People of the Book 2: George The Beast

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George Howell enhanced

Here’s what Leslie Sue Humphrey said about The First Few Friends I Had on Amazon:

“The era that Mr. Newton writes of, has piqued my interest for years. There has been much written about the Beats as well as the Hippies, in San Francisco and environs, but not of the transition between the two. I nearly swallowed the book whole, and have gone back to re-read it, in order to really taste as well as digest it.
“The experience of riding along with Christopher and his friends, as they began to explore their high school world in the in the late 50’s, with all of the emotional changes that teens naturally go through was delightful. The weaving of the love stories throughout the book, while causing some of the painful moments, had also the leavening effect on some of the very painful times that Christopher and friends lived through.
And I want more!”

7 thoughts on “People of the Book 2: George The Beast”

  2. hi Chris… hmmm you would never guess in a million years the path i took to get to this page. hay, now can i say i have been published?
    i didnt realize that your signe was the airplanes signe.

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    • Hi Terris, I wrote the following a few years ago. Thought it might explain things for you a bit.

      George The Beast Is Gone

      George ‘the Beast’ Howell, King of the Baby Beatniks, Roarer of Upper Grant Avenue, great friend of my North Beach youth – died at a quarter to six one morning in an intensive care unit at West Anaheim Medical Center in Anaheim, California. His body was shot. He’d had a lot of adventures, did a lot of drugs, and smoked a lot of Camels.
      Here’s the only photo I have of George. I took it in Gary and Sue Parma’s apartment on Sacramento Street in July 1962. It;s not that great of a portrait, and I never printed it, but I kept the test strip, and here it is, still good fifty later, preserved by that well made San Francisco State photo lab fix, flies and cigarette ashes and all. But I feel like a part of me is fading this morning.
      George wasn’t a luminary of the Haight-Ashbury. By the time that scene gelled, George was living in a village in Mexico learning to be a weaver. Eventually, weaving evolved into dealing – he found , restored and sold fine antique rugs. He made a lot of money doing it. He had his own shop in a fashionable San Francisco neighborhood. He had a driver. His profits, most of them, went up his nose or into his arm. He was a man of big hungers and little caution. He went bankrupt, fled to Hawaii to clean up.
      I don’t know his whole story, just bits and pieces he told me during our long phone conversations the last six months after we reconnected again. I thought there was plenty of time. We’d get together and hang out and talk for days until I had his whole story. That was my plan.
      His sister cared for him besides holding down her day job. He didn’t like being dependent on her. He didn’t like being dependent on an oxygen tank either. He had diverticulitis and couldn’t eat. He was down to 130 pounds. He walked his dogs in their garden when he could. He grew his own vegetables until it got to be too much for him.
      George was a hero to me, although we were the same age.  His character was bigger than his body and spilled into the streets around him.  We spent long foggy nights walking from Mike’s Pool Hall to the Hot Dog Palace and back, looking for friends, finding them and standing on the corner together till Officer Bigarini walked by and told us to beat it.  We were in love with the same girl.  We laughed about it.  We were both nineteen, then twenty, then twenty-one and we wanted to be beatniks.  It seemed like the only sensible career, and still does. 
      George turned me on to The Outsider by Colin Wilson. The book puts an intellectual structure around how we felt, it justified and clarified our inchoate feelings of being alienated from the straight society around us.  He was rereading it again this summer before he hit his final bump in the road.
      George, how can I come see you now?
      People I loved have been dying on me my whole life and it’s a dirty trick.  I still want to go see everybody.  I don’t really care about this world any more.  It will never compare.  I’m left here to walk the beach in my overcoat at the end of time.  And write it all down for no one.  So that’s what I’m doing.
      Everyone’s leaving.
      But Sunny Skies has to stay behind.

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      • Oh Christopher…….your succinct San Francisco memories are very poignant and moving! I truly “ate up” your “1090” history And back then we didn’t have to specify ‘Page St.” because everyone know what “1090” meant! I used to stroll down there to enjoy Big Brother and Holding Company in that basement ballroom with the lovely hardwood floor and pillars.
        I’m thinking of you so often, housemate, and would be delighted to hear from you…. – Your Melanie Kinkead

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