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explaining the reason they were actually charging an admission price for entrance to their New York concerts. He was forced into all sorts of strenuous positions, trying to defend his group's right to earn money from the hippie community, until he obviously was stretched to a point by all the interviews poking the same old "But we thought you always played for free . . ." line at him, that he finally screamed something like, "There's no free lunch! No free lunch! No such thing, okay?! We play music for money, and a long time ago, when we felt like it, in the park with our friends, okay?! I mean, we're professionals and this is a business, man!" And that was that, but it sure took a long time for it to go down, and it still didn't come out like it really was.

It was right after one of these free parties celebrating the Fourth of July, '67, that the Diggers finally gave the last thing they collectively had of themselves away--their name, the Diggers. No one knew it had been given away until the moment it happened. Heavyweight scribe and poet Kirby Doyle, author of Happiness Bastard, the first free novel published by the Communication Company, broadcast the news to the people in this street paper:

THE BIRTH OF DIGGER BATMAN

O sky glorious, O sky divine--People--dominions--nations-- Heavens--door--O walking deliverance--O Passage--People--O People--Machines--Animals--Trees--Towers & Bridges--O Seed --O colors--Faces--All Moving Things--Li*, hello . . . I want to tell you of the birth of Digger.

Morning, about 9:30, July 5th, 1967--clear and sunny upon the city, the sky echoing with happiness, the streets still and clean and just to walk on them is to be silent in the bright rising from the night after a big 4th of July electric music and free feed celebration out in the park where Emmett and the cooks from the Fillmore had made barbecue for about 4,ooo people.

I am up early and out into the street from Coyote's on Pine Street where the Communication Company lived--out and standing in the good day with the smiles all over me, just letting the warmth and the light honey about on me, my clothes glowing and the fine feeling seeping to the skin and a touch tasting to my innards, and O the head is just wanting to face with smiles in all directions. I had driven Susan Parker to the airport a couple days before and still had her car so I swings over a few blocks to Geary thinking to have coffee and a morning smoke with the Jahrmarkts, Billy and Joan and the kids. [end page 412]