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FREE FOOD GOOD HOT STEW

RIPE TOMATOES FRESH FRUIT

BRINC A BOWL AND SPOON TO

THE PANHANDLE AT ASHBURY STREET

4 PM 4 PM 4 PM 4 PM 4 PM

FREE FOOD EVERYDAY FREE FOOD

IT S FREE BECAUSE IT S YOURS!

the diggers.

They added the greens and potatoes to the stock only minutes prior to leaving, otherwise they would have lost their solidity in the boiling hot soup and melted into a mush, instead of becoming a stew. It was just before 4 P.M. when the two of them drove over to the Panhandle and set the hot milk cans on the grass with the boxes of tomatoes and cartons of fruit. There were already fifty people waiting and another fifty-odd showed up immediately, some of them carrying their bowls tied to their belts. The number of people increased to a stationary two hundred, as the Free Food continued through the week in the Panhandle, every afternoon at four. The bowls dangling from the waistbands took on an immediately recognizable significance.

The word quickly spread and soon such underground papers as the Berkeley Barb were nibbling around, trying to scoop a story on who was behind the Free Food event. They only ended up running into an anonymous wall, and finally were discouraged enough to simply chalk it all up to that "mystery-shrouded Haight-Ashbury group, the Diggers." The hipsters who knew Emmett and Billy searched them out in the cold fog and found them sitting on the grass among the young newcomers to the Haight and the old-timers from skid row, gobbling up the soup du jour. The Hun remarked that it was a great idea. "Try to keep it going for another week, if you can, and you'll really get your point across. Just another week. Terrific!" The straight New Lefties came around and turned a little green with envy that they hadn't thought of the food angle as an organizing principle themselves. If they had, they would have done it only as a one-shot for the publicity. The liberals, hip and square, would watch the hungry crowd being fed and grope around, looking for someone to offer a donation to. Conservatives would ask why everyone didn't get a job.

Emmett and Billy knew that Free Food everyday in the park was a popular act, but they didn't intend it solely as a symbol. No, they were hungry and so were a lot of others, and they were going to keep [end page 247]