By now Ive written or rewritten most of the Peoples Park article  I was there from the beginning because Jon Read my former employer was the landscape architect responsible for the parks initial design  He also provided the tools to build it and donated many of the materials   That first weekend was terrific  I drove my truck the one pictured in the Hippie Travel section up to the site and parked it in the middle of the park as it developed around me  My good friend David Garthwaite convinced his sister Terry that they should play music so The Joy of Cooking jammed all day I cooked food for the crowd in my truck and worked laying sod  Returned home at the end of the weekend tired and happy  When they fenced off the park my truck was still parked in The Boneyarda place at th and Delaware in Berkeley where a number of people were building boats vans and so on  My neighbor Alan Blanchard had said goodbye to his wife Sheila and gone up to Telegraph Ave to work at the Berkeley Reperatory Theater doing carpentry  He heard some noise on the street went up to the roof to see what was happening and was immediately hit by a volley of buckshot fired by an Alameda County Sheriffs deputy  He never saw another thing as he was permanently blinded  James Rector who was standing next to him had seen the deputy point his shotgun at them he turned and was running away when the blast hit him in the lower abdomen  He died four days later  I was in Sproul Plaza for Rectors memorial service just after he died  The National Guard troops surrounded the plaza and pointed their bayonets inward while helicoptors dropped CS gas directly on the thousands of people who had assembled  Walking home after this gathering we were assaulted by National Guard troops  That night I defied the curfew and drove my truck all around Berkeleyno one was permitted on the streets after dark and it was obviously a hippie truckyet they never stopped me even at the roadblocks which I ignored  Yes a whole other s saga  Still makes me sad about Alanhis wife left him and whenever I saw him after that he commented that he realized he would always remember me as he saw me on the last day he was sighted