CHAPTER 1 THE START

THE STREETS OF REYNOSA

In a dirt road graveled street

In a town south of the border

She was barely ten years old

When she had her first sip of whiskey

She stumbled down the sideroads

Of the graveled streets of Mexico

It was there she was led astray

In the streets of Reynosa

I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, but we lived in Millsville, which is too small to be on any map but it’s about thirty miles east of Corpus Christi in the coastal wetlands. From June through October hurricanes and tornadoes roll across the land leaving a wreckage of branches, lumber, and swampy desolation fit only for reptiles and birds. My aunts, uncles, and grandparents all lived there except for the few still remaining in New Orleans.

The town consisted of a few dozen houses, a pharmacy with a lunch counter, and an icehouse where old men sat outside drinking beer and playing checkers and dominoes and spitting into their spittoons.

On Sundays, everyone went to church and then bingo afterwards. Later in the evening, the congregation went inside the old wooden dancehall where a dance band played and the kids had their toys in a corner on a blanket, eventually falling asleep on the floor.

My parents had a small ranch style house outside of town on some acreage near the Aransas Wildlife Preserve.  My first memory was of crawling down the hallway with a toy xylophone and one mallet. I don’t know what happened to the other one. I could play all of the nursery rhymes on it but couldn’t yet speak. A few years later, I remember sitting by the tabletop in a chair with the radio at ear level, listening to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, the Everly Brothers, and Elvis Presley, memorizing the lyrics.  I still remember them and can do a mean Elvis impersonation. My grandmother had a piano, and I tried to work out songs on it, but I wasn’t around it often enough to figure it out.

About a quarter mile from the house, the wetlands were full of water moccasins, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, horned toads and assorted wildlife. I knew the dangers but it was my world, the only place I belonged. I had a brother, sister and parents but was cast out from the family and destined to lead a solitary existence in the midst of this household for reasons I will never know.

The footpath from the house to the wetlands was infested with rattlesnakes, and every few feet I had to skirt around one as I walked barefoot on the pathway, my feet hardened from a summer of no shoes, their rattles buzzing all around. I had a black and white Cocker Spaniel dog, Duke, who grabbed the snakes in the path and threw them out of the way, never breaking his stride. I began to develop a lifelong trust and dependency on dogs, a trust that has never failed me. They have been constant companions and bodyguards, occasionally saving my life.

My first real memory of my father was when he took me out into the swamps to shoot a shotgun. I was about five. He held it up to my shoulder and showed me how to pull the trigger. When the shot was fired, there was a deafening explosion of sound and gunpowder and the kickback hit my shoulder hard knocking me onto my back. I was stunned and cried as he ridiculed me and we slowly walked back to the house. I couldn’t understand what that whole experience was about and why he deemed it necessary for me to undergo that at such a tender age.

My brother, Rob, six years older than me, and sister, Susan, three years older had a rope swing in a large oak tree in the woods at the far end of the property. They were constant playmates but never included me in their activities, so I wasn’t allowed to play on it, but when I was about four or five, after a lengthy period of begging, they finally relented. I was thrilled to be accepted.

  I climbed high in the tree, holding onto the rope with my tiny hands and jumped out holding the knotted end of the rope. When the rope swung out, it kept going and going, at first thrilling, then terrifying as I realized they had untied the rope and left it wrapped loosely around the branch giving the appearance that it was still attached. I crashed to the ground, landing hard on my back in the dirt, the dust going up my nose, and was knocked unconscious. When I regained consciousness, they were standing over me laughing.

They followed me as I went back to the house and told my mother what happened. She refused to believe me. She never questioned my siblings or inspected the rope, she told me that I was mistaken and avoided my gaze, refusing to make eye contact. I can still see the cruel coldness of her face, which encouraged the continued torment of my siblings; they knew they could torture me with impunity.

One afternoon a few months later, they were playing with a rug in the living room, rolling each other up in it and then flinging the rug so that they were spun quickly as it unfurled. They eventually relented and decided to let me have a turn at it. They rolled me up in the rug, then left the room, laughing hysterically. I was terrified I would suffocate.  I breathed slowly, measuring every breath to conserve oxygen, and tried to slow my heart rate. After what seemed like an eternity, they returned and set me free, still laughing as they slowly unfurled the rug.

After that, I decided it was time to leave home and packed a little red plastic doll suitcase with a few belongings and told mother goodbye. She asked how I was going to eat and I told her that I would hunt berries and beg on the side of the road. That seemed to satisfy her.

I left the house without any further protestations and made my way into the woods where I built a makeshift lean-to from sticks and tree branches. There were large gaps that would never have kept out the rain but I decided to worry about that later. Around dark, mother sent my brother to come and drag me back home. I had expected to live in the woods and was very surprised and dismayed when he showed up. I was scared of him and returned to the house without speaking.

My mother frequently dropped me off at the beach and left me there for the day unattended. There were numerous sharks in the warm, shallow, tropical waters and when the lifeguards stood up in their stands announcing a sighting, everyone sprinted for the shore and waited for the all-clear signal. On one of those occasions, a shark attacked a swimmer, and I stood watching as the ambulance came and took the body away. I was quickly learning to fend for myself.

Another day, I spotted a Portuguese Man O War, a sort of jellyfish, on the beach. The beautiful pink and purple colors made it look like a large flower and I held it up to my nose to smell. The jelly-body oozed all over my face, hands, arms, and legs and the long tentacles hung down my body stinging me. The pain was excruciating, and I screamed and cried hysterically. It felt like liquid fire covering my body and my skin turned a bright, swollen red.

 A group of women at the beach ran to me and washed me off with water, trying to console me. They were furious that my mother was nowhere to be found saying, “Where is the child’s mother?!”

When she eventually showed up where the women were congregated around me, she grabbed me and jerked me to my feet, dragging me off, furious at being exposed for abandoning me. She drove home and threw me in my room saying, “Stop crying, it’s not that bad. Don’t come out of your room until you can stop crying.” Seeing yet another face of her cruelty, I was learning to stay away from her.

When I was a child, my mother sometimes left me in the care of my Aunt Virginia and uncle Ponce. She was a wild rebel of a woman from my father’s side, tall and thin; a red-haired, green-eyed beauty, always ready for an adventure. Ponce was a quiet, calm, patient and always willing to listen, a big Teddy bear of a man.

She taught me to drink coffee and whiskey and how to play poker while I was still in kindergarten. This came in handy in junior high where playing poker allowed me to win my lunch money from the other students. Aunt Virginia was very kind, always ready to stick up for the downtrodden.

One of my earliest memories is when Virginia drove us to Reynosa, Mexico for the day, about a three-hour drive each way. We arrived into Reynosa with the tropical sun blazing and the heat sweltering. We drove down the dusty, dirt road to a cantina she knew where she parked the car and led me into the dimly lit bar. Loud Spanish music was playing on the jukebox and we sat down next to a ceiling-to-floor waterfall with a fan blowing over it for evaporative cooling.

As a waiter approached our table, she whispered to me, “Order a Cuba Libre, that way it’ll look like you’re just drinking a coke.” I did as I was told. We talked for a while and finished our drinks, then walked out into the blinding sunlight. I staggered down the dirt road, tripping over the rocks, strangely unable to keep my balance thinking, “So this is what it’s like to be drunk.” As we drove up to the border guards, Aunt Virginia placed several bottles of tequila under my skirt so she wouldn’t have to pay tax on them, saying, “Now don’t you sneeze or anything and make those bottles clink.” I was a little nervous but managed not to make any noise. I was very dark from the days on the beach and the Federalis were certain she was smuggling me into Texas illegally. They made me speak English until they were finally convinced that I was American. I became a smuggler at the tender age of five.

L.A. STORY

The 1968 Newport Pop Festival at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, kicked off on August 3, two days before my seventeenth birthday. It was a beautiful, warm, clear, west coast day, the kind of day that makes people yearn to move there from around the world. I was hitchhiking, and a couple pulled over and offered me a ride, bringing me straight into the festival grounds, which was a good thing since I didn’t have the money for a ticket. Life was looking up, I was feeling good and prepared to party all weekend. It turned out that the couple ran the psychedelic light show for the festival, a simple oil and water projection system that illuminated the stage, the walls, the floors and ceilings, and everyone’s faces and bodies with the movement of the colored oils in the water manipulated by a glass plate.

The festival was one of the first events of its kind, featuring The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Alice Cooper, The Byrds, Iron Butterfly, Tiny Tim, Canned Heat, Blue Cheer, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Steppenwolf, Country Joe and the Fish, The Lovin’ Spoonful, and many more.

The light show crew were very kind to me, sharing food and inviting me to camp with them in their huge big-top tent for the duration of the festival. It was a hot and dusty weekend, with more than 100,000 people crammed into the festival grounds. The food and drink stands ran out of supplies half-way through the first day, and there was no shelter, so everyone was hungry, thirsty, and sunburned. I was fortunate to have a place out of the sun with a cot to sleep on. It was an exhausting all-day all night-party.

After the show was over, we packed up everything and they hit the road. Not wanting to be a burden to my new friends, I wandered out to the highway and stuck out my thumb. The gods graced me with luck once again. Amazingly, the light show couple pulled over and gave me a ride. When they asked where I was going, I replied, “I have no idea.” They offered to take me with them and put me up for awhile at their house in Laurel Canyon, and I accepted.

The guest room in their house was a far cry from what I had become accustomed to, my previous home being a park bench in Golden Gate Park. It was a relief to have a hot bath, food, clothing and a safe place to rest. It was luxurious accommodations with a beautiful, full glass wall in the bedroom and a view overlooking Hollywood. Their street was long and winding, going down the canyon and ending at Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard. It’s the same drugstore mentioned in the Tom Waits classic “Invitation to the Blues.” It was a regular hangout of Charlie Chaplin, Angela Lansbury, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Orson Welles, Marilyn Monroe, The Marx brothers, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There was a nice counter service and booths with inexpensive food and drink. I had gone from cold and starvation with an uncertain future to living in the lap of luxury in a matter of a few days. Things were looking up.

It turned out that besides operating the light show, the couple were also producers of the popular TV show Gomer Pyle.  After a few nights at their place, they introduced me to a jockey at the race track in Studio City. He had a jockeys’ build and sandy hair, green eyes, and a pleasant disposition. He offered to let me sleep on the couch at his place where he lived in the guest-house behind his mother’s home.

That night we talked for awhile, and eventually I revealed that it was my birthday. He didn’t ask my age, but insisted on getting me a birthday cake.

Tears came to my eyes when he left for the store. I would have given anything at that moment to be celebrating my birthday with family and friends that cared about me, but I was thankful I wasn’t entirely alone. I’ve forgotten his name, but not his gesture of kindness.

*********

I was soon introduced to Bob Harvey, a tall, handsome man who played bass for The Jefferson Airplane. He was living with his girlfriend and spending a lot of time on the road, and needed someone to house-sit his place for him, which I was very happy to do. The house was a cozy, rustic old cabin in the Silver Lake district on North Virgil, just beside the Hollywood Freeway. He rarely made an appearance there.

Eventually someone introduced me to a drug dealer known for the best cocaine around. He was a big, imposing black guy who lived in Watts, which had recently been the scene of extensive rioting. The entire area was full of police patrols after the riots. We settled into a routine. In a pre-arranged meeting at a bank of three phone booths, the dealer went into the end booth, while I entered the middle booth. We pretended to talk into the phones while we negotiated the deal then we’d hang up, walk out, and make the pass, exchanging drugs and money between us in lowered hands as we walked away. The phone booths were on the corner of Alvarado and Sunset at the Pioneer Chicken Stand. The cocaine was in wax paper, with a blue outline of a baby and the words Heavenly Blue stamped on the wrapper.

Sometime later, I heard the line in the Warren Zevon song “Carmelita” that mentioned Alvarado Street and the Pioneer Chicken Stand. Warren was part of that L.A. crowd.

The house in Silver Lake came with a sewing machine, and I soon found a job making costumes for a porn film company just off Sunset and Vine. I was walking down the street when I saw their models wanted sign in the window. I had no idea it was a porn film company, but when I found out, I talked them into letting me design and sew costumes for them. My mother had sewn clothes and I watched her, though she never taught me to sew, so I had a vague idea of how it was done. I bought some patterns and procured material from a gypsy woman down the street who gave me her cast-off fabric to help start off the project. I was now self-employed so I wasn’t asked for an ID or driver’s license and didn’t have to worry about not having a social security number. This was a giant step forward and set a precedent for the rest of my life. I was becoming self-reliant and it gave me a sense of confidence I had never had before. I was no longer a victim.

The porn production company’s star performer was Antoinette Maynard, who starred in such jewels as Suckula, The Kill, The Pickup, and Skyla. She was a tall, dark and beautiful woman and her father was a well-known author.

Sewing costumes and selling drugs provided me with a good living since I didn’t have to pay rent.  A few of the costumes I made appeared in art magazines, including a pair of harem pants with the sides slit all the way up. Around the time the magazine came out, harem pants became popularized by the show I Dream of Jeannie and were all the rage.

A pretty, young, blond run-away girl from West Virginia whose father was a judge moved into the house on N Virgil. It was nice having a little company. On Christmas Eve we walked to a phone booth to call our parents. I spoke very briefly with my mother but there was not much to say. She asked if I was coming home and when I told her no, she didn’t try to talk me into it, I think the offer was just obligatory. Then my roommate called her parents. During this holiday chat, the police came by and questioned us and she eventually admitted to being underage, she was seventeen.  I told them I was twenty-three but left my ID at the house since we walked to the phone booth. I tried to act with confidence and maturity and luckily, they bought it. They took us both down to the police station and admonished me at length for taking in a minor but eventually let me go. I spent the rest of Christmas alone in the cabin with no radio or sound of another human voice. I was desperately lonely and I didn’t have the money to go anywhere for a good meal and the few people I knew were with their family and friends. I’m sure they assumed that I was too and I was too embarrassed to admit that I was all alone.

The police told me they would keep my roommate in lockup until her parents could make arrangements to send her back home.  I tried to call her a few months later but when I asked for the number in West Virginia, the operator said, “You mean the western part of Virginia? There’s a Virginia, but not a West Virginia.” I was very insistent and she eventually hung up on me. I never did get through and staying at the phone booth for very long wasn’t a good idea with the police patrolling the area.

A few months after moving into the house, Bob introduced me to well- known songwriter Paul Williams, who was a Grammy-winning artist, and author of the song Rainy Days and Mondays. He was a diminutive, distinctive looking, blond man. Bob introduced us in a bar in Hollywood. Nick Nicole, a local long-haired bass player, was also part of that scene and we soon became lovers. I was playing guitar and writing a little, but not professionally.  Nick had a little deal smuggling weed with two other guys, David Anderegg and Bernie Lewis, a photographer for Playboy Magazine. They were flying in weed from Mexico in a small plane.

Of course, my entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and I got involved…

KIDNAPPED

After years of living a subsistence lifestyle, I decided it was time to get a job and try to better my position. I put on my only dress and platform heels and went to a local city owned temporary employment agency in Santa Cruz. They had listings for vacation temps and they also had a daily listing for immediate temporary employment. The new daily listings were posted on a corkboard in the waiting room. I found a listing for a receptionist needed immediately; light typing required. I called the number and was quizzed on my availability and office skills and made arrangements to meet with my prospective employer at a Denny’s restaurant on Ocean Blvd in Santa Cruz. He said his business was high security tech research and they had a compound in the mountains but he happened to be in town and could interview me at Denny’s. I told him what I was wearing so he would recognize me and when I entered, he motioned for me to come to his table. He was about 5’8, thin, and neatly dressed in a brown suit and tie, and brown leather shoes; typical business attire. We had coffee and he asked me all of the pertinent questions regarding the prospective job. There were no unusual questions or looks, nothing suspicions. He said he was interested in hiring me but the final decision would be with the management at the campus and asked if I would like to go there with him; he could give me a ride there and back since he was going there to drop off documents. It was about a 20-minute drive from Santa Cruz.

I hoped in his car and we headed north up Hwy 17 and turned down Skyline Blvd (Highway 35) passing near Woodside. After almost an hour of driving, I became increasingly suspicious and repeatedly asked to be let out of the car.  He refused to let me out saying, “It’s just a little further now, it’s a high-tech research business and they need the remoteness for security, don’t be concerned.” When I insisted, he didn’t answer, he just sped up.

He was going too fast to jump out and I continually gauged the speed of each turn, hoping it would be slow enough to exit without being killed. The route was planned very carefully so there were no slow turns. He turned down Highway 84 and drove for about two miles, turning down a dirt forestry road into La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve. The preserve is 5759 acres of old growth Douglas fir and redwood forest with very steep canyon walls rising about 800 feet above the narrow canyon floor.

He drove very rapidly into the canyon of the preserve offering no opportunity to jump out. About a mile down the road, he came to a turnout and whipped the car around to face the direction we came from. He had clearly been there before. As soon as the car came to a stop, I opened the door and jumped out. He grabbed my arm and held on as I exited the car dragging his body across the seat and his arm partway out of the door. I slammed the car door on his arm several times until he let go of me and I took off running up the steep canyon side. About 50 feet up I was almost out of breath and I looked over my shoulder to see if he was gaining on me. He was leaning over the seat and opening the glove box as if he were getting a gun, so I played lame duck to make him think he could catch up to me without shooting me. I was hoping he wanted me alive, at least for the time being. I stopped near a large redwood branch about 8 inches by 15 feet and bent over with my hands on my knees as if I were completely out of breath. I memorized the license plate and any other information I thought would be useful to the police if I escaped. I didn’t intend to be buried in that canyon. The strategy worked, and he stopped reaching for the gun and jumped out of the car scrambling up the mountain. When he came to within about five feet from me, I grabbed the heavy redwood branch, swinging it as hard as I could, aiming for his knees. The adrenaline rushing through me must have given me superhuman strength and it seemed feather light although I know it must have weighed about 15 pounds. The branch hit him across both knees and he went over backwards. For the first time I was encouraged. I knew that if he was knocked over backwards, he probably had knee injuries and would be a lot slower. I gave myself much better odds then.

I took off running again, not stopping to look back. I knew every split second might make the difference between life and death. Silently repeating the license plate number, half of the plate number with one foot and the other half with the next foot, his footsteps became fainter and fainter as he lagged behind. I reached the top of the mountain and the steep gradient gave way to a large, open grassy area with spectacular views. I could hear the highway traffic off in the distance and headed that direction without slowing down. When I reached the road, there were half a dozen cars and a group of hang gliders on the other side. There was a cliff that they were jumping from in their gliders heading toward the coast. I crossed the road and ran up to one of the men who had noticed me. I was too out of breath to talk so he asked me, “Is someone after you?” I nodded, yes. He then asked, “Are the cops after you?”  I shook my head no. Then he asked “Do you want to call the cops?” Yes, I nodded. He drove me to a phone booth as I sat in silence catching my breath. I was too out of breath to talk and also didn’t want to forget the license number or any details. When we got to the phone booth, he made the call to the police and handed me the phone. I immediately told the operator that I had been kidnapped and quickly repeated the license number before I forgot it in the conversation, then gave her all the details I could remember; the kidnappers’ appearance, car color and model, etc. A police car arrived within 5 minutes while I was still on the phone. The officer interviewed the man with the car and I hung up and got in the police car, repeating everything I just told the operator.

They set up a road block while I was on the phone, and I heard over the radio in the police car that they caught him. I was ecstatic. It was the difference between being a scared victim and an empowered survivor. My life would have been very different if they hadn’t caught him; living in constant fear. I still frequently awaken at night reliving the experience; assuring myself that I was the victor and that he was safely in jail.

The officer asked if I would come to Santa Cruz to identify the kidnapper from a photo book. When we arrived at the police station, they took me to a room with two officers as witness and a large book of about two hundred photos. It took a long time to go through the book and I was beginning to despair that I wouldn’t be able to ID him. Finally, on one of the last pages, I saw his photo. There was no mistaking him. I felt cold and the hair on my arms stood up.

The person in the photo was the one they had arrested in the road block. He had escaped from Atascadero State Hospital, in Atascadero, Ca. on the central coast; a forensic psychiatric hospital.  Since he had escaped, he had assaulted eight women. I was told I wouldn’t have to testify; he would never be released. They didn’t tell me why he had been committed and I was too afraid to ask. I realized later they hadn’t told me if the women he had assaulted had survived but I thought they probably hadn’t since no one else had given the police any information about him. Atascadero was reserved for only the most violent serial killers and sexual predators. For many months afterwards, I imagined seeing him on the street following me and, on one occasion, called the police to make sure he was still in jail.  I had screaming night terrors for years afterwards.