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... were eventful years, with rapid and often dramatic personal, societal, and cultural changes. My mom had terminal lymphoma for most of the 70s and died in 1979. I was drafted to fight in Vietnam but managed to save my skin and some of my sanity with the aid of lawyers and family, especially the Feldmans in Columbus, Ohio. I began this period as a married man and as an earnest young Teaching Assistant in the English PhD program at UCSB, complete with professorial briarwood pipe – an homage to my pop, who always smoked a pipe after he quit ciggies: |
| Negotiating the path to Carole's and my Prospect Ave. cottage on Honda dirt bike. |
| 1971: Summer break from English PhD program at UCSB. Working as counselor at Cottonwood Day Camp in Kenter Canyon, LA, with friend David Weissman and living in a different Bundy Dr. apartment with wife Carole; she would remain in LA to take classes when I returned to SB for school in the fall, and we met up on weekends. I seem to have had a flair for the shirtless during this period. Apologies. |
| Visiting my mom and Francie during this period. That's the big sycamore tree in the backyard of our house at 135 Esparta Way, Santa Monica. Wrong about the shirts; I didn't seem to have any while in LA, either. |
| After some years of long-distance Santa Barbara-LA on-off, Carole and I made an amicable split. She found a lifelong home in New Mexico where she worked as a clinical herbalist, columnist and much-respected authority in the field of permaculture. She passed away recently in Santa Fe. I am teary as I write this. Carole Tashel, one of the very best people I or anyone else has been blessed to know: |
| I continued to work summers at Cottonwood – that's my official counselor's shirt (finally, a shirt!) – and during the school year as an English composition Teaching Assistant at UCSB |
| Periodically I'd get a draft notice from the US Selective Service Board and have to appear in Ohio for a hearing or a physical. These were tense times, because they wanted to send me, in the words of Muhammad Ali, "to help murder and burn another poor nation..." Before flying to Columbus, off would come my hair and 'stache – every freak's emblem of countercultural solidarity – and then it would grow back until the war and the sixties/seventies faded into nostalgia, sitcom, and Rambo revisionism. |
| Met Lynne Stark while staying with a Soledad St. semi-communal group and lived with her for much of the mid-seventies. Nowadays she teaches physics at Santa Barbara Community College. Day at the beach with Lynne, maybe 1974 |
| During this time Francie was going to school at UC Santa Cruz and doing experimental photography under the tutelage of her friend Tony Grant. Self-portrait: |
| Had a weekly Sunday afternoon gig with the Yazoo City Rhythm Kings at Cold Springs Tavern, San Marcos Pass SB. Mark Comstock and June Laula sang lead, Craig Spirka played Bass, and I played lead on the '63 Telecaster that got stolen along with my car recently. Below, another Cold Springs Sunday, singing harmony with June |
| Of numerous Dead shows attended, one of the most transcendent was right in my own back yard: Robertson Gym, UC Santa Barbara, February 27, 1977. Archival photo of Garcia from that show: |
| Later that year my mom and sister took a trip to New York to visit the Petracca uncles and cousins and some museums. My Nonno (grandfather in Italian), Michele Petracca, my namesake, and my mother during that trip |
During the late 70s cousin Marshall took a trip to the Ukraine, to track down our landsmen in Nemirov. He managed to find the town, and met several of our remaining relatives there. According to Marshall, some were glad to see him, while a few harbored resentment toward my Zaydeh and others for leaving them to suffer the progroms at the hands of anti-Semitic Russians and, later, the Nazi concentration camps. Some of our family, as Marshall learned, died at Auschwitz and Treblinka. When my cousin told me about this upon his return, I just broke down; I had never known. Before leaving, Marshall dug up some soil and managed to get it through customs. Upon returning he gave me this vial. If you find it in my house – probably on my makeshift multi-faith altar – it's not a corked jar of clodded dirt as it might appear; rather, it is Ukrainian clodded dirt, circa 1979, from Nemirov the motherland, and one of my most special treasures |
| The early 80s were a regrouping period after seismic shifts of the 70s. Teaching writing at UCSB became a full-time career in 1981, and later I acted as Co-Director of the Program. I also became a runner and a meditator ... and lifelong gym rat, as the card below illustrates |
| Moved from a series of 70s semi-communes and/or semi-hovels into a sweet little rustic chauffeur's cottage in Hope Ranch, a short walk to the beach and by myself |
| With fiddlin' Mary Sauls Kelly, Mary Dwight and Katey O'Neill, formed an acoustic string band called Skippin' and Flyin', which played the local coffee house circuit and festivals, as below |
| Regular income from the university and some inheritance from mom allowed me to purchase my first house at 2112 Mountain Ave., on the West Side of SB. Front porch with Benjamin Golvin, my sister's boyfriend before she met and married Gordon. Benj remains a good friend of mine today. |
| Francie and me and Minou, the cat of my life, inside the Mountain Ave. house |
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| Met Jan in an impromptu cover band and was with her for the next twenty-two years. Read Captain Zzyzx for much-altered details. Here we are in front of Mountain Ave. garage, mid-80s |
| Real nice-looking couple: Francie and Gordon before a cross-country trip in their van, heading off into the 90s |
