Crazy Ol' Frisco

This week's Noted Stories features two songs inspired by one remarkable trip to California in 1975.

While exploring San Francisco, I unexpectedly witnessed Sara Jane Moore's encounter with President Gerald Ford—an experience that inspired “Sara Jane.”

Just days earlier, I had visited Berkeley on the very day Patty Hearst was captured. There I met a young man who invited me to a church gathering I never attended. Three years later, I learned what happened to him and his church and that’s what inspired “The Eucalyptus Trees.”

Two chance encounters. Two unforgettable stories. Two songs that could only have been written by someone who was there.

© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Noted Stories, True and Tall Tales Set to Music. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I'm your host, David Ray Skinner. Every week we're gonna feature a couple of stories that are musical trips down someone's memory lane, mostly mine, since I've been writing story songs for over fifty years. That's because I was born in Nashville, Music City USA, back in the 1950s. You know, back then the legend was that they handed a tiny little guitar to every newborn Nashville right there in the delivery room and expected them to become a musician. That was probably the first of many a tall tale and family story I was told. So it seemed only fitting that I started adding music notes and melodies to these stories. Actually, I started writing songs when I was eight years old, so as you can imagine, I have quite a collection. And rather than have them all sit buried on a shelf in dusty old music notebooks, I decided to launch this podcast to share them and the stories behind the stories. Now for this week's Noted Stories. This week's noted stories both have their roots in the cross-country adventure to California and the West Coast that I took 50 years ago. The germ of that whole trip was spread during one late-night roundtable discussion with my college friends and frat brothers a few weeks before graduation. We were all talking about life after college and what that actually meant. Someone said, We should just all get together and go to California. Why California? Another asked. He answered, paraphrasing a fireside theater skit. Actually, that sounded like a perfect idea. I mean, once all of us entered the so-called real world, that opportunity may be forever gone. Let's make it happen, I said. We all agreed to regroup after graduation and make plans for that trip. But then cold, stark, grim reality hit. One by one, every would-be West Coast adventure seeker dropped out of the plant. Some moved back home with their parents, some found permanent jobs, and others even married their college girlfriends. As for me, I moved to a farmhouse in East Tennessee's Wares Valley, close to the tourist town of Gatlinburg. I eventually found work as a reporter, slash cartoonist, slash layout artist, slash and delivery boy for the Severe County Times, a weekly newspaper in nearby Severeville, Tennessee. And Severe Times it was, but that's another tale for another noted stories episode. Meanwhile, I never forgot our pact to travel to California and the West Coast. However, by the summer of 1975, that plot had grown cold and all but frozen over. Is this how it's gonna be for the rest of our lives? I asked no one in particular. We make lofty plans and then abandon them. I was determined to not make that our legacy. Consequently, I decided to go it alone and make it happen. I caught an Amtrak train in Nashville, which took me to Chicago. In Chicago, I changed trains and took Amtrak's north coast Hiawatha through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, and I eventually landed in Seattle, where I changed trains yet again to get down to Portland, Oregon. I stayed in Portland a week or two. It rained every day. But I eventually hit the road, Interstate 5 out of Portland, to thumb my way down to California. After a couple of rides, a kid named Steve pulled over in his little corvere just south of Eugene. Where are you headed? Steve asked. California, I said. I'm going to the Bay Area, he answered. I wasn't exactly sure what the Bay Area was, but I said, perfect. Steve and I got along very well, and it turned out to be one of the best, if not the best, ride I'd ever hitched. He asked if I'd be interested in driving down the coast, literally. And of course, I wanted to see the Pacific. It took a little longer, but the view was worth it. We camped out that first night in a redwood forest and finally arrived the next day in the Bay Area. He wanted me to meet his family. His parents were both from the South, so he had heard about the South all his life, but had never been there or met anyone from there, and naturally I had loads of Southern stories to tell, all the way from Eugene to the Bay Area. My destination had initially been Hayde Ashbury in San Francisco to meet a friend of a friend who was an underground comic book publisher. He had been interested in the comic character I had created for the Severe County Times. Steve's family lived in the Bay Area, specifically the suburb of Clayton. Steve's parents were thrilled to have a fellow southerner under their roof. In fact, his dad invited me to stay as long as I wanted. Their older son was at school at the University of Oregon in Eugene. In fact, that's where Steve had been right before he picked me up, so they offered me his bedroom where I could sleep. Okay, it seemed a little weird, but by then I had learned to just go with the flow. Their house was in Clayton, which was walking or hitching distance from Concord, where there was a BART station. Now, BART is the acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit, which was the train that went into the heart of San Francisco. And the BART is the heart or driving force behind this week's noted stories. The first song is about Sarah Jane Moore, the wife of a suburban Danville, California doctor who had served as an FBI informant. The FBI had recruited her because she was a volunteer bookkeeper for people in need, an organization to feed the poor. This organization was set up by newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst in response to the Symbionese Liberation Army, the SLA, after they kidnapped his daughter Patricia in February of 1974. The SLA insisted that Hearst create this organization as one of the demands for the release of Patty. Little did Hearst know that by then Patty had been radicalized and she had already joined the SLA. On Monday, September 22nd, 1975, I hitched from Steve's parents' house in Clayton to Concord to take the BART into downtown San Francisco to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art. I had heard about it in college. I got there at the museum around lunchtime, but much to my surprise and disappointment, the doors were locked. Then I saw the sign, closed on Mondays. I stood there for a brief moment thinking of what it had taken to just get me there, but I was determined to make a silk purse out of a Sal's ear, something good out of the bad for the day. My New York friend Stephen Kling had taken me home to visit in late 74, and our first stop had been Chinatown. So I decided to treat myself to a Chinese meal in San Francisco's Chinatown. I vaguely knew how to get there from the museum, so I started walking down one street, then cutting over to another in a zigzag pattern. Just to kind of get an overall view of San Francisco. My zigzag route took me to Geary Street and Union Square. Upon arriving at Union Square, I noticed a large crowd of people gathering in front of the St. Francis Hotel. Was this a bus stop? I wondered. Then I noticed a number of police officers stationed by the hotel and on the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Was this a riot? I wondered. No, everybody looked fairly happy and excited. I mean, maybe it was a happy riot. But I gave up trying to figure it out and I approached one of the officers standing guard. Excuse me, officer, I said. Um, what's going on? The president's here, he said gruffly. President Ford is here, I exclaimed. Yes, move along, he growled. Wow, I had never seen an American president in person. And so I made my way through the crowd and stood up on the base of a street lamp, about a block away from the entrance to the St. Francis. That's when I saw Sarah Jane Moore. She appeared out of the crowd, as I said, just a block from where I stood on the base of the street lamp and fired a shot at President Ford as he exited the St. Francis. The crowd stampeded around me and my light pole, much like cattle running on either side of an oak tree in an old western. Meanwhile, they picked up Sarah Jane more like a roll of carpet as the president waved, I'm okay, from his quickly escaping limo. So, with that being said, here's my song, Sarah Jane.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

She said, You know there's more to life. Poor little Sarah Jane. The doctor couldn't change her mind. Playing Sarah Jane. And she left suburban life behind. Poor little Sarah Jane. Storming through the San Francisco ring. Hanging out with the tiny and the game. Something stays the same. I'm on the home. So she took the books and took the notes. For the SM Another books, for a little stepper J. And she gathered him for by and by Mr. Jared it with the FBI. For a little step of J. She said some moms can only be undone. With this my gun Revolution's coming on. I was quite surprised to see her there. As she pulled a gun on Union Square. Oh little Sarah Jane. We saw the president in his blue suit. And Samara Jane began to shoot. Oh little Stepper Jane. And then you roll him like a carpet and a cheese cream. When the president went from his little revolution's command.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

However, before I found the restaurant, I stopped in at a Chinatown Five and Dime and bought a pen and pad of paper, and I recorded the details of the event that I had just witnessed. I then found a Chinese phone booth and called my old newspaper, the Severe County Times, Collect. I knew that Monday was the deadline day every week, and I could give them a scoop over the phone for that week's issue. Just one thing, I told editor Tim Pollett, use the byline by David Ray Skinner, San Francisco correspondent to the Severe County Times. Now for the next song, which I call the Eucalyptus Trees. The intro is the same intro as the previous song, but this event happened four days earlier, on September 18th, 1975. Just as I would do the following Monday, I hitched from Steve's house in Clayton to the barn in Concord, but that particular Thursday, I was headed to Berkeley. I'd been thinking about writing a song about Patty Hearst, and I wanted to see her apartment, the place where she had been kidnapped the year before. I got off the bar and asked a few people if they could point me in that direction, and someone gave me the actual address. About a block away from Patty's apartment building, I passed a newsstand, and the man running it had his little AM radio on full blast. I was about to ask him about Patty's specific apartment in the building when the newscaster on the radio interrupted their usual broadcast to announce that Patty Hearst has just been captured by the FBI in San Francisco. Wow, just over the bay, I said, while I'm looking at her apartment. It might not be a good idea for you to be loitering in front of her apartment today, the newsstand man said. I agreed, but I didn't want to waste my trip to Berkeley, so I headed over to the famous campus of UC Berkeley. Right as I climbed the steps on campus, a young man about my age came running up to me. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, he said. Do you know the way to the eucalyptus grove? Not only did I not know the way to the said grove, I had never heard of a eucalyptus grove. Noticing my confusion, he said, That's alright, I know where it is, and I'm going to a picnic. Wanna come? Now remember what I said about going with the flow? This was another one of those times. The young man said his name was Kurt, and his church was sponsoring the picnic. However, when we got there, I noticed there was no food. Oh, Kurt said. I forgot to tell you, it's a virtual picnic. And we're just here to tell stories. Okay, I thought that's strange, but it's broad daylight, so I guess it's safe enough. After a few of the stories, I told Kurt I needed to catch the bart back to the booties. He gave me his card with his church's name and address and invited me to a church dinner the following week across the bay in San Francisco's Fillmore district. There will be a lot of nice girls, he said. When I eventually got back to Steve's house, I mentioned the encounter and the dinner invitation. I like the nice girls part, he said. Let's do it. So the following Wednesday, we made plans to head into San Francisco, but alas, it was not to be. Steve had to work late, and by the time he pulled into the drive in his old core of air, it was much too late to make it. Maybe next week, he said, That dinner never happened, but here's a song I wrote about that September Thursday in Berkeley and the aftermath. It's called The Eucalyptus Trees.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

But Tanya had just taken her place.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Open just to turn up a trace. So on that long ago did in September I went wandering around. I don't even remember how I got to the part of town. The Berkeley Sun went down, and we couldn't stop it. So Kurt wrote his name on the card. He said our church leader is a prophet, and the path to the temple ain't on. A hitching mile from the end of the park. But also stayed in the days. And spend my afternoons in the park. I took the stage. And we set up the run days. And I saw what it had to say. There were pictures of Curtin the others, frozen smiles in the noonday sun, where their leader led the sisters and brothers. And I saw just what that prophet had done. And in the jungle there was nowhere to run. It was divorced and simple. And there was poison in the empty vats. And the people's temple lay as dignified as diplomats in their sandals and their jungle hats. Amidst the boat and I never found my still they waited underneath the jungle tree. And I was pondering a picture of Petty, but Tanya had just taken her place with her face. No trace.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Three years later, I was in New York City working at Record World magazine, and one November morning I picked up the newspaper and saw exactly what had happened to Kurt and the other members of his church, all laying there in the jungle of Guyana. All I could feel were feelings of sadness and horror mixed with gratitude and relief because Steve had to work late that September night, three years earlier. We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of Noted Stories. Thank you for coming along on the ride. We wanted to recreate the time-honored tradition of storytelling and set those old tales to music, and we hope you enjoyed the adventures as much as we did presenting them. As I mentioned, I've been writing songs for 50 something years, so there's plenty of stories to come, and we hope you'll stay tuned. In the meantime, you can check us out online at notedstories.com and or david rayskinner.com. I'm David Ray Skinner, and this has been Noted Stories.