"BUGSY"

painting by Michael Bowen

    
Bob Polatzo, a native of Monterey, was lured to Gorda on the southern fringe of the Big Sur community by the poetic vision of Robinson Jeffers. There, on the mountain side of Highway 1, he pushed around a pile of granite boulders and roofed them with redwood timbers to create a stone house for his wife and new baby. It was a work of art  without electricity or phone. Within lived beauty, intelligence and strength until stark tragedy struck. Food got stuck in the babys' throat and no contact with emergency aid was possible. By the time they reached a phone the baby was dead and another utopian dream foundered on Big Sur's rocky coast.
    I first met Bob in the Spring of 1958 on Partington Ridge in Big Sur at the" D'Angola House", where Sandy Justice was caretaker. I saw him more frequently as I worked as a waiter and bartender at Nepenthe. Bob was a natural builder and, together with his partner, Guido, the sandalmaker, built many fine walls in Big Sur. He preached of an architecture that completely merged with the environment. Detchins Inn was the place I would see him the most often and have lengthy discussions about life and art. After that I would visit him at Gorda and assist in rolling boulders and lifting beams.
     Bob's dream was abandoned,  so, a young man named "Etien " moved in and Bob's stone house became a grass roots commune hosting nomad bikers and assorted hitch hikers. The stone house became a suburb of "Boydsville" and an A- frame house was erected gentrifying the neighborhood a little.
    Another of Bob's Monterey buddies was sculptor and builder, Pat Cassidy, who bought property north of  the Gorda store and ran a small saw mill.
      Amilia Newel, the artist wife of Big Sur, Sculptor, Gordon Newel, owned a gold-mining claim in the Santa Lucia mountains. So, following her separation from Gordon, she  opened a small art gallery in Gorda and bought Polatzo's stone house and property.
   Jazz, being what Jazz is, involved Afro-Americans and a very dark-skinned representative of that lineage, named Billy White, took up residence in the Gorda A-frame, attracting a multi-racial flaver that was lacking in any other enclave on the south coast. Billy's funeral party was a Big Sur classic, held at Point 16 with a massive congregation of black, latin, and white drummers. Another party of equal  proportion was that which celebrated W.M. Flatly's demise at the same historic site, once the home of John "The Voice" Nesbet,  renowned radio narrator during the 1940s. Across the road on the mountain side of the former Nesbet Estate is  the New Camaldoli  Monastery and Hermitage.
   Up the road at "Slates Hot Springs" Peter Melchur was the hip host of what later, under Michael Murphy's ownership and management, became "Esalen Institute". Peter was the one who first brought psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, to Big Sur, launching his Gestalt therapy. The hot springs themselves are a unique source of social healing and give a unity of experience to the diverse eccentrics who have the money, skills and strength to survive Big Sur. The coast road is always a work in progress. Forest fire, flood and landslide are annual events.
   That same spring, in 1958, I met a very fine artist, "Jay Kip", who had his pottery kiln at Point 16. I was impressed with viewing the artist at work. Soon after, I met U.C. Berkely trained artist, Harry Dick Ross, who was the pioneer Big Sur wood carver and stone cutter. Likewise, I met his notorious neighbor, "Henry Miller" with his beautiful wife, Eve.
    Further up the road Tom Sawyer, Nepenthe's favorite bartender, was mixing the drinks at the round bar and Eric Barker was the reigning local poet.  Those who mounted the stools considered it the center of the world. I was there in the company of Kay Olay, an actress I was performing with in "The Lark", a play being staged by Richard Baily at Carmel's Circle Theatre.
     Kay had introduced me to the community of artists and writers who lived on "Huckleberry Hill" directly behind the Army Language School in New Monterey. It included her husband, New York writer, Lionel Olay, who later went off to Cuba to fight beside Castro on the Isle of Pines and was killed in a purge of American volunteers.
     Dominant among the residents was Stanford educated Bruce Ariss, author of the fictional book, "Artists and  Models", which aptly describes the communal lifestyle of the neighborhood as it was in the 1930s and 40s when John Steinbeck dwelt among them. Bruce, and his wife, Jean, author of the book, "The Quick Years", were part of the intellectual circle that frequented "Ring's Restaurant"in Monterey,  a wonderful roost with a walled outdoor patio where poets read and art was displayed.
   Jean Ariss told me a tale about Bruce that condenses his multiphasic mind into a coherent unit. It seems that while she was in the hospital during the last week of a difficult pregnancy, Bruce did a lavish job of feeding his large household of family and friends, but he hated to do dishes, so he built another kitchen as the dishes piled up in the first. The table in the new kitchen was on hinges connected to the window sill and when dinner was over a servo-motor lifted the table to the open window where a hose sprayed the table clean along with the silverware attached by light chains
When Jean arrived home with her new baby she found two kitchens filled with dirty pots, pans and dishes.
    I've heard that the house has since burned down, but, from its ashes truth rises above the smoke of self-sacrifice reminding us that love remembers, love cares and love shares.
   Bruce had worked as a contractor on the building of the Camaldoli Monastery near Gorda and was amused by the difficulty he had communicating with the monk in charge when the subject of art was brought up and the monk insisted that the art of the hermit was prayer.
      In 1964 another element entered Gorda. It was LSD. First, it came up the road from Hollywood and, soon after, Northern California LSD, produced by the legendary Owsley was being tested by Big Sur's "Psychedelic Rangers". The  "Psychedelic Rangers", who were mainly Vietnam vets, included Don Lewis, Neal Rose, Barbara Johnson, Michael Bowen, Rodney Richmond, Jonathen Reister and Jim Cook. They were all artists and builders. Don Lewis had built a house in Garrapata Canyon on the northern most fringe of the Big Sur Community and was doing work on Kim Novak's house in the Carmel Highlands. Rumour had it that he had been the pilot of the helicopter that lifted an American out of the prison in Mexico City as was seen in the movie "Bronson".Years later I was sitting in a house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, swapping Big Sur stories with Dennis Hopper and Tommy Masters, when a guest sitting quietly nearby said "It's true. I'm the guy he pulled out." I asked him what his name was and he said "Joel Kaplin". Don Lewis didn't live long after I met him but he will never be forgotten. He was a real host with a big heart.

Dennis Hopper  and Michael Bowen

photo Bowen collection

Michael Bowen has sent me some e-mail with more of that story:
"It's me that plotted Joel Kaplan's escape. Lewis was working on it and could not figure it out after many tries and many bribes. He and Joel's sister came to me for my brain. I agreed to solve the problem and get her brother out for a share in the movie rights. So, Don, a crooked lawyer named Bill
Choulos, and I, drew up a contract for the rights. Then I analyzed the situation and realized that their was an uncovered prisoner's exercise yard which was quite large. At first I thought of a light cessna plane. Then it dawned on me that a helicopter could be used. Further, I realized it had never before been done. Thus, the element of surprise was there. After that we went ahead with the plans. Vic Stadard, an old smuggler friend of Don's obtained the helicopter, painted it the attorney general's colors, and basicaly flew in and got Joel. I met Joel after he was out and before he went to Argentina, at Choulos, the crooked lawyer's [Stinson Beach] house.  (Choulos was later caught by his boss, Melvin Belli, selling cocaine out of Belli's law office basement in San Francisco. Mel, then over 70, hauled the little crook into the street by his neck and fired him as he threw him into the gutter on Montgomery Street). I was cheated out of the film rights by Don and Choulos mainly because I wasn't around. I had gone to India for awhile for my spiritual benefit. It pissed me off for a while, but then it became clear that knowing it was entirely my brain that made it work was satisfaction enough."