Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (18 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life

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Page 92

See, that was another big thing for us. Back in those years, we would get in a van and we would drive up Highway 101 and we would hang out in the Haight. Haight-Ashbury.

We needed to take a van because Volkswagen vans were cool and then you could go more places. And, most importantly, it was a motel on wheels.

For this place, you left the yellow Caddie or the Vette or the Impala at home.

You were being hippies for the weekend.

You wanted some of that fine young hippie action.

The Haight was a strange place and still is.

There was this lamp post out front of this one place on the corner, where I met this fabulous looking girl and I mean, these were the days of no bra, and long hair. It was one block down from Ashbury on Haight. It was a real great hangout.

And I remember meeting this girl who absolutely turned me inside-out during sex. She was gorgeous. She was really nice. And, my God, she must have been a world champion gymnast.

Name?

You got me, pal.

The name was Gorgeous.

There were so many hundreds of willing chicks in the Haight at the time, you wound up doing it almost before formal introductions.

Free love was in. I took full advantage.

There was just so much up there. Omigod. Friday afternoon, we said, "Well, let's go up and screw all weekend."

And that's what we did. Morning, noon and night.

If they were receptive, that was cool.

If they weren't receptive, that was cool, too.

Go onto the next one.

Never force yourself. I was always a gentleman.

There were so many fish in the ocean, it didn't really matter.

You'd just drift in and out of these bars. A lot of them didn't have names. It's not like saying, "I'll meet you over at Joe's Bar or The Whiskey" or something. They just had the kinds of coffee they sold, like soaped onto the windows or something like that. That was the only signage.

But the Haight . . . the funny thing was, I did not get into drugs. I didn't want to, and I didn't have to, in order to score. I thought originally I would have to in order to get girls, but it turns out I could play it off and it wouldn't matter.

There were a lot of times I was with a chick and she'd take a hit of coke and she'd start to give me one and I'd go, "Nah, nah. I'm cool."

Everything was, "I'm fine."

Page 93

"I'm all caught up."

"I'm covered."

All these little things. You're dodging.

In other words, you didn't want the drugs.

You want the sex.

So that's how I ran into Angela at the Haight. I ran into Stokely. They would come up and do demonstrations. Angela, I want to say, was already a student at UCLA. But, actually, I'm not absolutely sure of her status.

I do know she was a nice girl. She had hair. She had a 'fro on her. Oh man, you shoulda seen her trying to get into a doorway with that massive hair.

She was strictly a Commie. She truly believed that everyone should share things together.

Angela was a good-looking girl. Man, she had great legs sticking out of these short little skirts. And she had an absolutely magnificent butt.

She was just hot. I salivated a little bit. But I never got close enough to Angela to try for her. I wasn't that much into the inner sanctum, at all. I knew them and they knew my name.

They knew I was Lumpy. And they tried to play me.

I didn't want to get involved with that.

You have to understand what it was like at UCLA, when I went there.

There were different areas around campus, these free-speech areas. You could be walking to class with a book and hear someone screaming out for the proletariat. Screaming out against the war. Against nuclear power. Against the government. Against wealth.

In my heart, I knew they were right, but I thought they were hitting their heads against a wall.

When it came to the black cause, Stokely was a manipulator. He was the head of SNCC, the supposed Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and "Snick," as it was pronounced, was total B.S.

SNCC was about as non-violent as Fidel Castro. SNCC would have cut your friggin' arms off. OK? You couldn't believe Carmichael at all.

Like I say, all this guy was after was the white chicks. That's all he cared about. He was a real vermin.

But Angela believed in what she was doing.

She was very uptight. Always nervous. Fidgety. I can't say I remember anything Angela actually said that stuck with me. Much of it was the same rabble-rousing claptrap to try to get people who had an IQ of 3 to go, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

That's how rabble-rousers are.

If you ran into somebody who really gave you verbal discourse, you avoided them.

Page 94

You wanted the guy who sat there with a blank look on his face going, "Yeah, man. Right on. Let's do it."

They didn't want someone who could actually think.

They didn't want the guy who would say, "Hey, prove it to me."

They wanted me to be a representative of their causes. And I wasn't a cause guy. At the time I was very liberal. I believed the world had to be changed. I didn't think I was going to be doing the changing.

I was a pretty law-abiding guy. Remember, we were "Beaver" people. We were America and the flag and all that other good stuff. And all of a sudden, here I am, I didn't want to burn flags. I was raised to believe in, you know, God and family and all that.

Not to believe in anarchy.

These people were preaching anarchy. Anarchy wasn't my bag.

My bag was to have a little play-type anarchy with them and then go back to my disgusting existence and let them fight the war.

That doesn't sound very high or morally great, I suppose, but that's how it was.

I just wanted to be where the action was.

I had to be.

That was what made me tick.

And where could you get better action than a peace demonstration or a black-power rally in the '60s?

A lot of times, the activist leaders were aware I was there. When they knew, they were very nice to me. They always encouraged me to be close to them while they were talking. Of course, they wanted to see my fist in the air, going, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

But my eyes were more on somebody's body and saying, "C'mon, let's get out of here and do our thing. And we'll come back. See how things wind up."

Something like that.

Aside from girl-hunting, I also liked the fact that you could meet some nice people at demonstrations. And some of these people, you would keep in contact with.

I just met so many people and my inventory of people that I knew grew to the thousands, not hundreds.

Anywhere I could go in Southern California or Northern California, I'd always run into somebody.

But there was only one occasion in which I actually got out and demonstrated and got my fine young Jewish tush arrested for it.

And that was with Cesar Chavez.

That was in East L.A.

Page 95

He was leading a deal called "MAPA." The Mexican American Political Association. And Cesar was out there trying to organize the brasseros. They were getting hosed so bad. The brasseros were the itinerant farmers. You know, they were all illegals. East L.A. was loaded with illegals and Cesar was trying to get people educated, he was trying to get people organized, he was trying to get people so they weren't getting messed over.

Cesar was a pretty good guy.

He was very, very loud. He was adamant. He was excitable. He was intelligent.

I've seen his eyes pierce through a lot of cops.

He really stuck up for his people.

Physically, he wasn't imposing. Not at all. He was dumpy. Cesar was nothing to look at. He wasn't tall. He wasn't short.

Cesar was a very nondescript guy. But he was a real good guy.

He had a big heart and big cojones.

Well, there was this lady we knew who was a Mexican. And this one night, she was talking about this demonstration on Whittier Boulevard.

Now, Whittier Boulevard was what Cheech used to sing about in the song, "Born in East L.A."and, in fact, Cheech and Chong were at this very demonstration I was at. You bet they were.

But Whittier was where you cruised in East L.A. Kind of like the Hollywood Boulevard for the Mexicans.

That's where all the lowered Chevies were.

So now we're down on Whittier Boulevard and we come up on this demonstration. We're sittin' there and the next thing I know, there are all these coffins being paraded down the street.

And we're lookin' and goin', "Hey, that's pretty cool."

The coffins represented how they were tromping the Mexican Americans, and how their bodies were being buried in unmarked graves. And they weren't giving them any money. It was just a symbol.

Now all of a sudden, the cops are going, "Disperse. Disperse." And everyone's going, "No way. We're not leaving, you pigs."

And I happened to be there, so, of course, suddenly I've got three cops coming up behind me, shoving me into the back of this van.

So we get our butts arrested.

Now, I haven't really been shouting, "Down with the pigs" and all this. I was doing my usual. I was schemin'. I was playing like I was all for the cause.

But I was there and I was part of it. I mean, actually, I did believe in what Chavez was doing.

If you didn't believe in Chavez's cause, you weren't human. Because the pickers and people like that were getting screwed over something fierce.

Page 96

They really were.

Cesar was right on the money. He did a lot of good for a lot of people.

But, still, it wasn't like I was in any real role in the demonstration or anything. I was just down there to see a scene. I was probably looking for some Mexican chick. I was usually in that mode.

But there was action.

It was the same thing. I loved the action wherever I went.

When things were happening, I wanted to be part of it.

So now these cops are coming to round everyone up at this demonstration and these three cops have me by the arms. I'm already almost in the van before they even start with me. Believe me, I did not exactly push them back.

I didn't say a word.

Why should I?

Because I knew I was already in there.

No way of talkin' my way out of this ticket.

But actually, we were more of a nuisance to most of the authorities than a real threat. Because, see, Cesar Chavez's guys really were non-violent. I mean, up in Delano and up in the farm country in the middle part of California they got pretty violent. But in East L.A.? The Mexicans were pretty laid back.

So the cops weren't clubbin' people. No Kent State scene. It was more like, ''Get the hell outta here. Clean up this demonstration, and let's all go home and watch TV or something."

So now I'm taken down to Parker Centerthe place they originally took O.J. and they threaten us for about a half hour.

It was so disorganized. Finally some guy comes out looking like Michael Conrad from "Hill Street Blues" and goin', "Well, if all you people can act like human beings and stop with this civil unrest, you can go home. If not, we're gonna throw your butts in the slammer tonight."

So I'm sittin' there goin', "Oh, yeah. I'll go home."

I turned around and they let me go.

There were maybe 300400 people arrested and they just wanted to get us out of their hair, if at all possible.

So that was my one time being arrested, although I wasn't formally charged with anything.

It wasn't long after that I ran into my next unforgettably crazy moment.

That would be dropping the peyote with Carlos Castenada.

This was at UCLA in the '60s. Drugs just weren't a really big thing for me then. I dabbled some, like I said.