Before their departure from Frankfurt, one of Hilde’s girlfriends subleased their apartment for a year. On a cool spring morning, Walter and Hilde departed on an inexpensive charter flight to New York City via Iceland. Both knew that Phil would pick them up in New York City, where he was staying a few days with his aunt in the Bronx. The three of them would then drive in his bus across the country to Oklahoma City.
The early spring provided a cool journey through the midsection of the United States. At night, everybody cuddled up in warm clothing and sleeping bags in the back of the bus. After three days and nights, the team reached their destination, where they were greeted by Kathy, moved into the second bedroom in her house, and started a new chapter in their life.
Kathy, with a petite physique and friendly toward everybody, continued working as a nurse, and Phil took a semester off from college to see how affairs would develop. They searched for the perfect location to open their restaurant by reviewing newspaper ads and driving around in Phil’s old pickup truck. A side effect was that the Germans received firsthand information of the city’s uncomplicated layout, its highway system, and most of all its dimensions. It was the country’s second largest city, behind Los Angeles, California.
By accident, they met Nelson, who was somewhat of a prominent local activist and organizer of events in the city and whose dad was a lawyer. Nelson explained his idea: to open a meeting place and communication center together with a group of people. He asked them if they wanted to look at a place on Sixth Street, close to downtown. It had been a print shop on the second floor of a brick building with walk-up stairs, some office spaces, and a large, extended undeveloped area with iron beams supporting the ceiling. Everybody became excited about the idea of a project that combined their mutual interests in a relationship where each party could realize their ideas. They shook hands to seal the deal.
The café would occupy the entrance space, and the community program would use an office plus the large empty space for collective events. Renovations started, and within three weeks, the People’s Workshop Café opened its doors for guests with a grand-opening night that included the performance of a favorite local band. It looked good, and the place was packed. They were all excited and happy with their success.
Phil, Kathy, Hilde, and Walter developed modest advertising ideas and the menu that needed completion. A fifth person, Ronald, contracted as a supplier for the daily hot-meal specials. They served sandwiches, coffee, teas, lemonade, and fruit juices. Everybody had a lot of fun performing their tasks, purchasing the supplies wholesale, serving the customers, cleaning the place, selecting music for the stereo, and meeting new people. Walter and Hilde moved into their own home, a single-family house in a decent neighborhood with grass in the front and a backyard.
When Irene arrived for a vacation, they all loved seeing each other again. Walter, Hilde, and Irene had grown together into a trio of friends in past years. They had done many activities hand-in-hand and shared a sizable assortment of encounters during their sessions at home. Phil and Kathy agreed to Walter and Hilde’s request for time off, who wanted to use their new used 1962 Chevy Impala for a ride south to Mexico with Irene.
Off they went through Texas and across the border toward Mexico City. After a side trip to Vera Cruz at the Gulf, they crossed the country again to see Acapulco. North of Acapulco, the trio rented a basic room with two beds in a small bungalow-style hotel. International travelers on a budget with backpacks frequented this location. Irene, Hilde, and Walter went into the city to sightsee and enjoy food in nice restaurants. On one of these trips, they sat at a table in an open-air restaurant, white linen on the table, birds chirping outside in the trees of the lively plaza. The table had space for four, but the fourth chair served as luggage deposit. Everybody enjoyed good food and wine as they talked and went to the restroom.
When it was Walter’s turn and he returned to the table, he asked, “Hilde, where is your leather purse?”
It had been hanging on the chair but was not there any longer.
Hilde grasped about, looked next to her, scratched her head, and said, “Let’s look in the car.”
The three Germans checked the passenger space, the trunk, everywhere, but did not find it. They went back into the restaurant to talk to the waiter and anybody else who would listen. None of the employees had seen anything.
“Perhaps you forgot it in the hotel,” Irene suggested, but Hilde replied, “I know I had it with me, but let’s check the room.”
They drove back to the hotel and searched their room without success. The beautiful purse Walter had bought in Oklahoma City more than a year ago was gone, along with some identification documents and personal stuff. Unquestionably, the most critical piece was the booklet with their American Express traveler’s checks; it represented their total cash resources.
Distressed, Walter and Hilde drove back into town to file a police report. What they encountered did not encourage them. They had to visit the main police station, a large, square-block building. Trying to find the proper department, walking through corridors up and down stairs, they noticed a space in the middle of the building. It contained the open-air jail where hundreds of people slept on the floor, standing in groups, some waving at them. Finally, the visitors found the tourism police office and filed the report. All this activity took time, and it grew dark outside. They could do nothing more that night.
Next morning, Walter got up first. He slipped into his Clarks boots, which he always placed next to the bed, and felt a strong, piercing pain in his left heel. He threw the boot off and saw something that looked like a scorpion quickly scramble under the bed toward the wall. Walter went to his knees and looked under the bed but could not see again, what had pricked him. The spot on his heel turned numb and thumped in a rhythm.
Business had to be attended. Walter forgot about the heel as he went with Hilde into town again on an exhausting journey to find the exact location of the American Express office. When they found it at last, the clerk asked many question for a report and copied by hand the endless row of check numbers from their copy into the report.
After a while, the clerk asked Walter, “Are you OK? You look pale.”
Walter answered, “Something bit me this morning; it might have been a scorpion.”
The American Express employee shouted, “Oh my god, you have to go to the emergency room—you can die from that!”
Walter must have turned even whiter and felt woozier than before. The clerk offered him a glass of water, and then he and Hilde made their way to the emergency room nearby. A nurse injected a large shot into his behind. Walter stayed knocked out in bed for the next two days.
All three vacationers took it easy in and around their bungalow right at the beach, where powerful waves of the Pacific rolled in. Other travelers visited, and occasionally at night, a wood fire lit up the area. Someone played guitar, and people crooned songs from different countries. Gradually, Walter recovered enough to walk around, eat food regularly, and enjoy the holidays. Hilde picked up the replacement traveler’s checks, and other than her stolen, beautiful purse and Walter’s insensitive left heel, all appeared well.
From the hotel clerk, Walter obtained a modest quantity of local grass, which tasted as if it had been covered in mud for a while—but nobody complained. Before they had left Oklahoma City, a new roommate had moved into their house, Bill from Southern California. He had had in his possession some of the famous Orange Sunshine, which contained the strongest LSD available at that time, and let them take it on their trip. Irene and Hilde did not want to miss the opportunity to experience it on that beach north of Acapulco, with the full moon rising and the shore all to themselves. The trio made sure they had sufficient clean water and juices available and some food for the long night.
When the drug kicked in, it literally was as if a thrust of energy took over the inner system, as well as the body. A clear, absolute awareness of reality ascended into the sensory perception, and the mind became merely a device, stripped of any doubt, question, or fear. This force lasted for many hours. Naturally, with the ocean right in front of them, its movements took a lot of their attention. Sometimes, however, it melted into a background activity with attached noise. The moon’s slow movement across the firmament activated awe within the quiet group of friends, who sat next to each other or sometimes moved here or there, but not far. Its brightness gave way to black vastness, filled with galaxies upon galaxies and tiny, blinking light elements. All of this provided consciousness beyond words, leaving indices of it in the dancing minds of these three fortunate human beings.
For Walter, it also provided a glimpse into the order of nature’s chain of events, happening at the shore of the southern Pacific Ocean. The incoming surf there contained at all times four- to six-foot waves that had a tendency to smash onto the beach with a loud sound, roll slowly up and off, and then retreat. After hours of watching and listening absolutely within the moment and being able to differentiate small portions of time through noise, then silence and motion, he realized that there was no real time, that everything that happens, happens now.
A couple of days later, the Germans took another psychedelic expedition with equal results. New visitors from Europe, the USA, and Australia arrived, and another campfire burned on the beach as the last week of their vacation began. The moon did not show up that night; a light breeze cooled the singing tourists, their backpacks scattered around the fire. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a group of ragged-looking men with antique rifles appeared. About ten of them surrounded the smaller group of tourists at the campfire. One of them shouted something in Spanish upon the startled exclamations of a few travelers. Chaos and confusion unfolded between both parties because some of the tourists jumped up on their feet and some of the gunmen began waving their rifles and shouting.
Hilde pulled herself together and slowly approached the man who appeared to be the spokesperson. She asked him in Spanish what was going on, and the guy told her, “We are the police. You are all under arrest for sitting on the beach and smoking marijuana. You have to come with us or give money to us. You did something illegal.”
As it happened, that night nobody had smoked anything but cigarettes, and the men could not find any trace of illegal drugs. Hilde concentrated on finding sufficient vocabulary and explained that her two friends, who could not speak Spanish, and she were on their vacation, renting the bungalow behind the scene. Irene, a secretary from Frankfurt, and her fiancé all came with the same car from the United States. She persuaded the leader to let the three Germans go back to their room before the unidentifiable police force in civil clothing could search their backpacks.
When the adventurers arrived back in Oklahoma City at their new home, a Harley-Davidson stood parked on the carpet in the living room. Bill, the biker, had moved in with his girlfriend. The bike and girlfriend were items previously not discussed with the landlords, Walter and Hilde.
At the People’s Workshop Café, the restaurateurs learned that their property-owner had given notice to vacate. Frequent disturbances due to drunken people standing on the roof of the building caused police action and neighborhood complaints. There were several reasons for the issues: being close to downtown, the homeless, and the fact that generous Phil and Kathy sometimes gave away free food. In addition to the progressive courses and classes offered in the community center, good-looking, young white girls could be seen around the place. This drew extra attention. After brief discussions with Phil and Kathy, the two couples decided to separate. Phil did not really want to continue working with others on a nonprofit basis; he wanted to open his own restaurant and make money. For Hilde and Walter, this was not an issue; they intended to hold onto the concept of running a café within a larger center.
It did not take long before they received word from Nelson that a new location had been located, across the street from the city’s venerable newspaper, the Oklahoman. The front entrance double door with spotty brass bars opened onto a wide staircase up to the first floor and straight ahead to the former ballroom. It could accommodate about fifteen hundred people standing or sitting on the floor. The team transported the furniture and essential kitchen equipment from the old place to the new location. Walter purchased stereo equipment, and he and Hilde refreshed the paint and installed improved lighting. At the same time, volunteers completed the bookstore, conference rooms, and treatment rooms for bodywork. On opening night, the favorite local band played for free, and a sizable crowd filled the large hall, people perusing the new facilities and checking out the bookstore and plant sale.
As it turned out, the usual day crowd stayed away from the new place. In the afternoons and at night, it filled up a bit, but it seemed the locals did not favor it. Nelson arrived in the company of a man who had previously worked as a disc jockey, then opened his own company and promoted a variety of music acts coming to town. After he looked over the facility, he made an offer to build a large stage in the ballroom on which the bands could perform. The crew accepted his offer, hoping it would increase the appeal of the establishment and the volume of regular customers during business hours.
The stage was built, and the bluegrass band Boz Scaggs highlighted the inauguration and opening night. With the place packed, the café sold many soft drinks, lemonade, and iced teas that night. Concerts were held once or twice a month with known local groups and domestically famous bands, culminating in with the booking of the British rock group Yes, which had made it big internationally. When the band performed in the old ballroom, there was not an inch available; probably three thousand fans showed up, and the band delivered.
After the grand events, however, revenue and customers during regular business hours declined. Hilde and Walter moved into a different apartment, a duplex. The couple split shifts during the week and on weekends both attended the café counter.
One night, after Walter’s tour of duty, Hilde did not show up to pick him up with the Chevy they shared. It grew later and later. Panic overcame Walter. It did not help that lovely blond and friendly Gil, who waited with him, offered a ride home, mentioned that she saw Hilde leaving with Bud, a longhaired hippie who lived with Gil in the same house in a commune situation. They might have left for the house because people were having a party, she said; Walter could come with her and enjoy it as well. Already too traumatized at that moment, Walter declined but accepted the ride home. Feeling that it would be a long night alone, he opened the fridge and started with an almost-full bottle of vodka, occasionally adding some ice cubes to the glass. When Hilde finally arrived home late the next morning, Walter had already been up for some hours; the alcohol had worked only temporarily that night.
The partners had an argument. Hilde apologized but indicated that she did not know for sure whether there was more to it, that she would have to see. The episode happened to be the first of its kind to become known in their relationship. Walter was not aware of any affairs Hilde had had during their time together, but he knew he had had a few love affairs; one of them could have become serious, but he had decided to stay with Hilde.
Devastated, he worked through the day to clear his dazed brain. At some point, he called Phil to tell him what had occurred. Phil offered him a place to stay at his new house if Walter wanted; he had separated from Kathy and rented a two-story house where he operated his own restaurant on the first floor and lived on the second.
Walter thanked him and said, “Let’s see how the situation develops. There is still the Workshop Café, and we have a car and apartment together. Right now, I feel awful and do not know what to do.”
It took about three weeks until the practical and emotional situations sorted out. Hilde decided to pursue her new relationship more closely, and she looked for a different place to stay in the downtown area. She also looked for a job. They gave notice to Nelson that they wanted to close the café. Phil offered Walter a job as busboy and dishwasher, including room and board. Walter gratefully accepted and moved his modest belongings into Phil’s living room, where he spent the nights on the couch.
Sporadically during the previous months, Walter had called Denise Hauck in Germany using a calling card and public phones. She had refreshed the connection initially by sending him a letter, and then Walter called. Meanwhile, she was working on her first job as news reporter for a German network television station in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt.
It was a pleasure talking to her. She appeared interested in Walter’s activities and well-being. When he told her the news about Hilde, she asked him, “What are you going to do—dishwashing?”
He had not contemplated any further steps; depression and general misery overshadowed any planning.
“You know, if you want to, you can come to my place and stay with me for a while.”
Surprised, Walter asked, “Yes, but what about Andreas?”
“It will be OK,” she replied.
He instantly felt a degree of new energy returning and foresaw a future in his life. The remaining three weeks in Oklahoma City Walter spent with Phil at different entertainment spots. They also talked in the living room about the ongoing war, Leary, Huxley, Gurdjieff, and the Black Panthers.