Nature boy

I always was happier in the forests and at the ocean than in a classroom all my life. I was mostly obedient to my teachers because I didn't want to be picked up by my ears until they bled like other boys were in public school. Also, that paddle with holes drilled in it so it would hurt more when it hit you didn't look fun to me either. So, in some ways I was a model student at least until I was about 12 and mostly got all As and a few Bs.

But always, being in nature was my first love along with riding my bicycle. Any way to be free! Any way to be away from culture and all it's demands upon me that I didn't want to be a part of.

I knew one day I would have to grow up and try to fit in this culture but I really wasn't interested in the end. I just wanted to walk through streams in the forests and to climb mountains and to body surf at the beach and boogie board on whatever that floated then riding in waves until I was about 13 or 14 and started surfing on surfboards first at Huntington Beach and later at places like Malibu where I also Scuba dived with a friend. My friends loved nature too, so we hiked a lot and went surfing once we had cars (I had a 1956 ford STationwagon that was white and blue). We had over 10 foot surfboards that hung out the back then and had sun bleached hair with surfer bangs that the girls all loved. We called our girlfriends "Surf Bunnies" then. It was the Los Angeles Beach culture then from the 1960s into the 1970s. We raced cars on the streets that had wide slicks (wide slick tires for racing) that were still legal then on the streets.

But, walking through a forest like in Mt. Shasta or Yosemite alone or with a friend was my single favorite thing to do until I discovered girls around age 15 which would have been in 1963.

So, I guess if you watch "American Graffiti" and a few surf movies of the 1960s or 1970s you sort of get what 1962 to 1969 were for me.

However, 1969 to 1974 I had eventually shoulder length hair and a full beard some of that time because that was how it was then in Southern California.