Look at Flower sitting on this grimy sidewalk half a block from Ashbury, my tin cup cool on the knees of my jeans where the embroidery wore off and my pale skin pops through, Toto tucked into my shirt between the third and fourth buttons (counting from the bottom), his back paws scratching my belly; look at Flower waving the cup and chanting in what Harley calls my sawtooth accent, whatever that means—he’s got me a little self-conscious, though what don’t I have to be self-conscious about, if I give it a moment’s thought (which I don’t)—anyway, I’m chanting “Spare change, spare change,” and rattling my cup and letting Toto pop out of my tangerine-colored Indian shirt, when this tall guy in a black collarless suit as out of place here in the Haight as a penguin stops in front of me and says, “Child, can I speak with you?”

            You know, they run buses down Haight Street these days, tourists from Iowa and Kansas and Pennsylvania get on ’em in their limeade pants and plaid jackets, and their faces agog through the windows as they see all the heathen hippies doing our heathen hippie thing here in the Summer of Love, like Life magazine called it, and so sometimes I feel just like a baboon in the zoo, and that’s what I feel like now with this man looking down at me. Oh, yeah, I tell him no.

            But of course he’s just like my Dad back in Bend, and he doesn’t take no for an answer; he squats down on his knees—they creak!—and looks straight at me and says, “You look like a darling angel, why are you here among these heathen?”

            See, I told you! They actually use that word!

            “It’s groovy, sir,” I say and plant a big winsome smile on my face. (Not only Toto’s got that move down.)

            “Groovy?”

            “Yeah, it’s groovy.” Big smile. They assume you’re dumb, you just play dumb.