“The Jive Hive was the real McCoy, Beatnik central. Watching the fuzzy-faced, scruffy kids in that grimy, bare-bricked basement, I thought of that Kerouac “On The Road” crap that Playboy kept publicizing. I’d tried reading it a couple of times but couldn’t get past the first chapter. Those endless, rambling descriptions were too much for me. Murderers serving time at Alcatraz had shorter sentences. The America that Kerouac conjured up, with its junkies and goof-offs, wasn’t a place where I wanted to spend time. Much like the Jive Hive in fact. I tried to control my prejudices but it was difficult. The beatnik kids kind of got under my skin. I guess I couldn’t understand why they had to dress like bums and gather like trolls in the dark. But I was there for a reason, so I kept my thoughts to myself and just watched the passing faces. As I scanned the room, something caught my eye. Over in a corner booth, nature boy a bunch of kids were staring in silent awe at a guy who looked like the king of the hobos. He had long hair down to his shoulders, a bearded, weather-beaten face and was dressed in tattered denim. A colorful Navajo Indian blanket draped over his shoulders completed the whole bizarre picture. Sitting there, sipping a glass of water, he gently nodded his head to the beat of the bongos. He seemed like one very serene guy. Gerry caught my gaze and leaned over to me. “That’s Eden Ahbez. He was beat when these kids were in diapers. Rumor has it he lives on nuts and berries, and sleeps up in the canyons. He’s supposedly a real cool cat. But get this, the best bit of it is, he’s the guy who wrote ‘Nature Boy’.”
“Nat King Cole’s ‘Nature Boy’ ?”
“The very same.”