For Watkins, there followed three-and-a-half months of hippie desultoriness, most of it spent taking care of a farm that was near Big Sur and whose owner had picked up the hitchhiking youth before going on to Hawaii. Watkins returned to the Los Angeles area, where, at a San Fernando Valley street corner, he was recognized and picked up in a hollowed-out school bus that was painted black, driven by the same two Manson girls who had greeted him at the door of the Topanga Canyon house. As the girls took him to the Family's new camp at Spahn Movie Ranch, near Chatsworth, one of them remarked that Manson was Jesus Christ. It was July 4, 1968.