Sep

26

It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow. It follows the fascinating characters to Slab City.

The summer population is up 30%. They are anarchist splinters of the Rainbow Family of countrywide buses, Grapes of Wrath jalopies, hitchhikers under polychromatic backpacks, and hobos wearing RR and rainbow tattoos. The Rainbow Family is a leaderless, nomadic community of hundreds of thousands.

They pass the old concrete guard house and into sudden peace of mind. They feel where they belong. 'Make your mark!' someone shouts, and they park their car or plant a tent pole, and someone else contributes, 'You are now lost to the world you knew.'

They've spent years being bohemian and sleeping on floors. From day to day, nothing is stationary. They must be, or become, zany to keep on moving, to drift and dance, and keep on moving. They swing into town in a disorder of strewn clothes and dumpster vittles in place of a spare tire in the trunks of their vehicles, spilled cigarette ashes on the floor, shoes that are falling apart, and ready to howl from camp to camp under moonlight.

It is one of those queer little towns at the edge of the world that makes you feel the salt of the residents who make you feel right at home. From this point forward, you don't even know how to quit in life.

Slab City patterns are captivating. 2015 was the summer of the Dirty Kids, who rolled penniless into town, slept in the 'Walmart' dump among the trash that was their treasures, and could only get clean by letting the dirt grow out of their pores, but never wanted to. The next summer of 2016 was of the Hobos, who set makeshift camps behind the Mayor's house, where I walked in one morning, observing, 'There is nothing here I haven't seen before,' and found a way into their hearts. The Dirty Kids and hobos have come and gone, replaced this summer of 2017 by the Rainbow Family.

Their shared fantasy is realized here. They can drop out, live in a mobile home, be a hippie and drive around to festivals and marijuana trims, and have a baker's dozen of children with dreadlocks and nose rings. Hippy is an establishment word for their invisible, underground evolutionary process of dropping out of the TV comedy of American life. For every visible barefoot, bearded hippy, there are a thousand invisible members of the turned on underground. I think that next summer may break the pattern to produce a second Rainbow gathering. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed and connected individuals cannot change the world; it's the only thing that ever has.

Slab City has everything tempting a hippie utopia: Freedom, cheap living, drugs, sex, music, clean air, nudity, good food, few rules, and a Hotel California sensation that 'You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.' They consciously or unconsciously like to get trapped here.

They are a hardscrabble group, the toughest of pilgrims to Slab in decades. Most come from having lived on the open road for so many years, before making this outlaw town their Shangri-La, that they have surprised themselves by not moving on. They have endured the summer heat of 115F for fifty straight days with physical persistence - walking back and forth three miles to town - and with mental tenacity - digging holes to live in like desert mammals – and suffering - working days at odd jobs to support their families and pot habits.

One day laborer passed out on the job with his face in the dirt. The SOP is to revive by pouring ice water on the neck, so you don't touch anyone who may start deft, or faking it, to whirl and stab you. However, he was grateful, and rose to work to pass out a few hours later, and again a few hours later with his face in the dirt. Since that day, he has not had to eat any more dirt to receive countless job offers.

Many are here on a spiritual journey. Slab is a pathway to personal fulfillment, because from the first minute of setting foot on his slab the seeker is put to the test to measure his brains and grit. Once that is proven, a few seek enlightenment via the old formula of ascetic experience, deprivation, and simplicity, all of which are plentiful in Slab City.

There is a man here who looks like one of the Monopoly brothers who is said to have 'more money than brains, and he has a lot of money', who was in enlightenment for five straight weeks at the foot of the Himalayas under Ram Dass. Personal growth and fulfillment is the most compelling argument for existence, and Slab City, at the end of the rainbow, is time accelerated toward this goal because life moves quickly by the minute, instead of by the day, as in other towns.

Nearly half of the summer newbies financed their travel as seasonal marijuana pickers. They reached Slab with a few hundred dollars and a stash of potent pot as a grubstake. A few became temp drug dealers, until their stash ran out, and then bought a nice $500 trailer to live out the summer. Most inexpert dealers, however, lost their shirts. One astute fellow took vehicle pink slips, trailer titles, and handwritten poor man's property deeds as security for dope sold. Nearly all of his clients defaulted on their debts, and he became the leading business tycoon with camps strewn with repossessed autos and trailers. Then, one by one, the clients beat him up, and stole their property back, until now he lives penniless and can't feed his dog in its first heat that is supposed to guard his camp.

The Slab economy has doubled with the immigrants. Most of them have become wired on methamphetamines and, like werewolves, vampires, and zombies, get activated at sunset with a puff. There is madness in every direction radiating from the camps and campfires. The cops dread them because they are gypsies, and it is easier to milk a cow that holds still. If they are chased for something illegal, they jump camps until the police give up. The Rainbowers just laugh, 'All I'm gonna do is just go on and do what I feel.'

My favorites are the hitchhikers and knights of the fast freights. Some have arrived with their homes on their backs and not even any food stamps, with holes in their shoes, nagged by their parents, tagged ADH by school psychologists, derided by Uncle Sam, buffeted along the open road, suffered of great privation, and they pad softly in the hot afternoon into Slab City with many smiles. They are the rattling skeletal progeny of America. Many have humbly worked their way up here from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. They have no ID, and will reveal nothing of their past except the footprints in their sox. Many do not go to town at all for fear of being recognized. I put them at ease with a Groucho Marx line, 'I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.'

Life is a long highway for many of the Rainbowers before they strike gold in Slab City. Suddenly, they slide on their American dream below sea level and hit home. After five minutes on a slab, nobody looks at the rainbow that carried them here.


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