PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

9. Musical Snowbank with Jewels

        I drove into Boulder in the last days of February. I remember snowdrifts and slushy city streets and some wham-bam storms that left the Metro a huge pile of whiteness, melting only on the warm windows; a pretty nighttime sight, an interior candle or two flickering magic colors: what a fine gypsy shelter for these wandering feet that for so many years had known so little shelter!

        And I was in the mystical magical city of Boulder with my own mystical magical rig! My flying carpet. Boulder! The psychedelic mountain university town where in 1969 I’d had such amazing sensational phantastical times! WOW! And here I was again, only this time I wasn’t a pedestrian sleeping outside under a piece of plastic at the mercy of weather and cops. This time I had my own traveling hotel room. I felt rich. I felt like a gypsy king.

        But I wasn’t rich. In fact, I was nearly broke. Shortly after I pulled into Boulder my mother sent me a couple hundred dollars from my magic little fund. I should have bought six used tires with tread with the money. God! But first I needed something else really badly. I needed some voices in my soul so I could heal my headache, heal my heart. Badly as I needed tires I could not get them. I needed this music -- or my heart was going to explode. I bought a new eight track tape player and two new tapes. One was Judy Collins and the other was Joni Mitchell’s new album, “Blue”. Whenever I heard them sing the memories of prison, and every hardship, and every fear faded away and my soul healed and healed and healed. From then on either Judy or Joni was singing in the Metro at any hour of the day or night.

        The money went fast. I went to a tire shop and purchased two new tires and put in some new spark plugs at the same time. Now I was legal and safe both. Safer anyway. I still had tires that needed replacing but they’d have to await more money. The two new tires in the front gave me a certain measure of security, but I still had to be careful because some kinds of highway ice don’t care how new or old your tires are. Especially on a weird shorty truck like my Metro. I think it thought it was a basketball; it had similar proportions; it was always threatening to bounce off things it wasn’t supposed to touch.

        I had purchased something else with my last dollars—a copy of a book of famous erotic lithographs by the Marquis de Bayros. The Marquis de Bayros was born in 1866 and died in 1924. From time to time in his life he was forced to move from one European Capitol to another as his art was banned by the authorities. I found his art amazing. I wanted to get into sensual feminine art again someday and these old prints were extraordinary; they gave me all sorts of fresh ideas. I was having a great many beautiful sexual encounters and it seemed to me that my own art should evolve from these roots into something wonderful, whether it be in oils, clay, or photography. Time would tell. All I needed was money for art supplies. It would happen eventually.

I was optimistic that money wouldn’t always be a problem. I had high hopes of making star ruby jewelry out of my little bus if I could get together enough money to buy the silver-working tools and lapidary equipment. Yep. If everything worked out like I planned I would surely become a star-studded mountain man artist in this locality.

But meanwhile I was so broke that even food was a luxury. I probably wouldn’t have any more money for at least a month, so times would be rough for awhile.

Molly showed up. When she realized that no amount of persuasion would keep me around her Trinidad home she and the kids decided they needed a combination vacation and shopping spree. And so I was surprised one day to see her waving to me from traffic in her cram-packed little car. She didn’t come just to see me she explained, she often made the four hundred mile roundtrip to get better deals on health food. Anyway it was good to see her. She stayed in Boulder a couple days before heading back. I promised I would drive back down to Trinidad and visit her before too long.

        I drove the Metro up into the mountains, Breckenridge I think it was. Many snowy nights I spent parked in the forest looking like a snowbank, but very warm. As a result of the nonstop singing of Joni Mitchell in particular I will forever be transported back in time to those cozy days by merely hearing a few bars from any song on the “Blue” album. Like a flame her voice seemed to melt out a cave in the glacier of my soul.

        I found a bar in the middle of nowhere with a real great atmosphere. Local hippies came to dance in the evenings and they all seemed to know each other real well. I felt I was a stranger and I was, but I had a good time. I had no money to spend but no one seemed to mind.  I parked the truck a mile away for the night and slept and returned to the bar in the morning. I brought in my guitar and strummed quietly to myself beside a window while watching the snow fall. I was prepared to be run off, but there were no other customers and it seemed cool. The owner came and sat at the table with me listening. He asked me if I was broke and I admitted that I was. He brought some coffee and we sat together talking. He said he owned another place in Boulder, a restaurant with a stage. He asked me if I would play there on some evenings for a few dollars and a meal. I was surprised that he thought I was good enough but I figured I’d give it a try.

        The drive down the mountains was scary. The rear tires were still pretty slick and once again the Metro was spinning in circles all over the highway. There was traffic this time though. So I went real slow and made it down without incident—other than running out of gas and having to hike a mile and spare change money to pay for it.

        The next night found me in Boulder at that place. I got out my guitar and sat on the stage and played some music. I wasn’t used to a regular audience like that though, and they weren’t very kind. All of a sudden I didn’t think I was good enough to be performing in public after all and I quit. They gave me a free meal and a few dollars anyway. I was embarrassed.

        And the following days got more and more financially embarrassing.   Gas was only forty cents a gallon back in early 1973. You’d think at that price no one would have run out of gas in traffic, but I did; more than once. Actually the Metro sucked gas. It got less than ten miles per gallon.

        I borrowed money from total strangers. I panhandled although it humiliated me. Once on the hill a huge German Shepard attacked a group of people that included children. It had them cowering in a pile against a wall and screaming. I charged in and wrestled the dog to the ground. I received some kind words for that. It was hard to panhandle on that corner afterwards somehow; Loved one night, hated the next, you know...   Difficult to make one’s mind understand those things when one is right in the center of the emotions and perhaps a little hungry and homeless other than a vehicle... People don’t usually understand.

        I tried to sell some of my finished stones, but I had no way to do that. I appeared to people to be a just a bum. Where would a “bum” get rubies and sapphires? Obviously they were either fakes or I had stolen them. If I approached any well-to-do-looking person with one of my stones they treated me like I was a rogue with the plague. The stones weren’t set anyway. What ordinary person would want to buy an unset stone? Not likely. I showed my stones to a jewelry shop owner or two. But they were only interested if they could get them for my cost. They didn’t want to pay me for all the grinding and polishing I did by hand. People are so selfish.

        I even had something special—a stash of emerald rough from Bogata, Columbia that I had received in the mail just before my release from prison. I hadn’t even had time to cut any finished stones from it yet. The emerald material appeared from the outside to be mostly a black soft matrix with shines of sheer beautiful translucent green in between.  One day I borrowed a grinder and cut away at the stuff and discovered that after I removed all the black matrix from each piece I had some large chunks of flawless faceting grade emerald, one to three carats each. They were called #3 grade in the brochure, but gosh, they looked fantastic to me. There didn’t seem to be any tiny cracks or fissures in them and their color was solid and incredible. This was an amazing piece of luck. But I couldn’t find anyone to buy one of them either, uncut as they were especially. And why would I want to sell such fine emerald rough before I’d had a chance to work it? It would be worth so much more after I’d cut it properly – even though I couldn’t facet it like it deserved, I could still create some fantastic cabochons! I kept them in a glass vial in my pocket sometimes to remind myself that things wouldn’t always be so difficult. Twenty-five beautiful uncut emeralds soaking in a small vial of oil...

        Late one snowy night I found myself really hungry and almost out of gas. In fact I had to bum enough gas just to drive to the International House of Pancakes and sit in the parking lot. Hopefully the cops wouldn’t bother me there if they thought I was inside eating. They’d been bugging me a lot recently... It must have been about two AM. I kept looking at all the well-fed people coming back to their cars. I tried to sleep but I was hungry and cold so I went inside the restaurant and brazenly started talking to some of the customers, showing them my stones. I showed the waitresses, too. I guess the staff felt like humoring me because they didn’t stop me; in fact they all seemed interested in the stones. I simply told them I had run out of gas and I was broke and was willing to sell a five carat star ruby for the price of a meal and a tank of gas, less than ten dollars. I got no takers. Finally a waitress bought me a free breakfast. I gave her a fine stone afterwards—“as a tip” I told her. She readily admitted she did not believe it was a real ruby but she put it in her pocket. When I went out to the car to leave I drove ten feet and ran out of gas. I had to spare change and walk a long ways to get a can. It was really cold and snowing.

        I looked for Pizzas thrown away behind a parlor one afternoon and got caught by the owner who brought me inside and sat me down at a table and cooked me up any kind of pizza I wanted. A few days later I went back there again and asked him for another and he lost his temper about how he couldn’t afford to do something like that on a regular basis. I was embarrassed again.

        Molly showed up in town again and we spent some time together.  It’s so weird to be with someone who loves you when adversity and cold-hearted hardship seems to smothering the life out of you. Like being reawakened to live a little longer in the light. She really wanted me to come south with her. I told her I would come down soon, when I got some gas money together.

        Towards the end of winter I made the trip to Trinidad and stayed a couple days with Molly. I had made some decoupages which I sold at a few craft stores. They were pictures cut out of the Marquis de Bayros book and glued on nice pieces of wood and covered with a varnish. They looked pretty good and I sold enough to think it might become my new way of making a living. Molly wanted me to stay with her forever but I just couldn’t make myself remain in one place. Spring was coming like a fever. I could feel it.

I returned to bittersweet Boulder to find the snow melting and Joni Mitchel still wishing she had a river she could skate away on.