Manson Family Inspired Art

rfoster1 and I were exchanging emails about paintings of the Family done by legitimate artists.  Between the two of us we found paintings that were quite good by one particular artist, Kaye Donachie.  Her paintings have sold for big bucks at a recent auction.  Just when you think that maybe your spending a little too much on your "hobby" you see something like this that makes it all okay!

"Every mornin' our love is reborn"  Sold for $18,400.

"Red and Blue"   Sold for $6,875.

"You hear yourself say things you could never mean"  Sold for $15,000.

"Your untold dreams I love to see"

This one was not at auction

http://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/kaye-donachie/every-mornin%27-our-love-is-reborn

The Late Dennis Rice preaching in prison

Thank you, pastor Jimmy Lee of Bullhead City, AZ. We at Eviliz are sorry for the loss of your friend.

Bruce Davis aka Hari-Kari

One of our happy readers, who happens to be a friend of mine emailed me a Bruce Davis interview, conducted a few years back in a World Magazine.

It will blow your mind a little.....well, at least it will get your attention, if you haven't read it. Ole Bruce had a thing, I guess, for wanting to blow the brains out of people, then make it look like a suicide. I suppose he had a knack for pulling off such "jobs." What talent that must take! Anyway, without further blabbering from your hostess, I give you:

Bruce Davis: Underestimating Evil by Lynn Vincent

After three decades behind bars, former Manson follower-turned-Christian believer Bruce Davis thinks the state has punished him enough-but is reconciled to the fact that God "is giving me what I need."

The first time Bruce Davis saw him, Charles Manson was lounging in an antique bathtub under a shade tree, ringed by half-naked women and smoking a joint. It was Topanga Canyon, L.A., 1968. "I thought, 'Man, this is where it's at,'" Mr. Davis remembers: "I didn't leave that house for six weeks."

Ultimately, he didn't leave Charles Manson, either. That decision would vault his life down a hideous trail that led from a hedonist's paradise of drugs and lust to what at that time were the grisliest murders in U.S. history. Charles Manson, Charles "Tex" Watson, and other Mansonites were convicted of murdering in 1969 actress Sharon Tate and her four houseguests, along with grocery chain magnate Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. A separate jury nailed Mr. Davis for his role in the Manson-ordered murders of musician Gary Hinman and ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea. When the gates at California's Folsom State Prison slammed shut behind Mr. Davis, the Vietnam conflict was evening news, Watergate was an infant scandal, and gasoline cost 36 cents a gallon.

Nineteen parole hearings have yielded 19 denials. His 20th hearing, slated for last month, was just rescheduled for the third time. And California Gov. Gray Davis has publicly declared that any prisoner with "life" in his sentence will never see freedom on his watch. But Davis the prisoner says that even if the state never shows him mercy, his is still a story about the grace and mercy of God.

I visited Bruce Davis and his wife Beth inside the California Men's Colony (CMC), a medium-security prison to which he was transferred in 1980. In the visiting room, two tables away, convicted felon and former rap-music thug Marion "Suge" (as in 'sugar') Knight talked with a silk-suited visitor. But Mr. Davis looked like a different man than the smirking stoner pictured in the pages of Vincent Bugliosi's Manson chronicle Helter Skelter. His hair has gone from brown to steely gray. He stood in his prison dungarees with a bowed, deferential posture. The man whom L.A. prosecutors once called "Manson's right-hand man" clasped my hand, bowed his head, and asked God to bless our meeting with candor and truth. Mr. Davis's cobalt eyes looked straight at mine, and he said he is sorry for his crimes.

Those crimes are among the world's most infamous. On July 25, 1969-exactly 15 days before the Tate-LaBianca butchery-three Mansonites paid a visit to musician Gary Hinman. They planned to rob him blind. But when death threats and a pistol-whipping did not produce an outpouring of cash, Charles Manson and Bruce Davis drove to the musician's home to provide additional motivation. Mr. Manson listened impassively to the victim's pleas, then used a sword to slice Mr. Hinman's left ear in half. Mr. Manson and Mr. Davis then drove off, leaving the others to torture Mr. Hinman for two more days before stabbing him to death.

A month later-two weeks after Tate-LaBianca-Mr. Davis was involved in the murder of Shorty Shea, a bit-part actor and on-again, off-again ranch hand. Mr. Shea had displeased Mr. Manson, who responded by gathering Mr. Davis, other members of the pack, and four sharpened German bayonets, plus the sword Mr. Manson had used to slice Mr. Hinman's ear. The group ambushed and killed Mr. Shea; Mr. Davis says he did not commit the murder but admits that he then followed Mr. Manson's orders and slashed the victim after he was dead.

"It was the only time Manson asked me to go on a murder," Mr. Davis says. "I didn't have the guts to say no." With police looking for him and other Mansonites, he became a fugitive, but finally surrendered to police on Dec. 5, 1970. (He didn't know that Christian relatives in Alabama had been praying he'd do just that.) Mr. Davis stood trial and, upon conviction, landed in Folsom.

There, in the fall of 1974, while standing at a water fountain, he saw hundreds of idly milling inmates in a whole new way: "Everyone appeared to have the pale of death. And I realized that the pale of death I was seeing on the others was also my own. Suddenly, I was desperate. I admitted I needed help."

That admission opened a testy personal dialogue with God, in which Mr. Davis says God reached out to him while he dug in his spiritual heels: "I wanted to reject God's moral demands, especially that His favor required my submission to the Lord Jesus Christ." But in the end, he tendered a surly, disrespectful surrender. "Okay, God," he remembers saying while lying in his cell bunk. "You say you love me and we both know that I don't love you. You say you want to help me, but I don't believe it. I've never done anything for you. But if you still love me, and still want to help me, then do whatever you can.

"That was the truth, and it was as ugly as I could give it to Him." Mr. Davis says. "And little by little, He began to transform important aspects of my life. By God's grace, in my 32nd year, I was saved."

Not everyone bought Mr. Davis's conversion story. When L.A. County deputy D.A. Jeffrey Jonas first began handling his parole board hearings in the early 1980s, he thought Mr. Davis's profession of Christianity was just another case of expedient jailhouse religion.

"I thought Bruce was disingenuous, of the same ilk as the other Manson people," Mr. Jonas says, noting that Mr. Davis and two other Mansonites all were prominent figures in CMC's Christian ministry at that time. "I thought that was about as hypocritical as you could be. Mr. Davis had never renounced Manson, but was paying lip service to spiritual values. Basically, his attitude seemed to be 'What's it going to take to get me out of here?'"

But in the late 1980s, Mr. Jonas's opinion changed. Mr. Davis, who had been reluctant to speak against Manson, finally did so. "Based on his comport after that time, I truly believe he has demonstrated that he's renounced everything Manson stood for," he says.

Tim Dailey, pastor of a church near CMC who has maintained an ongoing friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Davis since 1988, says: "Bruce Davis is a broken and repentant man who is fully aware of the devastation of his crimes." Mr. Dailey has ministered regularly to 40 CMC prisoners and their families, but only for Mr. Davis has he written a letter to the parole board: "I've got models to compare Bruce to. I saw the truth and genuineness in his life. Bruce has lived his Christian walk consistently. I have six sons and, without fear, I would have him live in my house tomorrow."

Mr. Davis has had lots of time to reflect on how he ruined his life. The son of a construction worker and an accountant, he grew up in Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee, but had a distant relationship with his father, who was often away on construction jobs. As Mr. Davis grew older his father traveled less but drank a lot, and had outbursts that were sometimes physically abusive. "My sister tried to cope by becoming a good student," Mr. Davis says. "I pacified my anger with overeating and sexual fantasy."

When he turned 20, Mr. Davis decided to put miles between himself and his family. He landed in California in 1963, where he worked as a welder and surveyor, mainly to finance his appetite for "nice clothes, motorcycles, a sports car, and drugs." In 1968 he had that first shade-tree encounter with Manson and joined "the Family." But soon Mr. Manson suggested that they all split up for awhile, and Mr. Davis headed east again, through Tennessee and ultimately to Europe, where he did the hippie-drift through Portugal, Gibraltar, and mounds of Moroccan hashish. In London, he became a Scientology devotee and worked at the cult's Surrey headquarters. But in the end, he returned to Los Angeles. Mr. Manson met his flight at LAX.

Although many Mansonites believed their leader's tales of a coming Armageddon to be called "Helter Skelter" (with Mr. Manson starring as Jesus Christ), Mr. Davis says his attraction to Mr. Manson was more pragmatic: sex, drugs, and acceptance. "I was very self-involved. Manson had a vision, and a group of ambitionless subjects. He understood what people needed and gave it to them.... I thought what I was getting was acceptance, love, and respect."

He refuses to blame drugs for his crimes, but admits that LSD, in particular, "enlarged my sense of what was permissible for me. It was all baby steps. The unthinkable became the thinkable. Then the thinkable became the doable."

Even murder. In terms of altering history, one murder that wasn't committed now seems as significant as those that were. One afternoon, Mr. Davis stood over a sleeping Manson and contemplated killing him. Mr. Manson, stoned, had passed out in a barn with a pistol in his lap. Mr. Davis thinks it was after the Hinman murder (his drug use at the time clouds the chronology), but it was definitely before Tate-LaBianca. "I could see with sudden clarity that killing Manson would be a good thing. I could've easily made it look like a suicide." Finally though, Mr. Davis was too afraid of Mr. Manson to go through with it.

Though he tries not to dwell on the past, that moment is one of "a thousand what-ifs" that sometimes season his thoughts. Mostly, though, Mr. Davis concentrates on relationships: with God, with his wife, Beth, and with their daughter.

Mr. Davis met Beth, a flight attendant with a major airline, through a prison letter-writing ministry. Beth says she began visiting Mr. Davis with the blessing of her pastor, who knew him to be a serious student of the Bible.

"I could see how much Bruce loved God, and how intimately he knew the Scriptures," she says. "He absolutely put God before everything else in his life." Slowly, their relationship grew from friendship to courtship. They were married in April 1985. "Beth has made me a whole person," says Mr. Davis. "She's so honest and open. I can't imagine now how my life would have been without her."

Six years ago, before the state of California nixed conjugal visits for inmates, Beth conceived and gave birth to a baby girl. Both Mr. Dailey and Beth's pastor Ron Salsbury call the Davises' continuing marriage a testimony to God's healing power. "When the conjugal visits ended, so did a lot of prison marriages," says Mr. Salsbury.

Mr. Davis prefers to keep his daughter's name private, but speaks joyfully of her: "She is God's greatest gift to me after my salvation and my wife." At least twice a week, she blows into the prison like a spring breeze bringing laughter and, sometimes, he says, tough questions.

"She asks why I can't come home, and what I did," Mr. Davis says. "I tell her I was involved in something where a lot of people got hurt. She asks if anybody was killed. I say yes, people were killed. I just try to answer her questions at the level she asks them. She's growing up really fast."

A painful question: When he thinks of his daughter, what does he wish?

He is quiet for a moment, then his eyes fill with tears. His hand searches for Beth's. "I wish I could take her to Paris. I'd take her across the Channel in a sailboat, then we'd ride back through the Chunnel. I want to be out and be a family. I want the most anxiety in her life to be what to feed her dolly or what movie to watch-not that her daddy's in prison."

Mr. Davis hopes for parole, but "I'm not holding my breath, I can tell you that," he says with sad eyes and a half-smile. "God's not giving me what I want, but He's giving me what I need. I don't agree that I still need it, but He's in control and knows better. I whine about it, but His message to me is, 'You so underestimate the character of sin.'"

Mr. Davis now has a ministry in prison. He spends time studying the Bible, and is working on a Ph.D. in theology from Bethany Bible College. Although he's held other prison jobs-from mopping floors to running a support group for terminally ill patients in the infirmary-he now works in the chapel, doing peer-counseling, teaching Bible classes, and leading worship.

The notoriety of his crimes, he says, gives him a platform to share the gospel. "I'm sorry to say that people here who are willing to listen have misconceptions about what's real. Should a person be listened to because he did something bad? No. But in here everything's backwards."

One thing that isn't backwards: The God who works outside prison walls works inside as well. Mr. Davis says his own change shows "that God is merciful. That there is such a thing as hope."

Finding the Manson Cave on a Private Los Angeles Tour

My guests from Adelaide (Australia) had something a bit different at the top of their wish list for their custom private Los Angeles tour: they wanted to visit the remains of the old Spahn Movie Ranch in the Santa Susana Pass (near Chatsworth).

READ HER ACCOUNT HERE

Thanks Stoner for Sharing!
(Stoner is the one who left the photo described in the article. LOL.)

Timothy Leary Meets Manson in Folsom Prison

The August 1976 issue of Oui magazine has an article written by Timothy Leary where Leary talks about meeting Charles Manson at Folsom Prison.  A brief explanation of how Leary ended up in prison-

Leary's first conviction of marijuana possession after a December 20, 1965 arrest in Texas, where he received a 30 year sentence, was eventually overturned on appeal.  On December 26, 1968 Leary was arrested again in Laguna Beach California for possession of two marijuana "roaches".  He was subsequently convicted and received a 20 year sentence on January 21, 1970. 

Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in lesser security prison.  In September 1970 Leary escaped from that prison.  The Brotherhood of Eternal Love paid the radical group The Weathermen $25,000 to smuggle Leary and his wife out of the US.  After traveling to many different countries US authorities caught up with Leary in Kabul Afghanistan in 1972 and he was returned to the US, placed in Folsom Prison in solitary confinement.  Governor Jerry Brown released Leary from prison April 21, 1976 shortly before this article was written.

 



After reading this article I decided to send a scanned copy of it to Robert Hendrickson as he and his movie "Manson" are mentioned in it.   I figured Robert had read the article when it was first published but might not have a  copy.  I was surprised by his reply, Robert had no idea the article was written and did not know that his movie was shown in a California prison.  Here is his reply-

"I can't believe I didn't know about this.

For them to see my film, someone had to have made an illegal copy and it could have been someone involved with the Squeaky Fromme / Ford affair.

There's a post for you! Who stole the MANSON movie.

The FBI? The Secret Service? The Prosecutor? The defense attorney? Squeaky? The Judge? Jerry Ford?  The 3/4 inch tape we had to produce for the Court in Sacramento is the likely source.

Then the question is: did the Warden approve of the showing. OMG, no wonder Charlie is such an icon in prison. I made him bigger than life itself.  Maybe a special screening of MANSON in prison _ with 35 mm print- like at cinefamily would really make him a model/star prisoner. In the 80's we licensed MANSON to a Florida prison for screening.

Robert"

Griffith Park Love-Ins / Satan's Slaves / Suzan LaBerge / Arthur Lee's Castle

Erik writes:

I was looking through some pics of Griffith Park Love-Ins for something I'm writing and came across this guy in a SS vest. Thought you might enjoy it. There are quite a few pics from that day.
http://www.pbase.com/saintj/image/32263193

Also, I lived in Los Feliz just a couple blocks from Waverly for the last 6 years or so in the guest house of a woman who lived there since '63. Her friend N lived at 3093 St. George which is the yellow lot on the map below.

The night of the murders they had a "sing" at the St. George house until 1AM or so, a dozen or so people singing folk songs. Then they left, nothing was unusual. In the morning N told me she let the dogs out to sniff around in the street like she always did. They went up the driveway across the street and came back with their tails down. She said she told this to the police when they came later. No biggee but pretty creepy to hear her tell this. She moved away last year. Here's her house listing. http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/3093-St-George-St-90027/home/7063679

Also, she told me that Suzan LaBerge worked at the Tam 'o Shanter at this time and she went right back to work which she thought was strange. She said she thought she had a drinking problem (who could blame her).
We used to go eat there on holidays when I was little.
http://www.lawrysonline.com/tam-oshanter/general-info

Of course Arthur Lee's "Castle" was a few blocks away as well, though he was long gone by then.
http://love.torbenskott.dk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=583
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jpoCnlk-8

Best,
Erik

Off topic-Let's talk Aaron Hernandez

Click HERE (not the image) to watch Liz on FOX CT

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AH's High School Pic

We interupt this Manson Family blog to discuss another interesting case going on. If you did't already know, Eviliz lives in a tiny sleepy community in Bristol, Connecticut. No you can't come and visit.

Ex-New England Patroits player Aron Hernandez is from Bristol CT and he is in one heap of trouble.
Hernandez's crime partners are also from Bristol. After being accessories in the shooting of Lloyd in MA, the two crime partners hurried back to Bristol .  The newest twist in the case is - apparently the two crime partners dumped the gun into beautiful Pine Lake.

All week we in Bristol have had the CT State Police Divers and Massachusetts State Police Divers searching the lake.  I and Eviliz Jr. kept vigil like the girl on the corner for the entire week of searching.  We hung out with all the press and made several friends.  Bristol was besieged by every news outlet you can name.  Since the Evilizes are beautiful and personable, while at the lake we made several media friends (shout out to my favorite reporter Tony Terzi from Fox CT News).  We were lucky enough to blend right in with the press and listen to Sergeant Master Chris McCarthy give the last interview of the day.  McCarthy told us the search for the day was over and no gun was located.  What happens next is riding on CT and MA state police's decision.

It's a tangled web Hernandez wove and things are constantly changing, but here is a snapshot of all the current and past investigations into Hernandez's alleged criminal behavior.

#1.) New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, whose Massachusetts home has been visited twice by police this week after a man’s body was found in an industrial park about a mile away, allegedly shot a friend in the face in February, according to a new lawsuit.

According to the suit, Hernandez was driving from Tootsie’s strip club in Miami to Palm Beach on Feb. 13 with a group of people when an argument ensued between Alexander Bradley, the suit’s plaintiff, and the football player. gun that Hernandez “was not legally licensed to have” discharged, the suit stated. The bullet hit Bradley, 30, causing him to lose his right eye, and resulting in numerous surgeries, difficulty eating and other damages that are “permanent in nature,” according to the suit.
A gun that Hernandez “was not legally licensed to have” discharged, the suit stated. The bullet hit Bradley, 30, causing him to lose his right eye, and resulting in numerous surgeries, difficulty eating and other damages that are “permanent in nature,” according to the suit.

#2.) When executing a search warrant at Hernandez's uncle's house in Bristol CT, investigators found an SUV in the garage that they say is linked to an unsolved July 2012 double homicide in Boston that took place outside a nightclub. The two victims were shot in a drive-by shooting. The vehicle was impounded. Hernandez has not been charged with anything in that case, but a law enforcement source told CNN that Boston police are "very active" -- and making progress -- in trying to connect the dots that could link him to the shooting.

#3.) Hernandez was allegedly involved in a bar fight in Gainesville, Florida, in 2007 over an unpaid bill. At the time of the bar fight, Hernandez was 17 and was not charged with a crime. A bouncer claimed that Hernandez struck him in the side of the head, injuring his eardrum.

Aaron Hernandez is in a world of trouble, it appears, and things seem to get worse for the former NFL star almost every day.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Aaron Hernandez went in as a tight end and will come out a wide reciever.

Spahn census story

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/30/magazine/tm-61410

POPULATION: 1 Old Rancher and The Manson Family

VERY FIRST PERSON

Thirty Years Ago, a Census Taker Had a Brush With Weirdness on the Spahn Ranch

July 30, 2000 |VIRGINIA LEAPER | Virginia Leaper is a freelance writer, columnist and radio commentator

Before mail-in census forms, there were census takers who went door to door, asking questions about marriage, family, children and ethnicity. Thirty years ago, I was one of them. Just before the end of my final training period, in 1970, our instructor gave out assignments.

We were to cover territories nearest our homes, and I drew the Twin Lakes section of Chatsworth. In those days, it was a place of Indian trails, boulders, rotten roads and individuals whose names in the register bore annotations such as "he carries a gun," "don't approach suddenly" and "very fierce dog."

Almost as an afterthought, our instructor told me, "By the way, you also have to cover the Spahn Ranch."

People gasped. The 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others by Charles Manson and his devotees were still fresh in our minds. The plot had been hatched at the Spahn Movie Ranch, where the near-blind 81-year-old owner, George Spahn, had been conned into allowing "the Family" to live.
Manson and five others were in custody, awaiting trial, but many of his followers were still living at the ranch. I had seen them in town on their "garbage runs"; disheveled and glowering, they would collect discarded fruits and vegetables from behind markets. Although their guru was detained, they believed it was only a matter of time before he would be back with them.

"Of course," the census instructor continued, "you don't have to get the names of all those hippies up there. Just the permanent ones. And you can take a policeman along."

"Fat chance!" I said to myself. As a writer, here was my opportunity to venture into the Manson stronghold and maybe dredge up an angle that hadn't been covered by the hordes of journalists. I had no intention of taking the fuzz along.

In addition, George Spahn was a neighbor of sorts. The now- rundown ranch, where cowboys and Indians had once galloped in B-grade movies, was just a few rock-strewn, chaparral-covered hills behind our place, across the Southern Pacific railroad tracks. Before the Manson people arrived, in the late '60s, we'd seen the old man riding around town in his old truck with "Spahn's Movie Ranch" on the side, driven by his ranch manager and sidekick, Ruby Pearl.

But after the Manson Family moved in, we didn't see much of Spahn. According to rumor, the young women kept him occupied with food and sex to the point that he neither knew nor cared what was going on in his home. Ruby Pearl was still on the scene, but her responsibilities as manager ended at dusk, when she went home. The only other member of the Spahn household was the ranch hand, Donald "Shorty" Shea, but he had disappeared soon after the murders. It was thought that the part-time movie cowboy had gone after an acting job, as he had done in the past.

I had spoken to Spahn only once during the decade since we moved to Chatsworth. Our young sons and their pals loved to roam the hills, where deer, foxes, bobcats and the occasional mountain lion lived. We were glad the boys were enjoying nature, and tried not to worry too much about rattlesnakes and the like. But one thing out there really worried me--the kids had discovered an uncovered well--or was it a mine shaft? They reported that anyone could have stumbled and fallen in. It was so deep, they said, that when they dropped rocks into it, they never heard them hit bottom. From their description, it seemed the shaft was located on the Spahn Ranch, and I called Spahn to complain. He promised to take care of it, but as long as we lived there, I don't believe he did.

It was a hot day in April when I turned off the old Santa Susana Pass Road and drove the couple of miles to the Spahn property. There, under the broiling sun, a sagging "Movie Ranch" sign led into a dusty yard and a cluster of ancient buildings still sporting names such as Longhorn Saloon and Rock City Cafe. Two filthy horse wranglers eyed me as I stepped out briskly, juggling a 3-pound census satchel, my handbag, and a clipboard and pen.

"Where can I find Mr. Spahn?" I asked.

One of them pointed toward a building. I knocked on the door, and after a considerable delay, it was opened by a rather scruffy woman in a ragged skirt and man's shirt. I introduced myself and asked to see Mr. Spahn. She eyed me coldly for a moment and then stepped back, leaving the door ajar. I walked in.

The room was so dark that I couldn't see a thing at first. My other senses more than made up for the deficiency, however. There were smells--indescribable cooking smells, animal smells, dust. And there was a loud buzzing; flies were everywhere.

I eventually made out a round table in one corner that held the remains of a meal; amid the mess, two large cats sat scrounging tidbits. Along one wall was an old sofa on which a large saddle rested. And at the far end of the room, I could detect a stove and sink, both black with age and grime.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw two young women, who appeared to be cooking and eyeing me suspiciously. I could now distinguish the seated figure of George Spahn, sporting his cowboy hat and dark glasses, talking on the phone. The octogenarian, I noted, was still quite a handsome man.
The woman who had answered the door approached me, hands on hips. She was small, skinny and freckled, with red hair. She looked vaguely familiar. Had I seen her in town? (I later realized that this was probably Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who had been assigned by Manson to take care of Spahn, to be his eyes, his assistant, his bedfellow, and to report on all his conversations and ensure that no one got close enough to spoil the Family's setup at the ranch.)

The woman stared at me. "Whaddya want?" she asked.

I stated my business and she laughed derisively. The two girls who were cooking joined in. "You want my name?" the redhead said. "I'm Greta Garbo. And that's Marilyn Monroe," she said, pointing.
The door opened, and the two surly cowboys came in. "She's from the census," the skinny woman told them, and then said to me: "This here's Humphrey Bogart."

I was happy to remember my instructions: "You don't have to get the names of all those hippies up there. Just the permanent ones."

By now, Spahn had hung up the phone and I approached him.

"Mr. Spahn," I said, "I'm here to help you fill out your census form. I'll try to make it as brief as possible."

Spahn smiled and nodded, and I proceeded to ask him all the questions about himself and his living quarters. He answered willingly enough. The red-haired woman moved closer to him, fixing me with a cold stare.

While this was going on, more women and men entered the house. It was getting a bit crowded, not to mention fetid. I finished the questions about Spahn and his house and, having decided to narrow the other "permanent residents" down to one, I asked about the ranch hand.

Spahn didn't answer right away. The room was suddenly very still, except for the buzzing flies. I thought maybe he hadn't heard me.

"You have a ranch hand who lives here, don't you, Mr. Spahn? Is his name Shea?"

Something caused me to look up. The eyes of perhaps 10 people were all focused on me.

I had a sudden flash of what I represented to these people. Not the war-protesting, civil-rights-advocating liberal I believed myself to be, but a personification of the Enemy. I was someone of the generation from which they had cut all ties, a member of the Establishment and a person conducting a government survey who might just be a police spy. I thought of the Manson Family's epithet, PIG, written in blood at one of the murder sites, and I regretted my decision not to take a police escort.

After what seemed like a very long pause, Spahn answered, simply, that Shea wasn't there anymore. I hastily got Spahn's signature and, with trembling hands, put my materials in my satchel and turned to go.

Celebrity Deathmatch!

Ah! Claymation at it's finest....The programs of yesteryear....were they not great? Now, this is what I call classic, good ol' fashion television fun! From the very, first, pilot episode, I bring you a "Celebrity Deathmatch!"

More Little Paul and Tecopa

Patty thought she'd squeeze one more post out of the cool photos that "Friend of the Blog" sent in. His notes read as follows:

Hanging out in the Snake Pit. (Patty's note: no, not that Snake Pit. This is different). L to R : Jonnie Watkins, Paul Watkins, Patty Mohn, Gary Mohn, Unk. Woman, "Tex" (Patty's note: no not that Tex. This is different too) and Bartender LeeAnn.

1980 Watkins Art Studio and Rock Shop. Downtown Tecopa, CA. Gary Mohn, Paul Watkins, Jonnie Watkins.

Pink Trailer Café, Tecopa Hot Springs, 1979 Vicky on break, enjoying Kay's Breakfast. In background: Gary Mohn and Paul Watkins.

Tecopa "Back in the Day"! Store, Gas Station and Paul Watkins' Jeep parked in front of the Old Tin Garage!

Patty supposes you could call these Paul's "Halcyon Days" between what came before and what happened afterwards. Paul died of cancer a decade later at what was still a very young age.