to town.Ron & Sean rented an RV for the occasion. We stayed in the parking lot overnight, between shows. I was only on the list for 1 of the 2 shows. I had this soft-collar from a whiplash injury, and wore the Rock Med t-shirt from the 1st show into the second gig the next morning. Went through 3 Security checkpoints. They never questioned me, just waved me on through. They gave Sean & Ron the third degree even though they were on the lists for both gigs. How could I see the first show, and not come back for the second? It was the only show I ever sneaked into. Always striving for the new experience. Some times it feels so good to be bad.

and, sometimes, I could get him into shows with me as my guest. We'd go around to the back door, and check in through Bill Graham Security. I always liked to tell the guard,"Sonny and Cher are here to check out The Dead..." That's when Sonny would punch me in the arm. I figure he needed to lighten up-I got him into the show for free.

Rock Med worked the show, and Champ told me to get some B-12 ready, and follow him backstage. That was fun. Then, I got to give Clarence Clemmons a shot in the ass. He just turned around and smiled at me and said "Thank ya, Mama!" Great smile.

closing of Winterland-Steve Parish,Skoop Misker, Bob Barsodi all the heierarchy of Dead Heads commenting on the last show with The Blues Brothers, New Riders, and the boys, and John Chipalina, and good old Bill Graham riding into the New Year with Mickey and Bobby recounting past Dead Shows. Yeah. Everybody loves a great Rock Show Story...HP & I were 25ish when we were married. Early on, we started volunteering for Rock Medicine with The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic on an absolutely non-stop basis. Every show Bill wanted Rock Med on hand for, HP & I were there. Many nights a week every week, and we only missed shows if we were bona fide kick-ass ill. We worked hard and constantly. Winterland in the 70's was it's own reality, or resonable facsimile thereof. We were associates of the ruling class of San Francisco Rock. Magic. Exhausting. Everybody was friendly, crazy, and very much the movers and shakers of of the Bay Area concert production family. Such adventure all of the time! HP and I were always there, always together, until we fell apart. My sister flew out from Indiana to help me drive back home. I was a wreck in oh-so-many different ways mourning the death of our marriage, my life as I knew it, My other sissy had me move in with her and her husband out in the Hoosier countryside. There beagan the healing and there, I continued my downward spiral. Grabbed the first job I could find, working in a nursing home. Hard work, the night shift, those Indiana nights. Way too much alcohol. Reading Steinbeck. Reading when I wasn't working, crying, panicing, or drinking. Lots of reading while I did those things, as well, HP had forbidden me to read for pleasure and deep thought. I know know that he was threatened by the thrall that reading has always held for me. He always demanded center-stage, and I did what he yelled at me to do. But the drinking scared me as well as engulfed me. Again, I could see a love/hate relationship controlling my life, or rather, I allowing it to happen, again. And I wanted to go back to San Francisco to the lights, and the music, and the scene. The Dead. Indiana winters are very cold. One day while drinking, playing cards with a friendly buddy in a little house in the country, watching the sleet cover the yards, the phone rang. The manager of the ambulance company that I had worked for in Hayward,CA had tracked me down. He was worried about me. I could come back to California, live with him and his family, and have my old job back, if I wanted it. He knew I was hitting the bottle and unhappy in my homestate. All my old friends knew I missed the life on the Coast and I was welcome to come back and start my life all over again. I had sufferred beautifully in Indiana for a couple three years..My friendly drinking, card playing buddy just looked at me while I repeated Mike's offer and exclaimed "Hell yeah! I ain't gonna marry you! Get out of this Hell-hole and go back where you belong," he exclaimed! He meant it as encouragement in his own demeaning way. I never had considered marriage to this buddy, and to this day I don't know why he chose those words. It blared of another self-defeating, complicated relationship. My soul was aching. Could I leave my family behind yet again? Could I start yet again? Could I go back to the life I was so sure I was missing out on so very acutetly? Yep. I went for it. With $500 in my boot, I left Indiana again,and headed West where I had always believed that I belonged, for adventures in the sun. I left on December 22, drunk. I wanted to be alone for Christmas and just be busy and get through it as painlessly as possible. I had four flat tires in East Texas. My car wouldn't start again if I turned it off, so I rarely stopped to sleep. I was alone and I wasn't afraid to drink in a roadside bar with my car running in the parking lot as I couldn't chance it not starting again. Man, I was nuts.I guess I took the scenic route. Eventually, I got to my old neighborhood in the East Bay. Somehow. And I returned to old friends and habits, right where I thought that I belonged. One night after settling back in, I called an old friend from Rock Med and let her know I was back in town. I had heard Clapton was playing Oakland Arena, and if it was cool, could I come to the show for old time's sake? She says,"Are you kidding? You belong here! Yes, come to the show. Folks and friends would be so jazzed to see you again!" HP stopped coming to shows since I had left, she prompted. He wasn't going to be there. And it was Clapton! And Phil Collins was on drums! How could I not go? I went for it. The night of the show, before leaving the house to go to my first Bay Area show in more than three years, my brain was playing tricks on me. To see the old crowd again after all this time, and to be alone on my own when I saw them-man, this was a time of intense emotions. I came so close to woosing out and staying in, being a no-show. In the end, I knew I had to go as I was Maude and he was Clapton. BART to the Auditorium was surreal, forcing my emotions into check, regulating my deep breathing, one foot in front of the other and on to Rock. Charlie was in charge of Rock Med, then. Everyone was overjoyed to see me, ao glad that I had made it. Charley took me over to meet someone. I was taken aback but tried to keep my cool. It wasn't HP, but a male RN, named Sean with a face so similar to HP's I knew before introductions were completed exactly who he was. Working at the ambulance company that HP& I had worked at for 8 yrs or so, and where I worked on my own now, I had heard a lot about Sean. An enigmatic cool male RN working in a local Oakland Hosp ER who bore a stiking resemblance to HP. The crew talked a great deal about HP's long -lost twin. HP had met him when we were married, and had told me that there was no resemblance. Now, I knew that I was meeting him, and I saw the likeness right away. The moment was one of electricity. He made some small talk, but we had both felt a spark. Then Clapton started with " Layla", and he looked at me with rapture and asked if I wanted to go backstage with him? Was it cool for me to go dance backstage after being gone so long, I worried? I protested that maybe I should hang out and help in the clinc. Charley tells me that I'm not really needed to work at Rock Med my first night back-I should go have some fun. Sean says"Oh! Come on! It's "Layla!" So I go with him. Running past old friends who didn't know I was back in town, grinning, so happy to see me. but it was "Layla and we were running. And then, we were dancing, shouting with joy, twirling with abandon. I closed my eyes mid-twirl and when I opened tham again I was looking into the eyes of Carlos Santana. He too, was backstage dancing. He wore an unbelieveable turquiose soft leather jump suit, something only he could pull off and he was dancing with me! I looked at Sean and pointed to Carlos, mouthing Carlos's name to him. Sean nodded, and motioned for me to go on dancing with Carlos, and I'm really not the type to argue, and I didn't need to be told twice. I turned back to Carlos who laughed out loud, looked into my eyes with the joy of the musical miracle he knew that he was treating me to, and he just went right on dancing with me! Later, running around the Auditorium like kids in the the crowd, Sean & I were dancing in a balcony when someone in the nose-bleed section spewed chunks, and some of it rained down on me. I could only laugh. I wasn't seriously spewed on and in my Rock Med years I had been thru so much worse. Punched out, peed on,and so much more...Still later, Sean offered me a ride to the BART station. We laughed alot as he planned to tell that night's story as the Clapton show where Carlos Santana threw up on me. We talked about it and laughed over it for some years to come.

My life is good. I know that. I am blessed. I got lucky. I met Bubba on a blind date. He drank Diet Coke, I was drinking Margaritas, back then. When he walked into The Cozy I took a look at his blond pony-tail and said "I hope that's him." It was. We met, talked and quickly discovered that we were opposites. Me, a tye-tye Deadhead loving to free dance, he misunderstood and asked if I would like to go line-dancing with him. I long ago decided to view life as if I were Ruth Gordon's "Maude". Maude would not close the door on such a fine young man just because he liked cowboy bars.( Come to find out-he really does not like bars at all. But all that took some time.) Anyway, I agreed to go with him at a later time. The bar was noisy, he was soft-spoken and I couldn't clearly understand what he was saying. It was I, the brazen hussy who suggested we go sit in my car,"But we are not going to make love in the parking lot," I warned him. He looked shocked. It was truly not his intention. We talked, and I think I kissed him, but kept things cool. We made a date for later. It was a sweet adventure. I had not been on a date, by my own choice in three years or so. I was not really looking for love having given up on finding anyone meaningful at this late stage(forty-something). I thought that I was content to be alone. My life had been complicated with relationships, I liked myself too much to get bogged down again with complications. I had put myself through many levels of Hell in the past, I was happy having Maude-like adventures, seeing the beauty in everything, not "being too judgmental" as I could otherwise, "cheat myself out out of too much life "and "have nothing to talk about in the locker room." I went line dancing. I danced around him elated the band was playing "Little Miss Can't Do Wrong"-my good old rock n'roll. There was no line dancing. that or any other night. We took awhile , but soon quit going to bars altogether...it made no sense as he did not drink, Not at all. Ever. It took awhile, but I quit drinking. It only increased my headaches in frequency and intensity, and my behavior was less than dignified-something I was looking for in my middle age...a little dignity. Dylanesque-style. We have been together since we got together.It's been more than 10 yrs. less than 14...we disagree on the year we met, but it really does not matter. We have been very happy and hope to continue to be. His name is really "Larry", and as that is the name of my Grandfather, Father, and Brother, he agreed to a strange request. My adopted brother, Billy Jones had asked me to live with his family in South Carolina, promising that he would introduce me to a "Bubba." I called Billy in the first month of dating Larry to tell him that I had found my own country boy who lets me call him Bubba to alleviate any multiple Larry-confusion. He is very good to me. He never swears, and he respects me. He calls me "Dear"-never "Bitch", which is how my ex would refer to me. We laugh a lot, and rarely fight. And he built me a house! He bought an acre and built a house, from the foundation to the two garages to the roof. And he let me have 3 dogs-Peggy Sue ( a nod to Buddy Holly), Ramble On Rose, and Rex-my Mom's dog that she had to give up when she went into the nursing home, refusing to sit up, walk, or take care of herself. Bubba said we could take Rex in and add him to our happy crew. We lived in a little camper trailer while he built the house. It has all been golden. Sure the house is still a work-in-progress,I suppose like the rest of our life...we still do not have a kitchen sink. It will come in it's own time. We seem to have everything else going for us. We have the blessing of Billy Jones. As well as everyone else who knows us.