My Best Friend

 

Have you ever had a best friend who was always by your side? A friend who never asked questions about where you were going or how you were to get there, they just tagged along? A friend who never complained about your bad moods or your choice of friends or your bad breath when you forgot to brush your teeth in the morning?

Dosti was that friend of mine. He was given to me by a guy who couldn't keep him. He was the first dog I had ever shared my life with. He was the kind of dog that understood when I talked with him. No need to give commands.

Dosti was a small bearded collie type mutt with long black and white dreads. About 2 years old he was super smart and we connected right away. He went with me almost everywhere. I never put him on a leash and when he needed to go out to do his business I would just open the door to our apartment which was just a block to the beach and he would go run and come home in an hour or two. I never worried until one day he didn't come back. I went to the pound to find him behind bars. They charged me more money than I had to get him back. I borrowed money from my room mate and took him home. A few days later it happened again. They were on to him. I had no money to pay back my friend or more money to get him out of the pound and they had told me the charges would double if they picked him up again.

I was in tears. I couldn't leave him in the pound. I made my way back to the dog jail. I walked in quickly past the front desk and into the area where the dogs where incarerated. There he was in the second to last cell. He freaked out when he saw me. I noticed the door to the cage had no lock so I slid open the door, grabbed him and lifted him up to the top of the tall the fencing. He pulled him self up and jumped over to the other side. I quickly walked back out, said thank you and darted out the door. There he was waiting for me out front. I shouted, “RUN!” We both took off running to the road and I stuck out my thumb. He was free and I was an accomplice to a doggy jailbreak.

After that I moved to a hundred acre ranch where he could roam all he wanted and was safe from the dog police.

In the 1970's hitchhiking was a thing and I felt safer with a dog in tow. If I had to go into a store or restaurant he would patiently wait outside for me.

Hitchhiking was always a dangerous activity. I needed to keep my spidey senses on high alert. On one occasion I was hitching to my brother's house in Los Gatos over the curvy mountain road. A single guy stopped to give me a ride. I hesitated but decided to take the ride. Dosti jumped into the back seat and I sat up front. The driver took off the first exit heading into the mountains. I got very nervous and when he slowed to stop at a stop sign, I opened the door and Dosti jumped over my shoulder and out the door before I even jumped out. He knew it wasn't safe and so did I.

We traveled in a van across the country together for a summer adventure. When we had to fly home I was forced to buy and put him in a crate. The airline loaded him into the luggage hold.

At the airport in San Francisco, I found the crate in the oversized cargo area and ran to him. He was crying and when I opened the door to the crate he darted to the doors outside. I ran after him. When he got outside he jumped all over me and we headed South to Santa Cruz.

I was going to Junior College and he couldn't be on campus so he stayed on the ranch waiting for my return. I took the bus and this one day when I got off the the bus and started walking home Brian and Barry, two of the guys who lived on the ranch, pulled the old Ford panel van up to me and jumped out. Running up to me with very concerned expressions on their faces they held me as they told me that Dosti had fallen asleep under the tire of Brian's old truck. The ignition didn't work so he just let off the break and coasted down the hill popping the clutch to get it started. They covered him with a blanket waiting for me to return. Dosti was dead.

My body couldn't stop shaking. He was the love of my life. At 19 I had already lost both parents. My brother had his new family and I had Dosti. He was my family. My best friend. I had no idea what to do with myself. After seeing his limp body under the upper house, I ran down to my house and threw myself on the bed. I stayed there for three days. I couldn't face the world without him. This was way worse than loosing my parents because they had made their own choices to drink until they died. Dosti was counting on me to take care of him. Somehow, I failed.

I had another dog I had picked up as a puppy but he was dumber than a pile of bricks and he died because he ran in front of four galloping horses. I didn't shed a tear. I just missed Dosti.

 Who doesn't love a sticky bun?

I have a ton of funny stories and here is an old one from my bakery back in the 80s.

I made the best sticky buns in town. I had a problem though. The name. NO one wanted to say sticky bun! Sounded weird I suppose. Like a sticky butt. So I renamed them the German word Schnecken. Well, no one could pronounce that! I would get folks coming up to the counter asking for "those buns there" or "I want one of those buns with the nuts" or just pointing to the tray asking for "one of those". I thought it was hysterical. No one would say sticky buns... I changed it for the the third time calling them honey buns and then my customers thought I had a new recipe or something. I just couldn't win... 

But whatever you call them, they are delicious. I make an orange sweet yeasted dough. The filling consists of brown sugar and spices. Then you roll them up and place them on top of a nice thick layer of heated brown sugar, butter, honey and pecans. When you turn the pan over while hot the sugar goo pours over the sides making a sticky, gooey, crunchy, wonderfully sweet and spicy sticky bun! 

When I teach these decadent breakfast treats and I take them out of the oven, I must quickly turn the pans over to release the hot sugary sauce. The students gather around the table to watch and when they see the hot melted sugar create the glaze over the swirled dough, they gasp, cheer, oo and ah, and I have to cut one up immediately for them to taste. 

This is the reason I love to teach baking.

My first Acid Trip 1967

 

“Hey, what's in this joint?”

“Acapulco gold” was the reply.

“Are you completely ripped?”

“No, why?” was not the answer I expected.

Carol and I wanted to hitch up to the city to see The Doors, Thirteenth Floor Elevator and Moby Grape at the Avalon Ballroom. I told my mom that I was sleeping over at Carol's house and she told her mom she was at mine. We had the entire night to do as we pleased.

I dressed up for the occasion and my mother never questioned why. I walked out of the house wearing a blue pin-stripped mini dress with my knee high black leather boots, rings on every finger and some long beaded necklaces. Feeling great and excited to see my favorite bands, I hitched to Carol's and we made it up to the city in record time.

The Drogstore Cafe, on the corner of Haight and Masonic, was a great place for burgers and hippies. We went there for dinner before heading down to the Avalon on Van Ness and Sutter Streets. We both ordered a burger and a coke. The Drogstore looked like an antique apothecary with large dark brown wooden booths that were filled with hippies sipping tea or coffee, eating fries or salads, and talking about the world. The air didn't smell like food though it smelled like patchouli. We slid into a long table with a few others and began chowing down on our burgers.

As I popped a fry into my mouth, a cute long haired hippie cat came and sat next to me. I blushed. I thought he might be hungry and want some of my burger or something. He just sat and stared at me for a few seconds and then spoke, “Hey chick, I am going to put some purple Owsley in your coke, ok?” I laughed thinking he was funny. His smile was infectious and I wanted to know him. I watched as he stirred my coke with a straw. After that he quickly jumped up and ran off to another table. I didn't even get his name.

Thumbs out, ready to go to the concert, a VW van stopped with two cats who were headed to the Avalon. Everything was groovy. They offered us a joint and we passed it around a few times before arriving at Van Ness Ave. The effects from the joint surprised me as I began to get more and more stoned.

By the time we walked to the Avalon the line of hippies was running down the side of the building. The Avalon was upstairs and the entrance was on Sutter St. Since we were there early enough, we fell into line about a half a block down from the entrance. Carol and the two guys leaned on giant plate glass window. I stood staring at all these people I didn't know.

“Where was I?” kept going through my mind. Nothing looked right. I didn't recognize anything. Walking up and down the line of stoned hippies, the sidewalk began to move. Undulating up and down, up and down. The walls and giant windows began to breath. I ran up to one of the concert goers and shouted, “where am I?”

The obvious response was, “The Avalon Ballroom”, but I also heard things like, “San Francisco and planet Earth.”

Each time my response was “Yeah, I know but where am I?

I kept going from one to another asking the same question, “Where am I?”

None of the answers were working for me. Carol gathered me up and me dragged me back in line with her. I leaned on the big window and suddenly it shattered. Tons of sharp broken glass rained down on me. I crumpled into a heap screaming. Just as fast as it happened it stopped. I looked up and there was no glass only a few people standing around me asking me if I was ok.

I stood up and looked at Carol, something was very wrong. I had never been this high from a joint.

As we walked into the dark romantic ballroom with it's red flocked fleur de lis wallpaper, the paisley patterned carpet began to swim on the floor. Floating over it I entered the ballroom were black lights and painted faces glowed and swayed in the purple light. It was the most beautiful scene, like glistening fairies dancing in the night. The oil-and-water light show undulated colors on the wall behind the stage.

The music blasted through the room and my body began to move and sway without my permission. I had no idea who was playing but I was hijacked by the sounds and lights. Dancing and spinning, swaying and singing, I was flying high.

I decided to go to the bathroom as I around for my friend Carol. I entered the long hallway leading to the women's room and the line was to the door. “Never enough toilets for women!” I spouted. Laughter fill the air. I leaned on the fuzzy wall next to a tall chick with long blond hair. We both smiled. As I looked forward, on the opposite wall was a floor to ceiling mirror that stretched across the entire wall. Surrounded by a thick gold gilded frame it looked like the mirror from the book, Through the looking glass. As I stared into it, I saw wonderland appear in all of it's sparkling colors. I thought it was time for me to join Alice and I walked up to the mirror fully expecting to walk right through. It was a huge shock when I bumped into the glass and realized I was hallucinating. All the women laughed and started saying things like, “Man, is she high!” and “Far out! I want what she is on!” Embarrassed, I told them what I saw and stepped back in line.

The night went on like this for hours. The music pulsed and pounded in my ears. I was so high I never knew who was playing all I knew is that I had to dance. I felt free.

Eventually, I found Carol and she had hooked up with some gals we knew from Haight Street and they said we could stay at their crash pad.

When the lights came on, I noticed the walls were intact and the floors were calm. I was still high and life looked different somehow but when we got to the crash pad, Carol reminded me of the cute guy who said he was going to put acid in my coke not just any acid, Purple Owsley was the best acid ever made by the street chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III.