In A Blue Volkswagen Bus

In A Blue Volkswagen Bus
By Marilyn Kentz

1966
Right after I turned eighteen I married my high school sweetheart, Larry Lawson. And right after I married him, he got drafted. He tried to get out of it by displaying his bulbous surfer knots. After he ended up enlisting, he did a three-month stint in Chicago and then was sent over land to Lawton, Oklahoma where he candled eggs and I kept our base apartment sort of clean in between watching Paul Revere and the Raiders’ and The Match Game. We did this until he finished serving his time – three years with the United States Army.
Meanwhile, my friends were all going to college, protesting the war and having sex with one another. Their weekends were spent in San Francisco at the Fillmore smoking dope and watching Big Brother and the Holding Company sing Take a Little Piece of My Heart while I lived among lovers of such songs as Harper Valley PTA and Sugar-Sugar, which relentlessly played on my only other form of entertainment - the radio. Needless to say I missed Northern California.

1969
When we returned we had a lot of catching up to do so we rented the tiny three-bedroom house that my cousins grew up in for $60 a month and began our version of a commune. Because it was located on Olive Street, we called it Fort Olive and I made a flag that read Fort All Love.
Seven was the most that lived there at once, but that doesn’t count the ones who crashed on the living room floor most of the time. Larry was the only person who had a real job. He worked at a dairy. Like the ads say, the Army prepares you for life. Larry brought home egg flats from work and we stapled them to the ceiling for acoustic purposes. We also had a few hens and a rooster in our back yard, though he did not candle their eggs. We were vegetarians, artists and musicians - often doing our art (and gathering eggs) in the nude.
I went back to school and joined the other protesters of the Viet Nam War. It was so much more fun than being an army wife.
I had heard of a small sign you could put in your window – about the size of a “Tot Finders” sticker - that encouraged fellow “heads” to “crash” at our “pad”. Which meant any vagrant was welcome to sleep at our house – and we meant it. Larry, being the only responsible one and head of household, thought it was a bad idea, but I never listened to him. So, I placed it in the left bottom corner of our front room picture window and they started coming.
First there was Steve, the drummer for Chicago. Being a house of music enthusiasts ourselves, we thought it was far fucking out that a famous drummer was crashing with us. He even had his sticks with him. He admired our egg flats. He stayed a couple of months, but turns out he was a drummer from Chicago, not for Chicago. Heavy. Then there was Paolo, whom I picked up hitch hiking. Paolo was an Italian chef and a damn good one at that. However, his veal scaloppini was not a big hit among us animal lovers. After only one night (I think we insulted him) he went on his way through wine country. We had many guests come stay. One time a whole group of people came in a powder blue VW bus and camped out on our front yard for about a week.
One day I was alone in the house painting a monochromatic oil on wood of our claw foot bathtub, listening to Carol King’s Tapestry on our stereo when the doorbell rang. That was unusual. Most people didn’t even knock. Two men in a suit stood on my porch, displaying their FBI badges and asking if they could come in. I was grateful I had my clothes on. Now in those days, homeless drifters were a welcome sight, but anyone in a suit scared the shit out of us. My heart started pounding. We had weed growing near the chicken coop, forgodsakes. I didn’t know what to do but let them in. I was in deep trouble. You can’t just excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and rip up a bunch of plants and try to flush them down the toilet or eat them. Damn.
The agents sat on my couch under the egg cartons and began questioning me. I looked up to see a little mouse peeking where one flat didn’t quite meet another. We had spray painted them black. It was sort of like a real musician’s studio. I was hoping the two men had come because neighbors were complaining about the noise. No such luck. The egg cartons were effective.
“Mrs. Lawson, what is that in your window?”
They know my name? “Oh, that’s so people know they always have a place to visit when they are on the road,” I answered with my best That Girl, sweet, yet kooky demeanor. I looked a little like Marlo Thomas, so I used it.
“And have you had many visitors?”
“Well, sort of. You can’t really see the sticker so well from the street. I wanted to put it up higher but my husband was pissed…I mean angry, so I had to…”
“By any chance did you get a ‘visit’ from a group of people traveling in a blue Volkswagen Bus?” the one wearing horned rimmed glasses asked impatiently.
“Why, yes - a nice group. Nice and polite.”
“When were they here?”
“A couple of weeks ago, why?” I was beginning to relax. This was not about the marijuana plants.
“Did they talk about where they were headed?”
“I think they said they were going up to Mendocino. Why?” My curiosity was piqued.
After another half hour of interrogation they closed with, “Well, consider yourself to be a very lucky young lady. You just let The Manson Family stay at your place.”
At that time Charles was already in jail awaiting trial. But the rest of his buddies were up north visiting Fort All Love.
When the two detectives stood up to leave, two more came in from the back of my house. I had been surrounded. As they all filed out the front door, one of the new ones said, “Better cultivate those plants, Missy.”
I smiled and nodded and then removed the sticker from the window.