Sunny: The Hippie Chick

By Dawn Natelle

Reviewed and Edited by Eric

Chapter 17 -- Just kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy

It was near the end of June and Sunny and I were headed north to Eureka again, to pick up a very excited teenager. Melanie was exempted from writing most of her exams, due to excellent marks through the term, but she did have to write her Geography exam on Thursday morning. She was hoping for a B in that class: all the rest had been As.

Halfway there I decided to use my Sunny time productively. “Are you still looking to get your bottom surgery?” I asked. Now I had an excited adult in the van.

“Yes! Yes, oh yes Mitch,” she nearly exploded. “When?”

“I was thinking this summer, while Melanie is with us. She can look after you during your recovery. Dr. Killensworth, who did your breasts, has hired on a new doctor who has done three of those surgeries already, and I have spoken to all three of the new women and they are pleased with his work. I think he will do a good job for you. Dr. Killensworth will assist. He wants to observe a surgery and see if he wants to add that to his breast augmentations as a sideline.”

“Wow,” Sunny replied. “What do you have to do?”

“Well, for the next hour I will explain the surgery, and then you can decide if it is for you. Then all you have to do is show up on the operation day. You will be knocked out: it is a major surgery, then three or four days in the hospital. After that two weeks in bed at home with Melanie sitting on you to make sure you don’t try to get up too soon.”

“When can we … you know, do it?”

“If you mean sex, probably after two months. That will be good timing, since Melanie will be back in school then.”

Sunny was silent for several miles. “It will be like we are really married then,” she finally said. “I am sad that I can’t have a baby for you. Maybe you should dump me and find a real woman?”

I pulled the van over to the shoulder and wrapped my arms around my beautiful girlfriend. “Sunny, you are a real woman. This is just a little operation to make life easier for you … for us. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t thank the goddess for making you love me. And if we are meant to have children we will, through adoption or something else. You have so much love to give and share. I’m sure there will be children involved somehow.” I held my sobbing girlfriend for nearly five minutes until she was calmed down and then we continued to Eureka.

According to plan we went to Mom’s on Wednesday evening, where Norma and Melanie was waiting. Norma had the knapsack that Melanie had packed and admitted that she had packed ‘a few more things’ that wound up using two full suitcases.

“We can’t take all that, sis,” I explained. “She isn’t going off to college … yet. It is just nine or 10 weeks, and most hippies live with far less than what she has in the knapsack.”

It took some arguing, but eventually Sunny and Melanie convinced her (and Mom) that I was right. So we put the knapsack in the van, and left the suitcases in Mom’s car. We spent the evening with Mom, where an excited Melanie was bouncing up in down in anticipation of her trip. To calm her down, I started quizzing her on geography questions. I had taken the exam for the same course about six years ago, and I knew how the teacher thought, and some of his favorite questions. Melanie did well, and I was confident she could pass the exam.

Sunny and I drove Melanie to the high school the next morning, with Mom and Norma following. They moved up to the van while we waited for about 60 minutes, with Melanie being one of the first students coming out the front doors after the exam. She saw the van, squealed, and started to run towards us. Sunny popped out and when the girls met in a big hug, and then walked back to the van arm in arm.

Mom and Norma got their hugs in the van. Melanie would have been ‘so embarrassed’ for her classmates to see any show of affection. (Somehow Sunny didn’t count.) Both mother and grandmother were sobbing as they hugged their not-so-little girl. I finally had to order them out of the van. We had a long drive ahead of ourselves. We weren’t even going home, but directly to the Monterey Pop Festival south of the city an eight to 10 hour drive.

I was not merely a visitor at the festival, but as a helper at the free clinic on Haight I was assisting the volunteer doctors acting as medics for the festival. Thus we were able to pull into the festival on Thursday night while the stages were still being set up. We parked the van next to the big army tents with a Red Cross painted on the roof. I immediately went back to the bed in the back and went to sleep. Melanie and Sunny were too excited to sleep and went out to explore the grounds.

I awoke at dawn, and discovered the girls sleeping next to me. Luckily Sunny was in the middle position, and it was her that my arm was curled around. It would have been just too weird to find myself next to my niece.

The first concert was not until afternoon, so Sunny and Melanie roamed the grounds again, while I scoped out the tent that was set up for medical use. There were eight hospital type beds there. I searched around and discovered where the bedding, towels and other supplies were located. As a premed student I would probably get assigned basic tasks like making beds and fetching supplies for the doctors and nurses. My favorite doctor, Dr. Jane from the Haight clinic, was working there this weekend so that other doctors could work here at the festival. Doctors and nurses and a few other volunteers like me wandered in. I introduced myself, but few stayed in the tent, instead heading out to the stage area to see what was going on.

Just before noon the girls came back, and Sunny opened the cooler she had packed our lunches in. It was roast beef on sourdough and was still quite tasty in spite of having being made two days earlier. Then we heard sounds coming from the stage, and the girls headed back to the sounds of the Association, the opening group. I could just hear the music from the tent, and recognized the hits Along Comes Mary and Windy.

The next band was a group from Canada that I didn’t recognize but Lou Rawls came on after that and I recognized his playing. A girl singer followed, then Johnny Rivers and I could hear Help Me, Rhonda and Secret Agent Man. Then Eric Burden and the Animals did a set, with Simon and Garfunkel closing the first night.

There had been a little action at the tent during the show, but not much. I spent the full time there, but most of the others spelled each other off to give them a chance to hear the bands. We had a few drug overdoses, and a few cuts and bruises to deal with, all stuff I had dealt with at the free clinic. I helped out with a young girl who found out that barefoot was good in theory, but not when people were smashing beer bottles about. A doctor who had been helping someone else came along to check my work as I was probing the cut to find a few last shards of glass. He said I was doing well and let me stitch up the wound. I think he thought I was a med student instead of premed.

Finally Sunny and Melanie arrived and with the tent empty, other than a night nurse, we went back to the camper. I worried that Melanie was on drugs, the way she raved on, but Sunny said she was just high on the excitement. She did rattle on for over an hour as we lay on the bed in the van, finally winding down and allowing us to sleep. The girls slept in during the morning. The Saturday shows would start after noon. I went into the tent where I found a bored-looking night nurse. There had only been two minor incidents through the night.

The afternoon play list had Canned Heat, followed by Big Brother and the Holding Company. I heard Ball and Chain sung by Janis Joplin. Country Joe and the Fish were followed by Al Kooper and the Butterfield Blues Band and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Steve Miller and Electric Flag followed to end the afternoon show.

After a short break and more of Sunny’s delicious sandwiches (which would have cost a fortune for lesser quality if we had bought food on site) the girls headed out to the final concert of the night. I joined them for the first three sets, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela and The Byrds, but I was yawning through the Byrds and Sunny made me go back to the van and sleep.

I woke refreshed to hear the final song from Otis Redding. Then it went quiet out there. Not really quiet. There were still the sounds of all the attendees leaving, but no more music. Melanie and Sunny came back and the teen was practically bouncing again. I heard one hippie look at her and say “I want some of whatever she’s on.” I knew it was going to take at least another hour before we got her calmed down enough to sleep.

But before that hour was passed, we saw a young hippie couple come into the tent, with the girl looking extremely pregnant.

“We thought the baby wouldn’t come for another couple of days,” the man said. “But it seems to want to hear the festival. I think Goldie is very close.” With that his girl moaned with a contraction.

I sent the nurse to find a doctor and helped the girl up onto a bed. She moaned again with another contraction: the baby was close. “Look, I’m not a doctor,” I admitted, “but I have done this before. Twice. If you want to have me get started until the doctor comes, I can.”

“Please,” the woman with the long, straight red hair said, moaning again.

“Sunny, get me some towels. Clean and warm if you can. And Melanie, please hold Goldie’s hands.” I pulled back the girl’s sundress and saw that the baby’s head was cresting. I sent the father out of the room: a delivery room is no place for a man. And then pulled down her panties to show the coming baby.

From there it didn’t take long. Within five minutes the baby popped out, just as Sunny returned with some towels she had warmed over the heater. I cut the umbilical cord and tied what I hoped was a tidy knot and handed the newborn to Sunny who was wide-eyed as she wrapped the babe in a towel. I sent Melanie out to get the father, noting that she was rubbing her hands as she went. The girl must have really been squeezing. Daddy came back ashen-faced and I made Sunny hand the bundle over to him. The smile that flew across his face as he held his daughter for the first time was amazing. I could tell that Melanie wanted to hold the baby, but she would have to wait. Momma’s turn came next, and when the baby was placed on her chest it went quickly to her breast and started to feed. Watching that was magical for Melanie and Sunny, and for me, I guess.

Five minutes later the doctor finally showed up and was pleased with my work. I had the paperwork done for the certificate of live birth, and he just had to sign it. As a non-doctor I was unable to. The nurse took the baby, which screamed at her interrupted dinner, to weigh and measure her. Then it was back to Momma for the second course of the meal.

The parents said their names were Goldberry Riverman and Tom Bombadil, clearly fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, and they named the baby Summer Galadriel Bombadil. I wondered if it had been a boy if it would have been named Frodo.

There were spare beds in the tent, with no other emergencies that night, so Tom lay down on a cot that we pushed over next to his new family. The other three of us headed to the van and quickly crawled inside. It was nearing 4 a.m. and the night nurse was on duty.

We woke late, nearly 10, buy there was no music until after lunch, when Ravi Shankar had the entire four-hour block to himself. Indian music was hot at that time, but it could not compare to a newborn baby. Melanie finally got her chance to hold the baby, at least a very smelly one, and helped the nurse change the little one’s diaper for the first time. Tom watched: he planned on being a hands-on dad, not one that leaves all the baby chores to the mom. Melanie was thrilled to be able to hand the tiny tot back to her mother, who had a fresh supply of milk ready for her.

When Shankar was finished (for some reason he got a four-hour set), while everyone else was on stage for less than an hour. But the evening performance was packed rock and roll stars. We missed most of the first set, by the Blues Project, but next up was with Sunny’s friend Janis Joplin and her new band: Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The Who was next, and at the end of their set Pete Townshend smashed his guitar to bits as the audience cheered, then kicked the amps and Keith Moon kicked his drum kit over.

While most of the audience cheered the mayhem, Sunny and Melanie were not impressed. The considered their guitars to be their friends and could not believe that a performer would abuse them in such a way.

Next up was the Grateful Dead, another band that Sunny was friends with, followed by The Mamas and the Papas. When they got to the stage there was a lull in the crowd noise for a few seconds and Melanie took that time to scream out “Mama Cass, I love you”. The singer looked up and waved to the crowd and Melanie assumed that the wave was to her, even though we were near the back and she couldn’t have picked anyone out of the crowd. But Melanie insisted for the rest of her life that Mama Cass Elliot had waved to her at Monterey.

Scott McKenzie came out in the middle of the final set and sang Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair. Sunny and Melanie and more than half of the crowd joined in and sang it with him.

It was over. There were crowds working their way to the exits and I had to take an arm from each of Melanie and Sunny to keep us all together. We finally got back to the medical tent, where I had a couple hours of packing up to do. Most of the other volunteers had disappeared. In fact, half of them never had shown up to work at all. They just used their passes to get into the concert free. Then there was a crew that came in to dismantle the tent and take it back to wherever it came from. Tom stood up next to the bed Goldie and the baby were in.

“We should leave now. We have to hitch a ride back to Haight,” he said helping Goldie to her feet.

“You aren’t hitching anywhere with that little baby,” I retorted, and Sunny nodded vigorously. “We’ll all go out to my van tonight. The roads out of here will be blocked up solid for hours. We can sleep in the van and head out in the morning after all the traffic is cleared up.”

Summer got a new clean diaper before the tent came down, and Melanie proudly carried her out to the van, while Sunny assisted Goldie, who seemed to be recovering from her birth-giving ordeal. Sunny, Melanie, Goldie and baby Summer shared the bed in the back, while Tom and I sat in the front. I let Tom have the second row of seats to stretch out on. I was pretty sure I was tired enough that I could sleep curled up in the driver seat. I was.

The sun wasn’t quite up when I woke, but I could see the sky lightening to the east. The place was a mess. It looked like the organizers had hired hippies to clear away the rubbish, and they were swarming all over the place with trash bags trailing behind them. I started the van with everyone else asleep, and we drove out to the highway, with no other traffic on the road. The motion of the van woke Tom first, and then the girls a few minutes later.

“Do we have any sandwiches left?” I asked Sunny when I saw her blonde hair pop up in the mirror showing the back.

“No, and I’m hungry,” she complained. “We haven’t eaten since noon yesterday. Can you stop somewhere for breakfast?”

“We haven’t eaten for two days,” Tom noted. “And we don’t have any money, so we’ll have to wait till we get home.”

“No you won’t,” I decided. “You have a young mother who needs to eat to produce food for her baby. And you need food too. It’ll be my treat.”

We argued for the next couple of miles, with Tom finally promising to pay me back “for everything.” But when we stopped at a diner, they both got out as we headed in to eat. A half hour later we all waddled back to the van, stuffed with the huge breakfast. Then it seemed like a short tripback home, and we were at Haight before noon.