My sister Linda gave me all the letters I had written to her, and today I finally went through them and found one containing very brief descriptions of people who answered the ad I put in Seattle's underground newspaper, "The Helix," in 1969, when I was stationed at Camp Ames in South Korea. Letters were still pouring in, totaling over a hundred, but this is all who had written to me before I wrote to Linda.
Ann Katherine Weed – Fremont, Calif. – college bum in her low twenties, was going to marry a guy, but he became a cop so she left – used to live in a commune.
Becky Ridley – Woodinville - hippie girl – gives horseback riding lessons at Gold Creek Stables.
Billie Jo Foster – Olympia – wife of Trinidad.
Bob Grinstein – Thomas City – queer.
Candi Eustace – Seattle – teenybopper.
Cindy – lives in Everett- poet.
Cindy Wilson – Seattle – teenybopper.
Dana Rea – Medina – writer – poet.
Debby Johnston – pacifist girl who joined the hippies a year ago – she wrote the letter while sitting in a Magnolia tree.
Debbie Wyckoff – Everett – teenybopper.
Debie Sherman – Mount Vernon – pot-head.
Diane Strand – Seattle – poet.
Dianne – hippie girl that believes in reincarnation – presently living with a guy.
Dorrit Jensen – she’s as unusual as her first name – and she writes excellent poems – speed freak.
Dyanna Laing – Seattle – Hawaian – lives in the Banana Patch commune.
Gail Smith – Seattle - anti-military college freshman – artist – guitar player – she believes in free love.
GeGe Reukauf – Seattle – acid-head.
George Moore – Seattle – was in Vietnam in the army – now he’s a hippie.
Jan Fox – she’s so crippled that her left leg is the only workable limb on her body – she types with her left foot – beautiful mind, but an atheist.Jan Shroy – hippie girl – pregnant – unmarried – she gave birth on August 2, 1969 – she says that no matter what insults society gives her, it’s the most beautiful experience in the world. [When I returned to the U.S., I stopped by to see Jan and her baby girl. She’s definitely a nice person.]
Jan Masterjohn - Kent - she and her husband Dave sent me many letters and some books - we planned to start a commune together when I got out of the army. I did spend a week with them, and audited a philosophy class with Jan at the University of Washington.
Janet Heineck – Seattle – hippie from Berkeley.
Janet Holman – Spokane – beautiful mind, and definitely not a virgin.
Jay Hershey – Olympia – artist – shacks up with Mona.
Jennifer Lynne Alexander – Seattle – her ambition is to get a Harley chopper, even if she doesn’t ride it herself.
Jinny Byham – Seattle – Army hater – festival lover.
Joey Elizabeth and Adra Valentine – worship Krishna and meditates daily.
Kas Snodgrass – Tacoma – she’s weird.
Kathy Lantz – Seattle - straight girl with an open mind.
Kathy Owen – lives in Bellevue – teenybopper.
Kathy Rowe – poetic girl, but not a hippie.
Kenny and Lonny – Seattle – two queers shacking up together.
Laura Crocker – Seattle – pacifist – sent me a copy of my ad.
Laurie Hurja – lives in Bellevue – teenybopper.
Linda – Boise, Idaho – has taken LSD – is interested.
Linda Dordness – Mountlake Terrace – on August 9th, she and her girlfriend started hitch-hiking around the U.S.
Linda Dukes – Seattle – she wrote and bawled me out for putting an ad in the “Helix” – very straight.
Linda Schneider – Seattle – teenybopper – record collector.
Lorie Phelps – Tekoa – pessimist.
Lorna Woodward – Seattle - fifteen year old girl who doesn’t know what it’s all about, but thinks she does – teenybopper.
Lynn Adams – Kent – interior decorator.
Margaret Goring – Seattle - hippie girl – makes clothes for a shop in the Seattle University District.
Margaret Parkinson – Seattle – hippie – her things are acting and singing.
Marilyn Simmons – Boise, Idaho – teenybopper.
Mary Archey – lives in Everett – half Japanese, studying for a degree in business.
Mary Holmaren – Seattle – singer in an amateur rock group.
Melissa Queen – lives in a commune in Bellingham - her letters are my favorite.
Mona – Olympia – shacks up with Jay Hershey.
Nancy – Seattle – didn’t write much, so I can’t describe her.
Patricia Murphy – Poulsbo – traveler.
Patty Sprinker – Tacoma – poet, nature lover, has even offered to send me an embroidered sleeping bag.
Ray Kelleher – Mercer Island – he works with the Draft Resistance in Seattle.
Rex Kennedy – Edina, Minn. – just joined the hippies, but he wants to enlist in the army, so I’m trying to talk him out of it and into the Resistance.
Richard Minor – newsman and D.J. on KXLY Radio Spokane – he used to be a newsman on the armed forces station here in Korea – he now also does photo layouts for the “Spokane Natural” (another underground newspaper).
Robert Burrell – Olympia – he was in the army, went AWOL twice in a row, and was kicked out.
Roberta Young – hippie girl – lives in Monroe, just eight miles from Mom & Dad – says she’s a fugitive from MYF.
Ronnie Boyer – Kent - girl who is just out to catch a willing guy – hippie - orphan.
Shar Carter – Auburn – poet – pot-head.
Shelle Lyons – Mercer Island - girl poet – Shakespeare fan.
Shirley Prytherch – British Columbia – nature lover.
Steve – a guy who was stuck in the same situation I’m in – he now lives in a commune – says, “Man, don’t re-up!”
Steven Doyle – Bellevue - he, his wife, and son, all went to the Virgin Moon Festival and turned on.
Sue Howard – Seattle - poetic hippie girl – cured heroin addict.
Sunshine – hippie girl from San Francisco, now living in Walla Walla – pot-head – love child - she says, “Love is the ultimate trip!”
Tim Madison – Marysville – student at Everett Junior College – photographer – electric guitar player. [Tim worked for my brother at the college print shop. After I founded the American Tarantula Society, Tim photographed Ivy Reed for our brochure.]
Pvt. Tom Whiting – stationed at Fort Lewis – dealer in pot and LSD.
Trinidad Foster – Olympia – writer – poet – husband of Billie Jo.
Vernon Jackson – queer that’s had his leg amputated at the knee.
Veronica Tomaszewski – Seattle – flower child.
Here's the letter written by Melissa Queen:
Sp/4 Dale E. Lund, 833rd Ord. Co., HQ Platoon, APO San Francisco 96231 - How are you? A little bit of help from your friends, is that what you need? Yes, we are here and love is thriving in Seattle today as we set type for the upcoming issue of Northwest Passage and in Bellingham tomorrow as we return to do the paste-up for the printer.
I spent the last winter in San Francisco where the hip-scene has deteriorated fantastically (there were 18 murders, not deaths, just plain old murders, in the Haight-Ashbury during the first four months of this year). The hardest thing of all was just to keep my head together - to remember that there are people all over who are learning to do their thing, their very own thing, and are really beginning to dig just being alive. Just to lie on your back on Mother Earth and look out there on the rest of the universe is really a trip. To swim in the waters of the sea and feel them supporting you, holding you up, is sensational.
I can do these things now, kick sand, pick up rocks on the beach, watch the sun rising and setting, in a way I couldn't then. And you'll be able to also again, if you can't right now.
I left San Francisco in June and found my way to Bellingham (you may know of it) where the people are warm and the weather is peaceful and the grass is green (and occasionally gold and red!). Yes, we're here , doing our thing, working on building the world that we all want to live in and waiting also for the people who also want to help build that world to join us.
What most of us have decided, I think, is that there's no point in trying to destroy the old world before starting to build the new. Going off on a destruction kick only puts our heads a little further behind the starting point. And so we put out our underground newspapers and hold free university classes and create a community school for our children, doing all of these things in the spirit of love and helpfulness and closeness that we want to be a part of this world we're creating. The old question of the ends justifying the means is no longer even a pertinent question. The thing is that the ends and the means work together. You can't gain loving, peaceful ends through destructive means. And so we've just thrown the ends and the means together into the same bag and out comes our new way of life.
All of this is quite new to me and so I think about it a lot. Which is also why I write about it, too. Ten years ago, a lot of us used to march around the campus with signs protesting atomic bomb testing in the atmosphere, compulsory ROTC and all the rest of it. We didn't get very far, needless to say, but we also knew that we couldn't just sit around waiting for the world to change. Maybe we should have at that, just waited until we were able to see that the thing to do is just start building the new world - ignore the old, learn to use it in the ways that we need to, and to hell with the rest of it.
You know, it really feels good to be free - free of the compulsions that made me finish high school, even finish college, and even join the system that I felt to be rotten (rotten in the sense of rotten fruit). It feels great not to wear a bra, not to feel compelled to use lipstick, eye shadow, deodorant, not to work at an 8 to 5 job, not to worry about what time it is, even. It also feels great to realize that I can wear a bra if I feel like it, go back to work if I want to, even - well, whatever comes into my head to do.
Anyway, that's where I'm at and if you feel like writing, I, too, like to get letters. There are 13 of us living together in two houses, and lots of others living in other houses that form the community in Bellingham. So, if you need someone to talk to (write to), we're here waiting for your letter. Will try to send things from time to time, but if I don't get around to it, you can be sure that we're just all of us very busy doing our own thing. And even that is a hopeful sign.
Remember the old adage, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
Love and peace,
Melissa Queen
