I think that at this time in my life that my father and started going down the wrong path. We disagreed on everything, I could do no right. I was starting to rebel. I wanted to be treated like an adult. I wanted to have a car. I wanted to choose my friends, I wanted to have what they had. What they had was given to them, I was willing to work for what I wanted. It was 1969 and I couldn’t even have my hair a little long. We argued all of the time. I was a big let down to him.
I was working at the super market when I really started to get interested in girls. Now I think I was always interested in girls, I really liked being around them. But now I was becoming a man, at least I thought so. I was really needing a car now. My friends were going on dates, going places that I didn’t get to alone, like the movies. Girls love to go to the movies. They like a guy with a car. a boyfriend with money to spend on them. Man I sure loved girls. Girls, girls, girls!
So according to my father I couldn’t have a car until I graduated. So me being my bad self I took some of my money out of the bank and went down to the Honda dealer and bought me a motorcycle! When my father got home did he ever explode! We argued, we argued a lot, then my mother stepped in. She calmed us down. My father came up with some new rules of course. I could leave the back yard with the bike, (we had a big back yard), until he was sure that I knew how to ride, and I had to have a helmet. I bought two, one for my dates too.
On Saturdays I cruised Foster Park. In 1969 this was the cool thing to do, the park was packed with people listening to music, throwing frisbees, dancing and having a lot of fun. I had never seen anything like it before. It was great! I loved going to the park. My father said that the kids there were just a bunch of hippies and that I should stay away from them. I discovered music that my friends weren’t listening to. Some guy called Jimi, and some girl called Janis, and groups called, Cream and The James Gang. It all sounded so different from the Beatles and the Stones. I made new friends.
