Smoking pot with Leary, Del in front of G. Gordon Liddy!
It's 1982 and the phone is ringing. I'm watching Lupin the 3rd cartoons in Japanese reading from Doug Rice's copious notes/translations. Artist Doug has just started working with writer John Ostrander for FIRST COMICS in Chicago and was my main source for Japanese animation in the period in which no Japanese anime was being released here. Sitting down my papers I picked up the phone....
Voice: Close here.
Del always said Close here instead of hello. His answering machine said, "You know the drill, do the thing".
Me: Hi Del.
Voice: Listen to this. Tim Leary and G. Gordon Liddy are on their way over here. You have to be here for this.
Me: Ok I'm on the way.
I was living in a high-rise on LaSalle Street across from Sandburg Village. It was the cheapest rent in the area, Boom Boom and I didn't realize that was because of the still unsolved Tylenol murders. A woman who had purchased tainted Tylenol at the drugstore a block away had been discovered dead in the hallway by the restroom of the rented condo, and was responsible for our low rent.
A few doors down from the drugstore stuck behind buildings and next to the Blues Brothers Bar was Del's apartment.
The Sandburg's claim to fame was that the porn actress Seka lived there.
The Sandburg Village was designed by John Cordwell.
He was an interesting character then, when there were many characters with great stories still around Chicago. The Wise Guys of The Billy Goat and the liquor store wisemen on the southside. I guess I'm part of that tradition. He had been involved in the escape that became the movie THE GREAT ESCAPE. Played in the movie by Donald Pleasance (who played John as if he were blind, though John wasn't!) he kept a diary of life in the P.O.W. camp and would illustrate an incident of the day in the camp in each chapter. John kept it behind the bar he owned and worked in, The Red Lion across the street from The Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue. He would show some people the book while telling them stories. In the Great Depression The Red Lion had been a gambling joint. The "cover" or "front" of the gambling den was made to look like a produce store. When you walked inside giant chalkboards kept track of horse races and sports events.
John Dillinger was staying a few blocks away on Halsted Street at the whore house of Anna Sage. During the depression the banks had lost everyone's savings, jobs closed as a result, but the banks still expected everyone to keep up with their mortgages. If you didn't, the bank which had lost your money, took your home or farm. Banks weren't too popular in those days. And bankers were called "banksters" by the rural folks. Dillinger would rob banks all over the Midwest and would often hide with farmers- none of whom ever turned him in.
Anna was being deported however, so she went to the FBI and offered to trade him in for citizenship and the reward.
The FBI could never arrest Public Enemy #1 in a whorehouse. J. Edger Hoover was way too prudish and aware of his place in history for that. (Rumors that he dressed in women's clothes while funny, are not true by the way. That would have taken a sense of humor that Mr. Hoover lacked.)
Anna was told it was a deal. She was to take Dillinger to the Biograph, and the FBI would come in and arrest the unarmed Dillinger while he was watching the movie.
Dillinger was unarmed because Chicago was a safe city for him. His attorney was a former Illinois State's Attorney. ( He was the last person to see Dillinger in a Crown Point Jail before Dillinger escaped. Legend has it Dillinger crafted a gun out of soap, the real world teaches me the last person that saw him gave him a very real gun.) Dillinger often posed with Chicago cops and sent the pictures to the FBI man handling his case, Melvin Purvis.
Dillinger was said to have had many an apple at the front of the Red Lion, across the street from his fate.
Dillinger went to the movie but the FBI didn't enter. A policeman had been called by the box office when they noticed the FBI lurking about and mistook them for thieves. The cop was held in the back of his own police car to keep him from reaching police who might tip Dillinger off. When the movie ended John walked out with Anna and another girl from the house of ill repute, and the FBI opened fire.
On the crowd.
As bodies began to fall around him he took off down the street and the shots rang out on Lincoln Avenue. He got to an alley which today is next to a Mexican restaurant and collapsed face first. An unidentified FBI agent came up behind him and fired the coup de grace, a bullet through the back of his head to make sure he was dead.
Two women hit by gunfire almost died. No one sued in those days, so none of the injured sued the FBI.
As word spread that Dillinger was dead over 20,000 people filled the street. Women dipped their dresses in his blood. A man was caught trying to amputate his ear. It was a circus scene. For years afterward, a hazy figure has been seen running from the marquee to the alley and then disappearing like a ghost at the first telephone pole. But then again, there are a lot of bars around there......
Anna Sage never got the reward money and was deported. The moral of the story? When you deal with the FBI, GET IT IN WRITING!
The Red Lion was haunted,too. Lincoln Avenue on that one block has a few ghost stories. They say a woman who lived upstairs at the Lion haunted the bathrooms, and would hold the door when women tried to exit the bathroom. The Red Lion closed in December 2007, but there were always interesting and fascinating men and women there.
As I walked up to Dell's door, I thought about meeting two of my heroes.
Photo from Jay Friedheim -- from l to r: Jay Friedheim, Del Close, Justin Pomeroy, Cindy (?), and Timothy Leary. Del didn't meet Leary until the early 80's!
G. Gordon Liddy had first met acid guru Timothy Leary when he arrested him for what later turned out to be peat moss. Liddy would go on to be the only man connected to Watergate and Richard Nixon to go to prison after everyone else had made a deal and talked! Even if Nixon hadn't kept his word, Liddy had. Sentenced to prison, Liddy would parade naked in front of the other prisoners to the showers each morning, singing in German the Horst Wessel song which an early nanny had taught him as a child. G. Gordon Liddy showed he was a true bad ass and no one dared bother him in prison.
Because Liddy kept his word and lived the way he wanted to, many hippies respected him.
I had first seen Leary in the news in the early 60's promoting acid. LSD wasn't illegal yet, and I was very curious to experience it. I read Leary's books and articles that I found in the library and finally took it with a guide as Leary recommended. It was before I had smoked pot, drank a beer, smoked a cigarette.
Now I was about to meet these two icons from different sides of that era. Before you read any further you should look at this video of Ken Kesey and The Acid Test. Del first met Kesey in California and tried LSD with Merry Pranksters. His trip reminded him of his father's suicide, and after that Del didn't care much for acid. He got heavy into speed however, and would do the special effects lights for the acid test speeding his ass off. He had a series of overhead projectors from schools and many chemicals that he mixed together for an array of effects. Now, watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcstOdT1Pe0
Before there were raves, The Acid Tests were the first traveling raves. Going from city to city in a psychedelic bus, passing out acid for free and having The Grateful Dead play became a legendary way to try LSD.
In 1982 however, Tim and Liddy were friends.
Del's door was open and I entered. Del hadn't cleaned his place in years, and cat hair dustballs rolled gently along the floor as I entered.
Del called me in, and I walked into his bedroom. Del was sitting on his bed. Liddy was sitting in the chair. Leary was on the floor with his legs crossed. I sat at the end of the bed as Del introduced me. Leary had a sparkle in his eyes, like the kind you see in a kid's eyes at Christmas. Liddy was formal but polite.
The smell of pot was pervasive, and Del was rolling a joint and talking to the two men about improvisation and why it was different from ad libbing.
The joint came to me and I puffed on it and then passed the joint to Liddy.
He didn't take it. He didn't even look at it. I realized I was passing the joint to a man who might arrest me on the spot and got a bit afraid, pulling it back!
Then Liddy began asking some of the best questions I ever heard anyone ask on improv. To be able to ask questions that well showed a remarkable intelligence.
A couple of hours passed and Del, Tim and I smoked pot and spoke of the days. Tim had never met Kesey in the 60's or gone to an acid test!
Liddy left. All the while never mentioning the pot we were consuming.
I got to smoke pot with three of my heroes. Even though one didn't partake!
