On the Grateful Dead’s fifth album, From The Mars Hotel, there’s a deep track titled “The Pride of Cucamonga.” It’s a Phil song. Phil songs hold the same place for the Dead as George songs did for the Beatles: a minor part of the corpus, yet important.
For years now, whenever I hear this song, I see the beginnings of a story. I’ve never really had the urge to write this story out. But for now, I would like to encapsulate it.
Oh, oh, Pride of Cucamonga
Oh, oh, silver apples in the sun
Way up in Cucamonga, Oregon, a small American city circa the depths of the Great Depression (1930-1932), lived a young man who was its pride. He was the captain of the football team and president of the senior class, with a Rudy Vallee profile and a jester’s wink. The kind you’d expect to be a good boy, to become the town’s leading lawyer or insurance salesman. But, with the twist of the times, he became a political radical. Introduced to politics by the father of his high school sweetheart, a local union organizer, the Pride took the lead in strikes and marches just as he had on the gridiron.
The northern sky it stinks with greed
You can smell it for miles around
Good old boys in the Graystone Hotel
Sitting doing that git-on-down
Cucamonga’s oligarchy—the apple growers, the owner of the lumber mill, the managers of the factories—met every Sunday evening at the restaurant of the Graystone Hotel, a Victorian mansard-roofed pile down by the railroad station. They owned the city. The local Left tried to unseat them, but failed. The Pride had to leave town in a hurry.
Since I came down from Oregon
There’s a lesson or two I’ve learned
By standing in the road alone
Standing watching the fires burn
But that was not the end of his life in struggle. The Pride made his way south, to the central valley of California, and continued the fight. Organizing among the incoming Okies, he learned new political techniques, now ways to deal with fires lit in the night. It was never an easy life, but, as the decade wore on, it was the only one worth living.
Amid the fires of revolution, he forged passionate bonds with women comrades, but none ever took the place of the girl he left behind him. When she sent him a letter, saying her father was in jail and her family in danger, he knew he had to return. It was time to hitchhike north, back to the Oregon border, through the wind and hail. In his duffel was another thing he’d discovered in California, his secret weapon: a matchbox full of genuine Oaxaca reefer.
I see your silver shining town
But I know I can’t go there
Your streets run deep with poisoned wine
Your doorways crawl with fear
The good ol’ boys in the Graystone Hotel run Cucamonga meaner than they ever have. But the Pride’s learned a thing or two, and he’s not going to be stopped. The ultimate showdown for the future of Cucamonga is here.
Yes it’s me, I’m the Pride of Cucamonga
I can see golden forests in the sun
Oh, oh, I had me some loving
And I done some time
And I done some time
And I done some time
The Library You See in Dreams 