EVEN ON A CHILLY
AUTUMN DAY the pavement in Berkeley preserves some warmth that reminds me
of vestiges of summer, when the
blacktop's so hot there's nowhere--not even in the shade--to get away.
Some leaves never make it down from the trees in the half-assed Central California autumn, but others blow around my stride and cooled my heels. I still don't have a job, but neither does half of South Berkeley. I'm all right if I can just keep alive.
There's a thousand ways they want to kill me, with their dope and their war and their shouting in the streets. But the Lord Whitey made it all, and I don't have anything to do with his problems. Except for his women.
Haight-Ashbury is a madhouse of ignorance and mistaken identity. Some people still think it's '67 but that crap has gotten tired and so have the people. They don't even notice that some real sleazes went and grew their hair to do ill with what all they intended for virtue: peace becomes robbery, communes turn into cat houses, free love ends up rape.
