Kung Fu Bill lived alone, above John James, in a house high in the trees near the Limahuli stream. Bill played the congas and often, in the afternoon, you could hear him from everywhere in camp pounding out a beat for hours, sometimes accompanying his drums with spoken word refrains. One of his mantras that I still remember was, “Chicks with checks.” That caught my attention and I climbed up into his tree house and asked if I could take his picture.
Bill was the younger brother of Eduardo Malapit, the country prosecutor who drafted an ordinance against hitch-hiking to harass the hippies, and then won a seat on the County Council for his strong stand against Taylor Camp. Eduardo was then elected Mayor, promising to close the camp.