1969

I turned 21 in 1969. There are some years of a person's life (in this case mine) that forever change the rest of ones life. 1969 was such a year for me. I had planned my whole life in a certain sort of way. 1969 forever changed that path for better and for worse. For that is how life is. Nothing is in a vacuum. When one variable changes, sometimes every variable in ones life changes too. For me, I could not believe how my life changed both for better and for worse that year. However, looking back I think without these changes I would have lived a very boring unhappy life or likely committed suicide by age 25. All these changes though painful took me toward a life worth living that I could not have conceived of before all these events took place.

First of all, I started out the year working Midnight to noon 7 days a week as a computer operator on IBM 360 computers and Univac optical scanners. Everything was batch sorting then. It was all still done with punch cards and there was no random access memory yet(at least outside of military operations). We did automated accounting for some of the biggest car dealerships in the state of California. However, working midnight to noon I never could really adjust to. So a couple of months into this job working midnight to noon I had a car accident from not enough sleep and had to leave my job.

Though I was relieved because I had been working myself to death at age 20(a stupid thing to do that young) my young male ego was very hurt at this outcome as everyone in my extended family and friends were very proud of my prestigious computer job leading into better and better things and well paid enough to have bought my own brand new 1968 Camaro with a 327 engine which rocked(so light and so powerful). A couple of years later I took it up to 140 miles per hour and it did just fine at that speed.

So, since I was crestfallen I decided to go back to visit my girlfriend in Detroit where she was going to College. I stayed with her folks and looked for a job. However, since there were no mountains and the temperature never went above 30 degrees Fahrenheit all the time I was there, being a Los Angeles boy this just wouldn't do for me at all. Also, since I flew there I didn't have my 1968 Camaro which I left home. Though my girlfriend and I didn't break up then she cried a lot when I went home to Los Angeles.

At this point I was really confused about a lot of things. I had thought I was grown up and capable of making all the right decisions but the last couple of months had crashed that theory. So, I realized there was a lot more to being grown up than I had ever realized. I began to get really scared about the whole thing and was very unsure of my future. It was as if my parents and I had raised me for a life I could not survive. I realized I didn't want the life I had led before. I wanted something new and different if I wanted to be alive at all.

I starting working as an electrician's helper alongside my Dad. I was doing this until I decided what next to do. I worked as an electrician's helper from February until August 1969. In July my Dad and Mom moved to San Diego where he could make a lot more money. He retired making about $30 an hour plus benefits in 1980, which was very good money at that time. He found that being an electrical contractor that he wound up having to borrow money to pay his income taxes every year and going into debt doing that. He could wind up much further ahead with less headaches going back to being a union journeyman electrician which he did until he retired.

On Weekends he would almost always go out to his 2 1/2 acres of land in the desert above Yucca Valley(about 30 miles from Palm Springs) from 1968 until 1980 to build his retirement house. We had a 28 foot 1946 Spartan Trailer he kept there until the house was built enough to live in while working on it. The house was basically finished by 1978 but he kept making refinements on it and adding rooms until 1985 when my Dad passed on there. My Mom lived there too and stayed with him and helped him every weekend he went there to work on it. Whenever I could I went to help him with difficult stuff where you need more than one strong man to do and often friends came out for the weekend and helped Dad and Mom and I.

I would often ride one of my motorcycles across the desert sandy roads and up dry sand washes at that time. It was a very wide open time in the desert those days. Also, there was a dirt road through Pipes Canyon all the way up to Big Bear from there as well which was a really amazingly fun ride. I took several girlfriends over the years up those roads.

After working as an Electrician's helper I helped Dad and Mom move to San Diego. At that time closed in Van type Uhaul type of trucks were not available for rent. So we rented a Bobtail truck which just had side gates that came out. Then we got a big tarp to put over everything and roped it in.

After Dad and Mom moved away I went for a month to live with my Aunt in the Hollywood Hills near Glendale where I had grown up from age 8. She had a swimming pool and a beautiful house but she had been a hollywood actress and married to an actor who had gotten a divorce. So my cousin was only about 5 at that time. I realized that I needed my own place and dreamed of a place in Santa Monica right at the beach.

I got fired from my Electrical job for taking an extra vacation day and climbing Half Dome in Yosemite with a friend. So I got a new job as an electrician in Venice, California right next to Santa Monica. However, this was a really crazy place at that time sort of like Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. I'm sure people will tell you Venice is still pretty crazy with Muscle Beach nearby and skaters of all kinds on the boardwalk and people playing music along the boardwalk and ocean there. Well, in 1969 it was even more experimental and crazy than it is now. When I moved there it was for me, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto". The best way I can put this is that this was one of the most eye opening experiences of my life. The day I moved into my beachfront apartment a neighbor on LSD had jumped out of his window headfirst into the sidewalk below with the expected results-- he was dead. This was just one of many shocking and mindblowing events during the next 3 months I lived there. When I finally moved away it was just too crazy to stay there anymore. However, living there had fundamentally changed me in many ways. I saw the world completely differently than before. Maybe it was the wild and free girls I had met there(I had broken up with my Detroit girlfriend in June 1969 and this is now October).

I finally moved to San Diego to get my head straight. Meanwhile, I had been excommunicated from my families church. Now you might think this is a bad thing. However, in the long run I'd have to say it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Though I lost all my friends worldwide in my birth church I found my soul. I didn't commit suicide because of it(came close) and became who I am now(my own man) and a lifelong truth seeker. Though it is a much lonelier life than I expected, it is a much more real life than I would have led had I not had to question EVERYTHING about my life. Often when you ask questions you don't get the answers you want but at least you find out the truth. Lies only strangle and kill. The truth may be awful but at least then you can find a way to survive in a realistic way. I'm alive. I had an amazing life that I would never have lived if I hadn't been through all the craziness of 1969.