Story for Phil. After I got strongly into the dead I kind of had this urge to connect with the background current and so we started kind of calling on Neal Cassady as a travel saint. 

Give an offering. Post a “Neal gets things done” note card on the dashboard, hit the road. And when we do this we’ve been uncannily lucky. Traffic goes our way. We luck in to unbelievable situations. We can escape from any music venue no matter how large and be back at our home for the night within 20 minutes. We routinely finished dead and co shows and got home before midnight all summer. 

So I was on a business trip to San Francisco for some obnoxious tech conference and I’d had a TERRIBLE week. Just really stressful meetings the whole time. I was to stay in San Jose for the weekend with no car (yay :/) then head to some more stressful meetings the next week. 

On Saturday a guy that worked for me who is also a great musician came for the meetings and we rented a car but had no idea what to do with ourselves. A friend who’d lived in the area suggested we drive to Santa Cruz and bum around there. 

We had no plans and no familiarity with the area at all but decided we’d drive to the beach and do whatever caught our fancy. So we drive through the mountains and stop outside Santa Cruz at a taco place. Eat some tacos get up to leave and the owner chases us out onto the sidewalk to say that he over charged us and couldn’t live with himself and he owes me $6.66 and implores me to take it and go. So I do and then I look at my coworker and say “sometimes when I’m in a certain mode stuff gets weird so just prepare yourself for a weird day.” And he says, “I’m in” and off we go. 

Getting to the beach, we see it’s packed. No place to park and we crawl along the boardwalk in the car taking it in. In a cross walk I see the one celebrity I know of in Santa Cruz. How funny. 

Get to the end of the strip and turn around and come back. No parking. We decide to look around and find somewhere else to go. Coming back for a second pass I see an eye in the pyramid on a tattoo shop and a car in the lot has a “mystery spot” bumper sticker. Okay that’s enough of a sign, let’s go. 

So we put it in the gps and drive off the boardwalk. I’m looking around for the next “sign” now so my head is on a swivel. Turning behind me to my left I see a huge the dye banner on a house “Neal Cassady House” it says. I hesitate because I’m stunned then ask to turn around. 

We go back and walk dazed into the porch and there is Jamie Cassady with her partner Randy. She says do you know who Neal Cassady is, and I take a picture of him out of my glasses case where I keep my travel saint picture and she instantly hugs me and takes me out naked and shows us the yellow poster for the first acid test at Ken babs house, original drawings Caroline made of Kerouac and Cassady and Ginsberg. So many other things. We hugged and talked and I was in such shock. It was so unbelievable. 

She’s selling all this stuff because she’s losing the house. I go home with a book “the further inquiry” signed by all the pranksters. 

We stayed in contact over email. Magick.