I was really tiring of Dave and Chris the Hippie. Their "Jesus Freak" routine was irritating me. Couldn't they talk about anything else? There was a war raging in Vietnam, Nixon was up to something sinister in the White House, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated 2 years previously, NASA was landing on the moon, and everyone was talking about the rock festival at "Woodstock."
I was fixated on a story that the Beatles had purchased an island near the Isle of Wight. It was said that people were being selected to come live with them in this hippie paradise. If you could find the telephone number hidden on the album cover of Abbey Road, you could contact them and a helicopter would come for you and whisk you away. Once on that island, you wouldn't have to worry about being drafted and sent to Vietnam. On that island, it was just drugs, sex and rock n' roll all the time. It really was paradise!
And I was really worried about Vietnam. It hung over all of our heads. In those days, if you dropped out of college, you were drafted. Even though the Navy and Air Force were participating in the draft, the likelihood was that you would be swallowed up by the Army and end up carrying a M-16 in the jungle. I had withdrawn from the semester's classes three times. By May of 1970, I should have been finishing my junior year, but even with classes taken during summer sessions, I still only had about 70 credit hours instead of 90. Because I had dropped below 15 credit hours per semester, I was now subject to the draft. My draft "lottery" number was 192. This meant that I was likely to be drafted by the end of the summer.
The draft hung over me like a cloud. It was the first thing I thought about in the morning and was on my mind all the time. The only time that I didn't think about it was when I was smoking dope or on a "trip." So, the first thing I did in the morning was take a "toke" from my hash pipe. Throughout the day, I would be smoking marijuana or hashish. Several times a week, I would take LSD, mescaline (peyote), or psilocybin (mushrooms).
I had two conscious goals: (1) Employing psychedelic drugs, I hoped to discover the meaning of life. (2) I wanted to end my sexual virginity. In other words, I didn't want to die in Vietnam as a virgin who had no idea why he had even lived. Well, I thought I had finally made progress on the enlightenment side, but I still couldn't find a cooperative female for the second part.
But for Dave and Chris the Hippie, every conversation was about Jesus.
It was sometime in the afternoon when I once again emerged from the grogginess of my hashish-induced sleep. Exiting the fraternity house, I could not miss Dave seated on his veranda reading his Bible. And since I was planning on going somewhere in my car parked right next to him, I could not avoid him.
As I braced myself for the onslaught of his "witness," he caught me off-guard with a new subject:
Chris and I are leaving for California this week . . . .
Now, I know that he didn't stop with that one phrase, but it was that one phrase that captured me. California! Immediately, I thought of warm blue skies, sandy beaches, crashing waves and "California Girls." I have never been one who paid attention to song lyrics. For me, it has always been the melody or the chord progression that holds interest. But, "California Girls" by the Beach Boys had lyrics even I could not ignore:
Well east coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I'm down there
The mid-west farmers daughters really make you feel alright
And the northern girls with the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night
I wish they all could be california
I wish they all could be california
I wish they all could be california girls
The west coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a french bikini on hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand
I been all around this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldnt wait to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls in the world
I wish they all could be california
I wish they all could be california
I wish they all could be california girls
I wish they all could be california
(girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be california
(girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be california
(girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be california
(girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
[Brian Wilson & Mike Love]
Here was my chance to complete my quest! I had tasted enlightenment on my LSD trip a couple of days ago. Now, if I could just hook up with one of those California girls!
I was standing next to my car. Hey, I will drive!
Chris the Hippie came out on the porch, having heard our discussion. He said he had some friends with a farm in Iowa that was on our way. We could stay there overnight. Then we could camp out at a state park the next night. If we shared driving duties, we could be in California in two or three days. I had a full tank of gas and a $40 check in my pocket--the refund of my security deposit from my apartment. The ZBT house where I had been crashing for the last few days would be shutting down for the summer at the end of the week.
The next day, my tripping buddy Barry, Dave, Chris the Hippie and I squeezed into my 66 Ford Mustang. It would be a tight fit, especially for those who were stuck in the back seat, but we only had the clothes on our backs and a couple of sleeping bags to stuff in the trunk. We were off to California!
As we pulled onto I-80 heading for Iowa, I asked for the specifics of our destination. It was then that Chris the Hippie told me that we were headed for a "Jesus Commune" in the mountains outside of Santa Cruz to stay with about 15 "Jesus Freaks." Oy! I should have known. Well, I could survive that. After all, I was just the guy with the car. As soon as I got to California I would be off to find those California girls while the Jesus Freaks sat around reading their Bibles.
That was my plan anyway! Little did I know that when we got to that farm in Iowa that we would pick up another passenger. Remember the movie, "The Wizard of Oz"? Well this new passenger looked like the wicked witch of the East--definitely not a California girl. And it seems that that this witch had captured Dorothy's dog, Toto.
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