Jagganath apperance in San Francisco

At the time, Malati, my wife, and all of us of course at the Haight-Ashbury, were very much attracted to Indian things. And there was a new shop in town in San Francisco down at Fisherman's Wharf named Cost Plus. And they always had a lot of Indian stuff in there, and we, and especially Malati, used to shop there a lot. She was a bit of a kleptomaniac too. We didn't have much money. So this was from the old hippie days, you know, going out with the bags of groceries and stuff. Anyway, I don't know if I should say this, Malati, but please forgive me. [Laughs.] So she found this little doll. There were three bins full of three distinctly different dolls. And something attracted her, and she copped Jagannath. Lord Jagannath, Krishna, the one with the big eyes and black face. I wasn't in the room when she showed it to Prabhupada, but apparently she just, as a matter of interest, asked him one day what it was, "What is this?" And it just blew Prabhupada's mind. He fell down on the floor and started bowing to it. This is what she told me. And he saw it as a great sign that Lord Jagannath wanted to come and live in San Francisco. So he asked her if she knew anyone who was a carpenter. At the time, I was the treasurer of the temple. And she said, "Oh, yeah, Shyamasundar; he likes to carve wood." So Prabhupada called me up. And he had the little figurine, and he sketched it a little bit different for me. I had a drawing of some kind. And I went down to South San Francisco where there was a barge-dismantling yard. And they always had big timbers of wood. In fact, all the Jagannaths I made from there on out, the wood came from barge dismantlers. Anyway, I got the wood and started carving it on the roof of our house on Haight Street. Prabhupada was very curious all the time about how it was coming. Sometimes he'd telephone. "Bhaktivedanta Swami here," he'd say. [Laughs.] "Ah, Swamiji, how are you?" [Laughs.] Some devotees, when they first met him, wanted to shake his hand. We didn't know yet how to deal with all this. Prabhupada was letting us in very easily. And, of course, you look at Jagannath. My God, how could anything be so outlandish? It could only have happened in 1967, in the Haight-Ashbury at San Francisco, California. For the last 10,000 years, it could only have happened there at that time. That people would automatically, without batting an eye, accept this as God. [Laughs.] And go with the program. "Oh, that's God? OK. Cool." [Laughs.] "At least we know what He looks like, now." [Laughs.]