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Show THE ZEPHYR/ AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006 pandemonium, they actually thought the volcano was going off. : But going back to the mid-60s, through all of this we both worked at our craft. We both worked like hell. I did some of my best work during this period. Like my "Land of Moab" series. He had finished Desert Solitaire, | think he was working on Black Sun. Ed hung around Taos writing---his wife thought he was a bum and I was still painting. We were both drinking a lot. It was during that period that the origins of "The Monkey Werench Gang" began to take root. It was just before the paper folded. This absolute idiot had come to Las Vegas, New Mexico; he owned the Melody Sign Company and he put up about 12 immense, forty foot signs north of Taos. They were the most hideous things you’’ve ever seen. : | What were they promoting? | Everything---cars and all kinds of things. Well, one night, we decided we'd go out there and remove them with a chainsaw. But we were working on about number eight and we . hear this other crew coming up the arroyo. We thought, oh, my god we're trapped, so we dove for shelter. But it turned out to be the town councilmen, the town pharmacist But going back to the mid-60s, through all of this, we both worked at our craft. | did some of my best work during this period, like my "Land of Moab" series. He had just finished Desert Solitaire. and the | town poet and so we had so a kind of reunion. | Neither party knew the other one was there, so it was hysterical. And then, we demolished them. About a week later the owner of the sign company came all the way over from Las Vegas to put an ad in the paper for the apprehension of these criminals and Ed, of course, being the editor took the ad and burst out laughing. Mr. Melody, that was his name, said, "What are you laughing about?" and Ed said, “Just something I thought about." And he put up a $2,000 reward for the © apprehension of the culprits. It was good bucks in those days. Ed told me about it and later said, "I seriously thought about turning you in and skipping town." What was your personal life like at this time? | Oh, semi-chaotic. Rita and Ed were having setious problems. Rita thought Ed was just a bum; one day, right in the kitchen, she told him he was good for nothing but stretching her canvases....Rita was quite a successful painter. It wasn’t too long after that, Ed had a chance to go out to Utah and work at Arches again. She wanted him to go back to Hoboken and work as a caseworker---she laid the law down with an ultimatum, either you come back to Hoboken or I leave you. He went oS Oh my god, both our marriages were on the rocks. | had three kids. Ed had two. It was getting to the point where we were both half out of our minds. | Your marriage was a bit shaky; you might want to tell the story of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Oh, my god, both our marriages were on the tocks. Thad three kids, Ed had two. It was getting worse and worse. It was getting to the point where we were half out of our minds. Then one day in Santa Fe, reaching the bottom of the pit, we decided to go over to Claude’s Bar which was the only Bohemian bar in Santa Fe and have a few a drinks. We were sitting We're now up to the late 60s early 70s, you and Ed were together a lot when your father died and when his third wife Judy died. God that was horrible, I think he wrote about it. We went to this rock shelter, this cave in the Grand Canyon---he had lost his wife and I had lost my father. I spent an entire summer with him and I think shortly after that, I think he was a ranger at Sunset Crater. I was with him there with the kids. His kids and my kids. I brought my oldest my daughter and I think one of ed’s son was there. I don’t know how he got a hold of Joshua. I know Joshua was there and that was when, I remember him talking about that snake, the two bull snakes that he described in Desert Solitaire. Yeah, he was talking about that and also about Bates Wilson, the superintendent at Arches National Monument. He was a great supervisor. He was a gem. Back when the park over there moping over our beer and boiler makers---I need HELP---and in walks Creely, Bob Creely, the poet. He took one look at us and after about ten minutes, he says, "I’ve got had maybe 12 visitors a day? to get out of here, you two are depressing me. You're the most morbid couple of people, I’ve ever met.” : He was a famous poet, a part of the Beat period, just post-Beat. He split and we stayed I’d make sketches and he’d write, long hand. He loved to write long hand. He even hated there and closed the bar at two in the morning. We staggered out of the bar and onto the street. It was midwinter with ice all over, and Ed and | were singing Schiller’s Ode to Joy, Beethoven's 9"". Joy of God these mortals... .brothers. .. Joyous...blah, blah, lonly know this in German...and we got about to the middle of Canyon Run Road. We slipped on the ice and we both fell in the middle of the street. We’re lying in the middle of Canyon Run, laughing our heads off and right in the middle f this, down the road, a little red Porsche comes along. It’s Rita’s shrink, who also happened to be my wife Claudine’s shrink. He was a real Nazi, a Freudian Nazi. He looked at us...first he almost ran us over us and then he got out of the car and examined us up close. He shook his head and yelled, "You two are Schwein, you two are the filth of|the earth and I am reporting you to your wives and I am going to make sure that you never live with your children again. You are menaces, you are filth!" And that’s what happened. So after the divorce, the wives, both of them Rita and Claudine got custody of the children, and that ended that chapter. Next ue 2 Now, what year was that? Oh, god I can’t even remember. It was oe the mid sixties. So do you want me to go into the grisly details of the rifle and the furniture? Oh, absolutely! But just to clarify, this is the truth behind Abbey’s story "Hard Times in Santa Fe" that appeared in the first issue of the Zephyr and which is reprinted in this issue. Well, all this followed our divorces. Brenthing had gone down the drain. I decided I had to get out of the country. I had a place in Santa fe but I decided to go over to the Mediterranean, I wanted to go to Morroco to/hike, Atlas, I wanted to go to Crete and | wanted to see the Minoan Ruins, I wanted to go to the island where my ancestors are buried. | I told Ed, when I leave you can take over the house. Before I left I was selling everything I could find, trying to make enough money to get over on a freighter and one of the things I did was pawn, Ed’s rifle, his favorite rifle. ] thought that when I came back--I didn’t know when\I'd be back, but when I got back, I’d unpawn it. But he found out that the damn thing was pawned and in revenge, he sold all the furniture in my house, the whole thing——just loaded it up and sold it. $0, when I got back a year finally later there was nothing...it was stripped. So that was ere Times in Santa Fe,” but after the initial bunch of cursing and swearing at each other, we laughed our heads off and had a drink. Oh, god. Where was the house that Abbey burned down? That was near Albuquerque, He was a student at UNM and he was caretaking this house; he went to town from the house to do something and he left the fire burning in the fireplace and he came back and the house was burned to the ground. That was before you met him? Yeah, bunch of plumes of went ape that was before I met him. Another time, you've heard the story when he put a tires in the crater outside of Albuquerque and set them on fire---huge black smoke came out of the crater. They thought it was a volcano and the whole town shit. The cops were looking for the culprit because it caused car wrecks and Anyway we’d go out on his days off,—he was working as a fire lookout at North Rim, the goddamned typewriter; I don’t know what he’d do today with the computers, shit. Now there’s computer art... CRAP..., it’s computerized crap; our brains are now computerized. But back to the deaths...I saw Ed’s wife in the spring before she died. Oh god, it was awful. That affected Ed more than anything, oh god. He blamed her cancer on the nuclear tests because they were downwind... that’’s where his venomous, absolutely dedicated hatred with the whole industrial, military mess stems from. After that he was a very dedicated monkey wrencher. What else happened during that time? During some of this time, both Abbey and I were in New York. One thing that you’ve got to remember about both Ed and I, we love Manhattan, we had a passionate affair with the Big Apple and we loved it. We'd go there together, though not often. I had a show at a gallery and he had managed to get into a fight with his publisher at the show; it was a preliminary cocktail party for kissing ass. 1 was standing there in front of the goddamned punch bowl, just growing more and more morose with all the assholes that showed up. One guy started running his knuckle up and down my spine. This well-dressed New York bastard. I looked over at the gallery owner and said what the hell is this? And he said, "DePuy, if you're going to make it in the art world, you’ve got to put up with certain things." I went ape shit, I picked up the whole punch bowl full of pineapple and vodka and dumped it over this asshole’s head. It turned out he was the biggest collector in Manhattan. So, the man went crazy and called the police but at that very moment, Abbey appeared at the door of the gallery, looked at the chaos and said, "Debris, out! Let’s get out of here, fast!" We went down to near the Village to a bar called the Cedar Bar, where all the Beats hung out. We got plowed. He had just had a fight with his editor; I had just blown the whole thing at the gallery. Then we staggered up from Washington Square on 5" Avenue, where we passed a big church like a cathedral and Ed said, "Goddammit, Debris, I want to go in there and pray." I said I wanted to stay away from the goddamn church. But he wouldn’t leave; the door was locked to this beautiful church and I don’t know how but he found a big beam of wood. Somewhere they were doing construction and he proceeded trying to break down the door...It was a big church, nice Gothic art. I can’t remember its name. Anyway the cops showed up, somebody called the cops. They showed up and dumped us both in the patrol car; luckily the cop, the sergeant was Irish and I told him my mother was born over in Dublin---he said, "What was your mother’s name?" I said Early and he said I knew Earlys In Dublin. I told him Ed was a yokel from somewhere out west and in his short time in the city, he’s lost his mind. And he said, I’m going to put you on the tubes to Hoboken and if I ever see you or hear of you in New York again, I'll throw you in prison for the rest of your life. So, he escorted us to the tube, the subway going over to Hoboken and stood there watching us as we entered, saying, "Never come back by god." So, that was it, the editor eae a a hard time, the gallery canceled the show. Although I still had a couple of shows after that. But you know, as I told you before in my art. It’s the Germans who support me. They love my work because I evolved out of German expressionism and they love it, They love the design. They’re also incredibly dedicated to the American Southwest. PACEI4 |
