Grateful and The Grateful Dead, Part I
One of my favorite Ruby stories doesn't take place in San Francisco, although her love of a great band certainly started there; well, it almost did. Shortly after Ruby turned fifteen, she saw The Dead before they were The Dead on a stage up at Rio Nido, on the Russian River. At that time they were called The Warlocks, and before that, they were called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, but that was before Ruby's time. Anyway, Ruby's family often spent time on “The River” because a lot of young people hung out there, and it was cheap and only an hour and a half from The City. They spent most of their time swimming, canoeing, hiking and so on. But Ruby swears the only thing she can remember about that 1964 summer, was sneaking out of their cabin to see The Warlocks.
Everyone had been talking about them to the point, that seeing The Warlocks felt just as important as the recent arrival of The Beatles, and these boys had the added attraction of being from the Bay Area. And, they were playing right there, in Ruby's vacation backyard. Ruby had been spending as much time with her friends as her parents could tolerate, but she wasn't allowed to date until she was sixteen, so whenever she went out, it had to be in a group. And it had to be “the right group.” Ruby and her friends were pretty good at disguising themselves as the right group, since most of them had met in one parochial school or another, either Lutheran or Catholic, and had become experts at telling their parents whatever it was that they wanted to hear. But in this case, Ruby's parents were adamant that she did not go to this “shindig,” because it started at sundown and they had heard, from other parents, that it would be overrun with a crowd of wild teenagers with long hair. Ruby's mother, who had been trying to get Ruby to cut her hair, suggested that if she did cut it, she could go to the concert! Ruby's mother was joking, but it didn't matter to Ruby, she had other plans.
First of all, their cabin wasn't too far from the bandstand, so she would still be able to hear the band. The other thing is that it had been a very hot day, her parents were cooling off with Manhattans, and Ruby felt confident that they would pass out in time for her to sneak out the back door, and slide down the generous banister that led to the carport. But it still took them a long time before they retired, and Ruby's friends had given up waiting for her. She had to listen to The Warlocks from her room that opened up to the balcony of the cabin. She had to put her nightgown on over her Bermuda shorts and camp shirt, which made her sweat and swear, while listening to music that she fell in love with instantly. Her thongs (they're called flip-flops now), were easy to slip on, so she just waited it out until the light in her parents room went out. By the time it did, the band had finished their first set and were taking a break. Ruby slipped her nightgown off, arranged the pillows in the bed to look like she was still there, slipped her thongs on, and slid down the bannister. It was dark back there and one of the thongs fell off, but Ruby waited until her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, recovered the sandal and made her way towards the bandstand.
At first Ruby could not believe that such a crowd had gathered right there at Rio Nido. It was one of the first times in her life that she realized how blessed she really was, to be in the right place at the right time. She quickly found her friends and they began immediately to share the excitement and celebration of having escaped from their parents, in one way or another, and had the good fortune to be out at night, with everyone else. It was well worth the escape. The music was even more exciting than anything the Beatles had come up with. It was a rock n' roll that was full of variety, sometimes rock, sometimes a little bluegrass, and even some jazz! It was new, it had character that made Ruby and her buds start dancing as soon as they got there, without partners, but as a group, the right group. The second set lasted longer than the first, with songs that seemed to have no end, or were played again because the audience couldn't let go. Somehow everybody with long hair looked like they were in the vanguard, ahead of everybody else with short hair! Long hair had become a symbol of freedom, and revolution. It mirrored the change that was happening everywhere and was absorbed quickly by a lot of the baby-boomers, who no longer felt afraid of the establishment, which often just meant everybody else. Ruby got high on the music, the energy and the cokes that they put aspirin in for an additional buzz. She felt the energy going up her spine, and coming through her fingertips whenever she raised her hands above her head, just “reaching for the stars and bringing down the moon.” She felt the bliss of discovery, and connection to a whole new world of music, that she knew belonged to her and her friends. It was personal. She had seen some of these guys before, and the ones that she hadn't, well, she felt that she just knew them anyway. They were familiar, with lyrics that were real, authentic and often a mirror of her own thoughts and feelings, making The Beatles appear more like Sunday morning than Friday night.
And her bliss would have continued too, except that the music eventually came to an end and after a lot of the crowd had left, she realized that the old man with the Hawaiian shirt on at the edge of the bandstand, was her father. He didn't have to come and get Ruby, because he had made eye contact with her, enough for her to know that the gig was up. Ruby quickly said goodbye to her friends and to her freedom, for a while. Her dad didn't say a word, not a good sign; but as soon as they were back at the cabin, she had to listen to the how disappointed he was speech, one that she knew so well, that she could have delivered it to him. She sympathized with both of her parents, because to her, being a teenager was no longer about being agreeable, or even compromising. It was a game, a contest, to see how well she could outwit them. Her logic being that in a few years, she would have to be making all of her own decisions anyway, so why not start now and get some practice? The City was alive with all things new and innovative, and The Warlocks were proof that San Francisco could hold its own, against any import, from any other country. And for that she was very grateful. After all, like Ruby often said, “Who doesn't like the home team, especially when they're winning?” As far as Ruby was concerned, The Dead never lost, even when they had an off night, because the spirit of that first encounter never left her for very long and in fact, still exists.
Part II - Motherhood, Pending
Ruby always remembered Jerry in the Summertime. That's when she had first seen him with the band, and like a lot of people, she felt that he was the heart and soul, the identity of The Dead, even though they all had individual personalities and most of them were real characters. She had been in Golden Gate park, on the Sunday before her son was born, watching the Dead at Speedway Meadows. The fog was just melting away from the Park. The grass was still a little damp, but as the sun got stronger, the smell of the recently mowed lawn was like incense, filling the air with memory. The kind that made your nose itch and the rest of your face smile, because it was clean, fresh, pleasing and full of pollen. It was one of many free concerts that year when everyone felt it was important to keep each others spirits up from collapsing under the weight of recent events.
It had been a strange year, and even though it wasn't over yet, it was completely opposite in every way to its predecessor, 1967, when there had been a Summer of Love. The feeling of that Summer was still there, but it was changing quickly. The previous year, it seemed as if the sky had suddenly opened to the love of the Universe, and the Age of Aquarius had shone through the clouds and burned them off. Then, just as quickly, the clouds returned and the backlash of cruelty had no limits, and a lot of people let the love go when they became disappointed with the reality of war and assassinations. Of the many things that happened, besides Dr. Spock getting arrested for protesting the war in Vietnam, there was the Tet Offensive with the most casualties so far in the war, then Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, and then more recently, Bobby Kennedy. Dr. King had done so much to bring us out of the dark ages, and Bobby had renewed our hope in the future. But that Sunday, the sun was actually out, holding back the fog, a blessing in itself, if you know the fog in the summertime in The City.
Ruby and her friend Sandi, were some of the first to arrive. The band was just setting up and the center microphone sirened and popped. Ruby's husband was a good guy, a quiet man, but not too interested in The Dead. So Ruby and Sandy went, just as they always had, bringing a little picnic with them. They shared a blanket and some finger food, carrot sticks, grapes and cherry tomatoes, what Sandi called Mama Food.
Ruby and Sandi had been best friends since the beginning of high school. They had graduated at the beginning of the Summer of Love, after they had both turned eighteen. Ruby was grateful that they had turned nineteen, a few weeks before her due-date, just so she could feel a little older than she had after graduation. Feeling tired and sluggish, she almost didn't go, but Sandi had said, “C'mon, you need this, you'll feel better.” And Sandi was right, she usually was. It was Sandi who brought the special doobie on Ruby's wedding day, when Ruby had decided she didn't want to get married, and kept throwing up in a combination of nerves and morning sickness. And tried to sing “There must be some kind of way out of here...” Back in 1964, it was Sandi who knew that they should start growing their hair long, long before it became a national trend. Sandi had blond hair and Ruby was a brunette, and even though their body types were different from one another, Ruby was taller and thin, and Sandi was shorter and slightly rotund. But people still thought they were sisters, because of their hair always being about the same length! They were like cousins though, since their parents had more in common than the girls friendship. Both sets of parents were alcoholics with one slight difference. Ruby's parents kept it a secret outside of their household, but Sandi's had long given up trying to keep anything a secret. That meant that Sandi's parents could be counted on to pass out more often then Ruby's parents. Ruby could always say she was spending the night at Sandi's, when the girls were usually at The Carousel, The Avalon, or Winterland, and Sandi could always say she was spending the night with Ruby, because her parents would never have called. That way, there was no curfew for either of them. Sandi had a little Corvair, and gas was only twenty-five cents a gallon. At the beginning of the great dancehalls, in 1966, it only cost two dollars to get in. So the girls could have a night out for five bucks, see three bands, and dance until they were exhausted. They usually didn't drink much at these concerts, except for the water in the girls bathroom, since everybody knew that anything could be put into the beverages. Jerry and The Merry Pranksters were notorious for putting large amounts of LSD into the punch. Neither one of them could tolerate much alcohol, let alone try any drugs that might put them into next week.
Finally, The Dead came to life and started playing, getting warmed up with something without lyrics. Sandi got up and danced for both of them since Ruby couldn't. It just wasn't that easy anymore, for her to get up and down from the lawn. Some friends of theirs caught up with them, and ate most of their food. But it didn't matter, because Ruby enjoyed watching them and everybody else, trying to get the energy up to the level that it had been at the previous summer. It didn't matter until the baby started doing somersaults and then suddenly stopped. It moved down, closer to the birth canal, and Ruby felt like she was sitting on the baby's head. Her little dog was with her, Muffin Dog, the little beagle mixed with something else, the one that she squeezed so hard the night that Bobby was shot, that she was afraid she might have hurt her. Ruby turned red and started to sweat. She couldn't get comfortable. Sandi had been keeping an eye on her, and moved in on her with the whole group she was dancing with. They circled Ruby, dancing around her in a circle and made her laugh and she had to tell them that she was not in labor yet, but that it would be soon. Since they weren't too far from the stage, Jerry didn't miss a beat, he was looking in Ruby's direction, and as soon as their song was over he said, “Hey, would somebody please get this mama a pillow?” Ruby waved to let him know she was alright, but the folks around her brought her pillows, blankets and some more food. That's how it was back then, loving and sharing, being together for the love of music and freedom. They stayed for the whole show because with all the help she got, Ruby just propped herself up with the pillows until she got comfortable, and went to sleep. People stopped by and dropped flowers around her so that when Ruby woke up, she was surrounded by daisies and hydrangeas, that had probably been picked right out of the gardens in the park. Sandi had made some daisy chains out of the lawn flowers, turning them into garlands for both of them. Then she went and brought the Corvair in closer so Ruby wouldn't have to walk so far. But it was still a long way back to the car, and took them a lot longer than they expected it to, especially with having to find a bathroom more often than they ever had had to before.
It was a long time before Ruby ever got comfortable again. But she had a Friday child, who turned out to be loving and giving, just like the saying goes. A child who enjoyed being a little warrior whenever Ruby had some kind of anti-war meeting at their home, and grew up to be a drummer in his own band.
Part III - Serendipity
By the time Ruby was forty, she was divorced for the second time, with her second child, a daughter that she named Opal, because it was known as a delicate stone with a fine vibration. Her first child, a boy, had already moved out and had a band of his own. So it was just the two of them and Ruby was a single parent, again, trying to survive the joint custody she had foolishly agreed to share with Opal's father. He was one of those bitter alcoholics, that was as trying as a heat wave, whether he was drinking or not, and never missed an opportunity to punish Ruby for her capital crime of ending the struggle that she knew they could never resolve. Eventually, she regained full custody of Opal, but those were tough years, when she kept her lawyer on retainer, just to have his protection.
Well, anybody whose ever been a single parent can tell you how much fun it is, trying to do everything all the time, and never feeling like you can catch your breath long enough to take a deep one. But Ruby and Opal were close and that made it all worth while; Ruby setting about to have a better relationship with her daughter, than her mother had had with her. Vacations for a family that's slicing pennies on a regular basis, are few and far between, so Ruby took advantage of friends that lived elsewhere besides the Bay Area. There had been a co-worker that had moved up to Sonora, not too far from a water-slide park, and then there was Carola, who lived near San Diego, Opal's favorite because of its proximity to Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. Ruby and Opal, who was about ten by then, had spent the better part of the last three months planning this trip to FantasyLand, which is what Ruby called Southern California.
It had been a mild winter, with a lot of sunny days all through the late fall and into December. And because Ruby got the week off between Christmas and New Year's, they decided to head south, where it would be even warmer, and less likely to rain. They were living in Oakland at the time, where Ruby thought the weather was the best in all of Northern California, even though it could still rain enough to make you think it was time to build an ark. Their apartment was in a small building on “Pimp Hill,” where a red light district had resided after the 1906 earthquake. It became a respectable district, after the Grand Lake Theater was built during the thirties, and for a while housed both vaudeville and film. By the time the two gems as they often called themselves, moved in, the neighborhood had everything you needed from a service station to a four-star restaurant. Ruby and Opal ran most of their errands on foot, and delighted in being able to take long walks over to Lake Merritt and up towards Piedmont.
One of their favorite stores was the produce market, that ran all the way from Lakeshore, one of the two main streets, out to the parking lot in back that served the supermarket and neighboring stores. They would start filling up their baskets as soon as they got inside the door, and didn't stop until they were almost out the back door, where the smell of the refuse containers would encourage them back in.
Well one day, after they had bought enough produce for a rabbit farm, they were headed past the refuse container and on to the supermarket for some paper goods. They noticed some kids going through the refuse containers, who were delighted with all of the produce they were finding to eat. Ruby stopped and spoke with them, since they looked like a lot of the Deadheads that were in town for The Dead concerts over at The Coliseum. Sure enough, they had spent their last dollars on concert tickets, and had to scrounge around for food. So Ruby gave them a five dollar bill, and suggested they get some protein, to go with their fruits and veggies. The youngsters, two young men and a young woman, were so pleased that they offered to carry Ruby's groceries for her, so she let them. After they got to the supermarket, Opal asked her mother why she did that, with money being so hard to hold on to as it was. Ruby told her that The Deadheads were good people, and if she hadn't had a son so young, she would have been more of a Deadhead herself. And even though life had taken her in other directions, she was still a Deadhead at heart, and had simply felt compelled to be helpful and that it was the right thing to do. The gems didn't go to church regularly, so Ruby made it a point to make some kind of contribution every week, usually to someone who was homeless. Well, these Deadheads didn't consider themselves homeless, but they were still out on the street. And after they showed their gratitude, Ruby was grateful herself that she had made the contribution to their evening meal, explaining to Opal that they never went hungry, or without a roof and warmth, and that sometimes you have to remember to tell The Universe thankyou. After that, it was easier for Opal to be generous whenever she could.
So Ruby and Opal went to visit Carola down in SoCal. Carola had a big house, and explained when they got there, that her nephew and his friends were staying there too. The nephew was busy putting his music into the tape-player, and asked for everyone to give him a minute, which was fine with Ruby, as she and Opal had just gotten off a very turbulent flight. It had just started to rain, so everyone convened in the kitchen where Carola was making hot chocolate, and jokes about rain in Southern California. And just as everyone was getting introduced, Ruby and nephew Paul recognized each other from the parking lot at the produce store. It was Paul that Ruby had given the five bucks to. And, before Ruby and Opal had arrived, he had enjoyed telling everyone how friendly people in Oakland were.
Yes, it's one of those "It's a small world" stories, but it's even more fun when you realize how far a simple gift can go. This story still gets a lot of mileage, and reminds Ruby to maintain her generous heart, and the love and freedom that she began to know, when she was fifteen, on the river.
