photo of Tommy Hall from the Austin Chronicle

[Gerry Storm]

I heard a Tommy Hall story around this time (early '70's). He, like many
residents of the H/A, was augmenting his income dealing a little pot. Hed
had ripped off some guys who had fronted him pot, kept the money. When they
tried to collect he came up with a plea in which he identified himself and
his immediate friends as the spiritual heirarchy of the hippy movement. "You
have to support us," he told them, "in the same manner as the Indians
support their holymen. We are doing the heavy thinking to assure the
survival of the soul of the movement."

Apparently it worked. He didn't get killed or even beat up...but no one in
their right mind ever fronted him any weed again. I few years later he
probably would have had a much less tolerant result as the biz turned into a
real biz and got hard.
G
----- Original Message -----
From: "gilbert shelton" <shelton@noos.fr>
To: <austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 7:31 AM
Subject: Re: photo of Tommy Hall from the Austin Chronicle


> The last time I saw Tommy Hall was sometime in the early to middle 70's
> in a supermarket on Haight Street by Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
> I didn't recognize him with his beard and scruffy look, even after he
> asked me, "Hey, do you know a guy named Gilbert Shelton?"  After he told
> me who he was (I still didn't know how to answer his question) he told
> me how great things were now in the Haight-Ashbury, with big parties and
> live concerts every weekend in the park ( I had seen no evidence of such
> a thing even though I lived in the neighborhood too at the time).  We
> didn't talk about philosophy.  I think maybe I had told him a long time
> previously that I wasn't looking for a guru.  He and Clementine lived
> next door to me when I lived in an apartment at 907 W. 22nd Street in
> '63-'64.  They, and Claude Allen, were in the building to the west of
> me;  Wayne and Honor Johnson and also Bob Finnel were in the building to
> the east (Finnel died of heart problems five or so years ago).  Bill and
> Pat Helmer and their kids lived on the corner to the east, two or three
> houses down.  Upstairs from me, where David Dean had previously lived,
> was Jesse Purifoy and his family.  Jesse was a mathematician who later,
> while teaching at some other university, used the school computer (as I
> heard) to make a fortune on the stock market.  They fired him when they
> found out, of course, but what did he care?  It's a great story, whether
> it's true or not.  H. Ross Perot made his fortune in a similar way,
> except he used computers belonging to the government of the United
> States, that is to say, YOU AND ME THE TAXPAYERS, which is not so great
> a story.
>
> Gilbert
>
>
> Michael Eisenstadt wrote:
>
> >                 Name: tommy.jpg
> >    tommy.jpg    Type: JPEG Image (image/jpeg)
> >             Encoding: base64
>
>
>
>