Jubilee Hitchhiker (70 page)

It had been a dozen years since they had last seen each other, and the boy had become a man. They killed the six-pack, trading stories. Richard started tossing the empties out into the ocean. Christopher objected. “I said, ‘Hey, that's not cool. What are you doing?' And he said, ‘I've picked up so many beer cans I deserve to throw some back if I want.' Strange man.”

 

Richard Brautigan fishing a riffle on the Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana, ca. 1980. Acrylic painting by Greg Keeler.

 

Lincoln Elementary School, Eugene, Oregon. Sixth grade class photo, 1947. Richard Brautigan is seated behind a desk at the far right. Always marching to a different drummer, Richard is one of only two students not wearing a Native American headband.

 

Senior class photo,
The Eugenean
, Eugene High School Yearbook, 1953. Perhaps the only photo ever taken of Richard Brautigan wearing a necktie.

 

Shack built by Harry Taylor, ca. 1930. Richard Brautigan lived here for five months in 1956 in the care of the Barton family after his release from the mental ward of the Oregon State Hospital. It was his last residence in Eugene. Photo by Quintin Barton.

 

Richard Brautigan reading from
The Octopus Frontier
at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach (San Francisco), August 8, 1960. Photo by “Edgren.” Courtesy: Greg Miller.

 

January, 1965: Richard Brautigan and Janice Meissner in their apartment above Boegerhausen Hardware at 2830 California Street, San Francisco. Photograph © Erik Weber.

 

January, 1965: Richard Brautigan posing by the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square Park, San Francisco. First cover shoot for
Trout Fishing in America
. Photograph © Erik Weber.

 

Richard Brautigan reading Michael McClure's play,
The Beard
, aloud after dinner at Erik and Loie Weber's Geary Boulevard apartment, March, 1965.

 

Richard Brautigan taking notes in the military pet cemetery at the Presidio, San Francisco, for his short story, “Homage to Rudi Gernreich / 1965.” May 23, 1965. Photograph © Erik Weber.

 

Price Dunn, “the confederate general from Big Sur” (bottom) and Richard Brautigan (top of ladder), on a trip Richard made with Janice and the Webers to escape a tidal wave which never materialized. Mouth of the Carmel River, Carmel, California. May, 1965. Photograph © Erik Weber.

 

San Francisco, March 24, 1967. Outtake from the cover shoot for
Trout Fishing in America
. Richard Brautigan and Michaela Blake-Grand cracking up while posing in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square Park.

 

Making music in the McGuanes' kitchen, Deep Creek, Montana, August, 1972. Clockwise from Lower Left: Jimmy Buffett (with guitar), Bob Junsch, Marian Hjortsberg, unknown woman in doorway, Mary Chatham, Richard Brautigan, Gatz Hjortsberg (partly concealed by wall) and Tom McGuane (on mandolin). Photograph © Erik Weber.