Young Punks Running the Town (reprised)

I’ve come to an awareness in these last few years, since I’ve started writing these little tid bits of my mountain side memories; in the late 1960s and early 70s, we were just a bunch of young punks who started some businesses in downtown Los Gatos and we just sort of took over the whole town. We opened places like Mountain Charley’s Restaurant and Saloon, The Grog and Sirloin, the ubiquitous Porch, selling everything from Godiva Chocolates to Tiffany lamps and broadleaved palms, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” with its crafts, cards and whatever sorts of art they could get their hands on. Old Town was just burgeoning over with leather works of all sorts, shiny ceramics off potter’s wheels and hand made jewelry embedded in a warm atmosphere of mellow guitar music and quirky poetry readings. The little town of Los Gatos was just boiling over with energy and exuberance to the point where some of the real old timers were often heard bemoaning the fact that we were turning the place into another “CARMEL.”

But, the point to be made here is that it was hard to find an owner or operator of all these enterprises that was more than thirty years old, for that matter, even twenty five years of age. And there was a certain vain of commonality in that all of the cute, young girls, in their floor sweeping “granny” dresses and long locks of hippy hair, had all been seamstresses for the rock and roll bands at one time or another, and all the shaggy boys in their bib overalls and handle bar mustaches had carpenter’s belts always at the ready for the next neighborhood barn raising even if their day job was in a big city law firm or accountant’s office. It was a very unique time . . .l

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