February 18 – Students
seize building and boycott started at Howard University.
February 24 – Students
occupy Administration Building at Penn State.
February 27 – Thousands
rampage through nine buildings at University of Wisconsin (Madison) over black
enrollments.
April 9 – Three hundred
Harvard students led by SDS seize University Hall and evict eight deans.
May 15 – Hippies in
People’s Park in Berkeley attacked by police and National Guard.
August 15 -17 –
Woodstock Music Festival draws five hundred thousand people for three days of
music
October 8-11 – The
Weathermen’s “Days of Rage” bombing of corporations.
1970
May 4 – Four college
students killed by National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio.
1971
April 23 –
Returning Vietnam veterans return medals and ribbons in antiwar protest.
(Stone)
This was the American
culture that produced the first residents to reside at the Black Bear Ranch
Commune, originally lead and organized by Richard Marley and his wife, Elsa
Collie Marley.
The ranch and
surrounding land had once been the property of John Daggett, Lt. Governor of
California during the gold rush days. Because of his political
connections, he was able to secure the services of three hundred Chinese
indentured laborers to build a hair-raising nine-mile road from the one-store
town at Sawyers Bar to the ranch and mine at the end of the road.
The ranch and mine,
which consisted of eighty acres of forest lands, buildings, trout streams and
verdant meadows, were for sale via the Big Sky Realty Company in Mount Shasta,
California; asking price was $22,000, with a down payment of $2,200. The
money was raised by the Marleys from friends and associates, primarily in the
movie industry, who sympathized with their ideas. (Coyote)
From its earliest
beginnings, when there was little understanding of how to live off the land,
when property was communal, and residents were discouraged from sleeping with
the same person for two nights in a row, to avoid the stigmatism of appearing
to be a couple, the commune, out of necessity for its own survival, evolved to
a more structured organization, with rules and committees.
Membership in the
commune was a revolving door; once accepted into the community, one may stay as
long as one likes, but most move on after a season or two. However, once a
communal member, a resident is always a communal member and reunions of alumni
are held once a year at the time of the Summer Solstice – June 21.
I hoped Yashinka was
able to make acquaintance with these latter-day adherents to the communal way
of life and get the interview and photographs he so desired.
By 5:00a.m. I’m up and
moving and, as usual, of the twenty or so hikers on the property, I was the
only one doing so. I wanted to go to breakfast, but it was a little too
early; nevertheless, I found a suitable loaner bike and began my ride into town.
I rode slowly, taking the side streets through the community. I
liked to look at the homes, the yards, the architecture.
It was Monday,
and there were only a few lights on in the homes I passed; I suspected that
these would be homes that had children getting ready for school. The
smell from wood-burning fires lingered heavy in the air, adding a sense of
comfort and coziness to the homes and families that were just waking up.
I found deer resting in the yards of several homes; they didn’t even bother
to get up or try to move away as I peddled by. I saluted them and
whistled a tune as I glided by their resting places.
There was a Mormon
church in town next to a major highway that was landscaped with extensive green
lawns. When we got the tour of the town yesterday from the shuttle
driver, he indicated that several large bucks had taken up residency on the
lawn. The church was not out of my way to Bob’s Ranch House, so I swung
by to see if I can see any. No luck.
Dotty's Café was open,
but I didn’t want fast food this morning; rather, I had my heart set on a large
stack of pancakes piled high with warm butter and overflowing with maple syrup.
As I peddled into the parking lot of Bob’s place, I saw another bike
parked beside the front of the restaurant. Inside, I found Swiss Army
sitting at the counter. I inquired as to why he was here so early; he
said when he awoke and found me gone, he assumed I’d gone to Bob’s place, and
wanting breakfast himself, followed after me.
The post office didn’t
open until 8:00 a.m., so having a little time to kill, I rode my bike around
town. At the far end of Main Street, I found a corner lot that was part
junkyard and part used-car lot. Assembled on the lot were several early
model 1950s Chevy panel trucks with price tags in the windows that read, “For
Sale – $5,000,” a few broken down, early model Mercedes, and most intriguing –
a collection of aging Nash Ramblers and Nash Metropolitans.
The Chevrolet panel trucks, that Dave says the owner paid about $200 for each. Asking price is not $5,000.
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