Growing Up Then and Now

Well, one day, a college buddy calls up and says he and his bride are driving East to visit.  “Great!” I say, but when they arrive I’m caught in a fix because that night two runaway 17 year-old girls from Dauphne, Alabama are crashing at my place.  I had to entertain Rocky and his bride and I had to safeguard two kids.  That night we would have to all crash at my place, some on air mattresses, some just on the floor.  But I announced a better plan:  It’s Friday night; No work tomorrow; Let’s get in Rocky’s car and head down the Jersey Shore for the weekend and rent a motel room.

Entertaining Rocky included buying some beer.  Well, I got lost trying to find Ship Bottom.  Worse, while we’re lost driving down U.S. 9, Rocky’s car breaks down.  The first car that pulled over wasn’t much help – a station wagon filled with an immigrant family from New York, also lost.  The second car was a police car.  “Oh, Oh; we’ve got beer; there are two underage missing persons in the car; this could be big trouble.”  But Nancy to the rescue!  Nancy, Rocky’s bride, was all straight A’s in college and pretty midwesternish straight-laced generally.  She gets out of the car, even before the cop gets out of his car (you could do that in those days), and tells the cop – almost exactly – what’s happening.  The cop never looks into the car, never checks anyone’s IDs, and Nancy comes back announcing that the cop was extremely helpful, knew of a car repair place just across the street from a beach-front motel in Ship Bottom, and had used his police radio to call a tow for us.  Not Lost Anymore.

Minnesota Slim looks much better

Turned out to be a totally rainy weekend.  We shot a lot of pool.  Enough that Nancy earned the moniker “Minnesota Slim” with the locals.  On the way home, in our repaired car, we nicknamed the town “Shipwreck,” and I got us into Philly on the back streets.  Ended up on Rising Sun Avenue.  And that’s how everything turned out.  The two girls reconnected with their parents, who were so grateful that I was invited to stop in the next time I was passing through Dauphne.   All these travels and adventures, Granby Colorado, Miami Beach Florida, Berkeley California, Voyage House and Shipwreck New Jersey, led to my introducing the Youth Works legislation once I got elected to the Minnesota Legislature, but again that’s another story.

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It took eight weeks for the Voyage House Steering Committee to decide to hire me.  I had to have one-on-one interviews with the director, the three counselors, the one lead teacher, and one of the group home mothers.  Meanwhile I lived at my parents, met my future bride for the first time [read “Third Time’s The Charm”], made money working a part-time job at US Steel, and served as the McGovern for President coordinator for SE Bucks County.  Finally I got the call “You’re hired!”  I show up for my first day of work, kinda ask OK, what I am suppose to do now?  The counselor on duty says “There are the streets,” points to the door, and hands me a fistful of Voyage House cards:

The back of the card had four rules to follow if the police detain you.  I was hitting the streets to work with runaways.  Pretty quickly I met all the drug dealers, pimps, and assorted other street people who hung out at Rittenhouse Square, a friendly place near the Greyhound Bus Station.  Once they learned I wasn’t undercover working for The Man, they accepted me as legitimate competition for the attention of the kids.  Occasionally I actually befriended a brand-new runaway just off the bus and helped him/her get to a safe place, but more often the kids had to learn about street life the hard way, going through the drug and sex scene before hitting rock bottom and turning to me.  I counted it as a success just planting the seed that there was an alternative.

Voyage House was successful in its goal because its director, an Episcopal Priest, had built a Board of Directors that carried weight with the power structure.  One Board Member was Judge Lisa Richette, Chief Judge of Family Court, and she let me know that it was okay to “harbor” a runaway for a few days without first contacting his/her parents or the authorities – otherwise we had no chance.  “Harboring” meant staying at one of Voyage House’s crash pads – a dozen or so families who agreed to take a kid in for a night or two and provide some meals.  Occasionally I took in a runaway but mostly I needed my apartment to myself to get a break from the intense street scene.

Tomorrow:  Rittenhouse Square

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Turns out the first ever Rainbow Family Gathering was taking place at Strawberry Lake on the other side of the Park.  If I hadn’t picked up that hitchhiker I never would have known about the gathering and my whole life would have been different.  Every year since, the Rainbow Family holds a gathering in some national park each summer.  But that first one was the only one I ever attended – although I was tempted to make the close-by one a couple years back in Superior National Forest.  The Rainbow Family is anybody who shows up.  (Talk about inclusivity.)

Actually I would have ended up there even if I hadn’t picked up that hitchhiker because the police had thrown up a roadblock at the other end of the National Park, on the other side of the Divide, and were pulling over every car, motorcycle, van and VW Bug to make sure no one else got to the festival.  The Governor of Colorado, ironically named Gov. Love, had decided too many people were trekking in and had to be stopped.  (Later, when I read the newspaper reports, I learned we were 10,000 strong.)

Well, just so happened, that VW Bug had two sisters from New Orleans and we hit it off.  After a while there were about 40 of us pulled over at the entrance to the camp ground.  One guy says he’s a local and knows the back way to hike in through the mountains.  So we all drove our vehicles to Granby, the next closest town, and start out hiking about evening time.  We hiked all night for there was never a flat surface to pitch a tent.  Occasionally someone would scream when they lost their footing and slid down a ravine – I don’t know how those early settlers, or the Indians, did it.

The next morning at daybreak I gather the troops and tell them I think our leader is lost.  I am going to climb that nearest mountain top and see if the Gathering can be spotted, and, if not, I’m heading back the way we came.  About half the group went with me and about half stayed with their (I thought lost) fearless leader.  (Later, when I read the newspaper reports, I learned that Gov. Love had called out the National Guard using helicopters to search for missing persons – lost hikers whom he – admittedly – had put in danger by blocking the camp entrance.)

After about an hour of hiking back the way we came in, we came across another group hiking in.  Only they were hiking in 20 lb. bags of flour, oats and rice because they had already been to the Gathering and had been assigned to the kitchen detail:  “Must have missed the turn-off in the middle of the night,” they told us.  And sure enough, just a few miles later, me, my hitchhiker buddy, and our two friends from New Orleans are looking at wondrous Strawberry Lake.  I say wondrous because an advance crew had built a sauna and everybody was skinny-dipping.  Along about noon this guy walks by with a gallon water jug and says “Just take a sip – it’s electric.”

Ken, the Capitol Barber, in 1997, a year after “I won’t get my hair cut until our tax system is more progressive.” Also Committee Administrator Chris Crutchfield and CCO reporter Eric Eskola

A little later the four of us are staking out a camp site admiring how well organized everything is.  Plenty of food, showers, everything you could want.  While we’re sitting around the common campfire, it suddenly comes over me that this was everything I was dreaming about gazing out my college dorm room window, but it wasn’t what I wanted.  This Counterculture was a Drop-Out Culture!  I wanted to be with political activists who wanted to wade into the mainstream, not follow a different stream.  So, on the spur of the moment, I announce I’m heading East to the Democratic and Republican Conventions in Miami Beach, Florida.  (Both parties had picked that island for their 1972 conventions in case they had to pull a Governor Love to avoid the tumult of Chicago in ’68.)

Tomorrow:  Joining the Movement

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