[Anyone] summer

[totem at laplaza.org]

>                                              THE SUMMER OF 1969
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> �It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
> wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
> the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
> Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
> everything before us, we had nothing before us�.�, Charles Dickens, A Tale
> of Two Cities
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Seems as though many of the old Taos dogs are waxing nostalgic about the
> summer of1969. Read about it in Horsefly and The Taos News.
> 
> 
> 
>  The State of New Mexico, the Town of Taos and The Harwood Museum are
> engaged in a major tourism promotion of  �The Summer of Love�, centered on
> Dennis Hopper and the making of �Easy Rider�. Hopper is being honored as the
> returning hero.
> 
> 
> 
>  I have a somewhat different memory of that fate filled summer.  I can�t
> recall too many love beads or painted bodies. That is not to say there
> weren�t a few great boogies and some wild times, but for me, that summer
> hasn�t faded into a mellifluous little clich�.
> 
> 
> 
> On May 5th I will commemorate the 40th anniversary of my arrival in Taos.
> My bride and I crested Pilar Hill and looked out on the valley below.  It
> was a bright, sunny afternoon, with a dusting of fresh snow on the
> mountains, the gorge snaking its way darkly through the valley, We thrilled
> at the scene like Israelites gazing for the first time from atop Mt. Ararat.
> We were home.
> 
> 
> 
> We drove into town, parked on the plaza, walked around a bit and ran into
> Russell Green, who looked like an early 18th century trapper; deerskin
> leggings, a long sleeved fringed tunic and matted hair and beard.
> 
> 
> 
> �What�s it like here?� we innocently asked.
> 
> 
> 
>  �Ya better get outa town�, he responded, �They�re killin� hippies around
> here�.
> 
> 
> 
> Thus began what was to become for us the Summer of Hate.
> 
> 
> 
>   We promptly returned to Santa Fe, went to the Salvation Army store and
> bought new clothes; for me a Gant pin stripped shirt, new kakis and a pair
> of penny loafers, and for Sue a Villager skirt and a white cotton
> blouse.  Next,
> we crossed the plaza to the barber shop where I got an Ivy League haircut,
> Sue put her hair in a neat bun and we returned to Taos, incognito. Bathed
> and bristled, we walked straight into Francis Martin�s real estate office,
> which was located just off the plaza next to where Tally Richards� gallery
> was opening. This irascible, tough old woman greeted us with a wide smile.  She
> rarely smiled.
> 
>      �Well, well, well, it sure is refreshing to see a nice young couple in
> this town!� she exclaimed.
> 
> 
> 
>  That afternoon she found us a sweet old adobe rental in Talpa and
> introduced us to our neighbors, Tricia Hurst and Earl Stroh. For the next
> three months we went to town only when absolutely necessary, to Safeway and
> Randalls and to visit Charles Lonsdale�s General Store, (Oh my god, soon to
> become Walgreens!) for bulk food and a copy of The Fountain of Light, the
> hippie newspaper edited by Roger Tomas, which detailed many of the horrors
> that were occurring daily.
> 
> 
> 
> Rumors abounded. A hippie was found hanging from a utility pole in Tres
> Piedras and the bodies of two hippies were discovered in a shallow grave
> just outside of Mora. Hippies had been brutally beaten in Ranchos and Llano
> Quemado. A young mother of two was raped at the Llano Hot Springs. The
> stories went on and on.  In response, Lonsdale organized a hippy militia led
> by a Manson-like ex-con named Cyril and his �Family�, which was comprised of
> a harem of georgeous young women They patrolled the town in Jeeps, had
> walkie talkies and wielded Bowie knives. You were warned not to walk around
> town alone at night and definitely not to go into the bars in Arroyo Hondo
> or Arroyo Seco.  The only time we went out at night was to go to Ron and
> Carol Kalom�s House of Taos restaurant for pizza and a chance to gather with
> the clan.
> 
> 
> 
> At the same time, the Summer of 1969 was also a magical time for the early
> hippies who arrived in Taos. For those fleeting few months, an unusual and
> profound combination of forces at play; a palpable sense of love, respect
> and trust amongst long hairs, an untrammeled and na�ve idea that the world
> could be reinvented through communal living, a deeply felt social and
> political conscience that demanded an end to the Viet Nam war, an end to
> American apartheid, an end to the proliferation of uranium mining in New
> Mexico; and an end to gross corporate greed and malfeasance.
> 
> 
> 
> On the other hand, many of the locals were outraged at the hippies� blatant
> disregard for their customs and traditions.  The Hippies were selling drugs
> to their children, having sex in their fields, smoking dope and dropping
> acid in their plazas and on their streets, stealing from their stores, and
> bearing all manner of disease in their long hair and filthy outfits. The
> women were outrageously provocative, openly nursing in public and sashaying
> about in braless gauzy blouses.
> 
> 
> 
> In response, a group of us organized a telephone campaign, calling
> university and public radio stations and newspapers in San Fransisco and
> Berkeley, Chicago, New York and other cities asking them to do public
> service announcements pleading with hippies not come to Taos. The tensions
> here were boiling over, our communes were being overrun by junkies from the
> East Coast looking for free drugs and farm boys from the Mid West looking
> for free love, the free clinic was swamped, and the free box was empty.
> 
> 
> 
> By the fall, the situation had calmed down a bit; most of the gawkers and
> freeloaders had left town, many of the trust funders went back to graduate
> school or their family business. A few of us stayed on and became builders
> and tradesmen, doctors and lawyers, teachers and journalist, ne�er-do-wells
> and addicts, real estate agents and more real estate agents.
> 
> 
> 
> The year before, The Easy Rider Crew showed up in town.  There were
> infrequent sightings of Hopper and Fonda, but as far as anyone knew they
> stayed in their trailers most of the time and got made up and got stoned.
> Taos got its ten minutes of Hollywood glamour. Some of the crew found the
> hot springs and communes and stayed on and joined the population described
> above.  The rest jumped back into their trucks and trailers and drove west
> into the sunset, or to the airport.
> 
> 
> 
> Hopper had been visiting Taos for a few years before the filming of Easy
> Rider.  You knew when Dennis was in town because trouble was never far
> behind- plenty of drama, lots of cocaine, and some very worried parents
> looking for their teenage daughters. Then, Hopper bought the Mabel Dodge
> Lujan House and proceeded to create one of the nastiest, most emotionally
> violent, misogynistic and drug infested scenes in the history of this very
> violent and racially polarized town.
> 
> 
> 
>   Dennis Hopper has never been anything but a pariah to Taos.  He has taken
> what he has deemed useful for himself and given almost nothing back to the
> community. And now this poor community is spending an inordinate amount of
> our scant resources to honor this man on the occasion of the
> 40thanniversary of his coming to Taos, and we are calling this event,
> �The
> Summer of Love�.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Town of Taos has embraced this promotion in part because desperate times
> demand desperate measures, and because, unlike Santa Fe, it has over the
> past four decades squandered its cultural birthright by not preserving and
> building upon the important historical, architectural and artistic aspects
> of the community, (the Taos Talking Pictures Festival, The Taos Poetry
> Circus, The Taos Solar Fest and The Taos Institute for the Arts come to
> mind), and now they must resort to pandering to baby boomer tourists from
> Santa Fe who missed the counter culture bus.
> 
> 
> 
>  This event will probably bring some badly needed money into town, but is it
> worth sacrificing our cultural integrity to do so?
> 
> 
> 
>  Even less understandable is the participation of The Harwood Museum. We are
> having Dennis Hopper curate a major show with an expensive catalog, and for
> the exhibition he has picked Himself, (what a surprise!), and a few of his
> old Southern California friends: a 60�s artist who is now a mescal
> distiller, an amateur photo montagist and former Disney actor, and three
> very serious and accomplished local artists, which begs the question; why
> have these three agreed to be included?. I imagine that the justification
> for this show must be: redemption for Hopper, money for the Museum and the
> foolhardy idea that this exhibition will raise the international profile of
> The Harwood.
> 
> 
> 
>  The museum, in order to fulfill its mission to this community, has more
> important and relevant work to do.
> 
> 
> 
> But neither the Town nor the Harwood have trivialized and commercialized the
> events of forty years ago as much as the Horse Fly�our �alternative
> newspaper. This comes as no surprise, as Mr. Whaley, in his multifarious
> roles as editor, publisher, political crony, �investigative� reporter, art
> and social critic, gossip columnist, witch hunter, salesman and event
> promoter, has so blurred the lines between reporting, editorializing, and
> advertising that it is difficult to discern what his particular agenda might
> be.
> 
> 
> 
> What we *do* know is that there are bodies to be painted, costumes to be
> created, stick ponies to be ridden, and especially, money to be made to
> benefit �The Horsefly Institute�, whatever that is.
> 
> 
> 
> There is much to celebrate around the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the
> hippies in Taos, so let us mark this occasion with a genuine and heartfelt
> reunion of the tribes.  We�ll indulge in a little nostalgia for an evening.
> We�ll find a venue, (too bad La Cocina and the Old Martinez Hall are gone),
> where we can gather, drink a few beers and tell tall tales. We�ll set up a
> row of empty chairs and mourn our fallen comrades; Bill Gersh, Ripple
> Erskine, Peter Duvall, Max Finstein, Susan Powell, Gilford Webb, Dick Gordan
> and Bill Letcher along with others.
> 
> 
> 
>  In my minds eye I can see them all, high, high up in Hippie Heaven, passing
> around a joint as they work merrily on their float for the Hippie Dippy
> Parade.
 
> Steve Rose

> 
> Taos
> 
> srose at newmex.com



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