Dave's longtime friend Douglas Flaherty, in Malta, Illinois, ca. 1973, helping dig a garden in the backyard of Dave and María's rented duplex. Malta was an idyllic little town of 950 inhabitants, 6 miles from DeKalb.
Doug and Dave had met at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in the summer of 1968, and during the "Love Lust" poem controversy, when Dave was fired from his teaching position, Doug wrote him a letter of support, even though he did not realize that Dave was the same person that he had known at UNM. The two began corresponding, and when Dave and María moved to Illinois, they visited Doug and his wife Jeanie in Oshkosh, where Doug taught at the University of Wisconsin. Doug published some of Dave's poetry in his small magazine, Road Apple Review, and in 1972 issued Dave's Brands as part of Doug's chapbook series from his Road Runner Press. In 1973, it was Doug who inspired Dave to begin his own Prickly Pear Press; Doug also made possible the printing of Dave's The New Breed: An Anthology of Texas Poets, the third publication and the first anthology of three issued under his PPP imprint.