From Dropping Out in Earnest and Hitchhiking overview
Shortly after taking LSD for the first time, and then becoming the drummer for the Vipers, I suddenly disappeared from Palo Alto. Norman Linke, invited me to spend the evening with him at Richard Alpert’s little cottage on Homer Lane that he was house sitting for. We smoked joints containing DMT and the wall to wall madras bedspreads and mattresses felt very womblike. I was comfortable and secure in my sense of a supportive psychedelic subculture.
The next day was the first day of summer break from school. I was feeling pretty free. In the morning I was walking across the parking lot behind Tressider Student Union when I saw a car with Burbank House friends Jon (the Bug) Manousos and Peter Talbot, about to embark on a cross-country journey with a rather loose itinerary. We had about a five minute conversation, I jumped in the car, and I was off to drop in unannounced to Carrie Heldman’s house in NewYork City.
What was I thinking? At this distance I can honestly say I was living in a totally naive fantasy world. I had no money and no possessions with me except the clothes on my back. I had no fear and no common sense. If I had any thoughts about the practicality of what I was doing I of course wouldn’t have done it. But I did.
I told the story many times in the few years after. It always consisted of a few positive highlights. If I suffered any I managed to suppress it from myself, enough that it never came out in the stories. And at this distance I have little or no recall of anything other than the romanticized highlights.
For some reason I never wrote anything about it. Now is the time to put my head down and finally at least write a rough first draft of this cross country trip. See working outline at the bottom of this page.
In 2002 I emailed Jon Manousos and asked him for help remembering this moment. Here’s my question.
I got into a car with you and Peter Talbot heading east for summer break. When was that? Who, where (Tressider parking lot?), why? I think the night before i did some DMT in Alpert’s cottage on Homer Lane. I think it’s the same trip I ended up in New York at Carrie Heldman’s house. I think I had just joined the Vipers and then disappeared on this unplanned journey before we played our first gig together. I don’t remember how I got back to California from New York. What do you remember about all of this?
His reply: You did get into a car (a 55 Pontiac) with Peter Talbot, myself, and two young ladies whose names I remember not. Time: August 1965. Place: Tressider parking lot. Why: Quien sabe? I don’t have a clue, except I seem to remember that you were hot for the aforementioned Carrie Heldman aka Trixie Merkin. How you returned to the Golden State is a mystery to me also.
—-
WORKING OUTLINE OF TRIP
Tressider parking lot
——