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Deaon:——Deaon Bailes—— Curtis:——and Curtis Lang—— Maria:——and Maria Malfavon, student historians from North Coast Rural Challenge Network, Voices of the Valley project in Anderson Valley. Lulu: We’re here today with grange master, carpenter, annual variety show host, and Boonville personality: Captain Rainbow. Thanks, Rainbow, for coming. Rainbow: You’re welcome. Deaon: So, Rainbow, can you tell us how your childhood was? Rainbow: Yeah, I guess. I was born in Missura—— Deaon:——yeah—— Rainbow:——on a little farm and lived there ’til I was about six years old, and my dad passed away then, and not too long after that our family moved back east to a suburb of Boston, and that’s where I did most of my, like, junior high and high school years back there. I have a younger brother and an older sister, and we were all raised in a single-parent household. Lulu: What kind of school did you go to? Rainbow: Well, when I got into junior high school age I ended up going to this private prep school that was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right next to Harvard, and we wore little ties and wore little suits, and it was an all-boys school and—— Curtis: Did you like it there? Rainbow: No, not too much; right from the get-go…. Curtis: It was too preppy for you? Rainbow: Well, yeah, here I was, rubbing shoulders with——some of the kids actually showed up in limos——(everyone laughs)——they were driven to school, right, and all the kids, they were being——I mean, there was no question that you went to college——it was just how classy the school was, you know, whether it was Ivy League school or, you know, or some other kind of school, you know, and everybody who went through that school there now, you know, they’re lawyers and doctors and business people who make a whole lot of money, I think——(everyone laughs)——and I was just kind of uncomfortable in that kinda scene; it didn’t seem right, and some of my other experiences outside of school, you know, didn’t——I mean, the world wasn’t like that—— Deaon: Yeah—— Rainbow:——and I could see that and knew that I wanted to check out other things. Deaon: So you said all those guys went to go on and be lawyers, doctors and things of that nature. What did you become to be? Rainbow: Who I am now——which is a whole lot of different things. Deaon: Great, great. Lulu: How’d you get there? Deaon: Yeah, that’s what I’m basically asking——like your college and how’d you get to high school if you didn’t like it? Rainbow: Well, I never quite made it all the way through that prep school, and I ended up——to get into college they said I had to have a high school diploma, so I ended up doing a year of high school, my senior year, in San Francisco. I came out west, left home… Curtis: What school was that? Rainbow: Mission——Mission High School… Deaon: Oh! Rainbow:——and I became valedictorian of my graduating class, and I got straight A’s. Lulu: How’d you do that? Deaon: Hmm! Rainbow: It was night school——(everyone laughs)——and nobody else in the class knew how to speak English hardly——(laughs)——so they needed someone to give the speech——they were desperate. I had to give this speech, and so I graduated, and then I went to a semester at San Francisco State, and this was like 1969, 1970, and these were the ’60s and I don’t know if you guys can relate to Vietnam——it must be——seem like ancient history, but these were the days I grew up in, and things were really changing, and the young people in those days——oh, we had grown up and been given a certain description of what the world was supposed to be like——like you were supposed to live in the suburbs, and you’re supposed to have your little job, and you’re supposed to mow the lawn every Saturday, and a lot of us didn’t like that description and thought——we certainly respect our parents’ generation who went through the Depression and World War II and wanted things for their kids. They didn’t want their kids to go hungry, they wanted their kids to have clothes, and they came through, and they gave us all that stuff, but all that stuff didn’t make the difference. I think every generation has to go off and seek its own things, and it was a pretty exciting time to grow up. There was a lot of tumultuous changes. Curtis: What is tumultuous? What’s that mean? Rainbow: Heavy duty——a roller coaster ride of events and emotions—— Curtis:——Ups and downs—— Rainbow: Oh, yeah. Curtis: How’d you deal with them? Like the Vietnam War, how’d you deal with that? Rainbow: Well, I knew I wasn’t going to go over there and, uh, fight in that war——I really didn’t believe in it——I didn’t think we had any business being there. Curtis: Don’t blame you. Rainbow: Oh boy! And so you had some choices in those days. I opted to go for conscientious objector status, which that means that if you got into that program you could do alternative service like work in a hospital or somethin’——and then I was livin’ in Berkeley with some pretty radical people, and, uh, they kinda convinced me——they said, ‘Oh, you’re just going along with the government if you do that!’ And I kinda got swept up with the events of everything, and I wrote my draft board a letter and I said, ‘Look, I don’t care what you want me to do, I’m not gonna to do it! And you can track me down and try to find me, but, ah, this is my last communication with you.’ And, uh, right away my draft board said, ‘Oooh, problem boy.’ (Everyone laughs). So they made me 1-A which means like, ‘ready to go,’ and uh——just luckily, right about then they started the lottery where——and I happened to get a high number, so I never got drafted. And it really would have been a test of my convictions to see, you know, would I have gone to jail, or would I have tried to become a fugitive and tried to hide out, you know. How strong do you believe somethin’ when it comes down to it? I am kinda glad that I never had to go through that and find out. (Everyone laughs). Deaon: So what was your college like? Rainbow: I just went to one semester at San Francisco State, and it was a big huge school, and they were having riots all the time. And here I’m trying to get to class and they’re having these riot police marching around…. Curtis: What were the riots about? Rainbow: Vietnam mostly. Ah, the war and, you know, freedom. Lulu: Did you participate in some riots? Rainbow: No, I was kinda more of a…peace, love kind of hippie and kinda went about things in a different way, although I attended a few protest rallies about the war. Um…. Curtis: What did it mean for you guys to be called hippies back then? Rainbow: Well, I thought it was a good thing. I thought it was just——I thought it was wonderful. I thought it meant a new way of doing things, and it was——there was whole counterculture, brother and sisterhood. Uh, you would know somebody by the look in their eye or the way they were dressed or what they were doing that they were in your brotherhood or sisterhood. And there was a fellowship there, and we trusted each other and, um, you’d just meet somebody that you’d never known before, but you knew that you were on the same trip. And it had to do with confronting your values and being on a search for what you found to have some kind of meaning in your life, and so I thought that being a hippie was just great. And it wasn’t ’til later that I found out that a lot of people, you know, thought hippies were just like the scum of the earth and they were like dishonest. And I went, ‘What?’——and they were just grungy and dirty and…. Curtis: Did you wear bell-bottoms and like—— Rainbow: Oh, yeah! Curtis: Like those cross-colored——what do they call those——tie-dyed shirts—— Rainbow: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I remember—— Deaon:——how ’bout the afro? Curtis:——you wear an afro, too? Rainbow: Nah, this hair doesn’t do afro. Deaon:——ain’t going to happen——(everyone laughs). Rainbow: I mean sometimes I’d have it all braided up and little feathers and stuff in it, you know. And it really meant somethin’ in those days to have some hair. It was like your little flag, your little kola that would tell people what you were about. Nowadays it sometimes gets in the way ’cause people judge you and put you in a box right away because of the way you look. And in those days they did that too, but it was OK, I wanted to be in that box. Deaon: So how did you find your way to the Valley? Rainbow: (A long pause). It was a looooong journey, I’ll tell ya. (Everyone laughs). Ah, there was a few years, after leaving home and going to do some college that, um, I kinda traveled around, kinda searching for what it was——what was I lookin’ for——it didn’t seem like it was in college, and didn’t seem like it was in the business world, so it was pretty interesting, exciting time, hookin’ up with different people, travelin’ around, living with different groups, different relationships of people; people were tryin’ out all kinds of different stuff. And so one of the deals was I got involved with these people wanted to start like an alternative college, and they called it Compost College.
Deaon: Right. Curtis: Here in the Valley? Rainbow: Yeah, they ended up bein’ up by Bear Wallow Lodge there—— Deaon:——heard about that—— Rainbow:——up on the forty acres above there, and it had, you know, it just had a little spring, and a meadow and no electricity or anything. These people ended up livin’ in these little plastic wickiups. And at that time, I was living up in Washington state on a farm with a bunch of people, and by the time I got back down here to check it out it had kinda broken up and people gone their separate ways, but there was still a buncha people living around there——Bear Wallow——and there was a little community by the river there, and the water seemed to collect people. We’d swim and we had sweat lodges. We were living in teepees and runnin’ around with little loincloths on. (Laughs). Yeah, it was nice, I’ll tell ya. Deaon:——that’s a trip—— Rainbow: It was, kinda like——I started out here in the Valley in the stone age kinda and my life over thirty years here——I’ve kinda evolved through evolution of human—— Curtis: It was like the hippie days when you came here? Rainbow: Oh yeah, oh yeah, major, for about the first ten years when I lived here——we rarely went to town. We didn’t go to town too much. Curtis: Was the town still as small as it is now? Rainbow: Oh, smaller. I guess it was smaller. Curtis: What was in the town? Rainbow: Well, there was the bar (laughs) which I didn’t ever go to (laughs) because there was a real…between rednecks and hippies in those days there was not a lot of love lost. We were doing different movies, you know. So we kind of did our own thing up on the hills. Curtis: So how did you get your name? Rainbow: Well, it was back in the psychedelic ‘60s, and it was a beautiful spring day in the hills above Berkeley, and a bunch of us had gone up there and partied. And after awhile, we were all mesmerized by reflections off a rock; we kept seein’ these tiny rainbows bouncing off the rock, and it took us about an hour to figure out that the reflections were coming off the rhinestones in a bracelet I was wearing, and I started laughin’ about that——it was wild——and one of my friends said, ‘Hey, man, you’re the rainbow-maker!’ And I’ve been known as Rainbow ever since. Mr. Mendosa: Tell ’em the story about goin’ to the bar and meetin’ a guy and sayin’ your name—— Rainbow: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, well, well, my name is Rainbow, right? Sometimes it gets in the way of meeting people. I remember going into the Lodge one time, and here’s these big, greasy, heavy guys all at the bar, and they’d been there awhile, you know, (laughs) and I’d go up next to some guy and he’d go, (Rainbow imitates tough guy voice), ‘Hey, hi, how are you? My name’s Buddy——what’s your name?’ I figure’d it was not wise to go, (in wimpy guy voice), ‘Hi, my name is Rainbow,’ (laughs). And so, so, (everyone laughs), I’d I just kind of mumble at him and say, ‘Oh, my name is (mumbles),’ and he’d say, ‘Oh, Reno, all right, Reno, get him a beer.’ So my name in the bar was Reno for awhile. That seemed to work and anything that works, you know, gets you through the day… I remember another little story——that’s before I got here; I was living down in Louisiana——boy, that’s a different kind of place down there. We were living in this little town called Lorranger, and I lived there about six months, that’s all. It was Mardi Gras day. I’ve been in the Mardi parade and those people, those people——whew!——know how to party——whoo!——they go all night and start up the next day. I couldn’t believe some of these people. Anyway, it was Mardi Gras and my heart had been broken by my girlfriend down there—— Everyone: Ohhhhhh… Rainbow:——and I was living in Louisiana on Mardi Gras day. And I loaded up my truck and here comes this guy, Jorgen, and this is Jorgen from Denmark (Rainbow imitates accent) and he’s——this is a kind of dorky guy, who’s like this musicologist and he was——(laughs) in this country studying communes or something. He wanted a ride out to California where we figured that there were a bunch of communes, and I said, ‘All right, Jorgen,’ then I figure’d he’d paid for half the gas, and there I go. Of course, Jorgen didn’t drive, so I’m driving along this old truck, and Jorgen sitting in there just taking it all in, and I——it was somewhere in Arizona; it was hot, and I was thirsty, and I’ve been driving for hours and hours, and there was this little bar, and I pull over. I didn’t notice, but there was a whole row of big ol’ bikes in front. It was a biker bar, and I didn’t do biker bars in those days (laughs). There was another kind of deal where, you know, didn’t mix it up too much with those guys, but I didn’t notice. And you know how when you go into a bar——oh, maybe you don’t——but it’s bright and sunny outside, and you go in and it’s always dark, and your eyes have to adjust to the light, and I kind of stumble in there, and my hair is all down and loose and probably wearing some really weird outfit. And my eyes adjust, and it’s a biker bar and they’re all up there, you know, at the bar, these big guys and they got on their little vests lookin’ me, and I kind of turn around, ‘Oh, Jorgen, I don’t think we should go in here,——‘Oh, no problem——’ he goes right in there. He goes up to the biggest, ugliest, meanest one of them all, ‘Hello, my name is Jorgen, I’m from Denmark. I’m a musicologist.’ (Laughs). ‘All right——hey, buy ya a beer, buy ya beer.’ You know, it was like——he, in his innocence, you know, he didn’t know——he didn’t know to make a judgement. He was pure, and me, I’m making a judgement about that——they were great guys——bunch of drinks and, you know, we’re talking about stuff and had a good time. You know it took Jorgen, the dorky musicologist who didn’t make those judgements, to just break the ice, as it were. Lulu: So did you ever, like, break the ice with the old-timers around here? Rainbow: Yeah, and it took some doin’, I tell ya. Well, I’ve been told that it takes ten years of living here before you’re not a newcomer, and there’s no way that I or——you can qualify, Lulu——but the rest of us that weren’t born in the Valley——oh, and you can, Tom——we’ll never be old-timers, the rest of us,——uh, and——but——and it took about ten years of livin’ out in the hills and being very different and not mixing too much with the locals. And finally I started working——got little jobs and——I remember digging ditches——over there somewhere down the Valley. I remember this old Mexican guy named Balthazar taught me how to shovel. I didn’t know how to operate a shovel, and there is something to it. I bet you don’t know how to operate a shovel correctly. Maria: Yes, I do. Curtis: I know how to shovel, but before I came here I didn’t know how to use a weed-eater or a lawnmower. Rainbow: Hey, hey, I’ll tell ya there’s some technology to shoveling that this old Mexican guy, he showed me how——he could shovel like ten times as fast as I could an’ here I am (makes huffing and puffing sounds), and he’s takin’ it sloooow and easy, but he did——no wasted motion, you know, and he’d lean the shovel on his thigh, you know, to lever the dirt up and stuff, and it was just basic stuff, but I had to be taught. Anyway, that was one job, you know, just workin’ with guys, workin’ with guys in the woods a little bit, plantin’ trees, planted trees one season, now that’s the craziest job I ever had, my God, ya get up, it’s in the wintertime, and way before, ya know, five o’clock in the morning, and everything’s soggy ’cause it’s always rainin’ around here it seems like in the wintertime, and you put on your kinda damp boots and your damp clothes and it’s cold and you get down there and you jump in this crummie——and they drive you out miles and miles to way out somewhere in the middle of the brush where they just did a logging show, and you go and you’re supposed to plant all these trees. Well, the ideal is you plant on a ten foot grid, and I’d heard all this——about following the line and you go and you just put these trees in every ten feet, and it sounded great to me, ya know, and I go out there, and everybody else jumps out of the crummie, and they throw all these trees on the ground, and they start jumpin’ up and down on them and I’m goin’ jeez, they’re hurtin’ those little things; no, no, they were breakin’ ’em up OK and they put ’em in these little pouches and then run off into the woods, and they’re gone like in two seconds and I——jeez, what——and Big Doug was my crew boss, you know Big Doug, Dancing Bear? Curtis: Uh, uh, I don’t think so. Rainbow: Well, you should, he’s a local fixture around here, so I go, ‘Doug! What do I do?’ and he sez, ‘Follow the line!’ and I go, ‘Well, I don’t see a line!’ I thought there was a line or somethin’ in the wood and he goes, ‘No, no, no——you see that tree?’ and I go, ‘No’——there’s millions of trees, ya know——and he sez, ‘See that tree?’ and I go, ‘No,’ and he walks me over to this tree, and it’s this one puny little tree that some guy had stuck in the ground, and he sez, ‘That’s the line,’ and I said, ‘No, that’s a tree,’ and he sez——oh, man, anyway, it took me a few days to get the hang of it, but pretty quick I was sloshing around in the muck with the best of ’em, and it was just——it was a crazy, crazy job, six and a quarter cents a tree, and you… Deaon: A tree? Rainbow: Yeah, six and a quarter cents you got for every tree, and you can bet I wasn’t out there la la la la la, here little thing, make a nice little hole, put the little tree in there, uh, uh it was like, ohhhh ohhh ohhhh, get ‘em in as fast as you can, I doubt if very many of my trees survived, to tell you the truth, and it’s a weird thing; here you are planting these trees, this life, you’re reforesting the forest; well, Masonite was planning on cutting ’em down in forty years, you know, that was their plan, didn’t quite work out for ’em, heh heh, but, at any rate, that was a job I had here in the Valley, and it’s through those kinda jobs and starting to do carpentry, and especially makin’ split stuff and workin’ in the woods with this old man called Adrian——used to call him the redwood guru—— Curtis: Why y’all call him redwood gruru? Rainbow: ’Cause he knew——gruru, gruru?——you know what a guru is? Curtis: Uh, uh——what’s a guru? Rainbow: He’s like a master, a teacher. Deaon: Ohhhh. Rainbow: You never met anybody like that, did, ya? Hey, ya know what, Balthazar was my shoveling guru. Curtis: What’s up with these names? Rainbow: Balthazar? Waddaya mean, that’s a regular name! Deaon: Balthazar? I’m gonna name my kid Athorisis. (Laughter). Rainbow:——and Adrian was a redwood guru. He was the master of his trade at what he did and it’s so nice that I hope you guys have the opportunity to run into a few people in your lives who are masters at what they do. Deaon: We already did——you! Rainbow: Hey! Deaon: You——the master of the Grange. (Much laughter). Rainbow: Yeah, well, that’s just a name they use——somebody who’s really mastered something. Deaon: So you’re not the master of the Grange? Help me out here! (Laughter continues). Rainbow: That’s just a name they use, they’re hoping I’m a true master. Deaon: What do they mean by that, are you just a——(laughter continues). Rainbow: Well, yeah, what that means in this Grange is——I’m the master and have to run the meetings and say some of the voodoo stuff, but I also have to sweep up and clean up everybody’s cigarette butts and stuff. Kinda you have to do everything. Deaon: OK, yeah, I understand. Rainbow: It’s not really an exalted position. Anyway this guy, Adrian, the redwood guru–what——you wanna ask me something else? Go ahead–
Maria: No, go ahead. Rainbow: It’s just a job that I had, you know, and this old guy, he was kinda getting old and his legs weren’t too good anymore. And, uh, I was young and kinda strong and dumb, and I said, ‘Jeez, Adrian, will you teach me how to make split stuff?’ And he was no fool, and he saw this guy who could haul all his posts out for him and——‘Sure, I’ll teach ya,’ and what my learning was for the first several months of work was how to put a post on my shoulder and climb up out of the creek bottoms with these heavy, nasty things and, but, ya know, watching him work, really a lot of things rubbed off, and it was a connection with another age that I think you guys——I mean, there might be some real old folks now who you might be able to talk to about this kind of thing. But he talked to me——he rode the stage, the horse-drawn stage, in about 1906 from Ukiah to Mendocino; I mean, that’s how old this guy was; and this is when men were men. And you worked, you worked from dawn to dark, six days a week; seventh day you did your laundry. Deaon: What about church? Rainbow:——and you did church, if that’s what you did, or you went to the bar——around here a lot of people went to the bar I think, and I just couldn’t——and he told me his father built a six-room house out in Comptche, and he built——alone——and he built all the window and door frames——this is really nice fine millwork an’ stuff——in three months, the whole thing, and I looked at him and I said, ‘Are you kiddin’ me, Adrian? Nobody can do that!’ and he looked me right back and he said, ‘I don’t think you understand how people used to work,’ and it’s true. It’s not like there’s anything different about us physically or anything, but it was a mental attitude and in those days you had to hump to get through the day and to just make it and it was tough and I had a lot of respect for those kind of folks who do that. Anyway, so I got a little——a little of this rubbed off on me and eventually I figured out pretty much how to make posts and rails and paling. Maria: What was Adrian’s last name? Rainbow: Newton. He was born in Melburne——you know where Melburne is? Maria: No. Rainbow: It used to be a little town out past Comptche——there’s still a sign on a barn there——it’s funny around here there were lots of little places that are gone now——people come and go. Lulu: So what other work did you do in the Valley? Rainbow: Well, one kind of work that I did a lot of was pickin’ fruit. We started out when we were all livin’ at Bear Wallow there. We’d pack up our teepees, our loincloths, and (laughs) the goat, and we’d drive over by Winters and Davis and Vacaville. And some of the people knew some of the farmers over there and they liked us to pick their fruit. They liked us ’cause we picked really slow (laughs), but we picked really good, you know, and wouldn’t bruise the fruit. We’d just trade for fruit that we’d dry and bring back here. We did that for a few years and we’d set up camp over there, pick fruit and dry it and come back. And then I started bringing fresh fruit back and other people in the Valley would say, ‘Hey, why don’t you bring me a lug of those peaches? Those look good.’ And then I realized oh, maybe we could pay for some gas for our trucks if maybe I charged a little bit. It was four bucks a lug and then our group… Curtis: How big was a lug? Rainbow: Forty or fifty pound——one of those field lugs. Curtis: Uh, huh. Lulu: Wow! Curtis: For only four bucks? That’s pretty cheap! Rainbow: Yeah, well, that was——but it was food. We weren’t interested in makin’ money. Deaon:——just help—— Rainbow: We just wanted to share that food. It’s kinda like what goes around, comes around, we always figured. Curtis: That’s that hippie theory. (All laugh). Deaon: It’s cool. Rainbow: Kinda, yeah, yeah. (All laugh). Not a bad one. I’m kinda sorry that it’s kinda changed. Anyway, our group kinda broke up and we stopped bringin’ the teepees and the loincloths and the goat (laughs) over there. And I was kinda left with the truck and a bunch of lug boxes and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll have a little fruit stand!’ And I would go over there and pick as much fruit as I could, and I would buy the rest to fill up the truck with different kinds of fruit, and I’d come back here. I had a little canvas stand, and I’d play bluegrass music and set up on the street. It was really nice, and I had the best fruit, the cheapest fruit in the Valley. And I even thought about——these health department people’d come by every once in awhile, you know, the County people, and say, ‘Well, where’s your license and blah, blah, blah.’ And I just start talkin’ to ’em, and everything was fine after awhile, and I’d sell ’em some apricots. And they were just happy. They knew it was good fruit, and that I wasn’t trying to rip anybody off. So that was workin’ out pretty good, and then I even went over to Ukiah to get a license one time and, oh man, you had to fill out all these forms. I went to like three different places. Finally I ended up at the police department. They gave me this form, the biggest of all, a long, long form. And then they said, ‘Now we want your fingerprints and that’ll be $11.50,’ and I couldn’t believe it—— ‘Whaddaya mean? Do I get a reduction ’cause I’ve only got nine fingers here?’ And they all laughed. So, I just never did it. It’s just too ridiculous. Lulu: So how did you lose your finger? Rainbow: Oh well, I cut it off one day. Just with a Skilsaw, I was up on a roof, did something stupid——(everybody laughs)——something that I’m sure you people would never do. I was kinda young and not real experienced, and I knew it was really bad. It was underneath the board, and I felt something really bad, and I was scared to pull it out and look at it…but I did and went ahhhh!!! And so my buddy——I said, ‘Hammond, help me, I lost my finger,’ and he says, ‘Well, find it!’ (Laughter). I go all——God——and actually he found it in the sawdust, picked it up and handed it to me, that was one of the weirdest things, I was looking at my finger. Maria: Was it jumping? (Everyone laughs). Rainbow: You know, it might have been, I don’t recall. So, man, it was pretty bad——it ruined my career as a concert pianist and everything (everyone laughs). Anyway, so I worked around different jobs in the Valley, and it was an interesting thing finally comin’ to respect and be respected by some of the old-time locals around here. I remember one deal was they use to have this thing called the Albion People’s Fair which was like——this is maximum hippiedom. This was like a weekend of total ahhh. I mean whooooo! It was just wild and, man, every year we’d just get done up to the max. We’d sell some little——I don’t know——candles or some damn thing so we could stay the whole night…so this one time here I am, I’m dressed——I got this like tunic thing on, this leather pouch hangin’ down with fringe, and these boots that came up to my knees, and it had bead work all over it, and my hair, of course, had feathers and stuff stuck all in it and…I’m driving down in my old 1946 Esther. Curtis: Esther, what kinda car is that? Rainbow: Yeah, it was an old 1946 Dodge pick-up truck, beautiful truck, beautiful, the lines on it… Maria: Nice. (Everyone laughs). Rainbow:——lovely…anyways, but Esther had a flat, and I had to get that tire fixed, and I’m sittin’ in the truck, and I’m pulling up to Jeff’s Chevron Station, and Jeff Short was quite a character around town; he’d always be out there in the mornings with a whole buncha guys in overalls, and you know they’re kinda out there spittin’ and talkin’, and spittin’ some more and hangin’ out, you know, and when the sun came up they’d stand out in the sun and talk about, I don’t know, sheep or whatever, and I pull in in the truck and I see these guys and I go, uhhh, I look down how I’m dressed and go, ‘Ooooh, this could be really bad,’ or, ‘——it could be really good!’ So I had this big cigar that I’d gotten somewhere, and I just lit this cigar, and I grabbed the tire out of the back of the truck and rolled it up to the guys, in my little tunic, and my feathers and everything, and said, ‘Hi, boys, fix this tire or what?’ They like——it was such a shock that I didn’t sneak up there and feel all embarrassed, or anything, I just went right up there, that I’m sure afterwards, when I left, they went, ‘Boy, something really weird just happened, but I can’t remember what I it was!’ (Everyone laughs). I don’t know, but sometimes it was real interesting meeting these people on their turf, or your turf. You know sometimes, every once in awhile, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would walk up to my teepee, you know, and we’d be out there dancing around or something, and here are these guys in like shiny shoes and ties and suits, and they’re going, ‘Well, hello there,’——it was very odd, kinda, you know, weird, these guys wearing their suits and ties out in the woods there and want to talk to us. We always talked to ‘em; they left pretty quick, I noticed that! Deaon: So, can you tell us about your acting experiences? Rainbow: OK. Well, I remember in sixth grade is when I think I got the bug, ’cause I always liked to sing, and I was in this chorus, and, of course, you could never tell your pals,——Oh, I have to go to chorus,’——that was just not cool, you know…I made up some excuse, but I really liked it, I really liked it, singing. Curtis: Well, can you hit a tune for us? A note? Rainbow: (sings) I don’t know, but I’ve been told, the streets of heaven are paved with gold, hey, hey little black-eyed Susie (or Maria).
Oh, come on, cut it out, Maria! (Much laughter). Deaon: Hey, that was great! Rainbow: We can axe that. Well, I still like to sing. Anyway, in sixth grade they picked me to be Johnny Appleseed! (Everyone laughs)…in the play Johnny Appleseed. I was the only kid from this school in it; all the other kids were from the other part of town. And I still remember walkin’ into the gym in the other school, and all the other kids were down at the far end and I open the door, creeeek, like that; all alone I’m feelin’ really nervous, and all the kids, everybody’s heads turned. Then they watch me. That was a really long walk across this empty space, and they’re lookin’ at me——(Rainbow whispers), ‘Oh, there’s Johnny Appleseed, oh yeah.’ And anyway, it worked out so that by the end of the show——I remember the last performance——here was this big fat lady in the front row (everyone laughs)——and she was just lovin’ it. She was grinnin’ and having a good time. I just remember looking at her and singin’ this song to her——(Rainbow starts laughing——everyone laughs)——and she just loved it. And I went, ‘Yeah!’——this is what——I like this——this is good. Deaon: She was probably thinking about the apple. Rainbow: (Laughs) Probably… probably… And my sister, she was into real theatre, like she got an MFA in theatre arts and was a professor and teaching drama and stuff, and when I tell her about what I do over here she says, ‘Oh, so you’re an entertainer,’ which is like——that’s kinda like the scum of the earth. And it is true, I like being with the people in the crowd. You know that’s a whole lot of fun when y’all can get together, big group of people, and you get your minds all in the same place, and you can take ’em on a trip, and they want to go. And it’s so nice, they’re offering up their minds and their energy and their time; when you feel that back from the audience, real good feeling, real good. (Everyone giggles). So since——when I came here, there was a guy called Doc who actually used to travel with the real——the mud shows, the real circus. Like Carson Barnes that was just here. He used to be, oh, he was canvas boss, I think, on that show for awhile, and he was also ringmaster for awhile on that show. And he also was trained as a clown, a traditional circus clown. He’d come back here in the Valley in the wintertime when the shows weren’t——he would travel all over the country in the summer and the rest of the time, but he would come back here in the winter, and one day one of our friends wanted to have a little birthday party for their little kid, and so Doc said, ‘Let’s do——we’ll do a clown show; I’ll teach you some of the routines.’ And they’re classic, classic routines, some of the basic premises. This guy Doc was real quiet, mild mannered——you never pictured him to be a clown, you know. Me, you might picture to be a clown because I am like arrrggh all over the place like this. (Everyone giggles). Doc, no! But he always used to say, ‘When I put on my face, it’s like I have this mask on, and I can be free.’ It is really interesting that it freed this guy up to be outrageous. But there is a lot of work to all those little routines, all those little things; the timing is so important as it is in much of life. Timing is everything. Anyway, so, anyway we did this little clown show, and it was fun. And all these other people wanted to be clowns, and so we ended up——there is that picture there, you know, that shows——that was our One Less Clown troupe. (Rainbow indicates photo). And you see Professor Dubious, he was the magician, and uh, Polka Dot; she was the band, the accordion player—— Deaon:——I see that mask y’all got on there—— Rainbow:——and down in front there, that’s Lady Rainbow, the Queen of Mystery, and then I’m up there. I’m, you know, just——I don’t know what names I had. I had different names and, uh, there’s Doc——up in back, and this guy over here is a dummy, I don’t know if you notice that. (Everyone laughs). That’s Gebrowski, the world’s greatest dancer. Lulu: Is that Henry? Rainbow: Professor Dubious. That is Professor Dubious, and he had this long kinda latex nose with squirrel tails on it for a mustache. That——whoo—— after a couple of years, that thing got pretty nasty. I mean we were doing like birthday parties for little kids and stuff. We weren’t the cleanest clowns ever, but we had fun. And we noticed some things about it. Like there were some people who always wanted to have a little moral, to do a little story, so that the little kiddies would learn something. And everything had to be nice, nice. We realized that, you know what, that don’t really work too good. You don’t get the reaction, um, so we always did notice that if you hit somebody on the head with a frying pan or pull down your pants and man, you’re gonna get a laugh. (Everyone laughs). And the kids, the kids, it was interesting, so we would ask the kids, we said, ‘Hey, you know when that guy hit me on the head with the big bat, do you think that hurt?’ The kids say, ‘No, no, we know you’re clowns. Come on, what do you think we are?’ And the kids were hip to that, and that was neat to know. Nowadays I don’t know, with movies and stuff being pretty realistic and like, a lot of violence on T.V. and in the movies, I don’t know about it. I think when clowns do violence it’s a little different. But, who knows, it was always a big question with us. Anyway, we kind of evolved from there into this thing called the Magic Company and, uh, I think I got some pictures of our shows and, we wrote our own shows. And it was like, Henry——Professor Dubious——was this magician, and he’d just come up with these big illusions. He’d come to us and say, ‘All right, well, I came up with the floating lady thing, and cuttin’ somebody in two, and, ya know, I got a bunch of doves; and then I can set you on fire!’ Oh great, ya know, he had all these different illusions, and then we’d write a story around those things. And we came up with all kinda wild things. And it was a lot of fun to make up our own stuff and put on a show for the people in the Valley. And we got to one of our last ones was that one, where’s that one, uh, we called it Middle Aged Men in Tights after awhile. Yeah, I see it right down there. (Shows photos). Curtis: Which one, this one? Rainbow: No, down below, underneath all of that right there. Curtis: Oh, this one. Rainbow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a time trooper. As I say, we were supposed to be traveling through time and I don’t know. I don’t think I’m—— I’m not gonna wear a lot of spandex from now on I don’t think. Deaon: Which one is you——this one? Rainbow: Oh, get outta here. Curtis: Let me see, I’ll tell you which one he is. Rainbow: Oh, come on, the guy with the ears. Lulu: That one, no the other one—— Deaon: You can’t tell by the moustache—— Rainbow: Yeah, see the hair’s all up and everything. Ya know, big muscles, and anyway—— Curtis: Is that when you thought of doing the variety show at the Grange? Rainbow: No, ya know, that kinda evolved out of the Grange and that’s probably the best example how I got involved with the local people here. The old Grange——that was built in 1939 where the new grange is now. We used to always have dances there, and it had a neat old floor and, uh, a little stage, and we’d put our plays on and do our shows there, and the old Grangers though, they never came around, and they were kinda disapproving of any of this wild hippie stuff and——but they needed the money so they let us rent it as long as we cleaned up really good, and we did, ’cause we really loved that old building. It was the only nice place with a dance floor and a stage in the Valley. Then it burned down one day. And, uh, we heard that the Grangers were gonna rebuild it. But they were gonna rebuild with a concrete floor——slab floor and a metal building. And, we all said, ‘Man we’re gonna lose our stage, we’ll lose our wooden dance floor. We can’t have this.’ A whole bunch of us went to a meeting and one time and said, ‘Hey, look we’ll help ya,’ and we had a plan and showed them the plan, and for some strange reason they went for it on the condition that when they ran out of money we’d help ‘em to finish it——do volunteer labor. Curtis: So they ran out of money real quick? Rainbow: Ooh yeah, ooh yeah, and ya know what——I think that’s one of the best things that ever happened to me for the rebuilding of the Grange ’cause if they would have had tons of money, they would have just got some dumb contractor, and they would have created this soulless, nothing building, but as it is now, it’s a building——we needed each other——the old-timers needed us; we needed them. And now times have changed and people don’t seem to need each other very much anymore, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sad because it really brings people together. And it did in that case and they were so——I don’t know they must have been desperate cause they even started inviting us to join the Grange. I thought——‘Oh my gosh, this is really odd!’ But, ya know, we found our common ground, we had this common goal and we might not agree in a whole bunch of other areas——there we were in the same place doing the same thing…so anyway, we finally finished the Grange and we wanted to have a party to open it, and we didn’t have any money, so we thought well, what are we gonna do? Well, we don’t have any money so we’ll just have a variety show, and we’ll entertain ourselves——eleven years ago now——and so we did the very first variety show, and it was so much fun. We started to have another one, and now——hey, I’m always looking for acts. You guys got anything? Four minutes in front of 400 people. What can you do? Curtis: Deaon might have one…. Maria: Four minutes? (Laughs). Rainbow: I’m serious. You guys——every year, you know. Haven’t you been saying, ‘Oh, I got a break dance act,’ or something? Deaon: Definitely no. Rainbow: No, well, I’m always looking. So, hey, hey, I want to say something else about——you guys——in the school——I used do a bunch of work around here. I built three of those greenhouses out there and——it was a pretty interesting story about one of this things. One day, I’m down here and the teacher, the boss guy says, ‘Hey, I want you to go over to Ukiah and take apart this old greenhouse and bring it back here and put it back up. It’s only 100 feet long and 50 feet wide.’ Duh! And he says, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I got a crew of guys.’ And I didn’t know hardly any Spanish at that point. Here coupla Mexicans guys that didn’t know any English and he gives us this little trailer (laughs) about six feet long to load this damn thing in. (Laughs). And so we go over there, and he says, ‘Oh, I can get more help for you. Stop by the city of Ten Thousand Buddhas.’ So I stopped by there—— Deaon:——What? (Laughs). Rainbow:——and I picked up all this tiny guys from Thailand who didn’t know any English either. (Laughs). So here is my crew of little tiny Thailand guys, a couple Mexican guys, and they don’t know English, and I don’t know any of their languages. (Everyone laughs). Then we go to take this greenhouse apart, and guess where it is? It’s at the Mayacama Industries. It’s where all the special people hang out, so like, you know, I don’t know what you call it, learning disabled or something folks, and we go there, and we pull in, and I got this crew of monks or whatever or guys (laughs) and I got these people; ‘Hi, how are you; can I help?’ you know, all these guys are coming around. It was really an interesting day, (everyone laughs), I’ll tell ya. It was——we got the thing down, but it was close, it was really close. One of the Thailand guys, I was led to believe, knew something about electricity, and this thing was hooked up to 230 volts, three phase which I didn’t have no clue about, and the guy says, ‘(mumbles)’ and so, I go well, don’t touch anything, don’t do anything, wait, we’ll wait for somebody else, and I go down to the other end try to get this other guy to do something. I turn back and this guy has pulled out these hot wires, and he is holding them up like this going——(yells). I went, ‘Ahhh, stop, stop!’ And I just made him stay there and hold these things until we got all the stuff shut off. Oh, man, and then these little guys, at ten o’clock, they had to have a tea break. They just sat down. Work stop. (Laughs). They had these cookies and these tea things. Maria: Who, the Mexicans? Rainbow: No, the Thailand guys. Maria: Oh, the Thailand guys, oh. Rainbow: They are really a trip, these guys, and they work really hard too, wow. And (laughs) anyway, we finally got this thing loaded up and out of there and it was a wild day. Anyway, when I was working here I met my wife, Dina. She was here teaching—— Curtis:——here at the high school—— Rainbow:——yeah, yeah, she was the art teacher, and that first year they had her——she was like, did ESL and Spanish, too. They——oh, man, and she was——I’d never seen anybody like that in Boonville. She——I used to watch her walk by——over to the domes, and I went, ‘Wow!’ (Laughs). So we got talkin’ and eventually I met her parents, and her parents——Dina was born in Brazil, and her father had come from Italy. After World War II, he had come over to Brazil and met Dina’s mom. They got hitched down there, and they had two children down there; Dina was the second, and she was four years old before she came to the country, and they immigrated to this country, not knowing any English. Here’s this guy from Italy, and with a wife who only spoke Portuguese, you know, from Brazil, and they end up in New York state and he’s working, he’s working in a steel mill, and I don’t know if you know, but people from Brazil don’t like the snow a whole lot. It’s cold and miserable——Buffalo, New York, oh, terrible place. Anyway, they finally——Piero, the old man, he had some cousins or something out in Ukiah, and he eventually came out. They had no money. They had nothing. He brought the kids out and had some little menial jobs. But I respected that guy so much——he finally ended up with a janitorial business, and they worked really hard, and they raised three kids, and from coming here and not knowing any English at all, they really did something. I used to love to go over and visit ’em because they’d speak Portuguese in the house. And the mom, Irece,——what a cook——I’d go over there and just eat and smile (laughs), and they’d be talkin’ away in Portuguese; it’s a beautiful language. And pretty soon, though, they’d get mad at each other——they’re very hot-tempered kind of people. When they got really mad they’d start waving the forks and the knives and start talking in Italian——man! (Laughs). Then I knew——whoo——look out! Man! I just tried to keep smilin’ (everyone laughs). Dina’s parents were real traditional type folks, and when I wanted to marry Dina I figured I better go ask——ask the parents for her hand in marriage, you know. So I go over there——I got lunch first, I made sure I got lunch first——and after lunch I said, ‘Well, Piero, Irece, I have something to ask you; I’d like to marry Dina.’ And the old man looks at me like this, and he smiles like this——(Rainbow demonstrates)——and then he says, ‘That’s a-good, but I wanna fifteen ships.’ Curtis: He want what? Rainbow: Yeah, that’s what I went——‘What? You want fifteen ships?’ and then he says, ‘No, no, I want fifteen ships.’ And I go, ‘Boats, you want boats, Piero;’I figured this is the bride price, (laughs) some old Italian thing, and he wants boats. I don’t know from boats. And I go, ‘Piero, you want a bunch of boats,’ and he says, ‘No, testa dura,’——he always called me testa dura. He says, ‘No, I want fifteen ships and two camels.’ So finally I realized he wanted sheep and camels! (Much laughter). Deaon: Oh! Rainbow: And he laughs, because it was like a joke, but I remembered, and so on our wedding day we rented the whole fairgrounds——the whole place——we locked the front gates so the drunks wouldn’t come in over from the bar; a few di;, they jumped the fence and——but that was fine; we wanted to throw a big party. We had three hundred people there, and it was just a great day and wonderful day, and we were partying along. I got Piero——the old man——up there on stage, and I started telling the story about the bride price and everything. I’d gotten my friend, Kevin, from Yorkville to bring fifteen sheep down there that day. So I’m telling this story——we looked into renting camels, but you had to go to Sacramento, and they would cost too much; so I gave him two cigarettes——he smoked (laughs). So I said, ‘And here are your two Camels, and here’s the fifteen sheep!’ I whistled, and Kevin herded all these sheep out in the middle. And everyone is dressed up for this wedding, and then it’s like ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Things are flying, and sheep are running all over the place; that’s what that one picture is; where all the sheep are all ganged up. (Indicates photo). Curtis: Oh, yeah. Rainbow: I just loved it, yeah, yeah. The old man really liked that——I could tell——because he says, ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ (Laughs). Whenever he liked somethin’ that’s what he’d say. He was a nasty old guy and——but, you know, we had——he had a certain grudging respect for me, I think, and I certainly respected him. Even though we were way different people; like he came from two different cultures, and he had made it in this country, and he really believed in like——this system of doing things. And I came from this white suburban upper-middle-class scene where I’d seen all the money; I’d seen all that stuff, grown up around it, and I knew that it really——that’s really not gonna make it——it’s not the way to do things, it didn’t seem like to me. So we were kinda going in different directions, and I know that Dina grew up with that. She always wanted to get ahead, and she’s such a hard worker, and she was the one, really, who I built that house for. Maybe we’ll have a picture of the house in there. (Gestures to pile of photographs). And the house is all made out of wood from the land. I feel really lucky that I was able to get that piece of land. About fifteen years ago I saw land prices going up; I’d always been renting, and I went, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’ And that little piece of land with the old homestead and the orchard and the meadow was not existent, so… Curtis: How long have you been married? Rainbow: Ten years, and now I’m not. Anyway—— Curtis:——don’t want to get into that—— Rainbow:——well, yeah, maybe another time. Anyway, I got this brushy, logged-over piece of ground that didn’t have a level place on it, and I kept stumbling through the brush and trippin’ over these logs——they left all these logs when they last logged it in like the ’50s, and in those days it wasn’t worth it to log ones that were too small and stuff. So they left them, and I went, ‘Oh, my gosh. This is great; I could maybe build a house out of this.’ And sure enough, we moved a mill there, and we yarded up those logs. It was so satisfying to make your own house outta your wood from your own land——and involved in the process from the get-go. And I really——I don’t know, getting a piece of land was interesting too, because it was like——oh, now I own all these bushes, they’re mine, every little birdie, every rock is mine. What an odd concept, and I had to think about it a lot and had to think, is this a place for somebody to live? What’s the best possible use for this land? Probably the best possible use for this land is to let it sit for a couple hundred years. But I had to feel like I’m trying to put back something to the land, and it’s hard to do because we take, take, take so much all the time. And I hope you guys think about that because we’re running out of stuff to take. Curtis: Could you tell me what a toilet——what is it, a toilet bowl float——what’s that? Rainbow: (Laughs) Well, I got some in the house. I know this guy who runs a junkyard down in Windsor, and I used to always go by there to see if he had any cool junk, and sure enough, one day, he says, ‘Well, these guys just came, and they dropped a truckload of copper,’ and I went, ‘Oh, well.’ And he sold it to me at scrap price——it’s this big copper pipe, two-inch pipe, and then a whole bunch of half-inch pipe, and I realized, ‘Wow, I could make a railing for all my stairs out of this copper pipe,’ and so I did. And then the newel posts, the wooden posts that are at the base of each landing of stairs——they call ‘em newel posts——you know, usually they have some doo-dah, goo-ga thingy sticking off the top of it, and I thought and I thought, and well, what’s good with this copper railing, and finally I realized: ‘Wow, toilet bowl floats are copper, and they look kinda cool’. So I got all these different sized copper toilet bowl floats——I got one from Mexico that a guy brought back from Yelapa; he was swimming in the ocean, found it. Maria: From where? Rainbow: Yelapa, south of Puerto Vallarta? Yeah, well, anyway, it’s a Mexican toilet bowl float, and it’s different. It’s cool. I like it a lot. Deaon: So, what is a toilet bowl float? (Laughter). Rainbow: It goes in the tank of your toilet, you know that tank that goes behind that holds the water that flushes everything (laughter). And there’s this little device in there, and it’s a ball, and they used to be made out of copper——most of them are plastic now—— Deaon:——Oh, yeah—— Rainbow:——that it raises up——it floats on the water and raises up——it’s connected to a lever——raises up and goes down, and once it’s raised up high enough, it shuts off a little valve so no more water can come in. Maria: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Rainbow—— Rainbow: That’s it?!?!?!?! Maria:——for talking with us. Rainbow: You’re cutting me off?!?!?! (Laughter). We just started! Maria: No… Rainbow: Oh, man. (Laughter). Deaon: Thanks, though. Maria: Thank you very much. Rainbow: Hey, well, it was great. We’ll have to do this again sometime. Deaon: Definitely. |
