some cowboy out on the range, and I remember asking myself: What the hell is a movie star doing up in the governor’s mansion? LaughIn was still the TV program not to miss every week, but now as the summer shadows began to lengthen, the dreaded TV reruns were making the evenings more mundane than usual. I had already laughed my guts out at all those Here Come Da Judge jokes, and I couldn’t even begin to count the times I had seen that old pervert on the park bench get conked on the head by the frumpy Ruth Buzzi. But I never got tired looking at Goldie Hawn in a bikini with all the body paint, and I was incessantly curious as to what her vagina looked like, and what it would feel like to have sex with her.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin blew everyone’s minds by being the first earthlings to step foot on that big white ball in the sky. On that July evening, I self-consciously stepped outside onto the front porch of my Hoover street pad and gazed wonderingly at the moon in the sky and shook my young head. Is it true? Could it possibly be happening? My science teacher once expostulated that the universe with its millions of galaxies and billions of fireballs like our sun, is constantly expanding like some kid’s birthday balloon, but now, that ever growing universe was a bit smaller in my mind. And I remembered what John Lennon had sung in Strawberry Fields Forever, that nothing is real, but then, I knew he was on drugs, and what did he know about anything? This moon landing had to be real, after all, Walter Cronkite was reporting it live from his news desk in New York, and I trusted him. I think it was because of his mustache. I figured all intelligent men wore a mustache, but then again, I was acutely familiar with the names of some very destructive men with mustaches, like Hitler, Stalin, Charlie Manson, maybe even Satan himself.

I was sojourning at the Colorado River at the tail end of the summer when I heard about the Sharon Tate massacre. Talk about freaks. Charlie and his entourage of lost hippies had to be on drugs to do what they did. I vividly remember floating on an inner tube on the calm waters of the river at midnight, staring deeply into the black night, hypnotized and absolutely awestruck by the sheer numbers of stars and the immense vastness of space, and I wondered how could anyone butcher a pregnant woman; how could a fellow human being be so cruel and sick, and yet, as I gazed above, deep into the firmament, all looked perfect, fixed and orderly.

Inside my gut I just knew all of what I was seeing had been designed by a greater power, and that we humans are just insignificant specks of dust. I saw infinite perfection spread out before me like some crazy black glittery sandwich spread. In my head, I heard Green River by Creedence reverberating, and I sensed an invisible but very toxic presence in the cool evening breeze, and for a moment there, I felt like Huck Finn, totally free and transcendent. Life was indeed getting too weird, too strange in the traffic tangled throbbing megalopolis called LA.

In August of that summer, I remember seeing the reports of the Woodstock music festival on TV, and I couldn’t believe the immense crowd that showed up, like something I had seen before as a kid at the Roxy, when all those biblical movies like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur were in vogue. Any minute there, I was expecting to see a bearded Charleton Heston up on the Woodstock stage leading the throng in some kind of benediction for the impending death of the 1960’s counter-culture. I remember being not all that impressed by all the long hairs and bearded freaks smoking dope and listening to the likes of Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez, for I had something else on my 17 year old mind.

Something that worried me greatly. Which takes me back to June of that long ago summer.

My girlfriend received two gifts for graduation from high school that June. One was a sleek 1966 white Ford Mustang. It had black leather interior, a radio that blasted loudly her favorite station KHJ, and a black stick for shifting into gear. The way she throttled that stick with that right hand of hers, it seemed she was finally in control of her life; she had finally achieved some semblance of autonomy and independence, and I thought she was so sexy and so good at driving that machine. I can still see her sitting in that car, smiling widely, and those long shiny brown legs stretching all the way to the floor pedals, and her short summer skirt hiked up halfway to her magical fun zone. God it was great being 17 and having a girlfriend who cruised around in a white ‘Stang.

The other graduation gift she received was the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida album by Iron Butterfly, no doubt the most cheesy but hypnotic rock album of the late 1960’s. The drum solo on the endless title piece effectively mesmerized my girlfriend; she said it made her feel like a sensual woman, and she always felt like dancing to it.

To me, life is essentially a series of mental snapshots, pieced together one after the other, forming a quilt of one’s brief existence on this amazing planet of water and rock and wind and fire.

How could one forget, for example, being 17, and sitting on a green sofa in the dark shadows of a suburban living room without any adults around, watching your 17 year old girlfriend dance and strip for you to the pulsating drums of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? And as I sat there on that slime green sofa, I was conscious of the fact that I had a penile erection; I wanted to do something more, but I frankly didn’t know what to do. James Bond knew exactly what to do. And Derek Flint. I had seen them in bed with various and sundry women throughout the 1960’s at the Roxy, and they did it without feeling dizzy or ill at ease, which was how I was feeling as I sat on that slime green sofa, watching with twitching fingers, my first love zipping tortuously slow, her orange summer dress. By the time the drum solo had begun to merge with Doug Ingle’s eerie organ tones, my love was no longer wearing the summer dress, but now, she was doing a flouncy hula in white panties and bra, and I felt breathlessly unsatisfied.

As it turned out, nothing happened between us on that long ago June afternoon. Perhaps we were both quite astonished at what had just transpired: My watching a teenage mating dance adroitly rendered by my young, naive Mexican girlfriend with the long inward-turning legs. But in retrospect, this dance planted the seed for what was to happen to us one month later in late July.

I had just returned from a four week journey to Mexico; a trip I detested for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that I was separated from my love and not able to do what I desperately wanted to do, which was to actually have sex with a girl for the first time in my life. I knew deep in my heart that I was inching closer to this momentous moment, but it had to be put on hold while I was soaking in the local color of Mexico.

The trip south was primarily spent on a long blue Greyhound bus filled with older retired people who, like my brother and me, had coughed up a significant amount of money to go on this twenty day tour to all of Mexico’s hot spots, like Acapulco, Mexico City, Guanajuato. It was a long, seemingly endless excursion through green valleys and open farm land. I noticed that most of the people were very brown and very poor, but the skies everywhere were blue and clean, and at night, starry and exuberant. Even though I was homesick and miserable 95% of the time, I did manage to have a few experiences that I shall probably recall on my deathbed someday.

Of a cloudy afternoon in Acapulco watching the fearless Mexican boys dive from the high cliffs, and being helplessly trapped in a violent typhoon while on the boat heading back to the mainland. Of a sweaty overcast journey down an ancient spiral staircase into the catacombs of Guanajuato to see the decaying mummies and hear the incessant buzzing of the myriads of flies that hovered and mated amidst the reek. Of spending ten minutes visiting with Pancho Villa’s rotund widow in Chihuahua and fingering the bullet holes that adorned her husband’s assassination car. Of a long July night in a dark hotel bar in Hermosillo with two red-lipped Mexican chicks, dancing and laughing, and talking with little comprehension about Iron Butterfly in convoluted Spanish and English. Me gusta la musica de Iron Butterfly! And of walking alone in the green shadowy meadows of Cocoyoc, thinking of my love" and wondering what she was doing back home in her white mustang.

Out in the fields I remember walking past a solitary flamingo, and I, too, felt alone and alienated, and that night, I recall leaving my motel room and returning to that same spot where the flamingo poked and pecked at the grass. I remember tilting my head upward, and staring deeply, intently into the blackness of Mexican space, and feeling insignificantly powerless. Seventeen years is but a flash of time, and now, I wanted to find my place, my home, like the wandering solitary flamingo bird.

While on the last leg of that long seemingly interminable bus ride home across the arid California desert, past Blythe, past Indio and Palm Springs, I resolved in my mind to do three things as soon as I set foot inside my Hoover street pad: Make some chicken Rice A Roni, play Traintime by Cream full blast on my stereo, and drive down to my Love’s green stucco house below the tracks. Like the captive Israelites in Egypt in Moses’ time, I longed to find the promise land of my love’s 17 year old female anatomy. What could it possibly look like? And smell like? And taste like? These were my driving obsessions as July waned and the decade of the 1960’s sang its final summer swan song. I knew that in the deepest fibers of my being that a climax was fast approaching soon, in more ways than one, and that I was both very apprehensive and anxious.

As the long double-decker Greyhound bus made its way past Riverside and Chino, I remember thinking back to the beginning of the year when my love and I spent that rainy stormy January night in front of the glowing fireplace at my Hoover street pad. Magical Mystery Tour by the Fab Four was playing lowly in the background on my parent’s console stereo, and we sat close on the sofa, kissing deeply, passionately, exchanging adolescent tongues and saliva, and breathing heavily. It was nirvana for the two of us, and I’ll never forget the flickering of the shadows on the white walls, like wild desperate ghosts seeking refuge from the nether world. And John’s sonorous voice phrasing All you need is love, and those horns sarcastically poking fun at the idea that the world, this globe of dust and dirt and blood and spit, was, to a large extent, devoid of any kind of love at all. Three times that night my love applied Slicker to her brown lips; lips that always beckoned my lips, so that I could enjoy the sweet taste of our deep wet kisses . . . kisses so intimate and intense that I can vividly remember them to this day. Surprisingly, I never became physically aroused by all this moist hot action, for in the back of my mind, I could still hear the shrill ominous voice of my 4th grade teacher, Sister Mary Daniel, describing graphically the consuming fires of hell, and the fact that all sinners will end up there for eternity; sinners who dared to think dirty lusty thoughts; sinners who dared to disobey God’s stringent command to not commit fornication. Sure I knew all about the hippies making mindless love in communes of drug-induced orgies, but they were all high on pot, and what did they know? Nothing happened that night. . . . except a lot of serious face sucking.

But as the weeks of the new year progressed into the green tumult of spring, there came a night in April when I was sitting in my dad’s white Chevy Caprice, with my love sitting close to me wearing tight flowery bell bottoms and a white cotton blouse. We were sitting in that car with the windows rolled up tightly, listening to Elusive Butterfly, when my Love, the 17 year old brown skinned Mexican chick with the inward turning legs, asked me to touch her breasts, something I had only daydreamed about. I remember feeling overwhelmingly scared and panic-stricken, and as KHJ radio continued to play the top 40 hits, I slowly moved my left hand toward the direction of my love’s cotton blouse and the black tiny buttons that resembled a child’s rosary beads. One by one I slowly and methodically unbuttoned each black button. . . . deliberately . . . systematically, willfully and lustfully. And as the minutes culminated into an hour, my hand had finally arrived to its delightful destination, the right naked breast of my Love. Many times in my life I have thought intensely on this moment, this transcendent event when I touch a real girl’s tit for the first time in my life. It was indeed a grow-up moment for me. I remember feeling the blood pulse heavily through my brain as I played with her erect nipple, there in my dad’s white 1969 Caprice, parked peacefully and unobtrusively in front of my Love’s green stucco house, in the suburban paradise I called home, 16 miles east of LA.

With searching reaching fingers I was finally feeling my girlfriend’s right breast. I was in awe of the soft suppleness of her balloon-like skin and the amazing change in the hardness of her nipple as I rubbed and gently pinched her excited flesh. The temperature inside my dad’s caprice went up noticeably that night and the windows fogged up making it impossible for silhouetted passersby to see the passionate but innocent goings-on inside.

As I sat there next to my warm loving Mexican girlfriend on that long ago April night, I flashbacked to a Sunday morning in the spring of 1963 when I was living on Mavis street over by the railway tracks next to the orange groves. The teenage girl who lived next door, a beehived 16 year old wearing peddle pushers, was in her boyfriend’s Ford in front of my house, necking wildly in the early morning fog and drizzle. I was hiding behind the curtains in the dining room, peeking curiously as the beehive and her badass boyfriend sucked face for a solid hour. For it was their moment to be young, and to dance the dance of passion. I was merely eleven years old at the time and I remember being literally turned on by what I was seeing. I can still hear Heat Wave emanating loudly but mutely from the Ford, and as the sounds of squeaking floor boards coming from the hallway threatened to interrupt my peeping, I knew my parents were up, so I left my concealed perch from behind the curtains. The last thing I remember seeing were those fogged up windows and two silhouetted figures embracing within the Ford’s confines. And now, here I was 6 years later, a teenager like Mr. Bad-Ass, necking and fondling my own Miss Beehive, there on Kengard street, half a mile below the tracks. My proverbial ship had at last come into Port, and now I knew, now I understood the insidious conspiracies of young flesh.

As the Greyhound entered into Los Angeles county from the east, I was fully cognizant of the fact that my trip to Mexico was fast drawing to a close. Bet there was yet one more mental snapshot for me to remember, to embrace; it was an ego mechanism that I liked to employ in order to make something intolerable tolerable. It was of a Saturday afternoon in early May when my parents were away for the weekend. My love from Kengard street had driven over in her uncle’s cherry red Camaro, and together we lay on my parents’ bed and necked passionately half naked; it was a scene right out of an Elizabeth Taylor movie. On that glorious day I was indeed James Bond . . . virile, masculine, in-control, but with my pants on. And as for my love, well, she too had her pants on, for we both felt that we were not quite ready for anything beyond bare-chested face sucking of an intense nature. Our hormones were raging and roaring like storm-tossed tidal waves crashing onto the rocks. The air in that pink bedroom was heavy but profoundly still, and I remember the sheer joy and ecstasy of our young love-making. But we had only gone as far as second base; there were 2 more bases to go before reaching home plate, and now that the skyline of LA peaked on the western horizon, I grew excited at the prospect of finally doing it with my first love.

I arrived home from Mexico on a Saturday afternoon in late July, 1969, and it was with sheer relief that I slipped a ten dollar bill into the hand of our tour guide, Jose, as my brother and I exited the Greyhound for the last time. Both my parents were there in the Caprice to welcome us back at the old Los Angeles

Biltmore Hotel, the point of our initial departure. One of the first things my mother told me when we reunited was the fact that my love, Teresa, was fine and that she wanted to see me as soon as possible. That evening, I saw her again, after being away for nearly a month. It was a homecoming replete with embraces and kisses and smiles and music. There was always music playing on her stereo, that little brown record player in the adjoining dining room only a few feet from her slime green sofa. In 1969, as July yawned, it was the Iron Butterfly and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Oh how Teresa loved to dance! The deep inner beats of the drum solo spoke volumes to her. . . . volumes of lust . . . Mexican lust. She was wearing a bitchen white dress that had enticing invisible words written all over it; words only my mind could decipher: Take Me, touch me, unzip me, remove me, but because Teresa’s grandfather was in the house at the time, I could only wince and dream, and hope for an empty house real soon.

Teresa’s mysterious grandfather lived in that green stucco house along with her mother and uncle. He rarely came out of his little dark green bedroom which was constantly abuzz with Mexican mariachi music or the lightening fast dialogue of old Mexican cowboy pictures playing on channel 34. Grandfather Reynaldo couldn’t speak a word of English, and his mustache was an enormous hairy thing that actually scared me, for I had seen Mexican men with mustaches before, dangerous Mexican men like Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa. I remember seeing that film on a long ago Saturday afternoon in 1962 when I had Bright’s Disease as a ten year old, and all I had better to do that spring was to spend my days on the living room couch, and watch TV, the Million Dollar Movie on channel 9. Only once did I get a glimpse into the old man’s humbly furnished room: there was a bed that wasn’t made, a bed side table with a framed photograph of him and his deceased wife, standing proudly in front of a new Pontiac; a small gray TV, a record player and a Catholic crucifix on the mostly bare walls. The old man was obviously now retired, but once a week, he would drive to LA in his gray 1960 Pontiac and hang out with his cronies; men who worked like dogs during the Depression constructing the LA City Hall building. Whenever I saw the old guy, he would nod and say hola but I had the feeling he didn’t care for my white English skin, nor did he really trust me with his grand daughter, and I’m sure he would’ve had a major stroke had he known about my plans to strip and gaze upon his grand daughter’s young 17 year old vagina, and that this transcendent event would take place soon only a few feet from his modest small green bedroom . . . an event I will never forget as long as my heart continues to beat. It still amazes me how much impact that one single private event, that required only twenty minutes of time, had on me; one third of an hour, an hour that has come and gone from this planet . . . this big water and dirt ball that just hangs miraculously in space-an event enshrouded in pure immaculate light inside an encased beam that is now traveling through space at 186 thousand miles per second.

The following day was a Sunday. The Richter family, who lived in the beige house next door to my love’s green house, had planned a farewell party for an exchange student from Finland who had been living there for the past twelve months. He was a pink skinned ectomorph with tiny lips and thick black eyeglasses who had managed to master English quite well since arriving in the states during the summer of 1968. I frankly thought the guy was a twerp, a Wally and didn’t care whether he was leaving or not.

When I arrived at Teresa’s house that afternoon, I knew full well all her adult guardians were gone for the day, and that my love was alone and getting dressed for the party. She opened the front door wearing a bathrobe, a white terry cloth bathrobe that was loosely tied around her slim waist. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was playing vociferously on her stereo as I entered therein. Within five minutes I was in Teresa’s bedroom, a pink room filled with satin and lace, pillows and stuffed animals, posters and vases, and a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. There was only one window in that room, the same window from which my love would always gaze out whenever I drove away after one of our dates. It was her way of showing affection; watching me from behind the drawn curtains as I accelerated up Kengard street in my father’s Caprice. I remember always slowing down and craning my neck to see if her shadowy figure was there, in that same window, waving goodbye. In my mind’s eye I can still see her there, like some nebulous ethereal ghost haunting me from the waning days of the 1960’s . . . waving good-bye to those strange days as The Doors called them. In the adjoining living room, I could hear In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida launching into that hypnotic drum solo, and like some dangling puppet held aloft by invisible strings, Teresa instantly jumped on top of her bed and stood there, and removed her white terry cloth bathrobe. Wearing only white panties and a bra, she again performed her quasi hula dance, turning around, bending over and shaking her arms, legs and breasts. I could only smile at her and appreciate the view, but my eyes were diverted for 2 maybe 3 seconds by the statue of the Virgin Mary, the most holy mother of God. And I stepped back two or three steps momentarily to catch my breath . . . as my love removed her bra . . .

II.

The Tower By The River

As an eight year old freckle faced boy in 1960, I wanted to know only one thing: What was the priest doing up at the altar during Mass when his back was turned to us? What was he hiding as he stood up there by that huge white marble altar in front of the 15 foot tall cross with a dead half naked Jesus nailed to it? It was such a mystery to me. Everyday Sister Mary Jane took us second graders to Mass in the big brick church just a stone’s throw from our classroom, and usually we would sit alphabetically in the first three pews up by the communion rail. I always found myself sitting and kneeling to the far left of the front pew, right by the statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. During the Offertory, I would lean out into the side aisle and squint my eyes to see what Father Elliot was doing as he bent over the chalice and sacredly handled the host, praying to it. Or was he smelling it? Or was he listening to the voice of Jesus speaking mysteriously and supernaturally from within it? I stared into the eyes of the Virgin Mary statue and asked her on numerous occasions please most holy mother, let me see what Father Elliot is doing.

St. Mary of the Assumption Church was a cavernous edifice lined with stained glass windows depicting the Passion of Jesus. On sunny spring mornings, the sunlight from the east would filter through the multicolor panes of glass giving off an otherworldly translucent atmosphere that suggested God is here, you better behave yourself. Sister Mary Jane made damn sure of that. If one of us second graders appeared for a moment not to be completely into the Mass, and not praying devoutly for even a second, the rosary beads of her black and white nun outfit would jiggle loudly and conspicuously, and that meant trouble for an 8 year old boy. It meant she was approaching from her seat behind us to grab you by the lobe of one’s ear and taken to Purgatory, the last pew in the church over by the statue of John the Baptist, the guy who had his head cut off and placed on a platter. The choir loft which hovered symbolically above Purgatory like heaven itself, seemed miles away from where I was sitting during those daily masses back in 1960. Usually Father Molthen was up there playing the pipe organ and leading the 7th and 8th grade girls choir in singing the usual heavenly hymns that embellished the Latin Mass. I used to literally get goose bumps listening to the girls because they reminded me of angels’ voices, and in a way, I was transported far away, beyond the center star of the Milky Way galaxy, into the mind of God himself.

Then there were times when I was bored and I thought of other things and felt other things, like what exactly was it that was under the salt and pepper skirts of those 7th and 8th grade girls, and how would it feel to kiss a 7th or 8th grade girl. Little did I realize it at the time, but a day was coming when I would find out.

To the sides of the church were six dark confessional booths barely lit by a purple lamp beneath the kneeler, and it was inside those little curtained cells that errant Catholics confessed their various and sundry sins to the priest. My first confession was made in May of 1960 and I can recall to this day what I said to Father Elliot: Bless me father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession. These are my sins. I lied three times. I disobeyed my parents 4 times. I said the word ‘shit’ one time and I looked up Mary Beth Olah’s skirt one time during last week’s spelling test. And that’s all After reciting this litany of transgressions, Father Elliot took a deep breath and said that Jesus had forgiven me and that I needed to say 5 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers as penance. So, after reciting a good Act of Contrition, I dutifully and with a tremendous feeling of relief, went back out into the main sanctuary and knelt at the communion rail to say my prayers.

During those early months of 1960 I wondered what it was like to receive the little white host on my tongue during holy communion. What would it taste like? And since Sister Mary Jane told us the host was the body of Jesus himself, would my teeth hurt him as I chewed it into little bits and pieces like some carnivorous shark from the depths of the ocean? And it occurred to me: Why eat Jesus? Why put into my mouth the savior of the world? . . . the big guy upstairs? The one who created me and died for me? These were mysteries to me also. By Mother’s Day, May 8, 1960, I would receive the little communion host for the first time, and all these mysteries would no longer elude me, for as Father Elliot adroitly placed the white pounded piece of bread on my extended tongue, I opened my eyes, and there only a few feet away from me was the lifeless half naked body of Jesus, hanging ignominiously on the cross, blood running from his side, hands and feet, and dripping from the crown of thorns on his head. As soon as I closed my mouth with the host snug on my tongue, I gagged a bit, for the body of Jesus was stuck to the roof of my mouth, and it took 2 maybe 3 minutes for me to dislodge and swallow it. But no matter, I knew that before long I would be showered with presents from my parents and godparents over scrambled eggs and sausage at Jack’s Salad Bowl Restaurant.

Well Mick, my proud father said that day after Mass. How did the host taste?

Host tasted good . . . got stuck in the roof of ma mouth.

. . . Inside my love’s pink bedroom . . . and as Teresa continues to dance her dance of lust, cupping and thrusting out her hardened breasts in my direction . . . my mind again races back . . . back to the past . . . to the summer of 1960, when my parents always called me Mickey Mouse, for I never missed an episode of the Mickey Mouse Club on the big black and white TV set that dominated the small living room of our house . . . back to the past, when my family moved north to Redding in August to a sprawling ranch house bordering the Sacramento River . . .

Blue and wild were its currents, and I can recall the foul odor of decaying salmon on the river’s edge, and the incessant croaking of the green, wart-infested bullfrogs, and the presence of hand-sized rounded stones everywhere, smoothed out over eons of time by the rushing, snow-driven waters from the venerable cliffs and gullies of Mount Shasta, the queen of the Cascades; an impressive volcanic snow-covered cone that I used to stare at from the kitchen window of our expansive ranch house by the blue rapids of my boyhood river. It resembled a woman’s breast, shaped symmetrically, voluminously like Teresa’s right breast, and as I stood silently and gazed, I wondered what it would be like to stand on top of that big peak to the north, miles beyond my river in the backyard, miles beyond the green lawns of the Shasta Country Club golf course across the river amidst the towering pine trees. I wondered also what the ever-present snow felt like, tasted like. Indeed these were far-away thoughts for a boy of eight, but I loved the blue river, the blue sky and the round smooth stones, and I would stare deeply into the green shadows of the distant trees. Like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer on the waters of the Mississippi, my brother Paul and I would take long walks along the banks of the river, the Sacramento, and explore this startling universe of sights and sounds and smells; it was a journey into the pastures of our youth, and many hopeful plans were made to construct a raft like Huck Finn did in the days of yore. But these plans were never realized because of the strong rapids and the dangerous undertow.

Nevertheless, I can say that I was Huck Finn for one summer, for I can remember the many times when fishing poles were brought out on weekend afternoons, and our bare feet plunged into the icy waters and felt the slimy slippery smooth stones, and my soul came into contact with the deep green mysteries of my spirit for the first time in my life.

I remember vividly an October night in 1960 when I was moved by some inner still voice to go down to the river’s edge, and there in the blackness of post-twilight, I knelt upon a large mossy stone, enfolded my hands as I did on my first communion day on May 8th, lifted my head and looked straight up into the black abstruse night, and I saw something silvery flying above me, something I had seen before in my Baltimore Catechism, something that resembled the being that grabbed Abraham’s hand just before he sacrificed his son Isaac. To this day, I have no idea what I saw, but it was real, and it had to be holy.

I remember it like it happened only yesterday. My friend Dwayne and I spent the day exploring the river, and we came upon a high tower, 2 maybe 3 miles from my ranch house. Nestled at the top of the tower was a round water tank with a circumference of about ten feet that stood at least 50 feet in the air, with an attached ladder made of steel leading to its flat summit. On a dare, I nervously scaled that tower to the very top, and it was there that the two of us spent two hours sucking on Tootsie Roll pops, and when finished with them, spent the rest of the time spitting big wads of phlegm and saliva into the slow paced water below us. Dwayne always carried around his transistor radio and so as we sat together on that insouciant afternoon, on top of that lonely tower on my river, we heard Chubby Checker and Connie Francis and Elvis Presley and Paul Anka and Jimmy Charles, and together we coexisted amidst the towering green trees that hid the water tank from the surrounding river ranches, the sounds of their voices ricocheting off the water and snaking through the branches like invisible benign Harpies, seeking refuge from the hot afternoon sun. I can still hear Jimmy Charles singing A Million To One and maybe, just maybe, I wondered about what I had seen the previous autumn on that black October night when I knelt at the river’s edge. Had I truly seen a vision of some heavenly creature? Was I one of those persons out of a million who had experienced such a thing, seeing an angel hovering above in the starry skies? Or was it a demon dissimulating its appearance? I’m not sure I will ever truly know.

Obsessions . . . obsessions. Looking back on it all now, my formative years were stitched together by one obsession after another, and these somewhat strange fixations were like long ropes that kept me tied, and they dragged me through the gauntlet of years; through the weird transcendent days of the 1960’s. First it was the mystery of the Mass and the host, then it changed when we arrived in Redding, much to my parents’ increasing consternation.

Since we lived several miles on the outskirts of the city, way out where all the river ranches are remotely located, it required daily twenty minute journeys into town for groceries, schooling, church and other errands. While my father silently drove to and from town, I did a lot of looking through the glass window and I marveled at all the sights of my new hometown; of all the old buildings, especially on Market and Pine streets, the sloping neighborhoods, the bright clean schools, the green parks, the shopping centers that were being built, and the neighboring mountains. But what I remember most about Redding besides the majestic Sacramento River flowing hurriedly through it, was the fact that it had, at last count, thirty three cocktail lounges and taverns. And for each tavern we passed by in our daily trips in the old 1958 blue Chevy Impala, I noticed there was a Cocktails sign extending directly over the forbidden, closed door of the entrance. And on each sign sat a delicate martini glass resembling, at least to my eight year old mind, a one-legged ballerina wearing a wide tutu, and inside the fragile glass was a cherry impaled by what appeared to be a long toothpick. It was an intriguing sight to behold and at the time I had no idea why I was obsessed with the cocktail sign. At night time especially, the landscape of

Redding was almost magical; it was like stepping into some luminescent dream world filled with blinking blazing neon cocktail signs and dancing one-legged ballerinas with arrows in their hearts. I was inexplicably hooked and transfixed by all these neon specters, and for awhile there in the autumn of 1960, I thought about nothing else.

I remember spending numerous nights in the family room of our river ranch house drawing cocktail lounges on notebook paper instead of doing my homework. I would sit in my mother’s rocking chair and draw cocktail lounge after cocktail lounge, probably more than a hundred by the time I grew tired of it all. I recall that with each drawing, I seemed to get better and better at it, creating realistic buildings showing the mysterious closed front door and the darkened circled windows no one could peer into, and, of course, the rectangular cocktail sign with the martini glass on top of it. These glasses were huge and got bigger and bigger with each new drawing, and the cherries inside were monstrous, colossal things; big and juicy and colored red with a crayon and stabbed by something resembling a long plumber’s pipe. There were other signs on my drawings like Hunter’s Tavern and Stark’s Cocktail Lounge and even though I was having some difficulties with my weekly spelling lists at school, I did manage to master the spelling of the word liquor with very little effort. My parents must’ve thought I was crazy. And I’m sure they were disturbed greatly by the fact that my goal in life as an eight year old was to grow up to become a bartender.

Why Mickey? my mother would ask with a worried tone.

Jus because, I would answer, and I’d continue to draw my cocktail lounges.

And then she’d shake her head with great exasperation and say: Lord almighty. Give me strength!

During the spring of 1961 my brother would constantly play his large collection of 45’s out in the barn of our river ranch. 45’s were those little records with a hole the size of a silver dollar in the middle and it would contain only one song per side, and each song was about 2 minutes long. As adolescents, my brother and I collected all the fad songs of the time: Yackety Yack, Klick Klack, Beep Beep, Short Shorts, and a bunch of others that he would pile high on his automatic 45 record player, turn it on and play them over and over again full blast. With a few kids from the surrounding neighborhood joining us, we would dance the afternoons away, doing the Twist mainly. Our barn was a spacious, wooden, almost dilapidated building separate from the main house, big enough for three cars with two side rooms which I figured were used as meeting rooms for some esoteric club, maybe the 4-H Club, back in the early 1950’s. One room had a united States map on the front wall along with a lot of cobwebs and rat droppings, and a torn American flag hanging unceremoniously and forgotten in the corner. Every once in a while a rat would dart out from behind the walls, mainly I guess to see what all the commotion was about. I learned first hand that rats are part of one’s reality when you live out in the country.

On Christmas Day, 1960, I happily opened a long rectangular box. Inside it was the gift I had been longing for-a Daisy B-B gun that requires cocking with air in order to shoot it. My brother Paul already had one, so now, the two of us could go hunting out in our wilderness backyard for birds, frogs, rats, mice, anything alive that was not impervious to the somewhat innocuous velocity of those little BB pellets. The first hapless creature my brother and I preyed upon was a fat bullfrog that was conspicuously croaking by an inlet about two hundred yards down the river. Upon spotting this creature, my brother and I immediately began shooting our air rifles repeatedly, hitting it each time as we slowly walked near it, cocking, shooting, recocking and shooting again for at least ten minutes. Finally there was a trace of blood in the still water of the inlet, and I knew I would soon be marking my first notch on my rifle. When my brother nudged the apparently dead frog to see if any life was left in it, he grabbed my LA Dodgers cap from atop my head and put the wet bloody thing into it, and back home we proudly trudged with our trophy. When we arrived, my mother was waiting for us on the back porch of the ranch house, and there amidst the shadows of the tall elm trees, we showed her our catch. Startled and gasping, my mother screamed at the top of her lungs: Why did you kill her? She looks pregnant. That’s cruel Stark. We couldn’t really answer her, and feeling a tinge of shame, I carried the dead bullfrog back down to the river’s edge and gently dumped it into the cold waters of the Sacramento. Never again did I go hunting for anything that looked remotely pregnant.

But there was another time when I was forced to use my BB gun in a merciless, murderous manner. It was a Monday night in January, 1961, around the time John F. Kennedy told everyone Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. My father was away for the evening, attending a Knights Of Columbus meeting in downtown Redding. My brother and mother were in the family room watching the Andy Griffith Show, and I had meandered into the other part of the house to retrieve my Dodger baseball cards. As I walked out of my bedroom, something big and brown scurried quickly across the wooden floor under my feet. At first I didn’t know what it was that I had inadvertently trampled upon, and so I screamed loudly, absolutely terrified that something was trying to attack me. Running into the dining room with incredulous expressions on their faces, my brother and mother found me fearfully perched atop the dining room table.

Get me my gun, I screamed. Something attacked me!

Within a minute, I had my BB gun with the one notch carved on it in my hands. Meanwhile, my mother had the kitchen broom in hers, trying to sweep the big brown thing out from behind the curtains and into the open so I could get off a clean shot in hopes of permanently immobilizing it. It wasn’t long before my incredibly courageous mother, or so I thought at the moment because I was repeating: You’re the bravest mother in the whole wide world, just the bravest mother in the whole wide world, had swept the brown thing out into the open and into the closed up kitchen. At that point, we could all see it was a good sized rat, as big as one of my father’s shoes, desperately looking for a way to escape the light and the clear bead of my rifle. After five or six shots failed to come close to my target, I carefully aimed once again, pulled the trigger and hit the rat squarely on its protruding snout. Blood instantly squirted out of its nasal orifice in red streams on the tile floor that resembled streaks of red paint from some abstract expressionist’s painting. Obviously in agony, I kept shooting the squirming beast until the onset of death. Later that night, my father returned home from his Knights of Columbus meeting. My mother with a knowing-smile on her face led him to a pile of newspapers in the middle of the kitchen, and after removing the heap of Record-Searchlight newsprint, all my father could utter was: Good God!

Darla Hightower was the 12 year old girl who lived across the street, there on Nicolet Lane. Dark-skinned with brown curly hair, and always wearing blue jeans, Darla was the owner of Stormy, a beautiful black horse that she kept in the stall behind her family’s small white house. I first met Darla in the Fall of 1960 when I walked out to the mailbox one day. She reminded me of a young Dale Evans as she sat high up on her saddled horse.