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thought of as “the Laurel and Hardy of East Palo Alto.” “Here, take the heavy end.” “No, goddamm it! You take it.” “No, no, no, no, oh! Lookout for that—” Then McQueen heard Garcia play some blues. McQueen said, “I never heard a white man with . . . soul like you got, man. Come on, I’m going to take you around.” Very quickly, Garcia was a comfortable citizen of East Palo Alto, and with its allied party circles, including a bunch of guys who lived on the other side of Palo Alto near the Stanford University campus at a rooming house called the Chateau.
    The Chateau sheltered a bizarre collection of young black and white bohemian proto-artists, musicians, and weirdos, and parties there more closely resembled a Fellini film than a campus sock hop. A visit in 1961 typically included being greeted by the nonresident Joe Novakovich, a lunatic vagabond known to wear a hangman’s noose for a necktie, who happened to be missing half his fingers and consequently insisted on shaking hands with everyone. Or one might meet John “Page” Browning, who had just left the U.S. Marine Corps equipped with a bullwhip and a double set of fast-draw handguns, or John “the Cool” Winter, whose favorite occupation, when not playing Lord and Master of Chance at the kitchen poker games, was to sit in his black cloth-lined room reading flagellant novels while sipping white port and cherry Kool-Aid. John F. Kennedy had been in office for a month and the rising energy of the new decade could already be felt, but these lads were ahead of their time in many ways, bentness perhaps foremost. The gathering of February 20, 1961, had a particular edge to it, caused oddly enough by a visitor, an actor named Gary who had wandered about the party relating intimations of imminent disaster to all who cared to listen. He’d finally narrowed down his premonitions to four guys who ignored him and climbed into a Studebaker Golden Hawk to scare up some pot or go home, whichever.
    In the backseat was Paul Speegle, who three years before at the age of fifteen had quit high school to paint and liked to observe, as he extinguished a candle, “That’s the way I’m going to go.” Flamboyant wearing a cape and carrying a silver-tipped walking stick, he was a prominent figure in the Palo Alto art scene, working on sets at the Commedia Dell’arte Theater as well as making jewelry and painting. Next to him sat Alan Trist, a tweedy Anglo-American student spending a year’s pre-Cambridge holiday with his father, then on sabbatical as a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. Just before leaving the Chateau, Speegle and Trist had been acting out what Trist later called “death charades,” Paul in his dramatic black cloak fencing with Alan, who was using a fireplace poker for a sword. Their driver was the Chateau house manager, Lee Adams, a smooth-talking black man whose taste for expensive suits and Alfa Romeos had earned him the nickname “Reginald Van Gleason,” after a suave television character played by Jackie Gleason. Jerry Garcia rode shotgun next to him.
    Lee had a heavy foot on the accelerator and Speegle encouraged it as they drove down toward campus from their start on the first ridge of the coastal range between Palo Alto and the Pacific Ocean. The grade was gentle and the evening pleasant, but as they passed the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, there was one wicked curve. The Hawk was cruising at around 90 mph when it slammed into the curve and clipped the chatter bars, fishtailed, and took off like a fast but clumsy bird. Whirling end over end, it ejected three of its passengers before landing in the field next to the hospital. Speegle remained in the car and died, the smash reputedly breaking every bone in his body but those of his hands.
    Lee’s abdomen was laid open and Trist suffered a compression fracture of the back that would cost him some height. Garcia limped away with a broken