Aunt June

Aunt June was my destination,shortly after high school graduation ,Mom dropped me off by the Williams Inn, with a tearful good bye,my hitch-hiking journey began.

Having read Jack Kerouac's On the road,& Neil Cassady's The First third..., Hitch-hiking from the village beautiful in the Berkshire hills to La Habra California was exciting.

Non-stop on the interstate , it was easy in the early 70's,almost impossible today, facial profiling would hinder me...

Called Aunt June days latter from a supermarket blocks from her house,what a house! fruit trees,& a big avocado tree in the back yard, she paid the local kids a nickel for each avocado they cleaned out of her yard,saying she's chop the tree down if it wasn't such a good shade tree,the avocados would splatter the house with green if hit with the lawn-mower,could twist your ankle if you stepped on them...

She was working in a aluminum recycling center & brought home cases of Coors light beer that weighed light ,were not totally filled, but went great with the tons of guacamole made from all the avocados ...

She shared her library of Alan Watts, Zen, poetry..., & her Jazz collection,along with the light beers & guacamole it was wonderful.

One of my first Sensei in living.

Week ends we went sailing in her boat Deliverance in Marina Del Ray, or went to practice the Zen art of archery...

How wonderful it would be to leave my trawler ,The Bohemian,on the Hudson river,& hitch-hike to her bedside in California , where she lies with lung cancer,the 40 year old memories will do nicely though , and my Loving thoughts are with her...

Dilly Beans

                                                       Dilly Beans

         This is my Mom's adaptation of her Mom's recipe...

          stem & pack 2 lbs. small tender green beans

          in hot sterilized jars

            to each pint add-1/4 tsp red pepper,

             1 clove garlic,1 head dill

   heat together. 

             2 cups water

             1/4 cup pickling salt( do not use iodized might make pickles soft & dark)

             2 cups white vinegar

  bring to boil;pour over beans.

   seal, makes 4 pints

       also used turnips,carrots,cauliflower,zucchini,celery,& cukes in this...

..Dead thru head ( SLPic of Jerry in portapotty) hopped onto a truckload of portapottys crawling down the breakdown lane. last ride hitchhiking to the Grateful Dead concert at Watkin's Glen. the truck was the only thing moving towards the concert , in miles of backed up traffic and the only mobile place to go on the go. It rolled thru gates in the barbed wire fences, with mounted police patroling between them...peeping through the potty's vent the security was intense, fortifided to prevent a repeat of Woodstock's recent gate crashing. Realizing the concert wasn't open yet... After the truck parked by the stage. Ending trucking to the show... "Came in through the bathroom window,"by the Beatles in mind while hopping off the truck, "Hey What're You Doin!?" someone yelled. Busted! "Hey bring some more duct tape to the tower ...this is the biggest sound system ever! And still have miles of speaker lines to run!" not Busted, put to work ... front row center before the gates opened to the masses,sitting in the lotus position, further expanding my consiousness pondering the I ching in blue swade bellboytoms (a high school graduation present), pop up silk top hat( from L.A. Thrift shop),& a hand full of turquoise rings... first of many live Grateful Dead shows... 

 hoping to get Google Wave before the iphone app. come out, a Second Life HUD for Google Wave would be nice...