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The summer of life and love

Dr. Leary was burbling about LSD — a drug illegal in California since the previous October — and how it was a consciousness-expanding, self-actualizing, therapeutic ecstasy. A young, wispy voice on the show with him said that dropping acid was the most freeing experience in the world, a feeling "like taking a shower on the inside." I dropped my hairbrush in the sink. After years of sleeping on bristly rollers and going to school in girdles, nylons and pointed-toe flats, I was fed up with social convention and dates that dead-ended all too often at the Starlite Drive-In. Watsonville had ceased to hold any more relish for me than a boiled hot dog from the Woolworth lunch counter.

As a Cabrillo College freshman, I was discovering Santa Cruz, traveling on student excursions to such innovative local art spots as the Cupola Gallery at Twin Lakes and the Barn, a psychedelic nightclub in Scotts Valley. Called the "Fillmore on the Mountain," the Barn headlined such leading lights as Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Country Joe and the Fish, but — unfamiliar as yet with any of these performers — I was more in awe of the black lights, flashing strobes and wiggly amoeba shapes projected on psychedelically painted, day-glo walls.

Listening to Leary, I decided Santa Cruz was the place for me. Within a week, I was entrenched in the downtown Catalyst, where I floated, giddy from smoking my first cigarettes, trying my damnedest to look groovy. My idea of a hippie was a beatnik, so my daily threads became cast-off Levi’s, a well-stretched sweater, and a pair of clip on, roach-clip earrings. College classes were abandoned in favor of just being seen with an artist’s sketchbook and manila portfolio.

Al DiLudovico started the Catalyst in 1966 in partnership with a handful of Santa Cruz merchants and UC Santa Cruz faculty. In its original location, sandwiched between Front Street and Pacific Avenue, it was rapidly changing the vibes inside the old St. George Hotel. The Front Street entrance was through a sliding door. Inside, panes of wavy glass went up to the ceiling, and on the floor, thick wood planks added to the mood of a 19th-century shop. The co-op coffee house with its tall deli case introduced me to fare I had never before tasted — lox and bagels, cream cheese, cheesecake and ginger beer.

Behind the counter at the back — through a pirated, illegal corridor— was the hotel’s palatial, glass-roofed garden room with its courtyard fountain.

Small wood tables and café chairs circled it, with mirrored panes surrounding two of the walls. One side exit went to the bar, while a sliding door beyond it led next door toward the remaining inventory of the Hip Pocket Bookstore. At the far end, a set of glass swinging doors connected to the hotel lobby. Here a number of senior citizens huddled for hours scrutinizing the weirdos as they meandered from the Catalyst out to Pacific Avenue.

Some of the elderly hotel tenants came in and spent their days rooting through the bookstore shelves, reading newspapers and playing chess at one of the tables. They were cool. Others, propped up by their canes against the lobby’s cracked leather upholstery, were merely thought to be Republican.

In 1967, in that fleeting, early spell of the hippie era that blossomed with "flower power," the Catalyst was a place without partiality, frequented as often by judges, lawyers and county government staff as by the shoeless advocates of cosmic charity. Even so, I was thrown off balance the day I found my mother and her ecumenical prayer group cloistered near the doors to the lobby. They had been browsing the philosophy section of the Hip Pocket — which made sense, since Watsonville had no bookstores — and were now in chitchat over coffee. Waving hello, I giggled and backed down the hallway toward the deli.

Simply by hanging out at the Catalyst, I collected the oddest assortment of friends, although in retrospect they now seem fairly ordinary, given the times. A few, seeking spiritual enlightenment, joined a downtown commune on lower Pacific Avenue. Others, children of NAACP activists, later joined the Black Panthers. Some of the young women accepted the challenge of single motherhood. On the periphery, characters mingled in and out, like Tubbs, the private detective, who drummed up his business over beer; "Scum," the manager’s little brother; and Forest, the zonked-out dealer who overdosed and died before we really got to know him.

Although three members of our group eventually took rooms at the St. George, most of the recent college dropouts still lived at home on the largess of our parents. We pooled our resources — both cigarettes and a gallon of gas cost a quarter — and toured the county in whatever vehicle we had that was running.

In my mind, the happenings in Santa Cruz as yet had nothing to do with rebellion, civil disobedience or the growing impact of the university.

Instead, it was linked to the sheer number of young people pulled into San Francisco and the East Bay. During the "Summer of Love," hundreds of these city street urchins started thumbing their way south toward the mountains, the beach and an old tourist town that once prided itself on the slogan "Santa Cruz—Never A Dull Moment."

Meanwhile, the UCSC campus was beginning to show a growing disrespect for the establishment. Many students, drifting away from traditional values, were headed toward militant activism and a rejection of authority. Others stayed focused on their chosen career paths and ignored the changes happening around them. Some who were confused gave in to a temptation to skip class, pick some flowers and lay naked in forest meadows on sunny afternoons.

After a long, wet spring, hundreds of students dropped into line along the highway when classes ended that June, thumbing rides with hippies as they moved back and forth between San Francisco and Big Sur. Santa Cruz was known now as a "trippy" place — balmy, affordable, tolerant and increasingly psychedelic.

Nineteen and fidgety to be where things were happening, I was facing the tough realization that without money, I was stuck in Watsonville living with my parents. Nabbing a job in Santa Cruz proved to be surprisingly easy.

Growing business interests had created 9,000 new positions throughout the county that year. Hundreds of openings for young and unskilled employees were advertised at Sylvania Electronics Company, where a labor force of more than 2,000 worked around the clock.

Sylvania had been in Santa Cruz for almost a decade. The main plant was in a new building on Encinal Street near Harvey West Park. Sylvania had won a number of defense contracts and required a steady supply of production-line recruits to meet deadlines. All one needed to get a job was the ability to read a schematic, crimp the ends of diodes, capacitors and resistors, and be able to tell one end of a soldering iron from the other. Color blindness was about the only hiring barrier. Training classes were held in substations on Swift Street and Fair Avenue on the town’s Westside.

Hired with a minimum-security clearance, I had no idea what I was doing but was on the clock from late afternoon until the wee hours of the morning. In 1967 the youthful Sylvania work force slightly outnumbered UCSC students and faculty, and there was no apparent hostility between them regarding sentiments about the Vietnam War. The important things in life, particularly for the night shift, appeared to be paychecks and parties.

Santa Cruz became my home. I found a housemate from my work shift who liked to socialize at a Capitola pub called the Local. Everyone there seemed grown-up and at least in his or her mid-20s. Many were dressed in leather sandals with tire soles and faded blue denims, looking the part of post-beat-era artists and writers.

The summer of 1967 was an eventful one that I thoroughly enjoyed, until one evening on line at Sylvania when the foreman told me I was due for a performance review. Offering a few words of encouragement, the "lead lady" on the production line said if I put in a little more effort, in 10 years I might be just like her. A long future with a minimum wage suddenly loomed before me. By the time the boss called me into his office moments later, I had meekly decided to move back home to Watsonville, return to college and to change my major from art to history. What a strange, long trip it’s been. Now, 34 years later, I am about ready to graduate.

This is the final article of the series presented in advance of "Timed Exposure—Photographing Santa Cruz, 1939-1969," to open Saturday at the Lezin Gallery at the Museum of Art and History. Created by Carolyn Swift as her Community Studies senior project at UCSC, the show has been coordinated with the assistance of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Covello and Covello Photography and the Capitola Museum.

Exhibit photographs are arranged chronologically in a timeline with three viewpoints. The first, "Focal Point," shows Santa Cruz as it appeared in the news stories of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, tourist brochures and publicity for such events as the Miss California Pageant. A second view, "Wide Angle," is an expanded observation of Santa Cruz in the motions of everyday life, capturing civic events and celebrations as well as disasters and times of national crisis. The final view, "Outside the Lens," pictures communities within the local population that rarely appeared in the spotlight, including agricultural and industrial laborers, working women and ethnic groups.

Nov. 19, Swift will present a slide lecture about the photographs, how and why the images were chosen, and some related stories. The program, at the Museum of Art and History, will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is $4 general, and $2 for MAH members and students.

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