[Anyone] Summer of Fluff

[JMac]

Goovy article!  Far out!  Psycha-forkin'-delic!
So, like, which Steve Rose wrote this?
Lawyer or Landlord?

And is he going to publish it as a "My Turn" in The Taos News?  He ought 
to - bit of cleaning fluid to cut the fatty hype.

Cheers,
John McL.
Taos

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From: <totem at laplaza.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 1:44 PM
To: <anyone at laplaza.org>
Subject: [Anyone] summer



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 of 1969. 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 cliché.

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 Randall's 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 hippie militia led by a Manson-like ex-con 
named Cyril and his "Family", which was comprised of a harem of gorgeous 
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 naive 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 Francisco 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 60s 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 has trivialized and commercialized the 
events of forty years ago as much as has 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 Gordon 
and Bill Letcher along with others. In my mind's 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