Messages about/to Peter Troxell

April 22, 2004

The hippie days

Dear Diana,

A beautiful man was Peter. I loved him so much then, that this great person and personality would deign to call me friend. We met through Linda Berman Hall. That was about 1970. We shared a cabin in Brookdale with Diana, Joe Hudgens, Joan Felt, Bonnie Applebaum, Peter Schnitzler, Paul Vorwerk, and others who came to be with Peter. It was there I began to practice Palmistry because the house had only occult books, no TV, no radio. Peter read to us Alice In Wonderland. What a voice. He sat up on a high bed smoking Schvar shag tobacco and we, his followers sat entranced at his feet.

Peter was a hippie then,a "drop out". He garnered surplus food for the house. He met and managed the Olganookie band, that gang of easterners who shared the big house across the orchard from the red cabin. We smoked pot and dropped acid, danced and howled at the moon. We supported the McGovern candidacy.

Peter was our wedding photographer. The album he made for us is art. My children have turned those leafs so often that the book has fallen apart.

I remember the day Adriana was born. Diana suffered a lengthy birthing. I can still see her with her nut brown tummy sunning on the deck.

There was a pool on Alba Rd with green water. Then we hiked across a narrow valley, across a fallen log to the pool where nude bathing was the norm. We had better bodies then. Memories overwhelm. Love you Peter.

Mike Lawler