Jack Snow, Palm Springs, and Chuckie Manson

“Hippie is all yesterday’s headline bullshit.” –Allen Ginsberg

Snow and Elizabeth Montgomery

Sherri was from Florida and smoked Marlboro Lights. She was from a very small town–a coastal town so humid that it called for tube tops and short shorts that barely concealed the beads of sweat dripping down her hairless legs. This was an existence of double-wide trailers, crack cocaine, titty bars, barely legible tattoos, and a life philosophy of “I need my shit.” 

Despite her dubious upbringing, I liked Sherri, so when she asked me to house-sit over a weekend in Palm Springs I obliged because I wanted to soak up some rays by her pool and maybe even party with her degenerate neighbor, who just happened to be a semi-famous game show host (now cancelled) from Vancouver that didn’t have many friends and was adamant about global warming denial. A relaxing way to commune with myself. 

“You can smoke pot inside, but there is no internet so I’m not sure you’re gonna make it out of here with your mental health intact,” she briefed. “And keep it mellow…no Miles Davis crap.” (I didn’t get the reference either, perhaps she was intimating his infamous heroin habit?) 

There was, however, a television from what looked to be the Nixon era, so I decided to embrace the nostalgia tapestry and settled on a show called Bewitched from 1969. LA Rams receiver Jack Snow just happened to be a guest on this episode, and Snow was magically transported (by a witch, of course) in this fictional world from the gridiron to a department store where high jinks ensues. When informed he was now in New York he looked dumbfounded. 

“I was just playing the Cowboys in Dallas, Texas,” he said, “and was running a down and out pattern.” (Snow was known to have excellent hands, and his son, J.T. inherited those trusty mitts as he was a 6-time gold glover in the big leagues)

There was also a Rosemary’s Baby reference in this episode which was a sobering moment as director Roman Polanski’s wife would be murdered roughly six months after it aired. A group of brainwashed, hippie dope fiends snuffed out her and her child’s life over an unrelated dispute between Charles Manson and Byrds producer Terry Melcher, who just happened to be Doris Day’s son. The so-called end of the “Summer of Love” thanks to a drug-addled criminal and a bored Beach Boy (Dennis Wilson’s solo project left much to be desired) who just simply wanted to fuck mud-caked hippies proves that there truly is only one relevant subject–the relation of beings to time. 

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