“Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.”  Horace Greeley said this, or perhaps not.

The view from my door.

How is it that I’m suddenly living in California, after 63 years on the East Coast? I’ve been asking myself this question for the last two weeks.

The easy explanation is that our son and grandson moved here and need our help. True, but it all started a long time ago, forty-four summers to be precise, back at the end of the fairy tale 60s…..

Once upon a time there was a young hippie who lived in Connecticut. Though enrolled in college he was not much of student, for he whiled away the hours playing guitar and reading books like The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. So he was forever dreaming of the Great Wizard Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters who traveled the country in a Magic Bus experiencing unimaginable adventures, gobbling lysergic potions and dancing to the sounds of the Wizard’s minstrels, the Grateful Dead. The Wizard Kesey spoke in riddles. He said, “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.” The young hippie didn’t know what this might mean, because when he looked around there was not a psychedelic bus in sight.

Then one day he was strolling down the big hill at the college when he saw a bus, and no ordinary school bus, but painted the blue of a robin’s egg. At that very moment the bus door creaked open and out popped the driver, a fellow in overalls with the longest beard the young hippie had ever seen, who smiled and waved, Come on board!

In no time the young hippie was “on the bus,” rolling away to parts unknown. Many hours passed in which he became ravenous. But all there was to eat was a sack of dried hippie cereal. He gobbled it by the handful until he felt a massive bellyache coming on. But neither the bellyache nor the dreary lowlands through which they passed could stop the quivering in his chest that told him some great miracle awaited him at the end of this journey.

Then they drove onto the grounds of some kind of outdoor stadium with an enormous stage high in the air upon which began to appear the minstrel heroes of his youth. It was hard to know which was more wondrous – Buddy Guy, The Band or Janis Joplin. And then as from the pages the book which had inspired his dreams, those minstrels from the legendary bus itself, the Grateful Dead, appeared and played well and sang not so well.

He was invited onto the train the minstrels traveled on, and who should he find eating scrambled eggs and toast like any ordinary hippie but Jerry Garcia, Guitar Wizard and chief minstrel of the Dead. He greeted the young hippie with a twinkle in his eye and agreed to be interviewed for the college newspaper. Soon the young hippie’s eyes where wide as saucers, for the Wizard spoke of wondrous things, not the least the fact that he was at that very moment still flying, having eaten a slice of birthday cake that had been dosed with the Pranksters favorite potion, LSD, as was the custom with the Dead.

The young hippie’s audience with the Great Guitar Wizard lasted long into the afternoon. By the time he got off the train he was sure he’d found that wonderful thing he’d ridden all this way to find. And indeed the Wizard had gifted him with the resolve to make his career in music. And so he did.

Yet something told him that it was not time to return home yet, that more wonders awaited him out in the great land. He abandoned the big blue bus for a small blue bus, a VW camper, and continued west with two friends from the college. Their friendship was fair, and the food was better on the small bus: now they shared once a day a whole pot of brown rice with a can of Campbell’s Soup. Even so the young hippie became hungrier and hungrier as they crossed misty mountains and traced deep dark canyons on their way West.

The young hippie became convinced that the mysterious thing he sought must lay at the very edge of the continent, that the sight of the Great Pacific Sea would be a wonder all in itself.

And so it was. They stood high on a cliff gazing on a vastness that made the Pacific’s sister the Atlantic look pale and piddly as a mud puddle. The sun was about to set and the three hippies simultaneously had the same thought – How much more wondrous would this sunset appear if they could taste of the magic potion?

At that very moment some local riffraff appeared from the beach below sold the weary travelers a potion, which they ate. The great glowing orb went down. As it approached the horizon, already resplendent with colorful jiggles and squiggles, its bottom flattened and oozed to the sides so that it resembled nothing so much as a hat. The travelers looked at each other. Was that it, what they’d come all across the continent for? Did that hat somehow contain that illusive answer, the answer to the question of existence?

They would never know, because like that the sun was gone and they stood down on the beach in the pitch black with an icy wind howling at them from Japan right through their bones. The riffraff who’d sold them the potion did have the sense to make a fire, but soon as they approached it to get warm it blew smoke in their eyes. And the riffraff spent the rest of the night telling over and over of things too boring to repeat, for it turned out they were not only riff raff, but morons.

By the time the sun finally reappeared the young hippie vowed that we would never dark the door of that potion again. And to date he has not.

It was high time to return East to the college, but one last wonder beckoned: the fabled city of San Francisco, promised land of the hippies. Yet when they reached the streets of Haight and Ashbury they found them to be not paved with gold, and as by some curse emptied of every last hippie, with not even an emaciated speedfreek in sight.

Where could the hippies have gone? Another friend from the college had told them of a girl who lived up in Marin north of the City. They drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and were immediately swallowed by the mouth a dark tunnel, and despaired, except that one of them pointed to the rainbow painted around the mouth of the tunnel and said, “I think this is a friendly tunnel.”

And so it was, for they emerged into the little village of Mill Valley, a place so rustic and cute and crawling with granola that they thought they must have dreamed it. They wound up an enchanted canyon through swirling fog to the girl’s house where she invited them in and showed them the stream that ran right through the living room, and as was the custom they cried, “Oh, wow!” And then she further blew their minds by opening her vast refrigerator, saying, “my food is yours,” and handing them her stash, “And these magic herbs, too,” and pointing to beds with thick mattresses and clean sheets, “And here you may sleep.”

To say that they were hungry at this point is to say that the Great Sea is full of water. They smoked some of the magic herb and ate a bologna sandwich, and then another one. They went outside and craned their necks up at red-barked trees that stretched to the sky. And the young hippie pronounced, “I shall make my home here, in Hippie Heaven.”

Hippie Heaven

But the young hippie returned to the college. Many years passed in which he grew old. His music flourished, yet not so much that he was rich. He was not the last to discover that Hippie Heaven, and soon the houses became more expensive. So though he sometimes visited San Francisco, he could never afford to make it his home.

Until now. I’ve been living for the last two weeks up a canyon in Mill Valley. It’s only til the end of the month, as we look for a place that we can afford in the East Bay.

Still.

I have long believed that if you want something badly enough, for long enough, you’ll get it. Oakland may no be Mill Valley, but we’re here, in the Bay Area, and it’s a kind of promised land.