Continued from chapter .. I was taken to the worst jail in Los Angeles, I was told by the arresting officer and he was gloating about it and I checked in at night, on a Friday and put in a cell with a young and a very short and very Lively and very active black cellmate of whom, when I woke up from the dark on Saturday morning, I got to meet him and know him and hear his stories and he was a delightful sort of person and full of energy and youth and good skin tone and handsome and intelligent and was wearing would looked like Silk boxer shorts and maybe a tanker top and we all the same, for we were all kind of in our street clothes or underwear, if I recall and he told me all these fantastic and great stories about what life was like in the hood in and South Central Los Angeles where he was from and I mean the rough part of Los Angeles and I got to know what life was like in the Black Community, that he was raised in and he was extremely friendly and a happy person and I don't even remember what he was in jail for for the weekend and it didn't matter to me because he was such a nice fellow and next to me in the cell was a young handsome Caucasian blonde man who was a Harley Davis enthusiast and was telling me stories of what it's like to ride a Harley-Davidson and the feeling and coming up to stop signs and intersections and looking around and feeling the groove and holding on to his tee bars and I got to know what it was like to be a Harley-Davidson rider and I can't remember what he was arrested for either for we were all arrested for minor quality of life issues, as I recall and while my black cellmate was chattering away out loud. The jailer comes out from behind his desk in the front room and I could see what look like bottles of booze behind his desk? He came out in a gruff and accuse me of talking out loud, for it was forbidden to talk in the jail cells, which were nothing but cages side by side where you can reach out and touch the person in the cell next to you and separated only by bars so that's the way it was like, animal or Tiger cages and he accused me of talking out loud and made me take off my clothes in the front of all the other cell mates and marched me off to a back room and put me in a room with another young black prisoner who was also naked and we just sat there in the cooler so to speak and didn't say anything to each other and knowing that we were both suffering the same fate and at supper time we were released to go back to our cells and I had taken the fall for my black cellmate who was doing all the talking out loud and out of love and of course not being labeled a snitch, and in the L-shaped row of cells that look like cages I could hear someone being sick and withdrawing from probably heroin and it was a miserable sort of place where all you wanted to do was see a patch of sunlight for there were no windows to look out or any skylights to look up to and then a preacher came in on Sunday and gave us a sermon and asked anybody if they wanted prayer to get on their knees in the cell and he would come up to the cell and pray with them and I got on my knees shamlessly and being brought up by a very loving and kindly and religious mother, I respectfully, in front of everybody got down on my knees with him and prayed and caring not what people thought and nobody said a word and another person or so also got down on thier knees. In the front of the cell door as the minister prayed and I don't remember what the prayer was and it was probably the sinner's prayer of repentance and no doubt I repeated it and nothing really happened to me like the New Birth, at the time, for I was praying about the condition I was in physically in and not my spiritual condition, and I wasn't ready yet to be Born Again, as it was more of a foxhole or jail time prayer, or conversion. After being released on Monday we were transferred to South Central Juvenile Hall, in the heart of downtown and East Los Angeles. to Juvenile Hall, after spending the weekend in jail, it was not open to take in prisoners on weekends and that's why I and my cell mate friend as minors, were kept in the Georgia Street jail and since has been demolished and destroyed, the last I heard and good riddance. They checked me into high school t for classes and as I was walking across a wide open empty field between classes, I saw a great big long cigarette butt on the ground and I went to pick it up to my joy and when I looked up I was surrounded by four or five great big Husky black and serious youth offereders and they were all grining at me and one of them said with a smile through his teeth and "What have you got in your hand there white boy"!?, or something like that and I felt like I was looking at serious bodily harm or even death in the face, at the hands of these huge husky youth offenders that were being transferred through Juvenile Hall from a youth facility prison for hardcore gang members and felons and tried like adults and here I was a white boy from the suburbs of West Los Angeles, where no Blacks or even Hispanics lived at the time and I came from a lily white suburb of Tarzana next to Encino California, where the song Encino Girl was sung about and even a movie called Encino Man was made of which was hilariously ridiculous because he was supposed to be about a frozen cave man found in the ground from the Ice Age and Los Angeles is a semi troplical desert that the only life comes from water being shipped by the famous or infamous aquaduct engineer called Mulholland, from water piped from up north for example and Encino for instance is in the foothills of the Mulholland Drive, in the Santa Monica Mountains and I used to hike up to Mulholland Drive from our home in Encino, before moving next door back to Tarzana, after returning with my parents from Northern California and movng back too the San Fernando. Valley and living in Sylmar briely and attending Sylmar High and then moving to Tarzana. Where William Rice Burroughs lived and the town was named after him and his book Tarzan and used to have an animal farm there. Well anyway back to my Testimonial, after being treated the way I was treated at the West Valley Police Station I even had less respect for police officers and Los Angeles was known to have a really hardcore and tough Police Department and the largest jail system in the world and the head of the Los Angeles Police Department around that time was said to be formally in charge of the Tiger Cages, where North Vietnamese prosoners were kept in pits with bars on top of them and lime thrown on them and exposed to the elements and I don't know how true that was and it's something worth looking into historically speaking and again back to my story. While I was surrounded by these for five felonious and adult youth offenders, from the California Youth Authority when and all of a sudden I heard a little voice in the distance crying out and saying to his Black Brothers "Hey that's Pete" and as soon as they heard that I had a Blck friend, they all just vanished and disappeared and it was my cell mate, that I took a fall for and Georgia Street jail and my good Karma, so to speak came back to me and but something happened to me, like it felt like every drug I'd ever taken as a youth laid residual in my body and or had accumulated had been squeezed out of my system and into my head and I started feeling like I was coming on to LSD or something while I was sitting in my Juvenile Hall High School classroom and I was starting to get paranoid and felt like I was starting to lose my mind or lose control and I lifted up my hand to ask the teacher if I can see the nurse hoping she would say yes and she did and miraculously I made it down the hall to the nurse's room and immediately a motherly black nurse looked at me and knew what had happened to me and I learned a new word and it was called PRESSURING and she had realized that I had just been pressured and it had triggered something physically and psychologically in me a sort of post traumatic distress order "PTSD" and I never even knew the meaning of the word until I experienced it and for the next months, I battled this feeling that I was losing my mind or that I was going insane and suffering from acute paranoia and especially when I was in my cell all alone with my thoughts and no one to talk to but God and myself and I didn't know God personally at this time and suffered and soldiered through it by God's Grace, anyway and did the best I could to pray, about not losing my mind from this disorder and eventully fellowshipping with my fellow inmates in the day time and ate with them and finally ended up in the Dorm and not alone at nights anymore and the Latinos that were there, never bothered us Whites and kept to themselves and did the cooking for the counselors and I even saw one spitting in their food. Also again it was my first time blocked up with the Blacks and the Whites and the Blacks pretty much kept to themselves, as did the Latinos and the blacks were much more vocal and intimidating in thier loud speech and jesters and remember now this is the the heart of downtown East Central Los Angeles in the heart of Darkness so to speak. But I got along with everybody and as I said the races pretty much kept to themselves and there was no troubles or problems yet and this being my first time I had ever lived in a multiracial community and the whites were very quiet and contemplative for Nordic blood and genes over the centuries had adopted the Nordic Whites especially to sit quietly through the long six months of darkness in the winter for example around the Nordic Circle and while the Black Community or used to living closer to the Equator where there was an equal amount of sunlight and an equal amount of Darkness during every 24-hour period and we're much more animated and active, Genetically speaking I suppose and it's the only explanation I could think of why the whites were so quiet and calm and withdrawn and more meditative and I think also that it was a cultural thing and not just a genetic thing and well that was my experience and feelings at the time as I was still struggling with my post traumatic stress symptoms of which again like I said before lasted for months, maybe three or four months out of the six months that I served for being associated with someone who had one ounce of Mexican marijuana on him and I was the scapegoat that was sent to juvenile hall and while my friend who had the marijuana apparently got off, with a slap on the wrist and didn't do any time to the best of my knowledge, because he told the police where he bought the Marijuana from and even though it was only a ten dollars an ounce in those days, it was a serious felony and the guy, that my best friend bought it from was a collegiate type and looked like a football player and had a lot to lose for selling him that Marijuana, at a time when two or three marijuana seeds alone could have you arrested as a felony and it's so ironic, when I was sitting in a tree as a youth and reading a package of parakeet food it said it's a federal offense to grow these seeds and I didn't understand why until later that they put radiated marijuana seeds in parakeet food for instance to sterilize them so they won't grow but sometimes the sterilization didn't work all the time and you could actually grow a marijuana from parakeet seeds and how many people knew that and no wonder the birds are singing all the time in their cages and that was before I picked up the habit and otherwise I would have experimented on growing parakeet food to see if some of the unradiated seeds would sprout at all and it would take is just one female plant to grow, to get high and but what did I know about growing marijuana, for like I said again I had not yet picked up the habit, when I read the bird seed federal warning against growing the seeds also, freaky and one reson I didn't cooperate with the police, on the bust was that I didn't want to be labeled as a snitch and be retailed against and he got a drive by bullet, through his parents living room window for telling and besides, it was not my weed and I didn't buy it and yet I was scape goated for it and had a couple of priors for mischief and theft and they needed thier pound of flesh, for an ounce of Mexican Brown and anyways us white boys, mostly from the suburbs fellowshipped together and ate together and talked about our experiences over food, which was pretty good for I was put in a specia unit called Unite "O", for least offenders and a kind of the Penthouse Suite of South Central Juvenile Hall and we had nice and friendly counselors one especially with a mustach and long hair and looked like a Hippie and he it was very friendly and didn't deserve his food being spit in by the Latinos and so life went on and something like a zipper for a jacket became like a piece of jewelry for some of the jackets the zippers were gone and if you had a zipper will you held on to it so you could zip up your jacket otherwise it's just kind of just open all the time and I held on to my zipper after I got a juvenile hall for a long time, because they would work on any zipperless jacket and we listen to Donovan and tried to smoke banana leaves and got nothing out of it and I think the most popular song at least for me was they call me mellow yellow and there was a ruler that if you smoked dried banana peels that you could get high and for we had some things we were able to smuggle into Unit C because for instance eventually I got a weekend pass to go home and when I returned I sold some tobacco and matches and Striker in my underwear and eventually I was caught when sharing the tobacco in the dorm room that I was finally able to sleep in with the others instead of being alone in a concrete cell or bedroom and I wasn't allowed to take a leave pass for the next weekend it hurt and I used to drive my own used car to home and back and park it outside Juvenile Hall and it never really got molested by anyone even though it's sad outside you know for 5 days a week and it looked like somebody might have gone into the glove compartment and that's about it and it was an old classic car, something from like the 40s and would be worth a small fortune today but that's how life and times are and how time flies and one may have an antique car like I did back then but it was a lot more common than today and well today, mellow yellow and bananas were symbols of marijuana joints like in the we all live in a yellow submarine and or like the song Little Jackie papers love that Rascal Puff and brought him papers and sealing wax and other fancy stuff and I finally realized and just recently, what the sealing wax was on the papers to roll, joints, duh! Well from there I was transferred to a Sylmar Juvenile Hall, in the north most part of Los Angeles. They're the facility was more like a l lockdown high school campus, spacious rooms, High School classes and I dreamed of San Francisco again and what was going on up there and for it was December of love coming up and here I was in lockdown. The days went on and I didn't know when I was going to be released for nobody told me how long I'd be sentenced, believe it or not and so I was getting very antsy and stirred. There was a black man and a very handsome one at that who is a fantastically gifted artist and could do a sketch with a pencil that was just commercial quality and a god-given and natural Talent and I admired him so and I did my best as an artist and painted a watercolor scene of Christ in a purple role than crown of thorns, carrying a cross and being whipped by a soldier and apparently my watercolor was good enough for someone on the staff in juvenile hall to know that take it and keep it for himself for I was more interested in just getting out and then one day in art class, the artist I most admired, came up to me from behind and said come on in the bathroom white boy and I will kick your ass and I was so shocked and surprised for him to say that to me, that I exploded on him and started beat him beating on him with such a velocity that he was totally caught by surprise and off balance and I took up popsicle stick work of art and smashed it on his head and I accidentally punched a counselor in the mouth and after that incident a black counselor was sent to my cell room to talk about the incident and a white counselor was sent to the black artist room. To find out what went down and nobody got hurt except one's Pride and I told him what had happened that that man no threatening to kick my ass and I got the jump on him and the counselor grinning seem to understand and when we were walking in line between classes through the open campus field and walkway and passing another column of students Marching In Line past us and the blacks seeing me in line walking past them they held their heads down and didn't say a word and I had their respect and I was the only white boy in the whole time that I wasn't that wasn't ultimately intimidated by the blacks. Then low and behold I get a notice shortly after that I am being released and wow what a joy that was and if I recall it was around the beginning of the Summer of Love and I hadn't totally missed it and I went to Griffith Park to loving or what was called a be in and I went to one in Canoga Park and saw Country Joe, without his shirt on and his long hair and beard and well tanned and playing the guitar and all the Hippie Jewelry and art stuff at the festival and cars were cheap in those days in LA and you could buy a running car for fifty dollars and you can drive around with ball tires and no doors on your cars or even windshields for that matter and when they broke down you could just abandon them and some used to run them off cliffs for fun, of which I've never been involved in but I've seen a few rusting chassis In the Hills of Encino and at Griffith Park, I used to love to ride the horses for the horses were trained to go down this fenced path in a big loop and all he had to do was sit on him and I would roll a joint while sitting on a horse feeling like a real cowboy, for I loved the Horseback rides in the Park as the "Love In" or "Be In", was going on in Griffin Park and I so remember reading an underground Hippie Newsletter, about two Hippie tribes and its Chief leaders of the tribes coming together naked and with a stick of incense stuck thier they're behinds and they tried to outgive each other with gifts and love and I thought that this is the life I've been looking for! "Peace and Love", and that's what all of us young teenage Hippies were searching for and after abandoning a Sunbeam convertible with no working starter motor that I used to push start, for it only had a four-cylinder engine if I recall and when it finally broke down I just took my toolbox out of it and just abandoned it on the side of the road somewhere and Chatsworth area if I recall and coming home to my parents and Tarzana I borrowed the family car to drive it to the beach through Topanga Canyon and it broke down on the canyon road and I just left it there and hitchhike back home I didn't want to tell my parents that I abandoned the used car and came home clandestine, in the evening at night and I got a coat and that was all and I left home and walked a few blocks to a freeway on ramp of Ventura Highway 101 and there was a dollar bill laying on the freeway on ramp and that's what I left home with and the first person to pick me up was a young handsome well-dressed office type executive looking person in a fancy new car and he was very young not far from my age I thought and no doubt from a wealthy family college-educated and he wanted to pull over on the side of the freeway and asked if he could have sex with me and of course I said no for that was not my bag, so to speak and then he dropped me off at the intersection of the Ventura freeway and Malibu Canyon Road and I got a second ride during the night, all the way to Tura County and the City of Ventura on the coast of California and found a place to sleep at the end of a cul-de-sac that had a lot of clean white beach sand and for the first time my life and never again for I am seventy four on June 26th and I have never slept on the ground like that without camping growing up and during the night a police cruiser drove by and I must have looked like just another homeless Hippie, sleeping on the ground or in the clean white sand beach gutter and when I woke up to sunny a d beautiful blue sky and clear day, I got a ride from a really nice young lady and she drove me all the way to Santa Barbara if I recall and while going down the freeway I noticed she had a book and the side pocket of the passenger door buy a well-known Yogi that had founded a Meditation Center on the coast of Southern California in Los Angeles called by his name was Parasanda Yoginamy or something and she looked a little concerned as I picked up the book to start looking at it like maybe I shouldn't get involved in this Indian cult, so to speak and she might have been obviously a follower and or a member of the Ashram and I had at least she was very kind to pick me up and I had no spiritual leanings and coming out of the Catholic Church and all and left it at the age of thirteen and she was also good looking and young like me and we were all excited for this was the year and Summer of love in 1967. The next ride I got was by a pleasant young man who took me all the way back too, San Francisco and he asked if I wanted to be dropped off and at Hieght Ashbury and I said "No", for I wanted to go back to Marin County where I used to live and in really that's where all the real upscale Hippie action was and where the first Rock Festival, ever in history took place in Marin County on Mount Tamalpias and it was called The Magic Mountain Festival and it lasted for a couple of days around June 4th and 5th and then the next historic rock festival was the Monterey Rock Festival of which I had not attended either and for one reason I was in Juvenile Hall still around the beginning of the Summer of Love and the Magic Mountain Festival and during the Montery Rock Festival in the Summer of Love, while I basically spent that time in Los Angeles and started hichinking North and so I missed these historic events and Woodstock didn't come till a couple years later later of which I did not attend either and busy rocking and rolling in a Hippie Commune with my best friend and four teen age girls, like ourselves living independently and well anyways back to the conclusion of this chapter of my story I was dropped off in San Francisco on my last ride hitchhiking from Los Angeles and I made my way across the bridge back to my beloved Marion County and homeless and broke and had to start my life of freedom and Independence without anything but the clothes on my back and look forward to the next chapter of my life of which this story by the Storyteller will continue under the subtitle of living the ultimate hippie life of freedom in Marin County until I can to the end of myself and my own good works myself righteousness and finally related that I was a hopeless Sinner and I needed a miracle in my life and mainly the new birth and transformation into the life of the Holy Spirit and how to fighting over time evil and my last besetting sin and if you have been blessed by this testimony one can make and offering through both PayPal or Zelle at telephone number 415 374 0734 and if one would like a tax exempt receipt then please make a note or write to the New Covenant Evangelistic Association Inc. P.O Box 1591 San Anselmo California 94979
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