Summer of Love

In late 1966 I find myself stationed a few miles south of San Francisco at Moffett Field. I’m attached to Transport Squadron 8 and assigned to work in the base radio shack sending teletype messages all over the world. In those days I don’t have a car and spend most off hours hitchhiking around the area with my camera. Most people I meet in this way are wonderful to a wandering sailor. The afternoon I first hear about a strange tribe of people called Hippies was an exception. Myself and John Borsh, a sailor from Minnesota decide to explore the Carmel Coast. We find ourselves walking a narrow winding section of Highway 1 just south of Point Lobos. Two wild men recently out of the Air Force who had just ingested a strange chemical called Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) decide to pick us up. At first the men seem normal. Myself and farm boy Borsh soon find out how LSD makes people crazy. The men say they are on a quest to find Hippies. They explain that Hippies are people who all live together in a tribe. They know of some in San Francisco but want to see the coastal bands. The men never cut their hair and the women will have sex with anyone, they say of Hippies. This sounds all well and good until their acid kicks in. The driver goes completely crazy. He almost kills us as he drives like a lunatic along the winding coast highway. We find no Hippies along the coast that day, so our insane traveling companions decide to give up on the coastal tribes and seek out a magical place they know of called Haight-Ashbury. We beg our way out of the car near Moffett Field, and they roar off to more acid and free love. We decide to quit hitchhiking. The next weekend we talk a loud Texan (who everyone called Tex) into taking us into San Francisco to find the land of Hippies.