Table of Contents
MORE NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN
God knows I am not too hippy. Perhaps because I am too much around the hip and I fear fads for, like anybody else, I like something that tends to last. Then, too, the hippy foundation or diving board or resting place or whatever you want to call it does suck in its fair share of fakes, promoters and generally vicious people trying to overcompensate for some heinous psychological defect. But you have these everywherehippy and non-hippy. But, like I say, the few people that I know are either a bit on the side of the artistic, the pro-hip or the understanding-hip, so I have been generally getting more of this slice of cake and it has seemed a bit SWEET.
But, lo, the other day I got the OTHER bit and I think Id rather eat sweet than shit. Being locked into a large building where 4,000 people work at dull and menial tasks has its compensations but it has disadvantages toofor instance, you can never be sure who is going to assigned to work next to you. A bad soul makes for a worse night. Enough bad souls can kill you.
He was balding, square-jawed, mannish???, with this look of hate-frustration upon his face. For months I had sensed that he had wanted to talk to me. Now I was hookedhe was assigned to the place to my left. He complained about the air-conditioning and a few other things, then worked in a question about my age. I told him that I would be 47 in August. He said he was 49.
Age is only relative, he said. It doesnt matter if you are 47 or 49, it doesnt make any difference.
Umm, I said.
Then the speaker screamed out some announcement: ALL THOSE QUALIFIED ON THE L.S.M. MACHINES REPORT TO...
I thought they were going to say LSD, he said.
Umm, I said.
You know, he said, that LSD has put a lot of people in madhousesbrain damage.
Everything puts people in madhouses.
Whatcha mean?
I mean the LSD brain damage scare is probably an exaggeration percentage-wise.
Oh no, leading doctors and laboratories and hospitals say so.
O.K.
We worked away without conversation for awhile and I thought I had escaped him. He had one of those easy mellow voices that drowned and warbled in its own conviction. But he began again:
Are you for LSD?
I dont use it.
Dont you think its a passing fad?
Nothing that is against the law ever ceases to exist.
Whatcha mean?
Forget it.
Whatcha think of the hippies?
They dont harm me.
Their hair stinks, he said. They dont take baths. They dont work.
I dont like to work either.
Anything that is unproductive is not good for society.
Umm.
Some college profs say that these kids are our new leaders, that we should listen to them. HOW THE HELL CAN THEY KNOW ANYTHING? THEY DONT HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE.
Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.
You mean to say you are going to listen to what some 13-year-old kid tells you?
I listen to everything.
But they arent mature, they arent MATURE, dont you see? Thats why theyre hippies.
Suppose they got jobs? Suppose they went into industry, went to work turning bolts for General Motors? Wouldnt they still be immature?
No, because theyd be working, he said.
Umm.
Furthermore, I think a lot of these kids are going to be SORRY that they didnt go to the war. Its going to be an experience theyll wish they hadnt missed. Theyre going to regret it later on.
Umm.
There fell again the peaceful silence. Then he said, youre not a hippy, are you?
Im working, damn it. And I told you I was 47.
The beard doesnt mean anything then, does it?
Sure it does. It means, at the moment, I feel better wearing a beard than I do the other way. Maybe next week it will be different.
Silence, silence. Then he switched his stool, turned his back to me as much as possible and continued working. I got up and walked to the mens crapper and stuck my head out the window for fresh air. The guy was my father all over again: RESPONSIBILITY, SOCIETY, COUNTRY, DUTY, MATURITY, all the dull-sounding hard words. But why were they in such agony? Why did they hate so much? It seemed simply that they were very much afraid that somebody else was having a damn good time or was not unhappy most of the time. It seemed that they wanted everybody to carry the same damn heavy rock they were carrying. It wasnt ENOUGH that I was working beside him like an idiot; it wasnt enough for him that I was wasting the few good hours left in my lifeno, he also wanted me to share his own mind-soul, to sniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his angers and hates with him. I was not PAID for that, the fucker. And thats what killed you on the jobnot the actual physical work but being closed in with the dead.
I got on back to my stool. He had his back turned to me. Poor, poor fellow. I had let him down. Hed have to look elsewhere. And I was white and he was white and most of them were black. Where ya gonna find a decent white man in a place like this? I could sense him thinking.
I suppose he would have gotten around to the Negro question if I had sent out the proper rays. I had been spared that.
His back was to me. His back was broad, American and hard. But I couldnt see his face and he didnt speak any more. What had hurt him worst was that I had neither agreed with or argued with him. His back was to me. The remainder of the night was peaceful and almost kind.
Tucson, Arizona, 6-29-67
Sitting in a country store that went broke, sitting at last after getting out Henry Millers Order and Chaos Chez Hans Reichel , one years work, putting the thing together piece by piece, magic by magic, held up by lack of funds and a praying, quivering, shaking 8x12 Chandler & Price, 50 or 60 years old, that fell apart on the last page; sitting there a moment, moulding their next move, hoping there is enough money for a next move are Jon and Louise (Gypsy Lou) Webb, who wrought the miracle of this third book out of LOUJON PRESSwhich already has won awards in Typography, Type Direction & Design in TDCs 13th annual awards show in New York City.
Sitting here now behind an abandoned store front of crumbling adobethey call it their desert workshop printerythey are almost broke.
It is Tucson and I am down here interviewing Jon Webb in 105 heat, and you know that Art can come from anywhere: the center of hot hell and the ghosts of old bean cans. I begin the interview:
Both of you are great editors and bookmakers. Loujon Press is up there with the gods with your books and the Outsider Magazine. Your Miller book is perhaps the most revolutionary piece of bookmaking in the past several hundred years. My question is, do you think that you will be able to survive or will the walls fall in and eliminate you?
Jon: Well survive, but the walls suddenly will fall in, they always do, same as they did on Alan Swallowtho we dont put ourselves up in his area of greatness, were far from it.
Buk: O.K., so, well where did the idea ever begin to become editors of this sort?
Jon: I gave up writing after two or three million published words because I felt that Id never make it creatively, that Id never get published without making compromises of some sort. Of course, that could have been an excuse for laziness or inadequacybut Im convinced I made a good move, from writing into publishing. I think Im a better editor than I was a writer. If I keep going, tho, Ill only get into a morass of rationalizations.
