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Authors: Dennis Mcnally
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Along with his friend Roger Williams, also nicknamed Cool Breeze, he’d clack through high school with horseshoe taps on his shoes, such a sure sign of depravity in that era that his expulsion from Palo Alto High School seemed almost foreordained. He’d always played piano, though he refused lessons, but few knew that he wrote poetry, painted, and read science fiction.
What everyone did know was that he was the white kid who practically lived in black East Palo Alto, hanging out with a black man named Tawny Jones, who had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle as well as a bread truck that they called the Seventh Son. It came with a mattress in the back, and their sexual exploits went far beyond the average teen’s. It was also useful for their trips to a bootlegger in La Honda, in the mountains above Palo Alto, where they bought whiskey at $1.50 a gallon. That, a horrid cheap sweet wine called Hombre, white port and lemon juice, and anything else they could find were their drinks of choice—Ron claimed to have begun drinking at the age of twelve. Satisfactorily lubricated, he and Tawny would go down by the railroad tracks and write songs. They took to hanging out at the Anchor Club and the Popeye Club in East Palo Alto and the Aztec Lounge in San Mateo, listening to old blues players, corroding their stomach linings with booze and hot links while they absorbed the blues life. Ron picked up harmonica and acoustic guitar, and connected with Garcia for some impromptu lessons, which he quickly absorbed. He always had the feel of the blues, even before he acquired the technique. One of the Chateau guys, a black saxophone player named Lester Hellum, was their friend, and he later recalled taking Ron to see T-Bone Walker at a San Mateo club. Ron sat staring at T-Bone’s hands and then said to him, “I’ll see you in twenty years.” Aside from being known to steal any blues album not nailed down (Tawny took the jazz albums), he generally avoided breaking the law. Once a friend offered to sell him a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. Ron was fascinated by guns and borrowed it, saying he wanted to show it to his father. A few days later, he returned it, pleading, “Don’t tell anybody I had it.” Beneath the fairly fearsome exterior was what Garcia called a “real pixie quality. [He] was just really lovable, really fun. He was a sweetheart.”
In September 1961, Alan Trist returned from a month of hiking the John Muir Trail in the Sierras, and before leaving for Cambridge had what he remembered as a long, “apocalyptic” talk with Garcia. They walked about in San Francisco near the Palace of the Legion of Honor, on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate and the Pacific, kicking pebbles and baring their hearts as young men will. What impressed Alan then and after was the positiveness of their outlook. He wasn’t too sure of the rest of the “hip” United States, with its emphasis on angst and torment, but in San Francisco they concluded, “this is a positive place, this planet,” rather in the sense that Kerouac derived the honorific “Beat” from “beatific.” They felt blessed. Hunter and Garcia saw Alan off at the bus station, and though they were not good correspondents, they would manage to stay in touch.
In October, Garcia returned to Palo Alto and moved into the Chateau. Though it was only a rooming house, it had a certain free-spirited quality that made it exceptional. Perhaps it sprang from the owner, Frank Serratoni, who liked to water the yard in a brief bathing suit, his old man’s paunch hanging out. Lee Adams was there first, then a drummer named Danny Barnett, then Rudy Jackson, a trumpet player. Rudy unfortunately made himself memorable by asking Miles Davis if he could sit in one night at the Blackhawk. “Hey, babe, want to do something together?” he inquired. Miles replied, “What you want to do, babe, fuck?” There was Page Browning, John the Cool, Robert Hunter, Willy Legate, and at times, Jerry’s
What everyone did know was that he was the white kid who practically lived in black East Palo Alto, hanging out with a black man named Tawny Jones, who had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle as well as a bread truck that they called the Seventh Son. It came with a mattress in the back, and their sexual exploits went far beyond the average teen’s. It was also useful for their trips to a bootlegger in La Honda, in the mountains above Palo Alto, where they bought whiskey at $1.50 a gallon. That, a horrid cheap sweet wine called Hombre, white port and lemon juice, and anything else they could find were their drinks of choice—Ron claimed to have begun drinking at the age of twelve. Satisfactorily lubricated, he and Tawny would go down by the railroad tracks and write songs. They took to hanging out at the Anchor Club and the Popeye Club in East Palo Alto and the Aztec Lounge in San Mateo, listening to old blues players, corroding their stomach linings with booze and hot links while they absorbed the blues life. Ron picked up harmonica and acoustic guitar, and connected with Garcia for some impromptu lessons, which he quickly absorbed. He always had the feel of the blues, even before he acquired the technique. One of the Chateau guys, a black saxophone player named Lester Hellum, was their friend, and he later recalled taking Ron to see T-Bone Walker at a San Mateo club. Ron sat staring at T-Bone’s hands and then said to him, “I’ll see you in twenty years.” Aside from being known to steal any blues album not nailed down (Tawny took the jazz albums), he generally avoided breaking the law. Once a friend offered to sell him a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. Ron was fascinated by guns and borrowed it, saying he wanted to show it to his father. A few days later, he returned it, pleading, “Don’t tell anybody I had it.” Beneath the fairly fearsome exterior was what Garcia called a “real pixie quality. [He] was just really lovable, really fun. He was a sweetheart.”
In September 1961, Alan Trist returned from a month of hiking the John Muir Trail in the Sierras, and before leaving for Cambridge had what he remembered as a long, “apocalyptic” talk with Garcia. They walked about in San Francisco near the Palace of the Legion of Honor, on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate and the Pacific, kicking pebbles and baring their hearts as young men will. What impressed Alan then and after was the positiveness of their outlook. He wasn’t too sure of the rest of the “hip” United States, with its emphasis on angst and torment, but in San Francisco they concluded, “this is a positive place, this planet,” rather in the sense that Kerouac derived the honorific “Beat” from “beatific.” They felt blessed. Hunter and Garcia saw Alan off at the bus station, and though they were not good correspondents, they would manage to stay in touch.
In October, Garcia returned to Palo Alto and moved into the Chateau. Though it was only a rooming house, it had a certain free-spirited quality that made it exceptional. Perhaps it sprang from the owner, Frank Serratoni, who liked to water the yard in a brief bathing suit, his old man’s paunch hanging out. Lee Adams was there first, then a drummer named Danny Barnett, then Rudy Jackson, a trumpet player. Rudy unfortunately made himself memorable by asking Miles Davis if he could sit in one night at the Blackhawk. “Hey, babe, want to do something together?” he inquired. Miles replied, “What you want to do, babe, fuck?” There was Page Browning, John the Cool, Robert Hunter, Willy Legate, and at times, Jerry’s
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