Peter Demma



R: So we have to repeat the Q&A we did before which is, where you were born.



I was born in Oakland, California and I think I went more-or-less immediately from there 

to Redwood City where--I lived at the foot of a hill above Redwood City on which there 

was a big cross at the top, and there used to be Easter rituals held there each year. But for 

the rest of the year it was vacant. As a little kid I used to get to go all around this huge, 

huge hill with not a house in site, to see that entire hill covered with grass, and to go 

down on that grass in a giant grass sled that my father built, off which I fell when it ran 

over me. I think thatÕs probably when my mother decided that was it, sheÕs no longer 

going to be married to this alcoholic, motorcyclist, crazy Dane. Close scrapes, man--how 

did I last this long? YouÕd be surprised at the places IÕve been and how I survived. Lord 

only knows I must have a mission. ThatÕs what I thought. IÕve been thinking that more 

and more.



R: You thought you had a mission when you were in school?



Yeah, I always thought I had a mission, even when I was three years old. Hah. What 

makes a person like that? Like the Blues Brothers or something.



R: One prefers to think that thereÕs a mission.



Yeah, itÕs a nice belief anyway.



R: Public schools in Redwood City, California?



Then I went to--after my mother separated from my father, this was actually after my 

sister had just been born, and she went to live with her folks in Berkeley, and thatÕs 

where I grew up, in Berkeley, first and second grade ages. I used to run around the streets 

of old Berkeley. We called it old, but it was old. It would be old to anyone. It was a lot of 

fun. We were terrorists.



R: WeÕre talking about 1940s now.



Mm-hmm. I went to the movies twice a week, Saturday and Sunday at least. I was really 

really programmed by all those movies. I thought I was John Wayne for many  years. It 

was just recently that I finally had to admit to myself that I really wasnÕt John Wayne at 

all. ThatÕs really fooling yourself all those years.



R: So public schools in Berkeley then, all the way?



I went to a convent in my first and second year. Nuns.



R: First and second year of--?



Grammar school. And then in my first and second year of high school I went to a Jesuit 

college prep in San Jose, (Bellerman?) And then I transferred to Menlo Atherton and 

graduated there in 1955.



R: Your mother was moving around these towns?



No, she remarried. ThatÕs why my name is a Sicilian name and not a Danish name.



R: What was the Danish name?



Huderbol. It was a cockamamie irrepreducible, first-time use name that my grandfather, 

who wanted to change his name from Hanson--there were very very, far too many 

Hansons per capita in Denmark as there are, say, Changs in Peking. 



R: So you were Peter Huderbol for some years and then you became Peter Demma--



Can you imagine that little kid out in the fucking play area, "HeÕs a butterball, 

butterball."



R: So your mother remarried and--



Then made my name Demma, a Sicilian name, and then no one made jokes about me 

anymore.



R: And then they moved through these different towns, like Menlo Park--



Yeah, my mother and stepfather, we all moved to Redwood City, and we moved from 

one house to another, his relatives, until we had our own house, which was suburban, 

Redwood City, just outside of downtown. 



R: Now tell me how you got from high school there to Istanbul.



I joined the Air Force.



R: Ah-ha. After graduating from high school.



Yeah. I put in some time at Lockheed and in Marine Reserve and knocked about different 

odd jobs, and then finally went to a school, Syracuse, New York, University of Syracuse, 

to learn Romanian. ThatÕs what the Air Force wanted me to do, so I could keep track of 

what Romania was doing, which was my job after I graduated, and I stayed in Turkey for 

three and a half years doing that kind of work.



R: Listening to Romanian broadcasting in Turkey or something?



Yeah, along with other shenanigans. 



R: Yeah. ThatÕs where you began your life-long association with dope.



Ah. I had no idea what anything besides alcohol was. I drank enough alcohol at a sitting 

to get a psychedelic experience. Well by that time pretty much on the floor, you know, 

and I knew what I wanted but it wasnÕt working. If there was only something else--we 

would say this to one another. Heavy drinkers we were. And outside in a taxi cab with 

these ladies and they passed this big spliff and it had some hashish in it that was like 

TNT. At least thatÕs the effect it had on me. And I was an Anslinger baby, you know. I 

believed that if you smoked a joint youÕd get syphilis, I mean, it was just bad, it was the 

last thing youÕd want to do. 



R: This taxi cab was in Istanbul? 



Yeah.



R: Now this is sometime in the 1950s?



Fifty-eight, fifty-nine. And then 1961 I came back to California, saw that my sister had 

taken up with a fun-loving crowd that more-or-less was living in Perry Lane area in back 

of the Stanford Shopping Center, and it was through her that I met Neal Cassidy, and we 

struck up a friendship that IÕll never forget. 



R: He was living there on Perry Lane or hanging out there?



Well he never really stayed in one place very much at that time, but heÕd always light 

down on Saturday to go out to the horse races.



R: Was that Ken Kesey and the Pranksters there or some other group?



Yeah. They werenÕt called pranksters. They were Ken Kesey and friends. And I got to 

meet everyone that was part of that circle and adjacent circles.



R: So Neal Cassidy meeting was then in 1962 or 3, something like that?



Yeah, 1961. Yep. Then I shipped out in the Merchant Marine. While I was sailing on one 

of the voyages my sister got arrested. It was the largest dope bust in Woodside. Now see 

if I am quoted and this goes out, this will--



R: This goes to you. This is going to be transcribed in a word doc and itÕs going to be 

given to you and thatÕs the end of it...



And IÕm the editor. Good. 



R: We all have this problem. Hard to edit it for publication.



ItÕs hard to reflect on anything for me, because usually--IÕve always felt that the shadow 

world was a lot more interesting than the straight world, 



R: So there are a lot of shadows in your story, but--



Well things that probably should stay in shadows...



R: ...ItÕs not so much a danger of getting arrested, itÕs more a matter of impugning other 

people whose names are given and telling stories that they donÕt personally want to tell 

yet, or something, right?



Yeah. In my case, IÕve seen things that I said loosely that had to do with my past that IÕd 

find repeated in court by this adversarial * they had where one guy had to win and one 

guy had to lose, and I wasnÕt winning this at all. And there are areas in the courts where 

there are no such things as constitutional rights or anything else. There is an agency that 

could be called a gang of thugs, that is called a gang of thugs, thatÕs the Child Protection 

Service, and because they can get away with murder they do get away with murder. And 

they love winning. They have to win. itÕs either-or. ItÕs not, "Is everybody happy now?" 

kind of deal. And theyÕre certainly not looking at their victims at human resources, you 

know, whether or not they are.



R: So they can make use of rumors...



Oh! Bring it up, doesnÕt have to have any bearing, it has to have no relevance, and if 

someone says, "Well we have it on good authority, Your Honor," then the judge can say, 

"Okay, IÕll accept that." You are amazed. 



R: Well you get to edit this and to black out everything in--I got my FBI file after the 

Freedom of Information Act and it was all blacked out.



All! IÕm sure mine is. Yep.



R: Okay. It was Ken Kesey and friends on Perry Lane and there you met Neal Cassidy 

around 1961 and then IÕm interested in everything from there to Santa Cruz.



Well, Ron Bevert, who was to become my partner with the store, was at the time, a 

couple of years before the store opened, a lieutenant in the army at Fort Ord training 

special training, special infantry or something, and he had a friend also who was in the 

army, another lieutenant, Norman Gurney. Do you know him? YouÕd love him. HeÕs a 

writer, from Kentucky. Anyhow, Ron and I used to do a lot of things together, and I think 

he was very impressed with my sense of mission. I was destined, ordained to have a 

bookstore somewhere. It was written in NapoleonÕs Book of Fate. I donÕt know if youÕre 

aware of the Napoleon Book of Fate. It was an oracle and it was used to read my 

whatever it was, you call, readout from the oracle, that I was to have bookselling as my 

passion, and I just fell for it hook, line and sinker. I thought, well, not only do I really like 

the idea of having a bookstore, but itÕs ordained. ItÕs in the Napoleon Book of Fate. And 

we would go to Big Sur Mineral Springs before it was called Esalen, and get a cabin there 

and a tent. LetÕs see, one I think where we had all gone together was Zen Flesh, Zen 

Bones--again, the name of the guy escapes me. I had just thought of it. Anyhow, he was 

giving a seminar.



R: ** asking you how you got to Santa Cruz, you were, at the time of going, meeting Ron 

Bevert and going to Big Sur, you were still living in Palo Alto.



And had nothing to do with Santa Cruz except coming up to Santa Cruz on mad dashes 

with Neal Cassidy for some reason or another. Driving with Neal is something that would 

only--you would only understand what IÕm talking about if you actually had the 

experience, and then it would really mean something to you dramatically. 



R: Neal Cassidy drove you down and that way you met Ron Bevert, who was stationed in 

Fort Ord?



No. Lauren used to hang out on Perry Lane with all the writers and so on, and IÕd bump 

into him and heÕd come to my house and then weÕd all go together up to the mineral 

springs for whatÕs-his-nameÕs Zen Flesh Zen Bones seminar, and in the hot tub one night 

during that seminar Jim Waltman who was with us suggests, "Why donÕt you have a 

bookstore in--?" By this time Ron Bevert was gonna have a boookstore at one place or 

another, Palo Alto, somewhere, because he liked the idea a lot.



R: Because he was gonna get out of the army.



Uh-huh. They were just about to get out, both he and Gurney. And so he borrowed some 

money from his folks.



R: This is about 1963.



Mm-hmm. And we used to, to follow up on JimÕs suggestion that we should have a 

bookstore in Santa Cruz, because thereÕs a university going there and they probably donÕt 

have much thatÕs very exciting and then thereÕs no ** books. Why donÕt you locate it--?" 

So I had early on determined that my bookstore was gonna be like Trill Harper(?) or City 

Lights or something really hip, you know? And thatÕs one of the reasons the word hip just 

sort of stuck with us when we decided what to name it. The idea was Mort GrocerÕs that 

wrote The Discovery of Neptune. "Why donÕt you call it the Hip Pocket Bookstore?" We 

were all sitting around--



R: So he was on Perry Lane also?



Oh yeah. Many people hung out there. How about Larry McMurtry--all kinds of people. I 

got to meet a lot of people. Anyhow, we just thought that was just a peachy-keen idea and 

Santa Cruz was gonna be the place, we come up to Santa Cruz and I see this old diner 

that had been abandoned and was run by a Yugoslavian not too long ago and just sort of 

gathering dust, used by a Republican campaign or something from time to time but 

otherwise just pretty much vacant. ThatÕs where we were going to have it. We secured 

that and started packing the thing with books. We had enough room for not only a 

bookstore but an art gallery, among other things. And it was one time that Santa Cruz had 

a really decent art gallery where there was a lot of fun and people would enjoy going to. 



R: So how did Ron Boise enter the picture?



Well, I said, "Gee, what should we have for a sign?" to Ron Bevert when we were 

planning to have a bookstore somewhere, and he said, "Look, I know this guy, he said 

heÕs make us one, because he had met Ron Boise prior to my meeting Ron. And so I got 

to meet him, he came up to Santa Cruz, and he says, "Well what--do you have a logo for 

the store?" And I said, "Yeah, our logo says ŌBooks for the ImaginationÕ and it has this 

rune and the rune looks like two figures holding hands. This is the rune for mankind." 

And Ron says, "Well it looks like it represents two figures holding hands. Why donÕt we 

just put original two figures up and that will be your logo?" Sounded great, so we went 

and bought $600 worth of copper and sheets and he put this man and women together up, 

and it had been shown at the first Cabrillo Concert--Cabrillo Music Festival--and people 

were invited from there to attend a rare showing of the original Kama Sutra sculptures 

that were being shown at Vic *Õs Sticky Wicket. The Sticky Wicket was a little proto-hip 

manifestation where the golf link is to the right of Soquel going south, between that and 

the freeway. There used to be a turn-off onto the freeway where you could get off, but 

they shut it down and built this golf link. And so that destroyed the Sticky Wicket. It 

wasnÕt easy to get to anymore, because people used to just drive--



R: A restaurant or cafe or something?



Uh-huh. And itÕs where all the Bohemians would hang out.



R: So proto-hip. So weÕre going a year or two before you started up the bookstore. And 

whatÕs his name?



Vic Jowers, and--Cindy? WeÕll have to check on what her name is. I just have such a 

problem with names. But she should be mentioned. She went off to Australia. She might 

still be around. But anyway--



R: So Ron Boise had already done his Kama Sutra sculptures and they were on display at 

the Sticky Wicket.



Not only that but he had been busted in a big constitutional issue case, First Amendment 

issue, and at the music festival I met his attorneys and Marshall Krauss and his wife 

Martha (Woopie?) and so much magic from that time through 1967, magic magic magic, 

of different kinds. It was so thick. What is it? Is it something that happens to your mind 

where you see things as magical? It was all Lord of the Rings and the Two Towers. 



R: So this is now in 1964, maybe.



1964 we opened and Tony Magy was one of our first employees and Patricia Dunn I 

think her name was. She was our first employee of all. And everything was pretty 

mellow, but then as time went on it was harder and harder to crack the nut and "How are 

we going to pay the rent?" and "IÕm not getting as much..." and thatÕs when I met--Neal 

said, "I have a friend. HeÕs got some money and looking to put it in somewhere here. 

HeÕd like to get involved in this area. IÕll send him up to meet ya." And thatÕs when I met 

Leon. And he says, "Well, maybe I can give you a few ideas," he says. "Why donÕt you 

do something like what theyÕre doing up in the City right now, a free speech night?" 

"Gee, thatÕs a great idea. Okay, letÕs do it." And so we had our little (Don Alatrape?) 

circle started and it grew really big. WeÕd meet in the gallery. It grew so big that we had 

to move out of the store and find a building somewhere to meet. 



R: It was a program of once-a-week presentations of an author or something?



Every Friday night IÕd put in bright fluorescent letters in the window, poster paint, what 

the subject was going to be, and one day the subject was marijuana, and it was in big 

letters, I was just--you know how these fluorescent paints, when set off against one 

another, they just kind of vibrate, you know, well the whole window was done like that. 

"TonightÕs subject will be MARIJUANA!" And thatÕs before anyone besides ethnics and 

musicians and gangsters had anything to do with marijuana. And thatÕs when Leon 

conducted his seminar, first marijuana seminar probably heÕd ever given on the West 

Coast, and instructed everyone as to what it was and the possibility, asked people to 

consider the possibility that people in their own families were going to be involved with 

it, it was getting so popular in leaps and bounds, there was no stopping it. And by that 

time there were a lot of ultra-conservative groups meeting. Weathermen and John Birch 

and I donÕt know what they call themselves now, but they were all concerned that we 

even the audacity to start what we did and howÕd we get in there and what was going on 

here and it looks like this is the beginning of the end, the beginning of the apocalypse 

they called it, apocalyptic. I mean IÕm talking the honchos, you know, big number-one 

generals, jeffes. Like Dr. Monteith, you know. These guys, there would be people found 

with automatic weapons and they worked in the sheriffÕs department, and they have 

meetings, they had bivouacs and things. They did a lot of funny things, though. TheyÕve 

been wackos, all right. Anyway, we were the weirdos. And when Leon laid it on them 

that marijuana was going to be the next big deal in this * place, everyone was in a state of 

shock. They just could not take that. TheyÕd start quoting the Bible and theyÕd stand up 

and talk about chemicals that were ordained by the Lord to be **** true something or 

other. We said, "What do you mean by true chemicals?" We had similar concerns. LetÕs 

see, had I--no, that was just leading up to an incident where we were arrested for a 

photography show that we gave. But it did work out the same way. The local liberals 

didnÕt come to our aid, you know, and champion our cause or anything. They just sort of 

turned around and said, "We donÕt know these guys."  But I won the hearing. They had 

no right to shut our show down, there was nothing that could be seen as obscene. One of 

the items that was confiscated was a photograph of a cabbage cut in half and you could 

see all the erotic things taking place in the design of the cut cabbage. That was evidence. 



R: I think that we already have skipped over here the story of the opening which IÕve 

heard about so many times with the sculptures and pulling the sheet off the sculpture and 

the mayor standing by to give a talk or something or other, so could you fill me in on 

that?



Norman Lezin said sure, heÕd be glad to unveil the--because at that time we were looked 

upon to be champions of some kind or another, you know, before they found out theyÕd 

never get to know us or something. Ach! Santa Cruz was already really cliquish, you 

know, but right now everyone was in a state of surprise and thrall, and we had the Beatles 

singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" -- we had a sound system that projected outside 

also, and thatÕs another thing about the store. You couldnÕt be anywhere near it and not 

know it was there, because youÕd hear this music you wouldnÕt hear anywhere else. 

Where else would you hear the Supremes on Pacific Avenue? So "I Want to Hold Your 

Hand" was blaring out over the speakers, there were throngs--there was actually throngs 

there. The police come up in a flying wedge on motorcycles because they have a warrant 

for someone who was seen present at the celebration there. They ride up on us and they 

find this guy, Pat Cassidy, from Big Sur. They have a warrant out. Pat Cassidy had gone 

on to be very legendary--I donÕt know whatever happened to him but--legendary as 

someone that was pretty much responsible 



[end of first side of tape]



R: So the Kama Sutra sculptures had already been on display at the Sticky Wicket--



I think before that the local gallery where Peter StaffordÕs brother was the manager of 

that local gallery and was arrested also. Michael. But I didnÕt know Michael in those 

days. And Michael had just come from a tour over in Istanbul also. WeÕd get together and 

IÕd try and remember my Turkish. As good as I was, I--oh boy, I had a lot of problem 

with it, but I think if I got back there IÕd just get in the swim of it once again. ThatÕs the 

only way I can learn a language is just to immerse myself with people and then start 

acting like them, and then the language comes to me. 



R: So the Kama Sutra sculptures were at the (Vorful) Gallery and then they were at 

Sticky Wicket, then they were moved to the ** bookstore--



No. We never had the Kama Sutra sculptures. 



R: The commotion was about the man and woman that you made **



Yeah, I think it was really about the penis. You know, look at--weÕve come to today, 

where, you know the Penis Puppetry show in San Francisco? These are three Australians, 

and they make different things out of their penises, thereÕs a big blowup on the screen, 

itÕs a show and itÕs like a two-and-a-half hour show. ** construct all these things with 

their--well weÕve come a long way to just see a penis anywhere, thatÕs something you go 

to FrenchyÕs * Bookstore for. Maybe, well, I donÕt know, in Santa Cruz, they must have 

been to Golden Gate Park, but I guess they have leaves up there, huh? DonÕt they? I 

guess IÕm thinking of Europe or something.



R: Do you mean in Rom**Õs sculpture that was the two figures holding hands, a man and 

a woman I presume, that the man actually had a penis?



Had a penis, thatÕs probably what--



R: That was the problem.



I would think it was. If we want to really get down to what the problem really was, I 

mean--



R: It wasnÕt the topless, it was the bottomless.



ItÕs just sculptures, I know, but--well, you know, mapping the territory. These literalists, 

you know, they really have a problem. And so this was a little too stark, I guess, for Santa 

Cruz. But we drop-kicked it into the far west, now itÕs the far west. Used to be like you 

went east, by going to Santa Cruz itÕs like going east. But now you canÕt get anymore far 

west. 



R: So there was an opening for the store and the sculpture with the two figures had a 

sheet over it and you were there and the mayor came to give a talk...



And unveiled the sculpture, and Bargetto Winery was hosting the wine, I mean a good 

time was had by all, and there were throngs, IÕm saying at least two or three throngs--

throngs, how much is a throng? Two hundred people? Gee, I mean there were a lot of 

people. So, and then the police riding out in a flying wedge, that excited everybody also. 



R: And the police arrived in a flying wedge because they had a warrant for arrest for 

somebody named Pat Cassidy.



Someone they were told was there, uh-huh.



R: Who was not related to Neal Cassidy, 



No.



R: That was just a coincidence. 



Yeah, I donÕt know--



R: So they dispersed the three throngs? That was the end of the event?



You know, I just donÕt know. I know--



R: There wasnÕt a legal case, like you werenÕt busted for that?



No, nobody was busted. I donÕt even think they found Pat Cassidy. I mean we were just 

so busy having a good time. And it was one big party. 



R: So did people like the bookstore was open regular hours and people came in and 

bought books and then you decided which books to buy and put on display and all that, 

you were a proper bookstore runner?



Pretty much. And besides that, any book that you wanted, I would personally go up to 

San Francisco and get for you, once a week. I did this once a week.



R: So at some point you moved to Santa Cruz, you moved your household, you rented an 

apartment or something in order to begin putting together the Hip Pocket Bookstore.



You know, just before I came to Santa Cruz I was asked to manage a store in Mission 

Hill, San Diego, and it was an auxiliary, an ancillary of Nexus, whose manager, Larry 

McGilvry and his wife, I canÕt recall her name now, he had just been arrested for selling, 

oh the pornographer who got into all that trouble that lived in Big Sur, Tropic of 

Capricorn--



R: Henry Miller.



Henry Miller, yeah, he had been--I think that he was arrested for that and had won that 

case on Constitutional issues. And so for a short time I managed his art supply store and 

bookstore annex. And then when I learned that Ron was ready to go and move to Santa 

Cruz, I packed up and--I lived in La Jolla at the time--



R: When Ron Berver(?), was he active in running the bookstore also? 



To a certain degree, but he was really involved mostly with the * activity, so there was 

some time where it was just all my--your baby. 



R: So when I met you, which I believe was March of 1968, after I met your sister-in-law 

at the Barn--



One year had gone by and I became a television repair technician.



R: The bookstore was over when I met you and you were a television repair person and 

you were married then or you had a partner and youÕd been together since the beginning 

of Hip Pocket Bookstore or--



Yeah, since 1962. 



R: So she was with you in Palo Alto and La Jolla and came with you together. I see. And 

did she have any active role in the Hip Pocket Bookstore?



No, it wasnÕt her schtick, at all. I certainly tried, IÕd say, "Hey Karen, can you just take 

care of the store, give me a break?" Naw, she wasnÕt into it. So * took care of the whole 

front while I went out the back.



R: I canÕt remember when your children were born. Was it before--



Well Larry was born before we came--



R: --to Santa Cruz.



Larry was born in 1963. And Melissa was born after IÕd had the store for a year. 



R: Yeah, so basically you were a family while this whole drama was unrolling.



Pretty much, yeah.



R: Okay. Okay, well, I guess this is a good place to stop for now.