Uh, here's the Santa Susana Pass Historical State Park sign that I passed on the way to Santa Susana Pass & Iverson
I drove to Santa Susana Pass & Iverson, which is more or less where Spahn Ranch was. There's a church there now. Probably the same church where Iamaphoney is found praying at the end of RA 101 (but I didn't go in to check).
I parked in the church parking lot.
After parking, I walked down Iverson and took this picture of the Iverson Road sign where it intersects with Santa Susana Pass
So then, following Iamaphoney's footsteps from RA 101, I turned left (east) on Santa Susana Pass and walked past that Historical State Park sign, looking for those telephone poles and for that post with the large chunk cut out of it.
I recognized these landmarks; they weren't difficult to find:
No one bothered me. No mysterious men in black or Manson/Crowley/cultists were there; no one followed me or has been following me.
It's overcast though. If it had rained, I would have left. On the other hand, if it had been a HOT day, I wouldn't have undertaken this, in the first place. That's when snakes are most likely to be out in force. It was pretty cool though, but even so, I felt somewhat apprehensive.
You can believe that I watched carefully where I tread through the underbrush.
I did go exploring by walking through the underbrush, carefully watching my step. If I had heard anything that sounded like a hiss or a rattle, I would have gotten out of Dodge. But I didn't run into anything like that, so I kept going.
None of the underbrush/shrubbery etc. really looked like the scene from RA 101, so there was a certain amount of hit-and-miss searching going on, but it wasn't an extremely wide area to search.
Finally, I headed here:
At least, I THINK that this was it. Maybe I forgot to take pictures of the very last place I searched. Maybe this is one of the places that I searched beforehand.
Anyway, I will confess to a certain amount of excitement when I looked through whatever it was I looked through and saw a brown familiar shape. I don't know what I would have done if there had been a snake resting possessively on top of it.
But there was none, so I pulled it out and photographed it on the spot:
I made off with it, out of the field, back onto Santa Susana Pass, looking over my shoulder (no one was following me) and back up Iverson Road to the church parking lot where I drove off.
Then when I had arrived at my host's residence and got to use the computer, I left my cryptic messages, which got you all so excited.
Here's a front and back picture of the briefcase: this time from the comfort of my guest room:
I just broke open the damn thing by putting pressure on the strap. I had already broken it open by the time I took these pictures.
OK, here's what was in it:
1) The Crowley book that I alluded to earlier; the 1976 edition. I see that a medium-sized photograph doesn't really show clearly the 1976 copyright in the title page, but that's what it is. There are no handwritten inscriptions inside this book; I checked.
2) An album cover and LP of "The Magic Christian" with Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers. I see that I have neglected to take a picture of the LP. I don' thave an LP player or an old phonograph to play it on, and I don't know anyway why the LP should have on it something that others haven't already heard.
The back of the album cover has some extraneous scratchings on it, presumably of matters that were of importance to Iamaphoney or someone.
Someone decided to underline "MacLen Music", as having produced "Come and Get It" (written by "Paul McCartney") and the reference to "Lilli" from Lilli Marlene.
And is that supposed to be some original handwritten doodling from Sir Paul McCartney in the lower right-hand corner? Or did all of these albums come with that doodling imprinted on them?
And here's something else that was in there. I can't imagine why it is important. It's a two-sided poster, with the well-known picture from MMT of "Paul" in uniform sitting over the sign that says, "I Was" or "I Was You" or "I You Was" on one side, and with another picture of "Paul" and Ringo in their wizard outfits on the other side.
And there was one more thing in there: a CD
There's a 15 second scene in there that will probably excite some comment, but it doesn't exactly shed much light. I uploaded it to YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YWiLybc5cAnd that's what was in the briefcase when I found it. It IS a briefcase, not a suitcase, by the way, as you can see. As far as I can see, there aren't any hidden compartments that might contain anything else.
Although, again, the CD that I uploaded to YouTube will excite some commentary, there doesn't seem to have been anything in the briefcase that would be worth killing for -- or even worth risking snakebite for.
And those of you reading this may well feel that it wasn't worth the wait, and I don't blame you. Well, it's time for Iamaphoney to fish or cut bait on April 10.