you know all I've ever really asked of all this is to be heard with an open mind. and it seems like that's the one thing that never happens. everybody has this take, a slant a view, that shakes or breaks or holds fast, but never seems to just be blank, waiting, open.
I was hungry. cutting firewood to buy groceries and beer. living in a little rat shack on Paradise Road, in Prunedale. This guy I knew for some reason I was at his house we were talking about this and that and sleeping bags and he says hey I got one out in the garage there you could have so we go to the garage but it's locked. this is at his house where he lives/rents, not my tight bro, but I've known him awhile. so he says hey we'll go in the window and unlock it from the inside. so we do. there's all this camping gear in there, and we're now in kind of take mode. some of this stuff not being his to dispense, but he says the landlord won't even know it's gone. there's drugs in there somewhere, in us not the garage.
so we're in there and a car slams up right outside I hear quick footsteps, I hear a loud barking human say "Monterey County Sheriff! come out with your hands up!" So bro/notbro steps put all quiet and meek. and no wait I went first. and there's this young uniform in a marksmanship crouch with a big ol' revolver pointed right at my torso and he's shaking and I'm kneeling down trying to talk to him slow and MELLow. And then we're in the cars me in one bro/notbro in another one. somewhere in there there's a man-to-man with an older uniform tho I couldn't tell you what it was about. this was in 73-74 when I was 25.
so then we're downtown in the holding tanklet. OK. this is the story that chokes my spiritual esophagus. At some point I get led back into the tomby depths of this old old jail, and the guard leads me past this cell and there's this little fucker in there all shave-headed, which in those days was quite the unusual do. and he's got this red down jacket on and he's real little like maybe 5'1" or something and when we get close to his cell he erupts into babbling high energy weirdness and mutters and gibbers and the word 'Mickey' keeps coming up he's like admonishing this Mickey person or it's like this I-told-you-so kind of energy but it's mutter and babble and I'm being escorted by this cell and it's like stepping through a forcefield, strange dark energy but there's this truth this kind of stripped down laid bare truth but it's a hopeless truth no redemption no hope no promise no reason just loss and deep controlled pain and it's also dark and bleak the kind of state where in a drug mode you want to scramble back to the womblike environs of music and normalcy, or food or something. I wish, like a lot of things I wish I could recall, I wish I could recall the exact words and also the previous conversation back in Prunedale in the squad car. also a whole heap of other shit including another 'Jake' up in Two Rock or someplace when I was still a junior college boy. around the time I got this mysterious gift of a studebaker and after that a pickup. but those aren't nearly as coherent as memory told, not nearly as clear as this one is, now anyway. the rest of the day was the usual wait for bail and then dropped charges which was ok though I can't be sure from here, I mean I can't be sure about the details the main stuff there is all true. later that year I saw a pic of Manson he was a little shavehead and he'd been down in Soledad, a hop and a skip from the Monterey Co tank.
I got a Squeaky Fromme one too. it's way scarier and it lasted for I think three days.
and you know what? it took me years to get here,through the fear, and the helplessness, and no help at all from anyone,
to just get back here.
it's not about which side are you on anymore for me eh?
Cause I'm not.

posted by Juke at 4:31 PM [edit]