Military brats, academic brats, and corporate brats are often impudent, unruly children. I say this not with scorn but playfully since I grew up as one of them. Somehow within each of us lurked an irrepressible desire to beat the system that robbed us of our parents. We knew the game and we wouldn't be the same. Our fathers had lifetime careers as officers, professors and executives. Our mothers had their own lives. Most of us outwardly conformed for the sake of the perks but a few managed to break the mold and provoke others. I had two friends like that who led the pack on every new base and in every new town.
We have known each other for over 50 years and the painting below peeks into the dark side of the professional world we grew up in.

San Francisco Presidio in 1945 was home for all of us, as our fathers
were stationed there during the signing of the United Nations charter.
Chaz Armstrong renagade son of the old General first spied me at the
Presidio movie theatre and soon we were meeting every saturday as
our fathers played golf with visiting digniterys.
It was a great place and great time to be a kid. We had just won the
war. Our team was best and our fathers were on the team. My mom
and Chaz's mother liked each other.Chaz's mother was the same age
as mine and a lot younger than the General. She would let Chaz stay
overnight at our house on Sea Clife Drive.

My father was only a Colonel but since he was in charge of security for
the U.N. Conferance at the San Francisco Opera house I guess
everybody thought Chaz was safe with us. They probably didnt consider
whether I was safe with Chaz. Thats how little they knew about our
adventures.

Two ten year old boys can get into a lot of mischief and we did.
Because Chaz's father was a General , Chaz seemed to think he owned
the Presidio and we roamed wherever we wanted.Chaz soon discovered
a shortcut across the Presidio golf course to my house.One day when
we were poking around the hedges that lined the course we discovered
a hideout some other kid had built. It had a lot of knick knacks and
even an old Persian rug.Chaz said we ought to hide nearby and find out
who the builder was. We didnt have to wait long before Cody
Beaumont showed up. Chaz knew him already but I hadnt seen him
before. Cody's father was a captain so both our fathers ranked his but
Cody could whip Chaz when they wrastled and soon he did the same
with me.
Cody always was the rebel general with Chaz and I  the scouts. He
gained our total respect when he showed us the  graphic photos his
father had taken when the American army captured the German
extermination camp of Buchenwald. I was hipnotized and revolted  by
the stacks of naked bodys exposed in such explicit detail. The images
dont go away they are burned into the back of my mind. The worst part
was facing such evidence of evil.
Captain Beaumont was a law student when he was drafted and knew
the value of the pictures he was taking. He kept a sharp focus and
used a lot of film. Week after week we would return to get our guts
wrenched at the sight of the horror. Until one day it was over. We
never looked or talked about them again. But we all knew evil existed
and we hated it.

 5 years later during the summer of 1950 we were together at Fort
Brag. Chaz's father was retiring from the Army mine was a general and
Codys dad was a Colonal. Chaz was the oldest and his father gave him
a 49 Chevy for his 16th birthday. One night we were returning late to
the base  and we picked up a Mexican sergent hitching back to camp.
He was an instructer at the airborn  jump school. Cody had been
studying Spanish and  was looking for a chance to practice. Soon he
and the sergent were chattering away like two parrots.It seems Chano,
the sergent had lost all his pay in a card game and needed a few
dollers. He asked us if we smoked  and Cody offered him a cigeret.He
said he ment "Mota" Marijuana. Cody lied and said we did. Then he
gave him $10 in exchange for a flip top Prince Albert tobacco can of
Marijuana.

5 years more passed and in 1955 Chaz  was at West Point  when he
said "Screw the Army those of us who smoke pot are safe from the
government sanctioned alien human experimentation. Thats why their
unreasonable laws keep being jammed down everybodys throat against
all common sense. Its an elite, government, alien axis conspiracy?  I
dont want any part of it." So he resigned and decided to become a
painter with his own studio in Pasadina. From then on he devoted his
life to poker and painting with his studio becaming a hangout for pot
smoking beatnik artists and mexican smugglers.
 

And me I'm Web Flynn. Webster Randolf Flynn to be precise and I
make music.
I was living in New York and in my 2rd year at Juliard when Cody came
by my apartment and told me about Chaz quitting the Academy to
study painting in L.A. It was very sudden because  when I saw him at
Christmas he was determined to be a good soldier. It was also Codys
idea that we take my Thunderbird cruse to California  and encourage
Chaz. Cody is a poet when it comes to bending words and minds, doing
it more than once to myself and others.. He said that with my music
and his words we were sure to score big in Hollywood. I wasnt too
impressed with the Hollywood part but it would be great to spend
some time with  the folks in San Francisco. A California Spring sounded
very appealing.

We had a great trip  stopping for fun and games in  Jackson Hole,
Aspen and Las Vagas  before arriving in Hell A. Chaz wasnt home in
Pasadena  but following a hunch we found him in a Garden City poker
club. I didnt want to stay very long  in southern California and insisted
we get to San Francisco as fast as possable. My Thunderbird was too
small so we rented a big Lincoln and headed to San Francisco with
Chaz carrying 2 kilos of Mexican pot he bought in Tiajuana for $60. We
traveled Highway 1 north from San Luis Obispo and stopped off  in
Gorda where we visited Pat Boyd an old vet we knew from our Fort
Brag days. After a few hours of sharing pipe dreams with Pat we
headed up the road to Big Sur where we pulled in for the first time at
"Nepenthe" a hip new  resturant that was to become a regular
meeting place for for our little society.
After our successful arrivel in San Francisco with pounds of pot we were
very popular in North Beach. I had to get back to New York but Cody
decided to get an aparment in San Francisco go to collage and deal
reefer Chaz sent up from "hell A".

10 years later in 1965 We were together again sharing a loft on
Filmore and Pine in San Franciscos Fillmore district. Chaz had just
returned from a year on the London scene where he stayed with John
Lennion and Yoko Ono at Titinhurst, and did many paintings and
drawings of them. He also had spent time with Timothy Leary at
Millbrook. Chaz was a strong beleaver in the theaputic use of
marijuana and an experamenter with everything else that was reputed
to expand or alter consciousness. But something strange happened at
Millbrook and most of the work he did with John and Yoko vanished. He
had put it all in a van and taken it to another old Dutchess County
estate to show some prosperious appearing visitors and somehow do
to some occult activity he returned back to Millbrook without the art
work. He could never find his way back to the old Estate and nobody at
Millbrook seemed to know who the visiters were.

 Cody arrived at the same time from his villa in Ijajic,on the shore of
Chapala, Mexicos biggest lake. I had rented out my folk's Sea Cliff
house for a year intending to join Cody in Mexico but he suddenly
changed the plans and said he had to be in San Francisco for at least a
year. Chaz would spend time with us but after Cody showed up with 5
grams of pharmicuticly pure Sandoz L.S.D. Chaz spent more and more
time on the Monterey coast at the old Armstrong Ranch in Big Sur.
Me! I just couldnt get any music done while staying on Fillmore street
so I rented a house boat at Sausalitos infamous Gate 5.

Cody was all over with his magic potion regulary traveling back to his
old hometown of Woodstock, New York with side trips to Austen,Texas,
usually leaving one of the girls he shared with Chaz in charge of the
loft. I say shared with Chaz, but there were times much to my present
chagrin  when the L.S.D. was abundent that I joined in the party .Why
chagrin? Because most of my past life I wouldnt care to repeat even
though at the time I was exstatic.
Cody was my link to the art colony of Woodstock and I was his anchor
to San Francisco. Because of being his fathers son he was my main
connection to the international intelligence community,or as he calls
them" global monitors of the conflect between  haves and  have nots."
We of course were the self appointed haves definding a generic class
of have nots from the oppressive system we had droped out of.
Chaz wanted to stage a happening and so did a lot of other artists in
San Francisco so in Janurary 1967 they staged the First Human Be in in
Golden Gate park. It was fueled by the free performances of many
great Rock and Roll bands.
A year later at the Monterey Fairgrounds our friend  San francisco Disk
Jocky Tom Donahue teamed up with Jimmy Lyons producer of the
Monterey Jazz Festival  and staged the Monterey Pop Festival at the
park like Monterey Fair grounds. One of the special guests was a
mystery man from Coco Beach Florada Peter Goodrich who returned to
Miami and together with Concert Hall Productions from Philidelphia
staged his own pop festival also with great success. He and a young
partner took their  money to Woodstock New York

"When the 1969 Woodstock Festival happened or more correctly "the First Aquarian Exhibition" was staged in Bethel, New York we were all there. Cody knew Peter Goodrich, and everybody else even  Abbie Hoffman and the legendary "Coyote ", the CIA contract agent who could cross every border and bring them back alive (most of the time). Coyote is important in this story because he kept the spirit of Woodstock alive in Bethel by having an annual Woodstock reunion every year with other Vietnam vets at the Hurd Road site.

 15 years later  in 1984 Cody and I attended the 15th reunion with 1,500 people. Again in 1994 we were there with over 100,000  folks assembled for the 25th anniversary and free concert that lasted for more than a week. I tried to get Chaz to come out from California  but he said he didn't want anything to do with a fringe event."

Woodstock 99 in Bethel was the 30th anniversary and it turned into a political carnival at Yasgur's Barn.

A lot of people will write a lot of things about Woodstock as we  saw with Woodstock 99 being hyped all over the world 30 years after the original event but so far none of them has focused on the life styles of those who were central to it. But it's a hard thing to put into words because the key word was, and is, Spirit. A word that is used as a metaphor for many dissimilar activities.
Cody had arranged for us to meet with the celebratedSydney in Woodstock for a seance at "The Arts Colony  Building" across from the Artists Cemetery.

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