First there was her laugh. Cathy Casamo had a laugh like the Oracle at Delphi, a knowing laugh. It came out of the darkness of a packed house while I was on stage during a performance of the Committee, a satirical comedy improv group in North Beach, San Francisco, California. A packed 3rd show, one Saturday night in the ‘60’s. I heard one laugh sail out over all the rest.
She lived at Gate 5 in Sausalito, a collection of small-to-large, odd, one-or-2 room houseboats made out of lumber, driftwood and sturdy sail-craft, most built on the hulls of old WWII beach-landing barges: 30 or 40 of them. They either stayed basic or you added some driftwood and lumber and tricked them out. A hippy/pirate/family vibe was what I got. There was even a group called “The Red Legs.” I’d lived at Gate 3 for a year (about 6 months before I met Cathy) and never found out what the Red Legs were into, but they all wore red bandanas tied around the calves of their jeans. Gate 3 and Gate 5 were turning into one big mudflat/floating/hippy/pirate ghetto kind of. It reminded me of the pictures you see of floating, boat-people villages in Thailand and China. Very close knit. This was just the small, American, Marin County, ‘60’s hippie, pirate version.
That year before I met Cathy, I’d lived on a rickety little, one-room houseboat off of a rickety pier one gate over from her’s at Gate 3 in Sausalito, next to The Big Junk Yard. And It was a great one too.
So I met Cathy and started spending a lot of time over at her houseboat. But soon afterward I moved to North Beach. The theater was there and that motorcycle ride home every night over the bridge was too much. But she never would stay overnight at my small bungalow in the back yard of a very cool Chinese family in the Beach. She had a 3 year old daughter, Caitlin, and a baby-sitter across the bay that she had to get back to in the evenings. So I found it hard to see Cathy once I moved to the City because of the dreaded motorcycle rides across the Golden Gate Bridge after my performance, anywhere from midnight to 2:am. I rode my ’62, Triumph 650 thousands of feet above the bay, the freezing cold wind whipping through everything I put on and feeling my wheels slip on the iron grating in the road-bed allowing the bridge to expand and contract of it’s own free will. The only way to get across safely was to speed up. You know the old “things in motion tend to stay that way” physics thing. But also, the faster things go, the harder it is to knock them over. Or slip. If I went slow, there was more chance my tires would slip a bit sideways while the frigging night wind was blasting at me - also sideways - from the Pacific through the narrow Gate. And then I’d ride back over again a couple of hours later, or sleep over at Cathy’s houseboat. It was too nerve-wracking.
Finally Cathy and Katy and I agreed to move in together if I could find a place in North Beach that was big enough, and Cathy liked it, and it was near enough to the theater so I could walk to work and back every night. Cathy was okay with it, but Katy wanted none of it or me. She was really a hard ass. She scoped me out for a long time.
One quiet, sunny Sunday, I found a really big, affordable, cool apartment “Pad” on Grant Ave. in North Beach: a hip street, 2 blocks from the theater. It was large, light, and airy on a narrow, store-lined street in a hippy neighborhood. There was just one little wrinkle in the beautiful blue sky. The apartment was above a bar. But as I was standing up there then, it was Sunday afternoon, and I couldn’t hear a thing coming up through the floor or through the open windows. I got Cathy to look at it the next afternoon, she liked it, no noise, I signed, and 3 days later we moved in. 3 days after that we discovered a huge crease and serious tear had developing in our sky: It was specifically an Irish Bar and on Saturday nights they had a mad drunk Irish Bar Band playing their asses off in very long sets with very short breaks. Basically, Cathy and little Caitlin went from living in a small, quiet houseboat commune off and old pier in Sausalito, to living in a highly populated urban neighborhood in North Beach, S.F., above an Irish bar that partied hard and heavy on Saturday night and tourists roamed the street on weekends. Both of us understood the odds and decided to check it out. 4 year-old, Katy still didn’t trust me and kept her own counsel. I was intelligent. But not smart. Big difference. I was learning. Now? Still. Then? Empty. Cathy had been around for thousands of years before I met her. She hung near Near Delphi.
We also lived directly across the street from The Coffee Gallery, this beat/hippy coffeehouse/bar. A great place to hang out in the afternoons, or after a show. Late ‘60’s: Nixon, ‘Nam, and North Beach, plus pot, pigs, LSD, long-haired hippies, & freaks. So, except for Saturday nights, the whole thing was fun for a magic moment. And Katy was coming around to tolerating me and eventually to splitting a cookie or two. For a couple of months, Cathy and Katy and I had a nice rhythm going. She came to the theater, we went to movies, we hung out at home, we went for motorcycle rides. A major drive of Cathy’s was community. “Family”. She really wanted that vibe. Craved it. She sought it out. Making dinner was something to look forward to - for all 3 of us. We usually made it together. And that feeling of family really nurtured and fed Cathy. I know it did, me. Katy dug it. Cathy was alive around that vibe: family, kids. On the other hand, Cathy championed the loner. The poet/hunters. The people who thought different good stuff or did different good stuff like poets, musicians, artists, writers, jugglers, outlaws, & clowns: people who were alive. She was a sponge that way. A magnet.
A seeming digression: Every once in a while I’ll collect something – a quirky thing in my spare time. And at that time with Cathy, my favorite collection was 30 completely rusted, antique faucet-handles from the ‘20’s and ‘30’s. I collected these beautiful, old, rust-colored, iron faucet handles while on my one-room houseboat next to the great big old, junkyard. I picked and gleaned the faucet-handles from old boilers and engines and kept them in a wooden bowl on a table in the living room of our apartment above-the-bar: A wooden bowl of rust-colored, antique, industrial art. Why am I telling you this? Because, one sunny afternoon, as I was coming home from rehearsal I saw this barefoot, hippy guy, about 23, four doors from my apartment offering up things for free from a large wooden bowl he was holding. I smiled. When I wasn’t improvising at the theater, I too, was a hippy. I had taken acid and would again - it was the 60’s; it was San Francisco – but I saw that the bowl was My Wooden Bowl from the table in my living room. The wooden bowl that contained my 30 beautiful, flat-round, rusty, iron, faucet-handles.
He came up to me all smiles and said, “Have a free sugar doughnut.” I looked in my wooden bowl: there were only 3 faucet-handles in there, sprinkled generously with a white powder.
”Hey man – this stuff is mine.”
“Oh.” He immediately gave me the bowl with the three handles.
“Where’d you get this?” He pointed to my apartment entrance between two storefronts. He led me upstairs and as I walked in the open door I saw Cathy sitting on the couch handing a joint to this very long-haired, psychedelic freak and a matching female. The room was filled with 6 or 7 congruent psychedelic freaks passing around two other joints. I was a long-haired hippy; but I wasn’t a psychedelic freak. That’s a whole other level.
Cathy smiled this huge smile, “I met them downstairs they were just walking around. They’re part of the Merry Pranksters.”
Like I say, I was a hippy, but next to the Pranksters I was Andy Williams. Their LSD consumption was legendary. I knew of them through newspaper articles; but I’d never met them.
She said: “I found them on Grant Avenue so I invited them up. I thought you’d like to meet them.”
Cathy was smitten. They had a growing mystique. They’d been gathering street cred for months. There was talk that Ken Kesey was going on a trip in a bus and Cathy and I had even walked over to see “The Bus” once, when they were cleaning and outfitting it in some garage nearby. Cathy was very impressed with the Bus, the concept, the people working on it, and the whole acid trip, zeitgeist circus of it all. She was all smiles talking about it on the walk home. And this particular, rusty-antique-handle-give-away day, she saw a group of 6 or 7 Merry Pranksters recognized them, and invited them up to smoke some weed.
“They’ve seen your show.” They all smiled.
I said, “Hi. What was this guy doin’ downstairs with my collection of rusty faucet handles, man?”
“Henry sprinkled ‘em with powdered sugar and he went down to give out free rusty sugar doughnuts.” They all smiled at Henry’s cool idea: This was the yin to the yang of the Love Generation, right in my living room. But Cathy thought it was funny, too, so I had to make an important choice. I let my rusty antiques slide, took a toke of the offered joint, and joined the conversation while mentally putting a little “check” mark in the Pranksters’ “no social boundaries” column. But Cathy loved them. Two or three would stop by on random days. Sometimes they took Cathy and Katy for a ride or they’d come over and hang out. They were always well behaved and high. I wasn’t exactly on their wavelength because I had two shows a night to do and 3 on Saturday, and acting high on anything didn’t work for me at all. I’ve only done it once and it was a disaster. But Cathy loved the whole Prankster Mystique. She was a sponge just drinking it all up and in. To Cathy, The Merry Pranksters and Ken Kesey were the cat’s pajamas. I was concerned but let it slide. It was the ‘60’s, man.
And a few days later she said: I’m going on the bus with The Merry Pranksters.” She’d asked and was invited. That was that -- just like that. I wasn’t surprised. I tried to talk her out of it, but I also knew she sure would appreciate a rest from that Saturday night bar band and she was getting bored. I could see it. And my trepidation wasn’t just about Cathy’s safety on the bus, I had some trepidation about little Katy’s safety with me. I was a Clown. A Satirist. I’d never been totally responsible for another person in my life. And with a 4 year old, it’s total. The 60’s had nothing to do with it. But Cathy was beaming about getting On The Bus! Stoked. Me: Reserved. One likes to see Cathy happy. To actually make her happy was even better, but to see her happy was pretty cool. I just had an overly abundant supply of trepidation. Where I pointed it was my problem. The big Boogie Man under my bed was taking care of Caitlin. That was Scary. I saw myself as an untogether, carefree soul. Oh, sure, I knew how to hang with Caitlin: We’ve lived together for months now, I’ve baby sat and taken her for rides, and spent the day with her – but Cathy was always there somewhere; at home, on the street, next door. But now Cathy and The Merry Pranksters were going for a couple of weeks at least. And I still hadn’t gained Katy’s full trust. Kids don’t see the small stuff and they don’t always know why, but they do grok the big tamale like a bat in a black cave. Or a canary in a coal mine. I never saw myself as her dad and I wasn’t the most socially adept crayon in the pool, so it blew me away when, as soon Cathy explained about going away on the bus and her staying with me; Caitlin thought about it for a moment - and she got it and made the adjustment; better and faster than me. Cathy started packing right away. To her, Santa was coming and taking her for a ride in his sleigh. One day a car full of Merry Pranksters came by, picked her up, and she drove off. She was a kid going to Africa with big eyes, on a big family adventure.
Katy’s adjustment to Cathy’s being gone was straight and simple; she started taking care of herself. Bam. Yes, I was always with her: I took her with me everywhere: rehearsals, shopping, friends’ houses, rides, meetings. I got her usual babysitter to sit with her thru my evening performances, but Katy was asleep for most of that away time. So, other than that, we went pretty much everywhere together. Katy always took her coloring book, drawing pad, & crayons and sat with Alan Myerson, the owner/director, at he director’s table in the center of the theater (we had tables and chairs – it was a nightclub/theater), and she either colored or drew or watched the rehearsal. We did very physical body movement exercises and worked out scene ideas and just “played with space”, and Katy was fascinated. We took it as a badge of honor when Kathy laughed. And if we got boring, she took out her crayons and coloring book and drawing pad and do her own thing ‘til it was time to go home. And the waitresses who came in early doted on her. Katy took care of herself and blew everybody’s mind – which got me great “human being” points – which are hard to come by for professional satirists, clowns and sarcastic, comic Dobermans. Being around Caitlin was ultimately Very Cool. Hanging with and being responsible for a 4 yr old for several weeks on your own and tucking them in at night and waking up with them as a single parent should be a basic requirement before receiving one’s naturalized, homo-sapien papers and allowed to walk on just two legs. For Katy and me it was a bit tentative for the 1st half hour, and after that it was a no-brainer. She was a 4 year-old and I learned to be a fast-learner. It worked out.
 
Cathy would call regularly in the evening and speak to Katy and me. And then the phone calls got irregular and then one morning around 10 am, I got a call from a male voice that said he was one of the Merry Pranksters calling from Houston, Texas and that they were all sleeping on the floor in Larry McMurtry’s house and Cathy had disappeared last night around 2 am and they couldn’t find her but that the Merry Pranksters were going to leave town the next day or two so I better come down and look for her because nobody’s going to be here in Houston. Whaaaaat? I said I’d be right there. I called my friend Garry’s wife, Julie, who sometimes sat for Katy, and laid out the situation. She had a 7 and 9 year-old who were friends with Katy. Julie said she’d take care of her while I went down to Houston to find Cathy. I threw some stuff in an overnight bag and boiled down what was going on, gave it to her in chewable bites, and delivered her, her dolls, art supplies, etc…, to Julie, called Alan, my director and told him why I wasn’t going to be there that night or for the next several nights (luckily for improv theater, everybody knows everybody else’s lines and if they don’t, make up your own. So the job part was cool. Then I took a cab to the airport and got on the first plane to Houston.
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the story continues on
>THE MAGIC BUS<
(Cathy's Disappearance)
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