The Summer after the Summer of Love, Part I (Published Augst 23, 2021)

It was the Summer after the Summer of Love, 1968, I was eighteen, and five of us jammed into my 1961 Chevy Corvair and headed to San Francisco, the then action spot of the world as far as the five of us teens were concerned. Interstate 5 was not yet open all the way to "SF" as we in Los Angeles called it. There were almost no has stations and the freeway would stop and start taking you onto the old California Highway 33. It was along one these stretches of Highway 33, reminiscent of a John Steinbeck novel, that the car ran out of gas. I remember that Louise, my high school prom date was already not in the best of moods and running out of call in the middle of nowhere land did not help. Besides, it was after dark and about 110 degrees outside, at least so it seemed. The cars in those days had no air conditioning, or at least my old Corvair did not. After taking the rath from everyone in the car for not filling it sooner, an old man in 1950's pickup came along and offered me a ride to the nearest town to get gas. The driver was missing several teeth and had a gun rack with a gun or two proudly displayed out his back window. What the hell, it was better than Louise and Wendy going smoke on the side of the road. I jumped in. Luckily the gas station really was only a few miles up the road and the guy in the pickup turned out to be a nice guy from Texas who shared how he had moved to the San Joaquin Valley during the Dust Bowl in the late 1930's. I returned to the car with a can of gas, drove up the road and filled the tank, and we pulled into San Francisco about midnight and settled into a parking spot near Golden Gate Park. No one in the car talked to me the entire way. I remember sleeping in the car, the others were quick to exit and disappeared into the late-night crowd of other young people around the park. Thus was my first exposure to the Summer after the Summer of Love.