long-haired brothers working

 long-haired brothers working



     Greg loved this story from my ill-fated venture into hippy "enterprise" that took place in 1971 on the groovy corner of 10th and Pico in Santa Monica. When I was an inside salesman at Van Waters and Rogers Scientific I became the favorite of the burgeoning hippy glassworks operations making water pipes for pot smoking. I was pushing the envelope at my staid company by wearing colored shirts and growing my hair a bit long. I really was fond of my coworkers but I yearned to be a long-haired peace child and being a salesman was not the scene I needed. I had a customer named Tom Augustine who was a charistmatic  dreamer who had rented a large wharehouse in SaMo and thought he could train a bunch of hippies into skilled stained-glass restorers. He also had a kiln where amateurs tried blowing glass. Tom was a nice guy who thought I could help him get his business off the ground but the entire thing was hampered by the bohemians who lived in the big wharehouse illegally but fairly typical for the time. I believe there were about 8 or 9 residents inside this unheated space. They set up burlap walls and brought in thrift store furniture which made the place hippy-romantic but very uncomfortable. No TV, no kitchen, no shower, one toilet and "workers" who always preferred to smoke hash and walk to the beach instead of doing actual work. Tom would buy salvaged stained glass windows from demolished properties and restore them. He also taught glass-blowing which he did not know that well himself but it brought in a few dollars that were in short supply. After about four months I could see I had made a bad mistake leaving a paying job for a band of fun but broke-ass hippies. I never was paid a penny for showing up. This was warranted since I never really knew what I was supposed to do there. Anyway, one day a truck arrived at Augustine Glassworks full of large stained glass windows and pieces of frames. The lazy hippies were assembled and we all went out to the  truck to unload the materials. It was an early Spring day and the hippies were in t-shirts working up a sweat when some hippy chicks walked by probably on their way to shop-lift at the Safeway. One of them said to us "I'ts so cool to see some long-haired brothers working" and our response was something like "peace sister" By the end of the month an entrepeneur took over the shop and I was given a hundred bucks and sent packing. It was a fun experience but a lost five months except for the quote that Greg loved to repeat with of course a hesitation and then the word "man."



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