off and buy gallons of wine,” Wood says. “That was a place that summer where there was a lot of partying, for as long as anybody could stand to lie around drinking wine. I don’t remember Jerry being into drinking particularly.
“My father was very intrigued by him,” she continues. “Even though Jerry was a dropout, because of the kind of intelligence and charm and insight that he had, he always seemed more like a leader than a bad guy. My dad thought he was a wonderful person but he’d say, ‘Why doesn’t he
do
something with his life?’ If there was any disapproval of Jerry back then, it was usually from the parental generation, but even so he was charming enough that they kind of threw up their hands—‘Oh, the darling boy! What
ever
will become of him?’”
Marshall Leicester’s parents were a little more negative in their assessment of Jerry’s character. After the ever-homeless Garcia spent a couple of weeks crashing at the Leicester family pad, Marshall’s parents made it clear to their son that it was time for this charming “freeloader,” as they branded him, to move on.
Bob Hunter spent most of July 1961 in a National Guard summer training camp at Hunter-Liggett Military Base in San Luis Obispo, a few hours down the coast, but when he returned, he, Garcia and Willy Legate all lived for a time at the Peace Center. Willy, at least, had a political streak, but Hunter and Garcia had little interest in the center’s activities, a fact that was not lost on Ira Sandperl and Roy Kepler, who tolerated them there and at Kepler’s but never really warmed up to them personally.
At Jerry’s urging, Barbara Meier attended the California School of Fine Arts that summer of 1961, and, like Jerry before her, became close to Wally Hedrick. Unlike Garcia, however, Barbara stuck with art through the years;indeed, she is still a painter. Garcia spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco that summer, too. “Jerry lived with John ‘The Cool’ [Winter] in this hotel on O’Farrell Street, which was just down from Magnin’s,” Barbara says. “So I’d walk those five blocks from Magnin’s down to the hotel to see him. It’s hard to say what they were doing. I think they had a little benzedrine and they were kind of racing around the city. I remember being with them and we’d rave around. We’d go to parties or drive over to KPFA [in Berkeley]. Little impromptu gigs and parties would turn up.
“They’d do crazy things like go down to Fisherman’s Wharf and boost [steal] a big fifty-pound bag of carrots, for instance, and they’d live on that! He never had any money, but I was sort of supporting him. I remember that I made a point of never showing up to see Jerry without first stopping to pick up a pack of cigarettes, for instance, because he never had cigarettes. Once he had a car he could never afford gas, so I was always filling up his gas tank, too.”
Eventually Garcia and Winter moved briefly into a nice attic apartment on Noriega Street, in the Sunset district of San Francisco, that was shared by Jerry’s occasional girlfriend in this era, Phoebe Graubard, and Elaine Heise, the former girlfriend of Paul Speegle (as Elaine Pagels she went on to write
The Gnostic Gospels
). Phoebe had grown up in Palo Alto, where she was close friends with Danya Veltfort, but she moved up to the city to attend San Francisco State. She thought nothing of having Jerry, John and sometimes others crashing at her pad for days at a time. “It was part of that wave of Beat energy,” Phoebe says. “If you read a Kerouac book, like
On the Road
, it was like that. They just kind of arrived, there was this frenetic
On the Road
kind of energy for a while, and some of those
On the Road
kind of experiences and these characters, and then one day they were gone.”
Phoebe says that Jerry spent nearly all his time on Noriega Street playing guitar, trying to master old-timey fingerpicking styles, and even gigging occasionally
“My father was very intrigued by him,” she continues. “Even though Jerry was a dropout, because of the kind of intelligence and charm and insight that he had, he always seemed more like a leader than a bad guy. My dad thought he was a wonderful person but he’d say, ‘Why doesn’t he
do
something with his life?’ If there was any disapproval of Jerry back then, it was usually from the parental generation, but even so he was charming enough that they kind of threw up their hands—‘Oh, the darling boy! What
ever
will become of him?’”
Marshall Leicester’s parents were a little more negative in their assessment of Jerry’s character. After the ever-homeless Garcia spent a couple of weeks crashing at the Leicester family pad, Marshall’s parents made it clear to their son that it was time for this charming “freeloader,” as they branded him, to move on.
Bob Hunter spent most of July 1961 in a National Guard summer training camp at Hunter-Liggett Military Base in San Luis Obispo, a few hours down the coast, but when he returned, he, Garcia and Willy Legate all lived for a time at the Peace Center. Willy, at least, had a political streak, but Hunter and Garcia had little interest in the center’s activities, a fact that was not lost on Ira Sandperl and Roy Kepler, who tolerated them there and at Kepler’s but never really warmed up to them personally.
At Jerry’s urging, Barbara Meier attended the California School of Fine Arts that summer of 1961, and, like Jerry before her, became close to Wally Hedrick. Unlike Garcia, however, Barbara stuck with art through the years;indeed, she is still a painter. Garcia spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco that summer, too. “Jerry lived with John ‘The Cool’ [Winter] in this hotel on O’Farrell Street, which was just down from Magnin’s,” Barbara says. “So I’d walk those five blocks from Magnin’s down to the hotel to see him. It’s hard to say what they were doing. I think they had a little benzedrine and they were kind of racing around the city. I remember being with them and we’d rave around. We’d go to parties or drive over to KPFA [in Berkeley]. Little impromptu gigs and parties would turn up.
“They’d do crazy things like go down to Fisherman’s Wharf and boost [steal] a big fifty-pound bag of carrots, for instance, and they’d live on that! He never had any money, but I was sort of supporting him. I remember that I made a point of never showing up to see Jerry without first stopping to pick up a pack of cigarettes, for instance, because he never had cigarettes. Once he had a car he could never afford gas, so I was always filling up his gas tank, too.”
Eventually Garcia and Winter moved briefly into a nice attic apartment on Noriega Street, in the Sunset district of San Francisco, that was shared by Jerry’s occasional girlfriend in this era, Phoebe Graubard, and Elaine Heise, the former girlfriend of Paul Speegle (as Elaine Pagels she went on to write
The Gnostic Gospels
). Phoebe had grown up in Palo Alto, where she was close friends with Danya Veltfort, but she moved up to the city to attend San Francisco State. She thought nothing of having Jerry, John and sometimes others crashing at her pad for days at a time. “It was part of that wave of Beat energy,” Phoebe says. “If you read a Kerouac book, like
On the Road
, it was like that. They just kind of arrived, there was this frenetic
On the Road
kind of energy for a while, and some of those
On the Road
kind of experiences and these characters, and then one day they were gone.”
Phoebe says that Jerry spent nearly all his time on Noriega Street playing guitar, trying to master old-timey fingerpicking styles, and even gigging occasionally
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