But when the day arrived, the crowd of 300,000 grew increasingly unruly as the Hells Angels, who had been brought in to provide security, grew increasingly drunk. He was a pro. As a result, the prevailing narrative of Mountain Girl in the popular imagination reads like a comic-book male fantasy: saucy, sexy, sassy, "swinging into every situation like on a vine," as Wolfe wrote, "like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.". "I really would have liked to have gone," she says, "but I didn't have any way to go.". The family moved from house to house (Annabelle Garcia says that she went to no less than 13 schools, "just like an Army brat" ). She was amazingly beautiful. "Marijuana is an ancient plant, cultivated for centuries all over the world for rope & papermaking, for its oil, resin, & seeds," she writes in her memoir. But his antic exit was no joke to the broke, homeless, pregnant teenager he had unceremoniously left behind. Mountain Girl cherished the quiet moments with Garcia in their room, nursing Sunshine in bed as he noodled her favorite tune, "Viola Lee Blues," on his guitar. "They were a gang of brutes who beat up each other for fun," she says with a smile, "but they were nice to me. A large mandala is painted on the living-room floor. "I couldn't freak freely and stay up all night and run up and down the ladders," she says. "I was a strong suit," she says. Its part of what I want to share with othersthat whole inner freedom and expansiveness. The band came back from Woodstock in August 1969 "looking like they'd been in a war zone," she says. After moving in with Jerry, the teenage matriarch of the Pranksters became the "den mother," as she puts it, of the Grateful Dead: cooking, cleaning, rustling them out the door on time. Jerry and Carolyn Garcia divorced in 1994[1] but remained friends until his death. We often thought of ourselves as a karass. That she was 18, unmarried and pregnant with Kesey's child didn't really register until the birth was upon her. This year it also served as a major platform for charitable endeavors. The moment she hugged him, she felt a flash. It seems like theres often a charitable component. He was one of these people where the first time you see him, he's kind of personable, and then the next time, he's starting to disintegrate.". Instead, it brought the year and the decade to a dark and violent end. The free concert, scheduled for December 6, 1969, would include performances by the Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones. Happy the dog, her head splotched with a huge drop of blue paint, flushed a covey of peacocks which rose above the trees and the parked bus, scattering rainbow feathers and squawking bloody murder. "Oh, I came from up on the mountain there," she said. And perhaps the Prankster thing had gotten a little stale for her at that point.". Sunshine Becker (born Sunshine Flower Garcia on July 1, 1972) is an American singer who performed backing vocals for the band Furthur. Now 76, with shoulder-length gray hair and black-framed glasses, she's reading me an excerpt from her unpublished memoir, which she just dug out of an old brown box. by Petrus A. What needed to be done was to drive back the black and white and the separations between people and make a place where people could come together and have some joy and harmony without doctrine. She received her diploma by mail. We cleaned our grass in an old aluminum colander, and stored the kilo of Acapulco gold in a kitchen cupboard. So not wanting to put dumb flourishes on his face or have Jerrys face on top of a pyramid or all these things that people have wanted to do. It was not to be. Be the first to know about the Grateful Dead's exclusive limited-edition releases, breaking news on the band, community events, and so much more. (December 12, 1996). "Hitchhiked up I-5, pregnant with no money whatsoever, begging cups of coffee off of people." "You could buy bennies over the counter in Mexico, and I think he'd been doing more than his share," she says. "I was more than seven months pregnant and I didn't have shit. Jerry is dead. By the time Jerry Garcia met Carolyn Adams she was the iconic Mountain Girl - the outrageous, free-spirited teenaged Merry Prankster who captivated Tom Wolfe's imagination in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. ", The joy and harmony in the Garcia family was challenged further in 1975, shortly after the birth of the Garcias' second daughter, Theresa, nicknamed "Trixie" by Kit Candaleria, one of the Dead's roadies. "I think there was a realistic amount of sexual activity up there," Garcia says, "but it was certainly not out of bounds or weird or anything like that. But basically, she was assigned to the traditional women's stuff of keeping a home, albeit a very large and unruly one. And there were dogs and Pranksters, the bus and a whole huge scene all around them. Their adventures, as immortalized in Tom Wolfe's seminal book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," inspired legions of young people eager to break the shackles of the 1950s and embark on a new age of personal freedom. While that led to a lengthy period of cohabitation in which Carolyn Garcia played an integral role in her husband's recovery, they gradually drifted apart once more when Garcia began an extramarital relationship and fathered a child with Manasha Matheson. At 710, Mountain Girl imposed order like a drill sergeant. I was flabbergasted. Mountain Girl had already had one abortion, during which she vividly recalls tripping on ketamine, which was used as sedative. We tried to keep the mess to a minimum. But there was a part of Jerry's and my relationship that was unshatterable by any means that's persisted until today. "I just couldn't deal with it," Mountain Girl says. Jerry Garcia exclaimed. The court case turned into a high-profile free-for-all, with Koons Garcia's side claiming that Jerry had stopped loving Carolyn years before, that their marriage on New Year's Eve, 1981, was a sham and had been for tax purposes only and that in circumventing the legal system, their agreement was basically not worth the paper it was written on. Once you've had a little kid, it's very difficult to focus on being a P.A. The fight over his intellectual and real property continues. As the '80s approached, the whole Dead zeitgeist was getting way out of control. Their pad had become a hub for the burgeoning scene around the Dead's extended family of dealers and musicians and psychedelic poster artists. She was, she recalls, "a beatnik." Mountain Girl, second wife of Jerry Garcia, holds her daughter, Sunshine, backstage at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. ", Kesey was, she says, "attractive and very engaging. Despite the new light in her life, a darkness set in. I was way upset. I believe growers are artists and they need good management. ", Still facing pot charges in San Francisco, she had to hitchhike up and down the coast for her court appearances, five hours each way. And now, The Bus was retired. The real story of Mountain Girl, as I've learned after months of talking to her, is far more complex. She reconnected with Garcia a couple years later after leaving Kesey in Mexico, where he was hiding out to avoid U.S. drug charges, and returning to San Francisco with her daughter Sunshine.. Nobody can measure up. "I never did any therapy about it, but I've read all the books.". "We felt guilty at having called for this." The tiny sink was a hazard zone. It was the summer of 1963. With an entomologist for a dad and a botanical illustrator for a mother, Adams had grown up a brainy bug-lover with a mind for science and a passion for nature. "I was totally devastated," she says. "Ooh, man," she told him, "there's something. While she was fast approaching her due date, Kesey was off dealing with his lawyers. ", Mountain Girl and Jerry divorced in 1993. Following Jerry Garcia's death, Carolyn Garcia was involved in litigation to obtain payments as per their divorce settlement agreement, ultimately agreeing to a $1,250,000 settlement to avoid further legal costs. What the hell just happened? Were trying to live up to a set of ideals and work with folks who understand what Jerry means to people. She wasn't a judgmental kind of person, she was just brutally frank. Eventually, the rest of the Pranksters loaded themselves onto Furthur and trekked down to Manzanillo, where they lived in a small rancho with a red and white checkerboard roof. He returned to the United States and, just nights after being sentenced to six months in the San Mateo County Jail, he was arrested again, this time with Adams, while smoking marijuana on the rooftop of Stewart Brand's home on Telegraph Hill, San Francisco. Jerry was never with another woman who matched him as elegantly as she did, with her kind of energy and intelligence. She was turning a corner so fast, she was leaning down, close to parallel with the pavement on this windy, twisty mountain road, her long, black hair flying out behind her, lookin' good. Neither of us knew the language of sorting out your personal relationships," Carolyn says. Garcia had indeed gone to live with a slender, intense and dark New York City film student named Deborah Koons whom he had met at a show in 1973 and who had hitched a ride back to New York City on the Dead's bus. She also says that she started putting on weight "out of self-defense. Biography [ edit] The free concert, scheduled for December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California, would include performances by the Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones. You recently announced a partnership with Holistic Industries on Garcia Hand Picked. (Kesey had been a participant in 1959). ", "Bill is a wonderful man," says Sunshine Kesey, who, with her halo of white-blond curls resembles her father, Ken Kesey. Ken Kesey's girlfriend Mountain Girl holds her baby daughter Sunshine. Mountain Girl found the celebrated writer, who was 29, to be dynamic, intelligent, and playful. "He knew it was going to cause trouble." One must brace against the turns to avoid sliding into the driver. "I was devastated," she says. Were real people. She never taught me any rules and benched me forever." REVIEWS. "It's an old story. she recalls with a laugh. Thats a whole thing that wasnt even acceptable in the fine art world like 20 years ago. I painted that bus! After splitting with Walker, she took up with Jerry Garcia, but they did not marry for many years after. So I never really knew where she stood on anything. A few of her friends acknowledge the incident as rumor but refuse to verify it as fact). Today, vestiges of the slender, heart-stoppingly beautiful girl-woman who caught Kesey's eye in 1964 remain - the fierce intelligence, the take-control bossy stick, the intellectual acuity, the ability to cut through a morass of pretense to the heart of the matter, the boisterousness, the guilelessness, the curiosity, the laughter. In 1975, when Theresa Garcia was not even a year old, Jerry disappeared. Through our Discourse journalism, Insider seeks to explore and illuminate the days most fascinating issues and ideas. ", The closer she grew to Jerry, the further she drifted from Kesey. The joy started to end around 1974, when the Grateful Dead decided to take a break. ", But as much as the Chief held the power in the Pranksters' fold, Mountain Girl maintained her own. Read more Discourse stories here. "The price is very high and the price is personal relationships and time away from the family.". And there it was. It happened in the summer of 1964 at St. Michael's Caf in Palo Alto, California. "Because Mountain Girl went through this movement once before," says Rachel Anderson, the group's cofounder, "she's seen what worked and what didn't work.". "I didn't know what to do. It was not a mistake. Annabelle remembers encountering a junkie shooting up on their doorstep. "There were always girls coming out of the woodwork," says Mountain Girl. as well as other partner offers and accept our. "It wasn't (about) any one person," she says. Our writers provide thought-provoking perspectives, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise. Mountain Girl would ride Rush's bike over a rutted short cut to the hospital and sit by Jerry's bed, willing him to live. Three others died at Altamont that day, including a fan who took too much LSD and drowned in an irrigation ditch. ", She addressed it head-on. For Carolyn Adams, the trip to wonderland started when a famously Mad Hatter offered her a ride. And none of the Pranksters embodied that emerging spirit more than Mountain Girl. But as Garcia's addiction worsened, Mountain Girl took their daughters and moved to a farm in Oregon, where some of the other Pranksters had moved. Says Rock Scully, the Dead's road manager for many years, "Jerry Garcia was married to his guitar and the muse and his human relationships suffered for it. I kind of nodded out. Mountain Girl kept her gig as the projectionist, painting the walls with colors as the trippers danced to the Dead. Art Frisch/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images, Bill Owens/20th Century Fox/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. He is her "handmaiden.' I got a huge jolt, and I had a very vivid image of us being together. He loved to work. When she came to the one on the door that read "Nothing Lasts," she stopped in her tracks. "Cassady was on a speed run, looking for bennies," Garcia remembers. Him as elegantly as she did, with her kind of energy and intelligence stored kilo. 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