US trip #2: quiet, noise, biking and Herb Jager
Posted on May 7th in Faith & practice, Uncategorized
America can be a fearsome, warlike and noisy place. It has vast freeways on which people emit copious amounts of CO2. You can deplore this, but it’s easy and fun to join in. I hired a brand new Harley-Davidson Electraglide and headed off to Sonoma, the wine country tourist venue where Mexican missionaries had sited their northernmost mission before being overcome by whitey.

Up to 110 DB, 860lbs, and 1800 miles on the clock. Do not drop this machine.
As I lay in bed in Joe’s lovely B&B, trying to listen to the dawn chorus against the next room’s airconditioning – punctuated by distant blattering of Harleys – I read up sorely needed articles about how to operate the big machine at low speeds (countersteering, looking round the corner with head and eyes, use of rear brake etc).
Somewhat emboldened, I decided to head off to what Google suggested would be a Quaker Meeting in nearby Napa. Sure enough, round the corner from the main square in Napa with all the big steeplehouses, in a community centre, there were five lovely Friends gathered for the refreshing hour of silence. Afterwards one of them kindly offered to show me the best local coffee shop with wifi.

He duly led me off, riding a Suzuki 650. I bought him a coffee. He’s called Herb Jager. He said he was a painter/decorator but there’s more to it than that. He knows a great deal about coffee houses.
A friend had suggested to Herb – who remains a contented atheist – they attend a first Quaker Meeting while they were working in Alaska in 1955. They went to a room and sat alone. “Where’s the meeting?” asked Herb. “This is it.” “When does it start?” “It started already.”
Herb just got married three years ago and is now hoping to move out of the Veterans Admin home to a catamaran. He’s 84 years old. He had been one the first “Bohemians” in Greenwich Village, before moving to San Francisco and taking over “the Blue Unicorn” coffee shop in 1965. This was described by Michael Fallon as the “new haven for beatniks” in an article which coined the term hippe. Herb ran it for five years, before moving to start starting “Communion”, an Indian restaurant offering “five courses for $1″ at the same time as bringing up two children in a campervan on the streets of San Francisco. If I understood him correctly he worked 14-hour days and lost a third of his body weight in 18 months. As we parted in the mall car park he sang me acapella several verses of the folk song “the bastard king of England”.
He’s not online so I can’t email him. But I’m sending Herb big peace and love. He’s a piece of the rock, and an inspiration.









