Free The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six by Randall Farmer

wore. I noticed no elegant edge of designer style, but an almost aggressive poverty, as if they were proud of not having money for good clothes.
    I hoped us Transforms weren’t behind this change.  We had enough baggage as it was.
    I walked down the sidewalks of the street, looking around me in amazement. I saw a woman pass me going the other way in a skirt almost touching the ground. My eyes followed another pair of women in their odd pants, wearing sandals and not even noticing the cold. They smelled of pot, and of other odd smells, incense, other drugs, and strange foods I didn’t recognize.
    There were normal people scattered among the hippie children, coming to eat lunch at the cafes, and shop at the strange stores. Some seemed to be here simply as tourists. I saw one man as he looked at me, and then heard him mutter disapprovingly to his wife “Can you imagine what kind of father would let his daughter come to that ?”
    I lifted his wallet as I passed him. I didn’t appreciate his attitude.
    A man sat on a newspaper on the sidewalk, with a guitar, singing about ‘if I had a hammer’. His guitar case lay open at his feet, and sometimes people threw money into it.  I did too.
    Farther on, I found two men and a woman shouting furiously, and collecting money for some protest against the War. They had covered the nearby wall with posters I couldn’t read. They proclaimed some oriental named Ho Chi Mihn as their hero, and had his face pasted on a bunch of posters.  Wasn’t he the political boss of North Viet Nam?  Or was that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?
    I dodged around a sidewalk café, busy even in the cold weather. Beyond the café I found a tiny art gallery, with baskets of prints in bright colors set out on the sidewalk. Across the street, a music café was just opening its doors, and putting out placards for some band of longhaired men supposed to be playing there tonight.  A guy tried to hassle me, trying to get me to sample some expensive opiate.  I got peeved, and my predator turned on.  For all I know, he’s still running.
    I needed to get to work.  I listened to my instincts and waited for omens, and my eyes settled on a small boutique several doors down from the tiny art gallery. I crossed through the slow cars and entered into the boutique.
    “Peace,” the woman behind the counter said, in greetings. She was another of the mold, long straight hair, and pants that only came halfway up her hips. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and her eyes widened when she saw me.
    “Peace,” I said back. ‘When in Rome’ and all. “Can you help me pick out some fresh clothes?”
    “Oh, sure,” she said, rushing over from behind the counter.
     
    When I left the Haight, I wore a blouse that looked like several scarves all sewn together, hip-hugging bell-bottomed blue jeans, sandals, beads, and a peace sign. My short hair was tied back with a braided cord with beads knotted in, and except for my short hair, I looked like every other nineteen year old flower child in the entire city.
    With a final, odd impulse that was half cynicism, and half rejection of everything I was, I bought a flower from a streetside flower stand, and pushed it through the tie that bound my hair. A flower child. Perfect.
    At the bus station in central San Francisco, the first bus I found went north.  The boutique lady had used the word ‘north’ a lot when I had gently asked about the SDS, and I took this as an omen.
    I went north.
     
    ---
     
    I drifted. I lifted wallets when I needed money, and did a robbery once or twice. I went where the busses took me. I listened to the wind, and the conversations, and finally realized this SDS thing wasn’t at all common or public.  In the process, I became a flower child for real.
    I spent my time with the flower children, those young innocents, full of dreams and illusions , and learned their language. They accepted me when I drifted through, and didn’t care when I