Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da:
Richard Ledford answer to my question: Will we hear from you soon?
“Yes I am going to write a lot soon, starting at the begining —
my spring ’68 long weekend trip hitchhiking from Pasadena to SF and back, when I fell in love with the Highway 1 Monterey area and the SF peninsula coast–
my plan to leave Caltech and spend some time driving up and down the coast just picking up hitchhikers–
my visit to the Hog Farm in late October 1969 in a VW van outfitted with a full performance high power 12Volt stereo-stereo system (unheard of at that time) and a complete bootleg copy of the Beatles White Album a full month before it was officially released –-
completing Stewart Brand’s Liferaft Earth, a week long outdoor public fast, just after we landed on the moon, an event which merciless rains forced to be relocated up the hill to the Skyline Blvd Rancho Diablo mansion —
how the mansion ended up rather trashed as the event wound down and the Hog Farm’s feasting fast breakers wiped out the kitchen —
how I hung around helping to restore the place back to pre-event normalcy and was then offered the caretaker position —
the harvest of pot grown under lights in the attic —
Thaddeus the dog, who was so smart he knew to grab a tree branch in his teeth and shake it to get his thrown stick when it got stuck up in the tree —
driving the VW van with 50 people clinging desperately to it so they could avoid walking the last six miles to the Altamont festival from where they parked, and then driving away in the morning because I knew there was some wierd vibe in the air …
So, as I gather my memories,
Richard