Major Test of Faith #8: Psychically Reading the Towering 6’4″, gun-slinging, mentally unbalanced cowboy-owner of an Austin, TX Reggae Club
Everything seemed perfectly guided as I landed in Austin, Texas about 2 months after the Rainbow Gathering.
The Universe had strongly hinted to me when it first revealed my Southwestern ‘mission’, before I left on my journey, that I would be making an important stop in Austin, Texas.
I got this strong hint after watching the 1991 movie “Slacker” by Richard Linklater, which takes place in Austin, and has a very strong mystical ‘fabric of life’ quality to it (you have to see it to understand what I’m talking about–it feels very similar to the hallucinogenic fluidity to my hitchhiking adventures).
But as I was hitchhiking around southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in the month before the Rainbow Gathering, how or even if I was going to get to Austin eventually was the farthest thing from my mind.
The ‘signs’ began to appear when the Mr. G (remember the burly, mountain-man, long-haired hippy who I hung out with on his sage brush plot of land, and who drove me to the Rainbow Gathering) gave me the number of a cool hippy couple he knew in Austin, Texas, since I told him that I mystically ‘knew’ that I would eventually end up in Austin.
And boy did this cool hippy couple hook me up…FAST !
Remember Mr. D from the last story? He was the other major piece of the Austin puzzle that had also magically landed in my lap.
Mr. D was the guy who asked me for a healing after the dust had settled on the scary healing circle I was guided to lead which I described in the last chapter.
Somehow, it came out that he ‘just happened’ to live in Austin, Texas, and based on his overwhelming gratitude for the healing work I’d done on him, and me telling him that I somehow ‘knew’ that I would eventually travel through Austin, Mr. D gave me his Austin phone # and warmly offered to put me up when I got to Austin.
(By the way, I recently tracked down ‘Mr D.’ on Facebook, and we’ve reconnected after 19 years. Mr. D remembered the healing I did on him after all this time. He said that the healing I did on him in 1992 was ‘etched in his mind as if it were yesterday’.)
So a month into my Southwestern journey, I had both a place to stay as well as a phenomenal contact in Austin. It all felt so magically guided to me !
After Mr. G dropped me off in Durango following the Rainbow Gathering, the Universe had me withdraw my money and my ID from the safety deposit box at the Durango bank, and I spent a couple of relaxing days at the Youth Hostel in Durango.
Over the next two months I hitched my way through New Mexico, continuing to have challenging yet still interesting experiences on the road. One of my road stops was the Neem Karoli Baba Hindu Ashram in Taos, New Mexico, where I spent a couple of weeks cleaning toilets and cutting up vegetables in exchange for room and board. I will spend considerable time discussing this Taos Ashram experience in my next story
Anyway, onward to Austin…
As I said earlier, everything seemed perfectly guided as I landed in Austin, Texas about 2 months after the Rainbow Gathering.
After spending a couple of nights at the Youth Hostel outside of Austin, I called Mr. D as well as the cool hippy vendor couple, and in a flash, I was completely hooked up in Austin.
During the days, I took my cardboard sign and usually parked myself on a curb on the side of a big church on a main street very close to the University of Texas. I got plenty of pedestrian traffic for my psychic readings at this location.
At night, I typically parked myself and my cardboard sign in some building archway on Austin’s main music street, East 6th street, and again, got plenty of pedestrian traffic for my psychic readings.
As I mentioned before, through asking for donations only, I would always make at least $50 a day doing my psychic work. Since I was staying at Mr. D’s for free, I only had to cover my food costs.
So I was feeling pretty darn good here in good ol’ Texas !
That was, until my vendor hippy couple invited me to do psychic readings at this Reggae club that they set up their booth and sold hippy goods at twice a week.
It sounded like a major Universe opening to me ! I liked Reggae music and it all sounded just so cool to me at the time.
That was, until I showed up at the Reggae club the first night and got the ‘low down’ on the cowboy owner of the club, who wasn’t in attendance that night.
The vendor couple told me that this was a great club to work at but that the owner of the club was ‘mentally unbalanced’ and would occasionally ‘lose it’ and take out his gun and start shooting bullets at the ceiling. This would usually stop the music and cause everyone to back up terrified with fear. Fortunately he had never hit anyone AT THE CLUB directly (except the bullets and debris falling from the ceiling when he fired his gun).
Besides these times where he would ‘lose it’, I was told, he really wasn’t that bad a guy.
As a testament to him normally being a pretty cool guy, he allowed this hippy vendor couple to set up shop, and obviously they felt comfortable asking me to ‘come on down’ to the club and do psychic readings, without even asking the cowboy owner.
So he was a mixed bag, with the ‘dangerous half’ of the mixed bag being pretty darn scary, to say the least.
So it was with more than a little trepidation, that I too ‘set up shop’, and set up my cardboard sign inside the Reggae club.
Everything went extremely smoothly at the club until the 3rd night when the cowboy owner finally showed up.
As soon as I saw the looks of him I was at once terrified and on the other hand relieved.
He was definitely a giant of a man. He would have made a good pro football lineman just in terms of his shear bulk. I also must say that I felt a bit relieved when I saw a long pony tail hanging out the back of his cowboy hat. The pony tail definitely gave him a softer, more hippy-like dimension that put me somewhat at ease.
But the tales of his gun-shooting seizures at the club’s ceilings were enough to offset any comfort I was feeling at seeing his cool-looking pony tail.
I tried to ignore his presence as he walked around the club talking to people.
Unfortunately, he did not ignore my presence, and within a short while, he walked right up to my table and asked me to come with him into his office AND GIVE HIM A PSYCHIC READING ! And he wasn’t being overly warm and friendly in his request.
Oy Vey! I was going to be alone with him in his office GIVING HIM A PSYCHIC READING !
I looked around for the hippy vendor couple to quickly try to alert them that if they heard any gun shots coming from his office while I was in there, to immediately call the police and also scream for help.
Unfortunately, they must have been in the bathroom or outside taking a break at the time, because I couldn’t find them anywhere to alert them to the possibility of me being severely injured or even possibly murdered.
I wasn’t the type of psychic reader who told people all the ‘fluffy stuff’, like when they’re going to find the love of their life or when they’re going to be successful in their careers, for example.
No, I was a ‘truth telling’ psychic reader, who, although extremely careful and gentle with my words, still and all wasn’t afraid to ‘go for the jugular’ when necessary and tell a person how they got into, and how to get themselves out of the messed up dimensions of their lives and minds.
And it seemed that this cowboy gun-slinger wasn’t in the mood to be told ‘fluffy stuff’.
He wanted the real dirt on himself, his soul, and his prospects for living contently given his current and past actions and activities (of course, he wouldn’t expound on any of his ‘extra-curricular activities’ outside of the Reggae club…..and I didn’t ask about them, and/or why he carried a gun around with him all the time……..although, as I recall, I ‘saw’ him in a lot of current and past situations when I tuned into his spirit psychically that weren’t quite ‘wholesome’, to put it mildly. But honestly though, after 19 years, I truly can’t remember any specific details of his psychic reading except the overall ‘dark’ nature of the visions I saw).
Anyway, I felt there was a 50/50 chance that I would make it out of his office in tact as I told him these extremely difficult things about himself, his past, his current life and his mind.
AMAZINGLY though, I passed the test !
By the end of my ‘truth telling reading’, he was warmly reaching out for my hand to shake, and without reservation welcomed me to his club and gave me his blessing to continue to be his ‘house psychic’.
Whew ! That was a close call.