The Followers

Sometime after we moved to the rental house on Chilton Street in Tyler Texas in the spring of 1970 we ran across a group of folks who were followers of one of the many Indian gurus who came to the U.S. in the late 1960s.

The group had started out on the east coast and some of them were sent to Tyler to establish a new base of operations... I no longer recall why they picked Tyler, but the "advance guard" bought some acreage north of town with the intent of setting up a commune and in the meanwhile they bought a large old house to restore a couple of blocks from where we lived. (I think it was the N.E. corner of Dobbs and Chilton).

The Tyler contingent was led by a couple in their late 30s. I recall that the husband was a hairstylist and the woman was extremely overbearing... Living with them were a chimpanzee (always in a small cage - seemed cruel to me but apparently it was "enlightened" so it was OK) and 3 young military vets who met while playing in the Navy matching band in Charleston (I think): Denny was of Italian heritage and played tenor sax. Al had red hair and a beard and played trumpet. And Bernie was a brilliant jazz guitarist from outside of Nashville. He had spent most of his Navy career playing at the Officer's Club in Guantanamo Bay but finished his enlistment playing bass drum in the marching band.

I seem to recall that it was Denny who had first become a devotee of the guru (whose name I no longer recall) and had convinced the other two to join the group. When their enlistments were up they all (apparently) had nothing better to do than become full time disciples.
Denny was one of those "blissed out" types. Everything was always beautiful... He later moved to Dallas with his girlfriend Judy when she was attending SMU. Bernie, Karina and I visited them in Dallas once and they were acting all happy but there was something clearly not OK... I ran into Judy at North Texas State a couple of years later and asked her what had happened. She said she got tired of pretending everything was beautiful when it wasn't...

Aside: Judy was an interesting character. Her father was 70 years old when she was born (passed away when she was little) and her mother was in her late 40s. As a result Judy was quite old fashioned. She had absolutely no clue about "modern" culture - it was kind of sweet.
She was always talking about what an amazing cook her mother was and one day she invited a bunch of us went over there for lunch. It was meat, corn and mashed potatoes with almost no seasoning - the most bland and ordinary meal I've ever eaten. And all the while Judy was raving about how incredible it was. We had a good laugh afterwards :-)
Yeah - I should probably admit I did have a bit of a crush on her - long strawberry blond hair and blue eyes... Quite cute.

Al and I used to play tennis at Bergfeld Park on a regular basis. It was (is) a really nice park. It even has a little amphitheater. That was the first place I saw the band "Gladstone" play. (Their 1972 song "Piece of Paper" made it to #45 on the Billboard 100.) But I digress.
Al was one of those people who had all the answers to everything and shared them freely. Always giving advice about everything... I actually did appreciate it. I was somewhat lost after I graduated from high school and his positive affirmations did help quite a bit :-)

Then there was Bernie. He will probably be mentioned quite a bit in future posts. He was my brother-in-law for a few weeks in 1971 :-) A couple of years later he came to Oregon with us and for the past 30+ years has owned a music store called Bernie's Guitar Shop in Redding California. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Aside: I recall this one time when the 3 former Navy musicians got hold of some Kazoos and were playing Sousa marches on them... It was really quite amazing :-)

I guess I'll close with favorite story about the group:
They had a number of mantras that they were constantly repeating and one of them was "If someone steals something from you it wasn't really yours to begin with".
So one day Karina and I went over there to hang out and the woman in charge was quite upset because they had been on their way to Dallas the previous day when their VW van broke down. They blessed it and hitched a ride to the next exit to get a tow truck but when they got back the van had been stripped...
At that point Karina interjected with "Well, I guess it wasn't really yours then, was it?". I couldn't help but laugh. Watching someone get "smacked in the face" with their own hypocrisy can be quite amusing :-)