SELLING THE BIRD
I had been to the Bird House, the home that functioned as an office for some Emory kids who mixed politics, socialism and counter culture happenings. Very few underground papers of the day mixed politics with music, but The Bird did and helped create the hippie scene in Atlanta. I'd pick up a bundle of the papers at 10 cents each and almost everyone that bought one would give me a buck a paper. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour or so, two newspapers sold and I was already making more than that. At 15 I was living large. Sell papers for three hours and my $30 rent was covered. After that, it was sell when I wanted.
I'd stand on the corner hoping not to get arrested (police busted Bird sellers all the time) and I never was. Once in a great while a car would pull up, grab a paper and drive off, but the vast majority didn't.
Many were people drawn to the area to stare, as if we were a lost tribe living among them. Some were kids from the South drawn to the oasis in the wilderness of racism. Some were soldiers on leave and curious about the free love. They usually ended up in the topless joints in the area. As the cars jammed the streets on the weekends many may have bought papers as their lone souvenir. Safer than getting out of the car and walking among us!
The idea to cover the music scene in Atlanta and the action in Piedmont Park was an early version of marketing genius. The announcements of who would be playing free in the Park drew bigger and bigger crowds. It wasn't just The Allman Brothers, it was The Hampton Grease Band.
It was The Brick Wall. It was many bands, including one that actually did a rock opera about Mothra! The Bird had made itself the center of the community.
I had many stories of selling the Bird. First I'll tell you the story of my best sell, and then, the scariest.
My best sell was for a beautiful girl in a Camaro who asked me about pot. I should explain that when the hippie movement started in Atlanta there were only 2 people on narcotics detail on the police force! They worked exclusively in the ghetto. Someone actually planted pot seeds in the front of the station which grew into big plants in front of the police sign before someone told the police what it was! Her car was way too cool to be a cop car. At that time, there were few women on the Police Force as well.
She bought my paper and we headed to my place to smoke. Turns out, she had never smoked before and I showed her how. Somehow I felt I was creating a hippie! Nothing sexual happened, it was just a thrill to be the person that turned this beautiful girl on.
The scariest story was when standing on a corner, I was approached by a Black male who pulled a gun on me and told me to step into an alley. I did, and as the guy ordered me to turn over my dollars two members of the Outlaws motorcycle club from New Orleans stepped into the dark alley. I could see the 1% tag and DILLIGAF on their jackets. 1% was a reference to a comment made that only 1% were criminal bikers, most bikers weren't. Wearing a tag that said you were part of that 1 percent was far more honest than most clothes could ever be. DILLIGAF meant DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A FUCK.
The guy holding a gun on me quickly put it away. He said something about making good, and the two Outlaws beat him down to the ground and hurt him really bad. In just seconds, I had lost count of the number of times they were able to hit him. One of the bikers turned to me and said, "You ok, kid?", and I mumbled a yes. I walked away, and it wasn't until minutes later that I realized they had just saved my life. They probably were beating him up for some other reason, but never the less, they had stepped in at the right moment and saved my ass.
I never saw those two guys again. Bikers came to Atlanta to lay low because the police liked them. This was a safe city for them.
How many people can say, The Outlaws saved my life?
I had heard about Big Sur in California, and decided that it might be nice to take a few months off and hitchhike around the country. Everyone hitchhiked in those days, and people picked them up! I had no way of knowing it at the time, but I was about to hitch through 34 states, spend my 16th birthday in a Clovis, New Mexico jail, trip on route one and hear Canned Heat play in Topango Canyon. A 16th birthday I would never forget.
As I thought of my strategy, which I actually didn't have, I knew I had to wait until after the weekend show at the Park to leave. A show that would end up being the first riot I was ever in!
Posted at 10:56 am by Psychomike
 | Posted by Pope Flores @ 11/09/2007 11:05 AM PST | |
Want to find out more about the Bird? Carter Thomassi has a great site about Atlanta in the day, click on my name to find out more about arguably the best underground paper of the 60's. |
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| Posted by Tina @ 11/09/2007 11:51 AM PST | |
How many lives have you lived?
I wonder how many other Bird sellers have stories?
Even today protest papers rarely cover music or fun things. The Lumpen in Chicago does, but that's about it.
Turning 16 in jail. That should be interesting!
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| Posted by Jon @ 11/09/2007 01:07 PM PST | |
I went my entire life not knowing what DILLIGAF meant (my brother wore it on his jacket), now finally I know!
Any idea how the term originated? |
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| Posted by Pope Flores @ 11/09/2007 01:19 PM PST | |
The phrase was first used by soldiers in Viet Nam during the 60's. It was as big there as SNAFU (Situation Normal all Fucked Up) was to the soldiers in World War 2.
It can be argued that lot's of language that would have had you arrested in America, like the F word, were first popularized in the military and gradually blended into the society. |
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| Posted by Sean @ 11/09/2007 02:06 PM PST | |
So looking back, and knowing how old you were, do you think your parents should have let you go so young to join the hippies? |
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| Posted by Patrick Edmondson @ 11/09/2007 02:14 PM PST | |
| You captured the essence of Bird selling. I worked 14th at Peachtree on weekends. Paid to party and hang-out! But had a cop put a gun in my face to threaten me if I stepped off the curb. Anyone else have stories they want to share, come on by www.thestripproject. |
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| Posted by Pope Flores @ 11/10/2007 08:29 AM PST | |
Hi Tina- I made it thru hippie, disco, punk, new wave, rave, trance, mashups.
I guess that makes me a pop culture anthropologist!
Sean, Once I discovered sex, the horse was out of the barn. Seriously though, many families were torn apart over the Viet Nam War. Georgia had mandatory ROTC to graduate high school, and the highest number of people to go into service.
Judges routinely sent people up for crimes to the Army (this turned out to be a big mistake).
Maybe 3% of the population were active hippies in those days. Most people would ask me when I said I was against the war, "Are you saying our President would lie?". It was incomprehensible to America at the time that a President, like LBJ, might lie to get us into war (The Gulf of Tonkin).
Today we have the opposite situation- no one expects the President to tell the truth! Also in this war those bumper stickers Americans had on their cars- AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!, MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG!, KILL 'EM ALL LET GOD SORT 'EM OUT! you will note have not appeared on cars in the Iraq War.
The American public took over 15 years to turn on the Viet Nam War. About a year to turn on Iraq.
Click on Patrick Edmondson's name above for a project on Atlanta and the strip. Thanks for your comments Patrick, and everyone else.
I find myself going back to the page just to read the comments- that couldn't exist in a book by the way. A whole new type of footnote!
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