Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

"But white people own most of the property," she lamented.

"In fact, but not in law," I retorted. "Negroes possess the same right to own property as whites."

"But what good does that do if they can't afford… "

"Listen to me very carefully," I interrupted, speaking slowly, with evident annoyance, "and maybe then you will understand."

"Come on, Mother," she said, rising to her feet. "Let's go."

They walked out on me. I took the bus home, feeling alone and misunderstood. I longed so much to belong to the Civil Rights Movement. Through the French Quarter passed many groovy young intellectuals and college students who were active in it. If only my Objectivist principles didn't confine me to the sidelines as a critic, instead!

"The only thing that we done wrong," I sang to myself in the cold, lonely night, "was let socialism stay so long."

"I like Martin Luther King," I said to Brother-in-law. "To feel like I felt that night in the park when Ola and I went to see him, to feel that way all the time, takes great courage. I kept thinking about how somebody could throw a bomb at us."

Having said that much, I was quick to abandon the courage of my convictions by adding, "I didn't like that CORE worker, though. That white Yankee college student stood there looking at those Negroes like he thought he was their good shepherd or something. I think there is racism in an attitude like that. And the argument I got in with Ola afterwards! Was she ever irrational! I expected her to at least understand Ayn Rand's principles. But she just kept whining like a wishy-washy liberal."

Brother-in-law nodded in warm approval.

I relaxed, feeling safe again.

Once Slim was hospitalized for tuberculosis for a couple of weeks and I went to visit him. In good spirits, he told me Brother-in-law had also been there to see him recently.

"And look at what he gave me," he said, "a list of '101 People Who Must Go.'"

At the top were the usual minority groups despised by most bigots and following them were the generally deficient, the nearsighted, the deaf, the insane, etc. - and then much more absurd classifications began to appear.

"People with bald heads," I read aloud. "People without bald heads."

"Yeah, ha-he-he-heh-heh, I like it. I like it."

I supplied an obligatory chuckle, feeling slightly relieved at this evidence of humor in Brother-in-law's view of his own professed notions.

I felt much the same way when one day at his house Brother-in-law told the story of an argument at the brewery with a man I think was named Herb. Like me, Brother-in-law's working associates liked the new District Attorney, Jim Garrison.

Along with John and Robert Kennedy and Pope John XXIII and Martin Luther King, Garrison was among the people Brother-in-law didn't like. Although I did not agree with the laws against vice, Jim Garrison's crackdowns on Bourbon Street strip joints seemed to me an honest enforcement of law, and I felt that was unusual in New Orleans, where the open tolerance of political corruption distressed me.

"So I was telling them how much I hated Garrison and they were defending the clown. Then all of a sudden Herb says to me, 'Just exactly what is it about Garrison that you don't like, Gary?' So I thought for a minute, and then I said, 'I'll tell you what is: he wears a vest.' Herb cracked up. Ha-haha-ha-ha-haha!"

On the other hand was a story about the brewery first told me by Slim. "Brother-in-law decided to quit his job the other day. So he went into the brewery in the morning and walked up behind this guy he worked with that he never did like, and kicked him in the back of the head with both feet. Then he went into the office and said, 'I quit.' Ha-ha! He's got a mean streak in him."

How it was possible to kick someone in the back of the head with both feet was a question I didn't ask. I just answered, "Yeah, I figured he could be mean."

Not long afterwards, at his house, Brother-in-law told a more elaborate version of the same story. I believe the man was standing on one of the runways over the vats and Brother-in-law was on a raised platform behind him. Or maybe Gary knew judo, I forget. In any case, the same element of capricious cruelty was present. Characteristically, Brother-in-law was cheerfully boastful about it.

On one or two other occasions Slim mentioned Brother-in-law in his absence, a topic I did not enjoy discussing unless absolutely necessary. Gary was such an unpleasant individual and Slim's admiration of him seemed so inappropriate that I usually became irritated.

"You had better remember his name, Kerry," Slim said one dull afternoon as we were sitting alone together in his room. "Pretty soon he is going to become a very important man."

"I doubt that very much," I muttered sullenly.

"I'm telling you something," he said paternalistically. "That man is going to be important, and you had best keep his name in mind. You might have cause to want to call on him for favors or something. His name is Kirstein. K-i-r-s-t-e-i-n. Remember that. Kirstein, like in curse."

"Yeah. He's a curse, all right."

"And he is also about to become very important, very powerful. K-i-r-s-t-e-i-n, Kerry, Gary Kirstein."

"Yeah, sure."

Then there was the time Slim was with a bunch of us gathered around a table in the Bourbon House and he said, in connection with something or other, "Like Brother-in-law! You should get to know him better, Kerry. Has that man ever got some kind of mind!" Slim shook his fingers as if they had just touched a hot stove. "Man, that sonofagun is smart!"

"He reminds me of a biology professor we had at the University of Southern California who used to giggle when he told us how to dissect frogs," I objected. "I think he's a drag."

"Yeah, well," Slim replied. That was his expression for indicating that, although he hadn't changed his mind, he didn't see any reason to keep arguing.

Brother-in-law claimed he didn't like people with beards, yet he usually laughed when he said that.

Once at his house I defended the Bohemians who populated the French Quarter. "They are much more interesting than the people Al Thompson calls 'the conformists.'"

"Yeah," said Gary, "many of the early Nazis were coffeehouse Bohemians. It ain't that I don't like them; it's just that they ain't heavy enough. You know what I mean? I'd like to see a fierce quality among them, nothing like the mass murder of the National Socialists, but some hardness, the willingness to kill somebody every now and then."

"Gazing about Los Angeles," writes Ed Sanders on page 69 of The Family , "it is possible to discern at least three death-trip groups that have provided powerful sleazo inputs into Manson and the family. It is significant that there exists in Los Angeles occult groups that specialize in creating zombie-like followers. These are groups that have degrees of trust and discipleship, that use pain and fear and drugs to promote instant obedience.

"These three groups are:

"1. The Process Church of the Final Judgment, an English organization dedicated to gore, weirdness and End of the World slaughter. The Process, as they are known, was active in Los Angeles in 1968, when Manson abandoned flowers, and in the summer of 1969, when murder reigned.

"2. The Solar Lodge of the Ordo Temple Orientis, a looney-tune magical cult specializing in blood-drinking, sado-sodo sex magic and hatred of blacks. The Solar Lodge of the O.T.O. was run by one Jean Brayton, a vicious middle-aged devotee of pain who attracted a crowd of groveling worshipers.

"3. An obscure occult group of forty or so which we shall here call Kirke Order of Dog Blood."

We could at least agree that much of the art produced in the French Quarter was decadent so, again, I would seek to avoid an outright quarrel by stressing an area of common opinion.