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During the eight or nine hours since it began, over twenty
thousand people had passed through the Invisible Circus and
there's no telling how many would have finally showed, if it had
been permitted to continue. When it was forced to end, the few
thousand who remained went out to the Pacific Ocean to herald the
dawning of the sun, and to roast pork sausages over a bonfire for
breakfast, listening to Michael McClure play his autoharp and
sing his song, "Oh, Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes
Benz" with Freewheelin' Frank singing, too, and beating on
his tambourine. Even though a dozen reporters spent nearly two
hours at the church, not one line was written nor one word spoken
about the Invisible Circus in the news media. It had been too
incredible to explain, and so it and the fantasies that were
realized during its brief existence became personal memories
cherished by the people who were there and were part of an event,
the likes of which has never been seen again in the city of San
Francisco.
The Invisible Circus proved to be a much-needed respite for
Emmett who got himself blind-wasted, but was back on the street
the next afternoon with Tumble, delivering the Free Food to the
throng in the Panhandle. A few Diggers, like one talkative
twentyfive-year-old named Tobacco, got it together during the
week and hustled rent money for several crash pads. There were
three on one block alone and they slept over 120 people a night
with only two rules enforced: no needles or sets of works and no
weapons allowed. Besides the four or five people who lived at and
operated each of these crash pads, there were few others older
than eighteen. They were runaways.
The runaway situation had become critical since the Human
BeIn, with the kids not only running away from something but
running to something. The myth of the Haight-Ashbury had been
manufactured to appeal to the young and they were running as fast
as they could to it. White middle America was outraged that their
children were leaving, and since a runaway has no constitutional
rights, and is merely the property of his parents, they demanded
their return. The liberal Democratic senator from Connecticut,
Abraham Ribicoff, proposed a bill which would have brought the
FBI into the search for runaways and further called for a
computerized system of federal investigation on behalf of
"American motherhood" and its preservation. San
Francisco Juvenile Court Judge Ray J. O'Conner became publicly
irate and said that all the Digger [end page 286]
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