Photos of the 1966 era Linda Lovely are few and hard to come by. But, I found this rare snapshot taken at my sister’s house, Thanksgiving Day of that year. In my obsessive quest to display the babes of the Haight-Ashbury, how can I ignore Linda Cartwright Newton, my main sixties squeeze, mother of my first child and bane of my life? Of course, should you ask her about our stormy marriage, she might argue I was the bane of her life. You never know. Women are so perverse!
Linda and I spent more time apart than together in those crazy years, which is why she so rarely intrudes into these calm and serene recollections. But, in the day, it was not so.
You must admit, she is an authentic glamor puss. Linda has dressed conservatively for this family occasion. And why shouldn’t she? Look at my father, to her right – he’s comfortable wearing a business suit and a dress shirt tightly buttoned at the collar. Yet his only plan for the day is to relax at his daughter’s house, trade comic insults with his son-in-law’s father, drink martinis and eat turkey.
The Pig, of course, shows no such social inhibitions. Just out of camera range he is clowning for the children in velvets, lace and cherry-red wax lips.
Detectives, if you look closely at Linda’s ensemble, you will notice that telltale sign of sin and debauchery in the Haight-Ashbury: beads! Hand-strung beads! They’re always a giveaway, fellow detectives. They can hide their drugs, but they can never hide their beads. It’s in their genetic code!
(For those who complain I never display the sixties beauty of my glorious Russian princess bride Patrushka…good things come to those who wait, ok?)
You wanna hear something strange? Today, forty years after that tempestuous age, Linda Lovely and Patrushka are the best of friends. I have nowhere to hide! I ask you, is this right?
ponderingpig.wordpress.com 
Ah. Youse married young, that’s all. Tempestuous is as tempestuous does, I always say. Just look at it this way, if youse stayed together, you mighta choked each other by now. As it is, you mugs get along and that’s good.
Me, I never tied the not, though I have been possessed by some funky spirits in my day. Lucky I got 3 lives left.
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I’m on to you, Olde Pigg. That’s Chris E. back there, isn’t it? I think the evil spirit is more likely to be the fellow looking out of the painting. Now he looks like a scary dude.
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Wow, this pic answers a question I’ve wondered about, as to where in the family my niece gets the wide-cheekbone face shape she has, since it is definitely not from the Piggy side. Now I know- her grandmother!
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I think it would be ever so interesting if Lovely Linda added a word or two, giving us some inkling of her understanding of that long ago union.
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In the words of the old Billie Holiday song, “One never knows, does one?”
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No, one don’t.
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I know. But I ain’t sayin.’
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My goodness and gracious. I thought Jinx knew everything. Now this Mr. Greg fellow knows something. What is this world coming to?
I, for one, would like to hear from the lovely Ms. Lovely. That might send all these know-it-all types a-packing, as we said in the cowboy movie days.
Yes, I was in the films. I had a cameo in “How the West Was Won”. I was the bad cow in “High Plains Drifter”, and was a second for Elsie in many of the Borden milk spots. Goodness, that Elmer… Oops, I said I’d never tell. Forget I brought it up.
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I think this is a dream and soon we will awake to find we’re young and beautiful and there’s plenty of hay for all.
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“All in a dream, all in a dream. The loading has begun. Flying Mother nature’s seed to a new home.”
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So exciting to have the esteemed Neil Young himself drop by the blog. Be sure to send the Pig’s best wishes to all your pals in Buffalo Springfield, ok? I am SUCH a fan!
However, in future I must ask commentators to stay strictly with the subject at hand.
Is it glamorpusses in general? No.
Is it should we allow glamorpusses? No.
It is specifically glamorpusses of the Haight. Which is short for Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Nominations for more glamorpusses are welcome.
Asking where have all the Glamorpusses of the Haight-Ashbury gone? is perfectly acceptable.
But I do require a certain discipline around here or the whole Pigsty is going to start smelling like somebody spilled the slops.
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I don’t mean to contradict the author of this blog, being an outsider and all, but it didn’t start going south until about the time the author stated writing about dreams and hay. Mrs Wiggins was on task, although it does seem she strayed a bit when she thought too much.
But seeing as ponderpig has his tail twisted a little tightly, I will ask the question to steer back to the subject at hand. “Where have all the glamorpusses gone? Long time passing?”
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This is hilarious. I Googled the Haight and get all this real wacky stuff. There are many sites that put up stuff about the Haight and the 60’s but I have to say that no one quite gets it like the ponderpig. It’s all here and grown-up to boot. Heck, even the non-sequiteurs are marvelous. I lived in the lower Haight until 65, so I missed all the hullabaloo, but in my heart I never left. I dropped in here and read for a couple hours. You people sound like you never left, though I can tell you all have. Talking pigs and cows. I read Freddy books when I was a kid too! There’s not enough of you out there. Go chase all the nonsense and don’t stop. You folks are the living remnant of what many of us left behind.
And then you argue about it. God, I feel like I am home.
In the words of your Governor, “I’ll be back”
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Anonymous: Thank you! My tail WAS twisted! In fact it was stuck in the pigsty door and I hadn’t noticed. I was feeling cranky and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t figure out why. I feel much better now. On with the show!
Bobby: Hey man – welcome. Please just jump right on in. We all knew the lower Haight well in those days. We probably knew you! Were you that scrawny kid that was always spare changing people?
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Hey there, the pondering one; this is turning out to be one of the most hilarious compiling of responses. I’d have to read back to remember some of the more provocative comments, which had me laughing and talking back to your fellow bloggers.
Jinx waxes philosophic. Your progeny learn more about the DNA of their kin. I plead with the lovely Linda to make an appearance. Greg claims to know the whole story. (But does he really?) Mrs Wiggins, seconds my request for Linda. Eternal youth is hinted at. Neil makes a rare appearance, sending the ponderer into a tail spin.
I loved the comment about your tail being a little too tightly twisted. Caught in the pigsty door indeed.
Bobby, you call this “grown up”? More like the eternal youth he is suggesting. But honestly this was one of the most hilarious reading of responses, to what seemed, at first glance, to be a rather serious admittance to some rather personal memories.
Thank you Chris (once again) for taking us all on such a lively and amusing trip.
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OK, pig fans – I just wrote to Linda Lovely asking her to drop by the blog and comment. She is a very important person now, so we’ll just have to hope. Meanwhile, I will try to drag up some more titillating sixties gossip about the dear old glamorpuss.
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Chris, You are such a BRAT! Since typing sometimes misses the meaning, I say this affectionately.
Linda, as a woman of the ’60’s, I ask you, were our voices heard, then or now? The answer is “rarely”. So here’s your chance.
So much is written from the male perceptive. The female understanding is quite a different knowledge! Too often when we comment on this exclusion from history, we are called “strident” or worse.
Lucy Lewis, a remarkable woman, who is mentioned in several blogs concerned with the 60’s, (the “Chet Helms Chronicles” as an example), is writing a book about these lost voices from the other half of this cultural divide.
Linda, I wonder if you will have to choose your words carefully, lest you be edited or erased.
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I was surprised to drop by the sty for a poke around and see so much commentary. Since Linda hasn’t spoken up yet, I’m going to butt in and tell you she is still as glamorous as can be. My most recent memory of her is last Christmas in NJ when she was dressed in a pair of handsome wool trousers, leather boots I think, a long sleek lined suede coat and some sort of warm Russian style hat. I told her I sure hope I still look as glamorous as that when I am in my sixties. She can also make a very glamorous spaghetti sauce that takes all day to simmer on the stove.
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Linda Lives, but the rest is pure rumor. Thanks dear Kirsti for your flattering comments, lifting this grandmas spirit as i approach my 67th birthday next month. I remember that in my haight ashbury daze, my sign of the zodiac was very important and everyone wanted to know, hey, hari krishna, whats your sign? first thing they asked…and when i would answer scorpio, got extreme reactions always, a WOW COOL Shes so HEAVY MAN and i was…excuse me now,i must go string my beads, they are calling to me, esp. the shiney abalone and turquoise chips..love to all L.L. aka crazy grandma
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You can’t imagine how beautiful and exciting Marilyn Jones was. Forget Lori, in fact even Chet said “everyone wanted Marilyn”. I met her when I was about six years old and she was thirteen. She was my idol and grew to be more magnificent as time went on. My friends and I all adored her and we were quite a lovely bunch ourselves. She epitomized the hippie movement and brought her joy to us. Her style inspired us. She sewed the most beautiful creations of her own design. I don’t believe I can even think of a young man that wasn’t enthralled by her, including my young friends. She was kind and loving to us and never crossed the gentle, slightly maternal barrier that our age difference demanded. When I visited her in San Fran she oh so carefully introduced us to the Avalon Ballroom and all of SF.s wonders never abandoning us to the times. Later I was part of the household when Chet had his down time and saw how she always welcomed him into her home with his wonderful companion Bigfoot. She fed and talked to him when he needed it. McGrew would come home and take over and she would be mine again for fabulous conversation and delightful fun!
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Hooray for Marilyn! (I’m not being sarcastic). I wonder where she is today? Kids desperately need big sister/big brother types like that, and she was there for you. Thanks for the paean. And please submit photo – you sound like you might be a glamorpuss!
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This ‘Linda Lovely’ you speak of–this is surely not the same ‘Linda Lovely’ who was known officially as Linda Cherney, appeared in one or two low-budget flicks in the 1950s, and shared a pad with fellow beatchiks Patsy and Skippy during that era, is it…?
Here in Canada, the CBC has archival footage of an interview with the three young women sometime in the late ’50s or early ’60s, and the Linda in question does not resemble the one whose photo you have posted….
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Oh! One other thing: I’ve been informed by an old beat friend of hers that Linda Cherney passed away about ten years ago….
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Good catch, R.W. You are referring to the original Linda Lovely, someone I would also like to know more about. My Linda Lovely was a figure in the mid-Sixties Haight-Ashbury so at least ten years younger.
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Gawd, the stuff you find when you hit “Search!”
So LL is a Scorpio, huh? Figures. In that pic she could pass for the near-twin of one of my fave babes of ’67, Candi P., who was also a Scorpio.
There were a lot of them around back then. The reason I finally learned something about astrology was because I had to get to the bottom of all that Scorpio stuff. Turns out the midheaven in my chart is 8° Scorpio. (And you ask why I’d put ’em on a pedestal?)
I once walked up to a group of three women in the Panhandle and remarked, “Wow — you’re all Scorpios, huh?” You shoulda seen ’em jump! LOL
Btw, one of them was the most beautiful (and unfortunately late) Patti Santos, who went on to fame with It’s A Beatiful Day. She could have been an LL triplet.
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Three years later and I’m following up on my earlier comments.
Isn’t it bizarre how Linda Lovely/Cherney and her friends seem to have passed into oblivion? Linda, Patsy and Skippy were poster girls for North Beach in the ’50s, and Linda painted and published poetry, yet all that can be found of them today online is Linda’s appearance as hostess/dancer ‘Ketti’ in The Screaming Mimi (1958).
I’ve searched the internet several times over these past few years, and I can’t find anything on Linda and friends other than the aforementioned film. How about you, Pondering Pig? Any luck?
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