The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play… Summary & Analysis

Victor tells us that “during the sixties, [his] father was the perfect hippie, since all the hippies were trying to be Indians.” He describes a photograph of his father that made the cover of Time; his father was protesting the Vietnam war in Spokane. In the picture, his father is holding a rifle over his head, while a “fellow demonstrator” holds a sign that reads MAKE LOVE NOT WAR. Victor reveals that his father served two years in prison after being charged for assault with a deadly weapon in the aftermath of the protest, and got out “just in time to hitchhike to Woodstock to watch Jimi Hendrix play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

Throughout Victor’s childhood, Victor says, Jimi Hendrix and his father “became drinking buddies.” Victor would put on the tape of “The Star-Spangled Banner” every time his father would come home, and his father would weep, “then pass out with his head on the kitchen table.” Victor would fall asleep beneath the table where his father sat, and the two would “dream together until the sun came up.”

In the wake of such nights, Victor’s father would tell him stories “as a means of apology,” including how he met Victor’s mother. “They fought each other with the kind of graceful anger only love can create,” Victor adds now.

Victor remembers how, one night in his adolescence, when driving home with his father, someone called into the radio with a request to hear Jimi Hendrix’s version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Victor and his father got into a long discussion about war and peace—“that’s all there is,” he remembers his father saying; “It’s always one or the other.”

Victor describes his vivid dreams of his father at Woodstock, but admits that “as much as [he] dream[s] about it, [he doesn’t] have any clue about what it meant for [his] father to be the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play at Woodstock,” or if he was even truly the only one.

Victor describes his parents’ arguments; a particularly difficult one occurred on a trip to visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave. Another began after his father, against his mother’s will, bought a motorcycle, and then wrecked it, resulting in a two-month stay in the hospital. Victor’s mother cared for him in the wake of the crash, but later their marriage dissolved. Victor describes his and his parents’ differing remembrances of how their family was torn apart. “Was it because of Jimi Hendrix,” Victor remembers asking his mother; he recalls that she replied: “Part of it [was], yeah.”

Victor recalls a dream he had, soon after his father left, of his father returning to their HUD house on his motorcycle. In the middle of the dream, Victor rose from his bed, went out onto the porch, and waited. His mother came outside to wrap him in a quilt, and he remained there until sunrise, then went back inside, where his mother made the two of them breakfast and they “ate until [they] were full.”