LAST JOURNEY

5. Minnesota Rainbow

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       One-armed Michael led the Bus Village welcoming committee that greeted us with cheers. Everyone always loves to see the old Bike Bus roll in. Mike told me he had a space saved for me beside his bus. Colorful hippy buses were parked side by side as far as we could see and thousands of beautiful people were walking up and down the road.

       Mike’s beautiful bus was on our right side; on our left was John’s Coffee Kitchen. The campfire was shielded from sun and rain by several tarps tied to buses and staked into the ground. Three coffee pots and two teapots steamed on the rusty grill and people gathered there with cups in their hands. Drummers drummed their drums, guitarists played and sang… Everyone sat around with a coffee cup in their hand, their hearts soaring with Rainbow love.

       John was a quiet brother who always seemed to have a very serious smile on his face, as though inner happiness was something to be worked at. Not only did he keep his coffee kitchen happening twenty-four hours a day but he also worked constantly on everyone’s broken down rigs. He considered them all his brothers and sisters. They had driven their tired old vehicles hundreds and thousands of miles to come to this Rainbow Gathering and many of the crates limped into the parking lot on wings and prayers. John was a good mechanic and when people found out he was willing to repair their mechanical problems for free they lined up for his services. He was coated in grease every hour there was enough light to see his wrenches. He had a look in his eyes that Mother Teressa would have respected.

       I chided him once that he was going to spend the entire gathering in the parking lot! He smiled and answered me that that’s where his Rainbow was—helping his brothers and sisters because they needed him. He was an inspiration, that’s for sure.

       Brother Scott was another inspiring person. He arrived with his wife in their thirty-five foot bus chuck full of food and set up Bus Village Kitchen. His volunteer crew served meals twice a day: rice and beans and tortillas and oatmeal and all kinds of soups. He told me he saved up three thousand dollars to provide that kitchen for everyone.

Everyone wanted to contribute their energies somehow. A sister named Allison was washing her hair when she realized how much everyone would appreciate having their hair washed. She spent the day washing people’s hair. All they had to do was bring her a bucket of water.Allison’s own waist-long hair was braided in hundreds of very small braids.       My hair kept falling in my eyes as I worked rebuilding and painting the army bikes I planned to donate to Rainbow Supply. My hands were too greasy to use them to push my hair back. It was a constant problem and it had been going on for years. When I looked at Allison’s braids I wondered if braids like that would remedy my problem. She liked my elkskin bikinis so we made a deal: I made a leather bikini for her and she agreed to do my entire head of hair in little braids. The process would take quite a while. We spread out my Indian blanket near John’s coffee kitchen and worked at the braiding a few hours at a time nearly every day amidst tumbling kittens and musical saws and tie-dyed garments.

Jack Herr was there with his children. Jack wrote the book The Emperor Wears No Clothes which exposes the truth about the government’s persecution of marijuana. He was involved in a cross-country speaking tour which he hoped would turn the government topsy-turvy. Jack wanted me to bring the Bike Bus on his pilgrimage.       I thought Cindy and Mavarick were a beautiful couple. They were old-timer hippies from Wisconsin. Sisters like Cindy are a special phenomena to me. Back in the sixties there were certain twenty year old sisters who seemed to naturally possess an ineffable enlightened composure, a quiet and benevolent and sensual sweet energy that I have always associated with Goddess. To meet them now in their forties and to find their beauty undiminished by time is an implosion of cosmic realization.  Such a woman was Cindy. She was so modest I could only get one picture of her during the entire gathering. Cindy’s fella Mavarick is a cantankerous and lovable brother. He kept busy directing traffic, parking vehicles, and turning shuttles around in Bus Village. He was often to be found with John under some brother or sister’s vehicle covered in grease.

       Steavie and Josie were a lovely young couple. They lived in a pink and purple camper nearby. Steavie is a conga drummer. He really wails. Josie is a voluptuous young blond who bounces scrumsciously and smells of hippy perfumes. She was three months pregnant.

       Ed the hound dog man traveled all over the gathering on a bicycle followed by a pack of dogs. Each dog had a name and a personality. Whenever any dog got out of line or tried to take an unauthorized leave of absence Ed threw a bitter tirade at the cowering creature as though it were an errant child. He organized “Doggie Kitchen” to make sure no doggies at the gathering went hungry.

       Another interesting friend who lived around John’s Coffee Kitchen was “Steps”, an Athabascan Indian. But he had no memories of his tribe. He had been adopted early in life by a white family. He missed his Indiana roots. He couldn’t speak the Athabascan language. He had no knowledge of their traditions or their folklore.

       Steps got drunk once at the gathering and revealed his weakness for alcohol. He became belligerant and got into a fight. The next day he was sorry. I respected him like I would respect a wounded wolf. He was that sensitive, and that wild, and that damaged.

       One-armed Mike was amazing too. I’d known him since 1982 when Ellie and I first met him at Goldforks hotsprings near Donnely, Idaho after we’d bicycle-toured up from California. Mike drove a thirty-five foot long bus without power steering all over North America with only one arm. His bus was one of the most beautiful hippy buses on the road. He did all the painting himself, inside and out.

       Mike moved his bus to a leveler spot and Rooster pulled into the vacancy, a big bushy-haired wildman. Rooster had a camcorder too. He invited me inside to compare notes. There I met his girlfriend Kim, a beautiful brunette sister who rarely wore clothes, on or off the bus. What a heavenly apparition!

       When Rooster noticed my appreciation for her fine form he stuck his long tongue out of his great red beard and wiggled it wildly in the air. He was telling me in his own way that he thought she was pretty fine too.

Naturally, they checked out my albums before long and Kim said she’d love to do a photo shoot with me. We followed a stream into the forest away from camp and shot a couple rolls of film. With her olive skin and brown eyes and her firm musculature she appears to be a native who might have never witnessed civilization. I eventually painted Kim. I call it Jewel of God.        Kim is a kind-spirited girl. Her dog had puppies during the Gathering and she held them like babies. She gave me some excellent foot rubs too. I love having my feet massaged!        One of my favorite photographs from the Minnesota Rainbow shows a nude Kim giving me a foot massage while Allison is braiding my hair and a fellow sitting beside us is playing the harmonica and a big white dog lies asleep in the forefront.

I rebuilt all the army bicycles that I'd picked up in Lake Preston. I painted them yellow with Rainbows. I gave them to Supply. They loved it. All during the gathering you could see those bikes running up and down trails loaded with boxes of food. And they used them for running important messages. And they even carried passengers sometimes.        Several people brought bikes to me to repair. So between fixing them and rebuilding the supply bikes I was kept pretty busy in Bus Village.  News crews from newspapers and tv stations were beginning to wander into Bus Village on their way into the site. One and all when they beheld the Bike Bus towering amidst the other hippy buses they had to come closer for photographs and whenever they found me they wanted a story.

        Two of Minnesota’s biggest newspapers, the Duluth News-Tribune and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, did their feature stories about the Rainbow Gathering with large photographs of the Bike Bus adjoining the article. The Duluth paper also did a separate story about my Bike Bus.

The Minneapolis paper plastered a large color photograph of me and the bus on the front page of their July 1 edition. The newspapers passed around inside the site and taped to trees for everyone to read. The Bike Bus was a hit everywhere and people knew me everywhere I went. Cool. Thereafter every photographer and journalist that arrived at the Rainbow perused those articles in preparation for their visit -- and when they got to the Rainbow they all came straight to the Bike Bus. One tv news crew with a Japanese anchor woman searched me out and videoed me for several minutes. It was a regular circus with nude people running around. Mario reached out through the window of Rooster’s bus and filched the tv cameraman’s hat and I managed to get a photo just as he grabbed it.     --Evidence.

       There’s always a lot of pot smoking at gatherings, --so cameras are regarded with suspicion. My own cameras were generally respected and I took many rolls of photographs. I was particularly worried about my camcorder inasmuch as it was the most expensive piece of technology I had ever owned and I’d be in a sorry fix if anyone smashed it. But I managed to shoot three hours of video tape.

Whenever I was around my bus I kept noticing a fellow who was parked near me who looked real familiar, but I just couldn’t place him. He was a slender, wiry brother with a long gray beard that stretched to his waist and piercing blue eyes. Finally I went up to him and we met and I asked him where I knew him from? He didn’t know either so we both started naming off places where we’d lived. When we came to Earth People’s Park in northern Vermont the memories all came back. Whoa! We’d been friends there in 1973! I was known as “Pan” in those days and when he called me Pan it awoke many memories inside my heart. I had not heard anyone call me that in so many years. So this was Wally! And his beard had turned gray but it was just as long as ever! It had been seventeen years since we’d last seen each other! Man! We hugged warmly.

I remembered his wife Marie and all their kids who used to run around his bus with blueberry-smeared faces. I asked him where they were? His face beamed and he told me they were all right there in the bus that was parked right in front of mine. We walked over to it and I instantly recognized Marie. Wally had to tell her who I was and her eyes sparkled and she exclaimed, “Pan!” and came and hugged me. And all her children? All three daughters were there too, but they were grown-up now, such beautiful young alternative-culture women! One of them had a baby in her arms.        Wally and Marie and I sat and talked together many times as the gathering progressed. I dug out my book and let them read the chapters about Earth People’s Park, and they said I had described things really well. They had never completely broken off their ties with the place as I had—and they had information on its present condition. I listened with rapt attention as they told me about friends that I had not seen in nearly two decades.  They said the government was trying to take back the land. They were trying to organize fundraising to pay off the land’s back taxes. They sadly described FBI raids and pot busts.

       Meeting Wally and Marie and their kids connected new days with old days in a steady stream of continuity. It was especially nice being called “Pan” again, too. Marie said she would need awhile to get into calling me “RomTom” but eventually she did and “Pan” fell into disuse again—and it made me feel a little sad: a silly bit of vanity perhaps, but the name was a forgotten key to rusty locks on old wooden doors, doors which opened to rooms of deeply etched memories that whispered and sighed and called to me...

       The day I met Mountain was another surprise. Ellie and I had known Mountain back in 1977 when the government took away our daughter Mushmara. Mountain and his girlfriend Moon came to court many times to testify on our behalf. They’d busted up many years ago and now were each with different partners. Mountain was with a Japanese woman whose name I can never pronounce or remember. They have a daughter, Pico, who is adorable. I loaned her a bike for the duration of the gathering.

       Actually I loaned several bikes to children and a few to adults. Keeping them in repair took a lot of time. I really didn’t want to spend the gathering working on bikes. I could have stayed in Washington and Oregon and done that.