1965

In 1965 I was 17 years old. I had started going steady with a girlfriend who was 21 after I bought my first car one month after I was 16. She sang in the church choir and was surprised she was dating someone 16. Then a year later we broke up and I started dating someone 19 who was going to L.A. State University (it was called College still then). After the two previous years I was sort of bored with High School and decided to drop out the beginning of my senior year. But, my parents had other plans. They said, "Hey. Why don't you go to the church school in Santa Fe, New Mexico? Your friend Victor lives there with his parents and I think his brother and he both attend there." I thought about this because if I just dropped out of school I would have to work full time. But, if I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico I would live at high altitude where it snows and I had never lived where it snowed before since I was 4 years old. Also, I wouldn't have my parents there telling me what to do either. So, I went even though I wasn't allowed to take my 1956 Ford stationwagon that I called my "Surf Wagon" because we drove it to the beach with our over 10 foot surfboards hanging out the back of the stationwagon back then.

So, I boarded the train and had no idea really what I was in for. First, the lady who ran the Residence for people who lived out of state had been in one of the prison camps in World War II in Europe and was a pretty tough customer having survived all that and having watched many many people starve to death and die while she was in the prison camp. She met her husband there and he was a doctor who made prosthesis for men injured in wars to replace their missing limbs for the Veterans Administration in Sandia.

I didn't have a TV there but I was allowed to have a radio and my friend Victor told me about how people when it first snowed had forgotten how to drive in snow and ice and it was fun to go to the park in Santa Fe and watch them crash the first week of snow and ice. So, being young after I finished my homework I walked into town and sat behind a big tree so they wouldn't crash into me when the road was really icy. And you could tell which ones were going to crash because anyone doing over about 10 or 15 miles per hour was going to crash into something coming over this one road. So, I got to watch about 10 or 15 cars crash as they came too fast over this one rise in the road into bulkheads, trees and parked cars. About one car in 50 would come to fast and crash. But no one got seriously injured, just there bumpers and fenders and most people just hit something and then drove away before someone else ran into them.

I had never lived since I was 4 in a place where it was normal to have temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit. When I first got there in early October on the Train it hadn't snowed yet. So one morning I woke up and there was a screen door on the outside of my room and it was 3 feet deep from nothing the day before. So, I had to be very careful not to break the screen door trying to open it. But since it was new fallen snow I succeeded. School was cancelled so all the kids from junior high through High School that wanted to had a snowball fight which was really fun. I had never had a snow day in any school I had been in before so it was really fun.

Later, that week we went Inner tubing at 20 to 30 miles per hour down a hill in Hyde park. One time I was going really fast and a 3 year old ran out in front of me, I screamed for him to get out of the way but he had chosen the wrong place to be so I scooped him up into the air to try to make sure he didn't get hurt so he flipped in the air and came down okay and started crying. I ran back but the lady was embarrassed because she hadn't been watching him and told me it was okay. So, I kept inner tubing. It was amazing to be 17 and over 1000 miles away from home with friends. It was great! Some people never have that much fun! Later about 9 of us piled into a friend's stationwagon who had graduated in the past couple of years from the school and now was attending the University of New Mexico. We visited man cool places around New Mexico on weekends that year. He owned the same year 1956 Ford Stationwagon that I did. Only mine was blue and white and his was beige and white I believe. They made two tone cars and station wagons back then in 1956 because that was the style.

I went home for Christmas and Easter on the Santa Fe Train from Albuquerque to Pasadena back then and graduated from High School in May 1966. When I returned to Glendale my parents wanted me to sell my blue 1956 stationwagon  that summer and buy a 1965 VW Beetle Bug for College so I did so I could save money on gas. They gave me a Grand Piano for a Graduation present from High School. I kept that piano until about 1974 when I moved to Hawaii with my first wife and baby son. I moved it up stairs to several apartments by then so as much as I loved it I didn't want to move it anymore. Many of my friends became professional musicians and we would jam on piano, keyboards, guitars etc. While I was in Santa Fe I took organ lessons because I had already had 8 years of piano from age 8 to age 16. I started playing in church when I was about 14 years of age and continued to do this at least one day a week until I was 21. And I also sang in the choir until I was 21. And my organ teacher in Santa Fe got permission for me to play one of the pipe organs in Santa Fe before I graduated so I did.