Memories of a Misspent Youth

When you're living alone in a travel trailer in a retirement village, you do a lot of reflecting. There's not much else to do when the big events of the week are a pinochle game and a potluck, and the talk of the whole park is Mrs. Norris's wonderful homemade strawberry preserves. What excitement!

Can't get too excited though. You know how Ernie's blood pressure is.

Now that the wind's died down and the warm season is upon us, everything is still. The only traffic that goes by my little tin house is the occasional golf cart, and they don't make any noise. No skateboards, no dogs barking, no dope deals being made except those transacted in hushed tones at the doctor's office.

It's a big change from living on a busy corner in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, where diesel buses stop and start up again every fifteen minutes all day and night, skateboards are constantly rumbling by, tires are screeching, horns are honking, inebriates are inebriating and psychotics are psychoticizing.

I'm alone with my own thoughts, which were recently stimulated by an e-mail from a guy I haven't heard from in over 40 years, and who was one of my main road dogs in high school. He's done very well for himself -- I won't say where or doing what -- and after stumbling across one of my web sites he made the connection. Ain't the internet wonderful?

He set me to remembering things I haven't thought about forever. So I just had to e-mail him:

Hey Name Omitted--

Remember the time you and me and K------ were sleeping outside, and you and K------ rang Mr. Bitch's doorbell at three in the morning? You guys almost got collared, because Mr. Bitch was an early devotee of electronic security systems, as you found out.

I was chicken, so I hung out across the street in the woods and watched.

There was another time when I wasn't chicken though, which was when you and I and the aforementioned other suspect were walking up the street and this hot car full of hot shit drove by pretty loud and fast, and K------ yells "You assholes!" So they slammed on the brakes and started to back up, and K------ hollers "Let's get outta here!" and takes off running.

But I said, "Just keep walking," and we did, like a couple of tough guys. So the studs backed up a ways and were muttering something inaudible but vaguely menacing, then decided we weren't worth the effort. Either that or we really had 'em buffaloed with our cool savoir faire, our tough guy nonchalance, and that certain what the French call I don't know what. So they went on their way.

Those days were a lot of fun, except for having sex on the brain and never getting laid (every day was a long, hard day), and we didn't even have to use drugs or get likkered up.

So what are you doing for amusement these days?