For the occasion of a small memorial gathering for our dear friend “Big NanC”, Todd wrote this reminiscence.
I loved Big NanC. She was the adult among a bunch of adolescents stumbling towards actual maturity. For me she was a model about how to embrace a radical lifestyle, and not actually fail because you couldn’t keep shit together.
Some people in the circus saw her as a buzz kill, a person who challenged their fun with “Clench – a – Wench” and insisting on limiting the expression of stupid sexist views. But, I recall her spending hours with the LA clowns laughing at their jokes.
My most salient memory of NanC was on the Navarro River in Mendocino County. We were camped in the Monsanto owned redwoods. All or most of us had spent the previous day tripping on Owsley windowpane acid, stark naked, and swimming and floating in the Navarro River. It was a wonderful day.
But next day the Monsanto rent-a-cops showed up and said there were complaints about “naked people” from the day before. Les and I intercepted the cops before they could go too far into our camp, or down to the river. “No! There had been zero nudity here! Nothing to see hear”
And about the time we had just about convinced these two amateur gum-shoes that all was pure as the driven snow in our camp, here comes NanC, walking up the embankment from the river.
She rose up above the embankment like the sun rising in the west. First her pleasant, yet intense eyes, followed by her bare shoulders and then all of NanC wearing nothing but her smile and a pair of tennis shoes.
The cops said something to the effect of “okay you guys are outta here.”
Les and I started yelling and making a fuss. The alarm sounded other circusers came up and started yelling. The two Monsanto rent-a-cops retreated to their truck. We, of the circus started to run around the truck, yelling and whooping, like attacking hordes. Clearly alarmed at this spectacle of a dozen dissheveled circusers menacing them in their company truck – the get on the radio.
Not long after a real cop pulls up. A CHP gets out, draws his gun, if I am not misrembering, and tells us to clear out. “You have until sundown to be out of Mendocino County!”
His line was so good, it almost made it worth losing our primo camping spot.
NanC, per usual, was unperturbed.
We gathered up the stragglers who gone into Mendocino town, and broke camp. We ended up in Sonoma that night, at a place not near as nice, but still pretty okay.
NanC taught me a lot about growing up that summer. I shall always be indebted to her for being a good role model, I will miss her.
Big love to Big NanC !!!
peace
Todd
aka Zeke Raffleshcnauster,
aka Mangle the Magnificent