Backpacking to Europe
The school year was over, and I decided to drive to Virginia to see Pamela. It had been more than a year since we parted ways and I was really missing her. Somehow I had the phone number of her grandmother who lived in Charlotteville. I had a vague plan of driving to Buffalo via Charlottesville with the hope of maybe finding Pamela for a visit before heading north. I had a standing invitation from my sister Diane to visit her in London. I could give my car to Ronnie in Buffalo to pay him back for various monies he had loaned me in the past and then fly to London.
Before leaving Naco, I had stopped by the school to turn in my keys. The principal murmured something about how “I had better be out of town before sundown or the sheriff might be paying me a visit” implying that somehow criminal charges were pending (!?) Had I crossed the line sharing beer and pot with y sixth grade students? It really didn’t matter, I was getting out that morning anyway. Soon I was on the interstate heading to Charlottesvlle.
Arriving in Charlottesvlle I used a pay phone to call the grandmother’s number. She gave me her address and I drive to her house. I remember breaking down in tears talking with her about how I had missed Pamela. She relented and gave me Pamela’s address in Willamsburg. I went there and met with Pamela who scolded me for not calling her on the phone for the whole time I was living in Mexico. Actually I did call her once, when I first got to Bisbee, describing my living situation there but she wasn’t interested in joining me at that time so I never called her back again. Anyway, she still seemed distant and somehow resentful towards me so I decided to continue on to Buffalo.
Pamela
Arriving in Buffalo, I signed my red Toyota Corolla over to Ronnie and took a flight to London. I was still wearing my Guatemalan shirt from Mexico. When I got to London, I made my way to my sisters’ place. She was living with Ollie Olson, a draft dodger and ex-Peace Corps buddy of my brother Ronnie. There was another roommate, an art student. Their digs was a nice 2-level row house. My sister was either teaching or studying photography, I cannot remember. I had some time to explore the neighborhood and so I discovered the large “commons” areas, basically huge parks, strategically located throughout the city. I would do my tai chi form in the park near my sister’s house and by doing this I met a “bloke” who was doing some t’ai chi himself at the other end of the park.
Ollie and Jerry – note Quatemalan shirt
He eventually introduced me to his T’ai chi master Liu who was teaching at the London YMCA. I attended several sessions. During one of the sessions I had a hallucination that I will never forget. Master Liu was in front of the room doing a T’ai chi move called “raise the power of Chi” when suddenly is seemed like the room filled up with a mist or kind of smoke that covered the floor. Master Liu said “If you fail to see directly into your own self-natures, you will forever be condemned to live out your life and then die in ignorance.” At that moment his legs seemed to disappear. He was blindfolded and his arms tied behind his back and he was laughing, as if laughing at his executioner. Then the smoke began to recede and his legs came back. Soon he was standing before the class looking completely normal. I looked around to see if any of the other students had seen what I had seen but nobody had.
1934-1990)
Master Liu Hsiu-Chi
Later, after I returned to the states I was able to teach Master Liu’s style to my students in Tucson and then again in Eugene. I founded the “Tao The Ching Society” and began preaching a type of Taoist philosophy and spirituality. I was greatly influenced in all of this by Master Liu’s Chan Buddhism (Zen).
One thing Diane and I did together was to vacation to Amsterdam and then, later, to Spain. In Amsterdam we smoked hashish in a hash “speak easy.” We goggled at the whores in the red light district. We walked along the canals looking at the house boats.
We took the train to Barcelona via Paris. While on the train I ended up sitting right next to a pretty young Spanish woman. We started making out. Unfortunately for us, a Russian sitting across from us offered us a drink of Votka. We agreed, each taking just a single swig. It must have contained a powerful drug because the next thing I remember was trying to stand up and falling directly into the cabin window striking myself directly on my “third eye” area.
On the train to Barcelona – photo by Diane Bush.
Later I was wandering the train and, according to my sister, taking my wanger out and pissing in the corridor. The Spanish girl and the Russian had disappeared. When we got to Barcelona. I was having difficulty walking and became belligerent. I didn’t feel normal until two days later. My sister was helped in this ordeal by a nice American couple who continued with us to Barcelona. We all ended up sleeping on the beach together.
The photo by my sister Diane was taken during our trip to Spain that summer. Like I said, we were all sleeping on the beach in Barcelona. I woke up early (I have always been a light sleeper and early riser) to the sounds of beach cleaning equipment in the distance. A guard civil officer came over (the Franco era guys with the funny hats) and started chatting in Spanish. My Spanish was still pretty good in those days. He invited me to walk with him to see some of the sites along the beach and to talk.
This was in interesting introduction to Spanish “maschismo.” He took ne to a police tower where we could see French woman bathing in the nude. We then went to a fence hole where we could spy on women using the beachside dressing rooms. Hmmm. Then we stopped by a café where at 6 am he ordered us both cognac to drink as we talked. He bragged about being married with three of four children but that he also had “several” girlfriends who he fucked under a bridge near the beach. This guy was a regular piece of work.
Returning to my friends on the beach, who eventually woke up, we began exploring Barcelona. At one point we split from the American couple and Diane and I, after a proper tour of Barcelona, decided to catch a train to Citges, a small beach town of the coast south of Barcelona. When we arrived, we were able to rent a tent (more economical than a room) on the beach and that is where we nade our HQ for several days.
At night when Diane went to sleep (she didn’t have much of a capacity for night life and drinking), I would explore some of the clubs and the winding, narrow streets of Citgis. I found it absolutely fascinating how the Spanish would stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning carrying on, chatting etc. as if it were the middle of the day.
The photo of me sitting at a Citgis café above shows the café owner. She told me that during the Franco era (he was still alive and in power when we were there) the preist would review all movies and cut out offensive scenes (like any kissing scenes) with a scissors so that all movies were completely censored.
I had always found stories about the Spanish Civil war fascinating and I knew about the atrocities that occurred under Franco. I also knew about the active communist and anarchist forces during the civil war and how most were hunted down and later imprisoned where they were systematically murdered in prison, all with thetacit consent of the Catholic Church. So when we were finally leaving Spain to return to London, when a railworker struck up a conversation with me regarding the Vietnan War, he looked around to make sure nobody was listening or watching and then threw a clenched fist in the air and shouted “Viva La revolution sociale!” I will never forget that gesture.
I was only allowed to stay in England sixty days and since I didn’t want to get Diane in trouble, I moved out of her digs and made my way down to Brighton where I found a job in Clark’s Bakery and got my own digs in Hove. I made so little money at Clark’s that I was only able to afford my food and rent with nothing to spare. But the job at Clark’s was interesting and had its humorous side. I was assigned to making cheese cakes in a very factory-like situation. Sometimes I would be on the bread assembly line or would be switched to fruit cakes but most of the time it was cheese cakes using a weird material called “quark.” Since one was paid so little, every once in while I would snatch a cheese cake to take home, hiding it under my jacket.
There was a cute girl in the same section and eventually we went out on a date and ended up in the sack together. My Greek landlord took me under her wing and gave me a bottle of Greek wine to help things along. She had been a spy for Britain in Egypt during WWII and cried whenever she spoke about her love for Greece and the beauty of its jungle areas.
One day we had a shipment of sheep kidney pies that were dumped on the pavement just outside one of the buildings in the noonday sun. When I complained to a Peter Sellers type manager who was wearing a white lab coat that the sheep kidneys were starting to stink, he ordered me to shut up and get back to mixing the quark. I can only think of the poor devils who later got one of those sheep kidney pies in some pub somewhere and who got horribly sick from eating one.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to head for the continent without any definite plan, other than to head for Paris. But when I got to Paris I quickly found out that it would be difficult to stay there. I didn’t speak any French and I had very little money left. I spent a whole art of the day trying to make contacts so I could stay and spend time there but nothing was working out. So I decided to head for Germany where more people spoke English and where I might find work. I ended up getting a ride all the way to the French speaking part of Switzerland where I found a workers hostel. All I remember is a bunch of French railworkers watching Brigit Bardot movies before retiring for the night.
In the end I had to take a train to Munich and now I was down to almost no cash. On the train I was reading Tim Leary’s book on psychedelic experiences and the book caught the attention of a young German couple who spoke English. We quickly made friends and they invited me to stay with them upon our arrival in Munich. We went to their apartment where after smoking some hashish, we all ended up in the sack together.
In the morning Pheps was also in need for finding employment so we teamed up together and hit all the opera houses. Pheps had prior experience as a stage hand and so that is where he decoded to concentrate. This didn’t immediately pan out so we decided to jump a train to Berlin without buying a ticket. Unfortunately we were caught and thrown off the train and had to spend the night in some non descript German train station in the mddle of nowhere. Somehow we were able to return to Munich (we jumped the train again going back) and, while wandering about, came across a “Premmi House.” This was a place where some “boy God” of the Hindu faith was recruiting followers of his religion. It was a huge house with many rooms and one could stay there for free and eat there as long as one participated in their rituals and meditation sessions. We were there several days when Phepps announced that he really liked the movement and wanted to stay. He confessed to being an ex-heoin addict and needed the structure to thrive. I tred in vane to point out the absurdity of the whole thing but to no avail.
I had arrived in Munich wearing my Guatemalan shirt and dressed for Tucson. It was no longer summer but late fall but I had not noticed this until now as it suddenly turned very cold and started to snow. I panicked and had to nick a pair of gloves from a department store. I wasn’t eating very well at this point and and somewhat delirious, began wandering the streets at night aimlessly, just trying to avoid the Premi House.
On one occasion I came across a travel agency walkup window that opened onto the street. I stood there and a woman opened the window asking me in German what I wanted. I asked for airline ticket from Munich to Tucson, Arizona leaving in a few days. I spoke in English. She answered in English, “That will be 400 German marks, please.” I looked into my wallet where it seemed a moth flew out, nothing else in there. But then I spotted an old, expired credit card. I handed it to the woman. In what seemed an eternity there was nothing but silence but then, all of a sudden, the sklish sklish of the credit card machine making an impression from the card. “Sign here lease.” I signed and was handed two tickets, one from Munich to New York and one from New York to Tucson. I hurriedly walked off with my bounty.
Upon returning to the Pemi House my German friends staying there agreed to give me ten German marks needed for the taxi ride to the airport. I arrived at the airport to see the place surrounded by police armed with machine guns. I got into the airport and someone told me about the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes and the need for heavy security. I got on the airplane and, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, I was in the air bound for New York.
Upon returning to the New York I telephoned Pamela’s sister who lived there, not wanting to deal with relatives. Luckily Susan Tyree and her husband invited me to stay overnight. I did so, had a nice but short visit, got back to the airport and was again in flight to Tucson. I remember arriving in Tucson and was somehow able to exchange the few marks I had left for 75 cents. I was back!
