I graduated from High School 60 years ago this May

 On one level it seems like yesterday and on another level it feels like another universe far far away or that it happened to someone else and not me.

But, then again that's what 60 years can do to an 18 year old who is now 77 almost 78 years old. 

And the person I most would like to talk about this now passed away in a Kayaking Accident in Colorado in the early 1980s in his early 30s who graduated with me then in 1966 from the "I AM" School that was then in Santa Fe, New Mexico but is now in Mt. Shasta, California.

So, looking back now from here this is what it looks like to me now.

I moved on the El Capitan Train with viewing area in glass on the top of the train cars to Santa Fe through Albuquerque in Fall of 1965.

I remember that Train ride to Santa Fe the first time the most. I met a Viet Nam Veteran only 19 years old and all the life had been sucked out of him. Though I enjoyed talking with him a lot I realized I never wanted to be in the military because this had destroyed his life. Everything youthful and happy and exuberant was gone from him. He seemed like a 100 year old man. He was lost to I realize Now PTSD and I wonder if he even survived very long after he returned home. He was lost to himself possibly forever. He said all the polite things that one said then in those times but I realized that basically everything happy in his life was gone maybe forever. I realized then I didn't want to ever be a soldier because this definitely had destroyed his life going to the Viet Nam war.

When I arrived in Santa Fe I couldn't bring my 1956 Ford STation wagon that I bought with money I made working at age 16 for 800 dollars cash. It's important to realize that a brand new Camaro when I bought it in 1968 later was only $3500 because what people were paid was incredibly less than now and likely the minimum wage was ONLY $1 at that time (even though I usually made $2,50 to $3 an hour when I worked from 12 to 16 or 17 years old because I often worked for my father or other lucrative jobs where were plentiful then for teenagers but not now.

So, I wasn't allowed to bring my "Surf Wagon" to the private school away from my parents who were in Glendale in the Los Angeles ARea of California then. Also, in my dorm room I had it to myself and there was no television and of course no cell phones or personal computers because they hadn't been invented yet only a radio. So, I did a lot of reading there and listened to rock and roll on the radio even though that was frowned upon then because this was a church school and very conservative in their thinking then.

The next thing I remember is a girl named Patty (not sure of the spelling) who was a year younger than I and likely a Junior in High school. However, she had a seizure from an ulcer and I was the only one strong enough at 6 feet 3 inches then in high school to pick her up and carry her to the car half conscious and drive with her to the hospital where she soon recovered from this. However, she sort of fell in love with me because she thought I rescued her and I liked her too.

However, I was going steady with another girl in Los Angeles and this became very complicated for me to have 2 girlfriends at the same time (one in Santa Fe and one in Los Angeles). So, I didn't really know how to deal with this in any honorable way (because I was only 17).

So, this caused me a lot of problems because the girl back in Los Angeles I had intended to marry since I was a child. But, over time this tended to break me up with the girl in Los Angeles even though Patty and I only were together through the summer because she lived in the Los Angeles Area too and traveled back to Los Angeles (we traveled together) (for her safety) on the train.

The next thing I remember is that it snowed one day and I couldn't get my screen door open at first to my dorm room because there was 2 or 3 feet of snow up against it. This was totally new for someone from Los Angeles being somewhere it snowed like this. Then the school closed because no cars could drive in this much snow at all and so all the kids in the dorm rooms had a big snowball fight which was incredible fun for me having mostly been raised not int he snow at all. However, I had skied on my father's world war II army surplus skis near Mt. Waterman above Los Angeles in the mountains there in the Angeles national Forest which goes up to about 8000 or 9000 feet next to Los Angeles.