David Hoffman is the first photo in Ben Klein’s beautiful book Irwin Klein and the New Settlers, photos taken by Ben’s uncle Irwin Klein. The negatives were rescued by Irwin’s brother Alan Klein and recently published in a photo documentary of Counter Culture types tucked away in the hills and valleys of Northern New Mexico circa 1970.
David took a nostalgia tour a few weeks ago with his daughter Iris, and as we’ve been in contact since Ben’s book was released, I invited him to visit on his way back to the airport. We spent a delightful evening and morning comparing notes of our mutual friends and acquaintances, many of them pictured in the Kleins’ photo book. I hadn’t seen David for fifty years! The conversation revealed truths I’d never known about because hippies most often didn’t delve into the past. We were about being in the Now. The tao of hippie-ism was living life fully in the moment.
David had scuttlebutt on my first old man’s first wife that was interesting to me now. He had his versions of what was going on in that house on Woolsey Street quite different from mine. I didn’t even remember that he had lived there, yet he vividly described me with irrefutable facts. Eight hours of mad chatting just wasn’t enough to even clarify the time line, much less find out about who was alive or dead, and who had done what in the in-between time. A truly exciting visit.