Following My Father: Capitola

After a summer at Kennolyn Camp, I was eager to move into a house of our own. My parents found an adorable cottage on a hill on Gilroy Drive.

The living room was paneled in knotty pine, with lots of windows, and open beams underneath a vaulted ceiling. My bedroom was small, but sunny. My parents slept on a pull-out sofa in the living room.

In my room, I arranged my knickknacks and listened to music or read. Some of my favorite songs that year were "Don't Mess with Bill" by the Marvelettes, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Dusty Springfield, "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted," by Jimmy Ruffin, "Soul and Inspiration" by the Righteous Brothers, "So Lonesome I Could Cry," by BJ Thomas and the Triumphs, and "A Groovy Kind of Love" by the Mindbenders.

As a consequence of moving so much, I carried with me feelings of loss and sadness. As happy as I might feel with where we lived, as I did in Capitola, because we moved from the time I was a baby, I longed for a real home -- one that was ours where we stayed put. I had to leave so many friends behind, and that became more and more painful once I reached adolescence.

"So Lonesome I Could Cry" truly brought out my wistful, mournful feelings. Listening to it helped me express those emotions and gain some relief. I sang along with tears in my eyes.

The lyrics are sung to a slow, swinging, mellow tune, originally performed by country singer Hank Williams in 1949.

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill

He sounds too blue to fly

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome I could cry

I've never seen a night so long

When time goes crawling by

The moon just went behind the clouds

To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep

When leaves begin to die

That means he's lost the will to live

I'm so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star

Lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome I could cry

From a beam in the living room, hung the rounded cage of a green parrot. We took care of Samson for a friend of my parents named Geneva, who went on a trip to Central America.

Geneva was the librarian in Cambria, a tiny seaside town on the central coast. We met her when my parents and I used to go to our property there, where we hoped to build an adobe house.

Geneva, who raised her son on her own, had an adventurous spirit. Later, once her son grew up, they lived in many unusual places, including a warehouse in Ojai, in the central valley. Geneva bought property in the mountainous, rocky, and desolate area south and east of Cambria, with the plan of building a house. Whoa! You wouldn't catch me living in a place like that!

Samson screeched, clicked, bobbed, and squawked whenever the cover was taken off his cage. I loved to talk to him and watch him in his antics from my seat on the stone fireplace below. He loved the orange half we stuck on a stick in his cage. He took a bite, then shook his head in a comical fashion. He preened by fluffing his feathers and bending his neck in acrobatic maneuvers. He liked to climb and hang upside down from bars in his cage.

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Soquel High School was surrounded by farm land. The air smelled like cow manure and fertilizer! I minded little. Being a freshman made me relieved and happy. No longer did I have to deal with the petty squabbles and cruel dynamics of junior high.

Before school, I took a shower and shaved my legs with Dad's razor. This was long before disposable razors (or disposable much of anything). Dad's razor was made of metal, with two blades on either side of a top piece.

The razor was tricky to use. I clotted the many cuts I got with Dad's styptic pencil, a little white stick of powdered alum crystals.

Girls and women wore stockings under their skirts and dresses always, and girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. When I snagged my stockings, I tried to prevent a run by coating the snag with fingernail polish.

I wore my hair chin length. My straight brown hair was pretty easy to handle. It was shiny, thanks to my use of Prell shampoo. I did not even have to use conditioner back then.

Soquel High was a balm to my nerves and a lift for my depression. I made two friends right away in German class: Tina and John.

Tina was tall and willowy. Her short brown hair suited her. She was attractive, despite her braces, which made her self-conscious about smiling.

Tina and her younger sister lived with their parents in a tract house across Soquel creek from our quaint neighborhood. Her parents came from Germany, and brought their strict ways with them. Tina was rarely allowed to do anything but come home directly after school.

Yet, Tina was a cheerful, witty, girl, who laughed a lot and made me laugh. We might have become closer friends had her parents allowed her to do more things after school.

John's confidence and cute surfer looks seemed to allow him to think he could get away with cutting up in class. Our German teacher was pretty tolerant.

One day Tina whispered, "John likes you."

"What?" I said, incredulously.

"John likes you!"

"What makes you say that?"

"I can just tell."

Tina was right, John did like me. He let me know one day as I walked down the hall to my next class. He caught up with me, and asked me if I wanted a ride home on his motorcycle.

I felt thrilled to walk through the crowded school parking lot in the company of a cute boy; then, better yet, getting on the back of his red Yamaha motorcycle!

The walk from my house to Soquel High was long and boring. I was, thankfully, unburdened of this when John began picking me up at my house in the morning. In the afternoon we often took a trip somewhere, either to his house in Aptos, to Brighton Beach or Santa Cruz, or into the Santa Cruz Mountains.

I loved motorcycles! At the end of camp, Mom bought a little red Honda scooter. She took me on a ride up the mountain and we stopped in a wood off the road. When Mom looked away, I hopped on the bike and skidded down the sandy path!

My alarmed Mom soon saw that I could drive it well once I practiced. After that she let me drive it around town once in a while, even though I was only thirteen and didn't have a license!

None of my former friends ever made trouble in class, and I did not really approve of John's doing so. I ignored him. But, it was his exuberance and confidence talking rather than a desire to make trouble. I figured that out, so despite his misbehavior, we made friends.

Soon, John became my first real boyfriend. By that I mean, he introduced me to what I will call "almost-sex" one afternoon in his bedroom when no one was home. Later he introduced me to sex, elsewhere.

John lived with his mom, step-dad, and younger sister Jane (John and Jane, original, I know!) in a Spanish-style house at the end of a street that bordered Aptos State Park. His mom studied to become a librarian at San Jose State. His step-father worked as a psychiatrist at a state hospital near Watsonville. Jane was a sweet and pretty little thing, who felt very close to her big brother.

John told me harrowing stories of the mischief he and his friends got into when he was little -- barreling down hills where they might at any moment get hit by a car, for example. I thought his risk-taking might somehow relate to his parents' high-conflict divorce.

John never saw his dad, and had taken on his mother's hostile attitude toward the man. I thought that was sad.

Like my family, John's family moved a lot, although by no means as frequently as we did. So, he and I had a basic understanding of what it felt like to be new in school, to leave friends behind, and also, to enjoy experiencing many places.

Once, John's family even lived in Japan. I found that out because his dog's name was Taro. Having no idea what that meant, I asked John, and he told me about taro root and their life in Japan.

John began studying classical guitar that year. Soon he played Bach's "Bouree," and "Menuett in D Minor." Now, that was impressive!

Playing the guitar seemed to calm John, and gave him a good coping mechanism to take with him on his family's moves.

I wish I had a musical instrument to help me cope; but, I had no training or talent in that area. In San Francisco when I was ten, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. I walked down to the tiny studio on Baker Street, sat on the piano bench next to my teacher, and eagerly returned home to practice.

Problem was, I had only a cardboard keyboard. I soon became too frustrated and lost interest.

I had more success with the guitar and recorder later on, but without lessons, except for friends showing me the basics, it was difficult to make progress. Maybe if I stuck with them I might enjoyed playing them even to this day.

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John and I often trekked down a long, windy, dirt road to New Brighton Beach. New Brighton's white sands curve around a wide cove in the Monterey Bay. We took long walks along the shore and sat on the sand, talked, and kissed.

One day John borrowed his dad's Volkswagen Bug. He took me to a secluded spot in the woods, where he made moves on me. Despite some fondling experience with my boyfriend at 13 in LA, John, at 16, took more mature approach that was too fast for me. He backed off when I objected.

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My parents had a pretty laisse faire approach to parenting me. They were much more strict when my two older sisters were young. This shift in position may have related to the fact that I almost died at two months old. Or maybe it had to do with my parents' being older. Maybe it had to do with my personality, which was, by and large, much more playful and cuter than my sisters.'

At any rate, my parents allowed me to do many things my sisters wouldn't have dreamed of. One such thing happened when I lived in Capitola.

Our parents gave John and me permission to take the Greyhound bus to San Francisco to attend the Chinese New Year parade. Then, we stayed over at John's mom's friends' basement hippie pad in the Haight. Alone.

We slept on a mattress on the floor. The "bedroom" was partitioned off with printed cotton bedspreads from India. John respected my naivete, and we did not have sex.

The next year I was allowed to go on a much longer adventure with John. I will tell you about that in a future post.

Despite my happier surroundings in Capitola, I still had underlying depression that came over me some evenings. Restless, I walked down to the main business area and roamed around the dark streets.

Along the way to the breakfront, I passed a pool hall/pinball arcade. I had taken up smoking, and needed cigarettes. I braved using the cigarette machine, dreading the moment the coins I dropped in and the snap back of the knob made sharp noises. When the pack came clunking down into the trough, fished it out, and hurried out onto the street.

Buying cigarettes as a teen was terribly suspenseful and nerve-wracking for me. I was not then, and never have been, a good liar, and dreaded someone's asking me my age.

Even as an adult, when I still smoked, I was embarrassed to buy cigarettes. I knew they were bad for me, but was addicted. Every single day I smoked I wanted to quit, and it made my life have a definite underlying torment.

One element of my experience had to do with the stigma, especially when I felt compelled to smoke at grad school or internships. I attempted to hide my smoking and the smell that went along with it, the latter, of course, impossible to hide.

I was embarrassed around other parents at my son's schools. Some of his friends' parents smoked, but very few.

Before work in the afternoon, I brushed my teeth and took another shower. The irony of it was that my patients and colleagues could undoubtedly smell the smoke embedded in my clothing.

In Capitola, if I did have cigarettes, I smoked while climbing up the hill to our cottage. I remember a dark night. The fog was so thick, it might as well have been lightly raining. What I thought about is a mystery. Loneliness and loss simmered in my psyche, despite my newfound friends.

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One Saturday John's family took me rock climbing. We traveled to a large outcropping near the highway in Vallejo. John's step-dad was an excellent teacher and had all the equipment: pitons, ropes, carabiners, and so on.

I loved rappelling! It felt so free and exciting! I enjoyed the challenge of scaling the rock, as well.

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I enjoyed my freshman classes, with the exception of math. Never overcoming my mental block, algebra was a torture.

My freshman year gym class was actually enjoyable. I still disliked undressing and dressing -- putting on those silly blue bloomers -- in the locker room, but came to love to be out on the field. Field hockey excited me. I liked to run, so it suited me.

I considered joining the track and field team, as I enjoyed the short and long jumps, as well as running. But my school year was cut short six weeks before the end of the year by Mom's all too familiar refrain, "We're moving. Start packing."

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One day an obese woman came to the door and asked Mom help clean her father's house across the street. She also wanted me to paint the living room. I enlisted John's help.

The walls were very dirty, so we had to wash them. What a job! Then, we applied the paint. It was hard work, but the lady paid us.

Later, she invited us to her house in San Jose. Along the way over the mountain, along the freeway, and through side streets, we became aware that she was extremely drunk. She actually told us she was drinking vodka because vodka doesn't have any odor in case she was stopped.

We arrived at her house. She and her husband kept drinking. Neither John nor I wanted to face the prospect of taking another harrowing drive over the mountain, so John called his mom, who came to get us.

That was the first time I personally encountered an alcoholic. It was very disconcerting. I felt repulsed. I did not know about alcoholism at the time, so took the prevailing cultural attitude that those people's drinking was evidence of a certain depravity and under their control. "Why couldn't they just stop it?"

In the spring, John and I traveled to San Francisco for a dance at the Social Hall on Sutter Street. The psychedelic era was just getting off the ground, so this dance introduced us to it. The place was packed with gyrating bodies!

Colored lights made patterns over the dancers. Girls wore everything from long, flowing, gauzy dresses to mini skirts and sleeveless tops. Many guys wore tie-dye t-shirts, long hair, and jeans.

Used to tradition rock and roll dances, like the twist, the swim, and the jerk, it interested me to see how other people danced. I felt self conscious.

Colored lights wove patterns int0 the hall. A large ball made of tiny mirrors reflected the lights in a revolving pattern. The music was incredibly loud.

San Francisco saw the birth of the hippie, or counterrevolutionary, movement. A neighborhood at the end of Golden Gate Park's panhandle, a large, grassy area that extends many blocks past the end of the park, is called the Haight-Ashbury, or simply. the Haight. That is the sight of the first enclave of hippie life.

Hippies often painted their vehicles. They were something to see; I always liked the VW buses.

A slogan typical of the hippie movement was Make Love Not War, usually accompanied by a peace sign, where you make a V with your index and middle fingers.

Another peace sign was drawn or painted. It is make up of a circle with a line bisecting it and two shorter lines running from that diagonally.

Hippie sayings included "Groovy," "Flower Power!" or simply, "LOVE."

If you are too young to know about the psychedelic era, here's a run down. The era had several threads, or movements. One, was, of course, the popularization of recreational drug use, particularly LSD and marijuana.

Another thread in the psychedelic era was "free love." Meaning, love (and sex) was the ultimate answer to everything. Young people said to each other, "You're beautiful!" People "turned on and tuned out."

Although not represented in the picture, most hippie girls grew their hair very long, and might braid a strand or wrap it around their heads. Afros were in. The hippie phenomenon was born.

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My friends Debbie and Dona from junior high in San Francisco sometimes ventured into the Haight. We looked at the psychedelic art, clothing, jewelry, and bedspreads, and the scene in general. It was "groovy."

It was an experience to walk along Haight Street. Many people were clearly on drugs. Some people handed out leaflets and flyers promoting hare krishna, a religion that came from India. Its core beliefs are based on Hindu Vedic scriptures. They practice Bhakti yoga, which has to do with loving God and thereby pleasing Krishna, the Supreme Lord.

Hare krishnas shave their heads and wear togas. Even many of the women shave their heads.

They also chant, sing, and meditate. And, when they were common to run across in San Francisco, asked for alms as they handed you a pamphlet.

I became very sick of and annoyed by them. They seemed to be everywhere: they were on street corners, in parks, at the airport. They were quite aggressive in their requests for money.

On Haight Street, my main interest was in the fantastic assortment of beads and other objects used to make jewelry or macramé pieces. I especially loved colorful, ceramic or glass beads from which I made necklaces. I made my favorite necklace by stringing a brass cowbell from India and a couple of beads onto a long leather thong. I enjoyed the sound it made as I walked.

Young people often wore bells on their clothing or jewelry in those days.

In the late sixties, the Panhandle became the site for "Love-ins." Love- ins were events where hippies got together to meditate, dance to music, use drugs, even to have sex. Those on drugs tended to gyrate in slow, fluid movements, and sometimes seemed to chase their hallucinations.

Woven amid the other threads were the political events of the day. The 1960s saw the Civil Rights Movement that successfully gave African Americans equality under the law and the right to vote. This accomplishment was by no means easy or quick. Racism, stemming from the slave era, lived on, and lives on today, tragically.

Hippies and others who supported civil rights and equality for blacks, traveled to take part in The March on Washington in 1963. where 250,000 people gathered on the Washington Mall. Martin Luther King ended the program with his "I have a dream" speech. In his speech, King employed the effective technique of repetition to emphasize what his dreams were about.

He began his speech by referring to Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which lent power and historical contest. The speech began as follows:

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land."

King continued to lay out the purpose of the march and what the civil rights movement aims to accomplish:

"There are those who are asking the devotees of Civil Rights, “When will you be satisfied?”

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No! no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

He urged African Americans to have hope that they will get what the wish for:

"Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to South Carolina. Go back to Georgia. Go back to Louisiana. Go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

King ends his speech by telling the audience, and the nation, what he dreams:

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama — with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification — one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain and the crooked places will be made straight, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brother-hood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire; let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York; let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania; let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

I present the whole text of what Martin Luther King dreamed of because it was one of the greatest, most impassioned speeches ever given; and, because it is crucial for every American to know about.

Tragically, this wonderful man and hero was assassinated in Memphis in 1963. His death was one of the greatest losses to this country ever.

The 1960s also saw protests against the long and ultimately futile war in Vietnam. Hippies and others participated in sit-ins, a form of passive resistance advocated by Mahatma Ghandi that was successful in India to end English rule and gain independence.

Peaceful marches were another ultimately effective form of protest against the war.

Both of these kinds of protests were often met with opposition by law enforcement. Those participating in sit-ins were dragged along floors and streets and arrested. Marchers began to be arrested in 1965 when a relatively small group protested in Washington, DC, and Lyndon Johnson ordered them to be.

Over the years, a more radical approach to protesting emerged. These groups thought that violence was the answer. The Weather Underground, or Weather men, formed in 1970, objected to the war, and also fought for civil rights. They set up a campaign to bomb government institutions.

The group was classified as a terrorist organization by the FBI because they used violent means.

In 1970, a bomb members of the Weathermen were making exploded in a townhouse in Greenwich Village, New York. Three of them were killed. The bomb was intended to kill Army soldiers and non-commissioned officers at a dance they would be attending at Fort Dix.

The 1960 and '70s saw many more protests and upheavals.

My parents and I marched in the San Francisco Spring Mobilization. 60,00 people marched that day.

The march was inspiring. I was so proud of myself and my parents for participating and making our opposition to the war known. I felt the wonderful energy and commitment of the other marchers. It was truly thrilling.

During the war, those against the war were opposed by those for the war. They were dubbed "Hawks." Families in which children objected to the war and their parents were Hawks, sometimes were broken up by the intolerance for disagreement by parents.

In 1970, students at Kent State University in Ohio staged a boycott in protest to Nixon's announcement that a major offensive was planned in Cambodia. The National Guard attacked them with guns, and four students were killed.

A peaceful memorial for the slain students, protest against the war, and demand for the release of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, leaders of the Black Panther movement was held in New York City in 1970. A group of 400 construction workers attacked them with bats and other weapons. This became known as the "Hard Hat Riot."

The Vietnam War ended in 1973 when a peace agreement was signed and Richard Nixon officially declared the war was at an end.

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John and I went to another dance, this one at the Coconut Grove on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Grove hosted big bands, including, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton and Tommy Dorsey.

By the sixties, it was a venue for dances and concerts. John and I also went to a rock concert there.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, built in 1907, is the oldest in the US. It is now one of the only amusement parks on the west coast. You can see in the picture a domed roof at one end. That is Coconut Grove.

My family went to the boardwalk many times when I was little. I remember being scared to go on kiddie rides alone, but my desire was so great that I did. We walked the whole length of the boardwalk, passing games and stands offering festive foods, like cotton candy, hot dogs, and popcorn, along the way. It was a long walk for a little girl!

There were many games where people pitched or threw balls and darts to try to get something knocked over, like milk bottles; or into bushel baskets, dishes, or cups; or to pop balloons. If a person was successful, they won a prizes, such as stuffed animals, monkey dolls, and knickknacks.

When I got older, I loved to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and Cyclone. On the Tilt-a-Whirl, I sat in a round car on a disk with other people. The disks attached to a large disk. When the large disk spun, the small disks whirled the cars around.

The Cyclone is also a large disk. It has tall walls all around where people stand. The disk rotates and swivels. Centrifugal force causes one to stick to the walls.

The boardwalk at Santa Cruz boasts the fourth oldest roller coaster in the US called The Giant Dipper. As its name implies, there are steep dips followed by a sharp rise followed by another dip. I think I was five when I first rode it.

My bravery is pretty surprising, given that when I was three, Mom and I went on the Wild Mouse, the kiddie roller coaster. For me that was scarier than the Big Dipper because of the speed and the sharp turns.

What happened was that the ticket taker forgot to lower the safety bar in front of our seat. When we were on top of the ride, Mom yelled at him about the problem that resulted -- Mom was having a hard time holding onto me. People down below were also shouting and pointing, but the operator would not stop the car. Whew!

My favorite ride when I was little was the 1911 Looff Carousel. Charles ID Looff was a Danish wood carver who brought the carousel to the boardwalk.

Each of the 73 horses was carved differently, with varying features. Some have teeth that show, giving them a wild character. Some horses have swords at their sides or garlands around their necks. They have real horse hair tails and jewels embedded in the saddles.

Like the carousel at the old Playland-at-the-Sea in San Francisco, The Looff Carousel has brass rings that hang from large hooks on the exterior poles. People on the outside of the carousel try to grab them. When someone is successful, he or she tries to throw the ring into a clown's mouth on the interior of the carousel. When the do, bells ring and lights flash.

The music for the carousel comes from the 342-pipe Ruth und Sohn band organ built in 1894. The "Ruth" is encased in a colorful façade.

Another organ was brought from the carousel at Playland when it was demolished. It is a Wurlitzer 165 Band Organ that is very rare. It stands in the carousel building, sometimes playing alongside the Looff.

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I got my ears pierced in Santa Cruz. A doctor pressed ice cubes on either side of my ear lobes to numb them, then poked holes with gold stud earrings. I was to wear the earrings until the holes healed.

Although it was popular among teenage girls to pierce their ears, it was sometimes viewed as inappropriate. Prior to the sixties, the prevailing thought was that only Mexican girls and women wore them.

My brother-in-law Bill counseled against my getting pierced ears, citing that reason. There was prejudice implied that was distasteful to me.

When I lived in San Francisco the year before we lived in Capitola, my friend Debbie and I took the bus to the boardwalk. We were mainly interested in darkening our tans. We spread our towels and slathered on Coppertone.

I was basking in the warmth of the sand and sun, enjoying the sea breeze, when Debbie put her long sleeve shirt on.

"Why are you putting your shirt on?" I asked.

"Look at my sunburn!" she replied.

I looked at her and saw that she was literally red as a lobster and in terrible pain.

Sunscreens did not exist yet, so all the suntan lotion did was prevent your skin from drying out. Debbie had the fairest skin you can imagine, short of being albino; hence, the sunburn.

She said she couldn't stay in the sun anymore, so we moved to the shade under the boardwalk.

I bought popcorn, cotton candy, and Coke at a concession stand to cheer her up. Besides, after our long trip, we were starving!

Another friend named Denise invited me over to her house in Santa Cruz one evening. We sat in her bedroom experimenting with makeup and various hairstyles.

I wore little makeup, usually, but that night I lined my eyes with a dark line of mascara, and applied thick mascara and lipstick. Our skin was rosy and smooth, so we skipped any foundation or powder that her older sister had on the dressing table.

Denise put my hair up, and I gave her an up do, as well. Then, we paraded around the dark neighborhood!

Denise also invited me to a Halloween party at a farm in the mountains. We bobbed for apples, stuck our hands in slithery spaghetti, and ran around in the dark.

My costume consisted of a dirndl skirt and puff-sleeved blouse. I braided my hair into two pigtails, and put round red circles on my cheeks with freckles over them. The idea was that I was a country girl.

John and I often took a Greyhound bus to San Francisco, stopping in Mountain View to visit my sister Winnie. She worked as a math aide at Ames Research in Moffett Field, She once took me on a tour.

Man, was that a surrealistic, futuristic experience!

Moffett Field is home to NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Humongous hangars have been used for many things over the years. Because that site is one of the few areas in the San Francisco Bay that rarely gets fog, it made an ideal air field.

An interesting tidbit is that the city of Sunnyvale bought the 1,000 acre piece of land for about $480,000, equivalent to $7,346,295 in 2019. They sold it to the US government for $1!

A naval air station was authorized in 1931. Moffett Field has played major roles in the development of military planes, the Second World War, the Korean War, and other military operations.

Walking around Moffett Field gave me the willies. Everything was either cement or metal. The enormous hangars dominated with ominous threat. No one was around.

Ames Research Center, where Winnie worked, was built in 1939. At Ames, engineers, technical experts, physicists, and other scientists work on a plethora of projects having implications for space exploration and understanding, aeronautics, and studying our atmosphere and locations of the earth, such as the Arctic and Antarctic. The Apollo space mission to the moon is one of the space missions devised and monitored at Ames.

At Ames, Winnie met a physicist, and they dated. John asked her to marry him, and they drove to Capitola in his silver Porsche to meet us. Winnie's excitement showed, and John seemed to promise her an adventurous, fun, and intellectually interesting life.

Things did not exactly turn out that way. Once they married, John never drove his Porsche. He kept the battery charging on a generator in their garage.

The first time I felt there was something very wrong with their relationship was when John wouldn't tell Winnie where they were going for their honeymoon. Winnie had no idea how to shop or pack.

They ended up in Hawaii. I cannot imagine that John was very much fun there.

Today, John would be diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome or another condition on the autism spectrum. He had virtually no social grace or capacity to relate other than in a rigid, limited way. He controlled Winnie's every move, even to the point that if she bought a ten cent comb without consulting him, he went ballistic.

The atmosphere in their home felt frigid and unfriendly to me, despite Winnie's warm and caring personality. Once a young woman with zest and humor, Winnie virtually changed into an old lady overnight. That is to say, she started wearing her hair in a style like an old lady's, and she drove like an old lady, too -- overly cautious and slow. I used to grit my teeth and hold onto the seat for fear we would be hit from behind.

But all this is a topic for another post.

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Sometimes I took the bus into San Francisco to meet Dona and Debbie. One day, as we walked along Market Street, an old derelict man fell off the curb. I helped him up. This impressed my friends, and made me into a hero in their eyes.

For me, compassion for those less fortunate was instilled in me by my parents. On walks from the train station to downtown, we often passed drunk men (called "drunks" in those days) lying or sitting in the entryways to shops and office buildings. When they asked for money, or even if they didn't, Dad gave them some.

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John and I ventured into the city and saw Thunderball, one of the first James Bond movies. James Bond movies were super popular then, and still are now. But back then movies weren't produced en masse, the way they are now. Sean Connery played Bond superbly, that gorgeous, agile, courageous, smart, suave, sexy man -- a real lady killer.

The plot was beyond me. It wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I could follow adventures like James Bond movies. I guess I found them overwhelming. Plus, Thunderball was awfully adult for a fourteen-year-old. Much of the innuendo and plot line went over my head.

The counselor I became friends with at Kennolyn Camp came to visit quite often. His parents had a home not far from us in Soquel. Ken was 28 to my 14, but my parents did not object, knowing how much he helped me at camp.

Ken's motorcycle was a Harley Davidson. He gave me a helmet to put on and away we went into the mountains or along the coast.

Sometimes we drove by car. Once we parked at an overlook at the ocean to enjoy the view and eat a picnic lunch. The whole trip Ken seemed to have to adjust his crotch. This made me uncomfortable, but I sensed that he would never be inappropriate with me. He never was.

Ken got a job driving a semi up and down California. He was a tall, well-built young man, with a pleasing personality, and was very capable.

Ken bought me an ivory wool coat with a fur collar. This seemed like too lavish a gift to me. I'm sure most other parents would not have allowed their daughter to accept it. I felt that the coat was too grown up for me, and rarely wore it.

When my parents and I lived in San Francisco when I was fifteen, Ken joined us to attend a play at the Curran Theater. I wore the coat to that.

Ken never said so, but I could tell that he was waiting for me to grow up so we could marry. My adulthood was several years away, so it was pretty weird. Besides, I had no romantic feelings for him.

Ken and I had another adventure when I was 16 and lived in Menlo Park. He stopped at my house on his way somewhere else. I cooked him a steak, only, not knowing how, I put a lid on the pan. The cooked steak looked pasty and was overcooked.

Ken taught me that one is supposed to cut only three pieces at a time!

We proceeded in his semi to Fisherman's Wharf. The ride was thrilling! I was so high up, and the seat jiggled with the vibration of the big truck as Ken drove along.

Ken took me out to lunch at a seafood restaurant several blocks from where we parked. Finding no other parking place big enough for his truck, he parked at a bus stop.

When we returned, a huge tow truck was just hooking up! We ran to the truck, climbed in, and Ken drove away. I thought it was daring of him.

We kept in touch until I was 16, when we had a falling out.

From the age of twelve or thirteen, men started to be attracted to me. Although I didn't have large breasts, I began to look a bit older than I was. Maybe it was the way I carried myself. Maybe I started exuding a little sex appeal, I'm not really sure.

I was attractive. My family referred to me as "the beautiful one." Even as a young child, Dad would say I looked like his mother, a beautiful opera singer. Winnie used to introduce me to people by saying, "Meet Pepsi, my beautiful sister." Very embarrassing.

During my teens and young adulthood being beautiful felt like part of my identity. I didn't flaunt it, but with so many people responding to me that way, it was hard not to have it define me.

As I got older, my feelings about my beauty became more ambivalent. Women and girls often rejected me out of hand because, I suppose, they were either jealous or held stereotypes about beautiful women. Maybe they felt I would steal their boyfriends or husbands.

Once I went out briefly with a man I met at a conference in LA that Winnie took me to. He lived in northern California, not too far from where I lived, so we occasionally did something together.

One day he took me to his friend's apartment in Berkeley. The man was either a psychology student or professor. I imagine the former.

The next time I saw the man I was going out with (sort of), he told me his friend had warned him away from me. His friend said to him, "Stay away from her, she's bad news."

Stunned and repulsed, I never saw the man again. What bothered me about the whole deal was that he told me about it. What was his motivation for telling me something like that?

Another part of my ambivalence had to do with feeling like a sex object. Men came on to me right and left. Yeah, it was nice to be attractive to men, but many of them acted inappropriately.

I wanted to be regarded as more than just a pretty face. I sometimes felt people dismissed me before they even got to know me. I wanted to be seen as the multi-dimensional person I was.

When I went to City College in San Francisco, I worked as a switchboard operator in a downtown hotel. It was a small, family-run affair started by the father of one of the owners, Mr. Haas.

Mr. Haas asked me to dinner. In those days I rarely turned down a dinner invitation. It was poor judgment on my part. He took me to an exclusive restaurant in the financial district, and wined and dined me.

He was a man whose (obnoxious) son also worked in the hotel. I met him in high school in Menlo Park, and just happened to find the job at his dad's hotel. In other words, Mr. Haas was around fifty, and I was twenty.

Was I appalled when he started making moves on me on the drive home. What a jerk. If I hadn't needed the job so badly, I would have quit.

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Six weeks before the end of the school year, I was met with Mom's familiar refrain.

"We're moving, start packing."

"Where to this time?"

"Anchorage, Alaska"

"Here we go, moving when the semester is not over yet," I thought.

Mom and I ventured to a thrift store in downtown Santa Cruz, where we found two huge old trunks. Hers was covered in army green canvas. It stood upright and swung open in the middle to reveal a clothing rack and drawers. A big star on the outside suggested the trunk formerly was used by a performer of some kind.

My trunk is beautiful. I have taken it with me everywhere I've lived. It sits in my living room, where I use it for a side table. It holds a lamp. At Christmas, I put a small tree there.

The trunk is huge, about three feet tall, two-and-a-half feet deep, and four feet wide. It is covered in deep brown leather. Steel bands cross the top, bands of steel on the edges, and two antique latches.

Inside it's covered in a blah beige canvas. A compartment with a cover that lifts up fits inside the lid. I keep photos in there. I tried to line it with blue calico cotton once, but found it impossible.

I packed my trunk, withdrew from school, and said tearful goodbyes to my friends.

My trunk looks like this, only is in perfect condition, except that the leather handles are old and broken. I should get them replaced!

Once everything was packed, I said tearful goodbyes to John and Tina, then traveled to San Francisco to stay with my sister Sylvia. Mom and Dad flew up ahead. I don't remember why.

I stayed with Sylvia, her husband, and two little girls many times during transitions between places. Although I enjoyed seeing my nieces and liked my brother-in-law, I had mixed feelings about Sylvia, and did not like those visits.

Sylvia was strict and controlling with her daughters, the same way she had been with me. She was also overprotective, in my mind.

The three of us sisters had quite different personalities. Winnie was both serious and fun, with a great sense of humor. I felt close to her. Sylvia was also serious, but too serious, I felt. Her "sense of humor" was generally at someone else's expense. I loved her, but I did not like her much.

I also felt Sylvia judged me. She called me "spoiled brat" as far back as I can remember, and she often criticized Mom for not providing me with enough discipline and structure when I was younger. When I became a teenager, she seemed to disapprove of me, and I didn't like it.

Later, Sylvia and I became close for a time when I was in college.

My experience in Alaska was not pleasant. In fact, I hated it there. I will tell you about that in my next post.

Until then, stay safe and wear a mask!