It's the late sixties, a time of peace signs, free love and revolution; and Kent like others of his generation, is looking for a meaning to his life. Driving alone along the Big Sur, he flashes back to difficult memories about college, drugs, family and relationships. The flashback over, Kent is back in his car, but he loses control and crashes over an embankment. Stunned and hurt, Kent starts hitchhiking, not caring which direction. He wanders aimlessly, taking rides from strangers, never making real contact. Then he meets Julie who intrigues him and they move in together. Kent still has to find himself and the meaning of his existence.

A crotchety old ranch owner fights to be able to live his life the way he wants to, and not the way other people--and the law--tell him he has to.

Ass-breaker Dingus Magee is looking for a gold train when he comes upon old acquaintance Hoke Birdsill on stage to San Francisco, and robs him of his money. Hoke goes to the nearby town of Yerkey's Hole, where Belle Knops is both mayor and bordello-mistress. She appoints Hoke Town Sheriff and tries to get him to stir up the Indians so the soldiers at the nearby fort (the main customers) won't go to Little Big Horn. Dingus tries to stir up more trouble and get involved with the pale, baby-talking Indian, Anna. The film is a send-up of the oft-repeated phrase "the Code of the West" and exaggerates it and what it stands for into the ridiculousness that it is.