Is California Dreamin Becoming a Reality?
Late in the Summer of ’69 the Santa Anna or “devil wind” shot down from the California hills at 100 miles an hour, brittling dispositions and trees alike, preparing those few signs of life in Los Angeles for an Indian summer of death which, though matching other years in the strength of its demonic energy and violence, would once and for all implant the Fear in the hearts of millions of Americans. The wind came, people sweated, lay in bed asleep, took Excedrin; the crime rate went up 75 per cent; and Charles Manson was. The Summer of Love in San Francisco had come and gone two years before, most of those still deeply committed to a no-compromise counter-cultural movement had long since taken to the hills to the North or the plains of New Mexico, and the streets of the Haight and Sunset Boulevard lay littered with the last pock-marked remains of hippie. Hippie was now the 95-lb. speed freak on the corner who hustled bad acid and talked non-stop about getting it all together “in a commun
