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                                       BY
     
                              MICHAEL LOUIS SCOTT
     
                                  MAY 9, 1950
     
                                    TO DATE
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER I
     
     
     
     
          The first remembrance of my youth was killing a garter
     snake with a shovel in my parents's garden in Martinsville,
     Virginia.  We would move on from there when I was four.  there 
     would be many more moves in my  life to come.
     
          I was born of mid-western parents in  Alton, Illinois on
     May 9, 1950.  My mother said she had gone to the movie that
     same evening, but she could never recall what was showing.
     
          She had married my father four years before, and within
     a year had my oldest sister Janis.  Three years would pass
     before I was born.   My father was an organic chemist working
     for the Standard Oil Company  in Wood River, Illinois.  He had
     be born and raised in Champaign, Illinois the only son of a
     railroad engineer,  Clarence Scott and a school teacher
     Elizabeth Gard Scott.  Dad's mother was part of the French
     Huguenot community that had settled in down state Illinois. 
     Grandad was of Scotch-Irish descent that seemed to go back for
     ever in this country.  My father was a brilliant student
     graduating number one in his class from the University of
     Illinois  and later on doing graduate work at the University
     of Ohio.  His first wife was a wealthy heiress to the
     Household Finance Company from Chicago.  After several years
     of turbulent marriage the had divorced with two children, one
     suffering from Down's syndrome.
     
          My father Louis was to meet my mother Phyllis Boven, a
     nursing student of Dutch reform descent from Holland, Michigan
     and marry shortly after that meeting in the post World War II
     era.  Mom's parents were of strict Dutch upbringing although
     her father a dry goods merchant had died earlier in the
     thirties, leaving his widow with five sons and tow daughters.
     
          Holland, Michigan and Champaign, Illinois would remain
     the focal point of many childhood vacations, as the corporate
     world would gradually sweep the family further out of the
     region.
     
     
     
     
     
     
          In  1955 we moved to Pensacola, Florida where Dad was
     involved in the Nylon operations of the Monsanto Corporation. 
     By that time I had two younger sisters Patty and Peggy.  Thus
     my mother was a full time house wife with four children and
     Dad was embarked on a career in the burgeoning chemical
     industry.
     
          While in Pensacola we would experience a six inch snow
     fall which does happen in northern Florida and we would 
     record for posterity the building of a snowman of home movies.
     
          There would be two glorious summers of going to the
     beautiful white sandy beaches which are no longer so common
     along Florida's coasts.  At age four, I once took off in a
     rowboat in the inlet across from our house and ended up
     fending off an alligator with an oar until I managed to
     return to land.  I would always be somewhat cautious of the
     water after that.
     
          Dad bought the family a new Buick Roadmaster, and after
     two years in Florida we would head north to  Decatur, Alabama
     where he would manage another textile operation, this time
     making a synthetic called Acrilan in the middle of the old
     worn out cotton fields of the deep South.
     
          In the early fifties, Decatur was a growing town with the
     Redstone Arsenal twenty miles to the North and new industry
     coming in with the lure of cheap power from the Tennessee
     Valley  Authority.  We were unable to buy a  home, so we
     rented an old Victorian home in the center of town and waited
     until a new home could be built.  My sisters and I pursued the
     game of hide and seek in the rambling old structure creating
     much havoc for my mother and our colored maid Wilda who would
     be in charge of us whenever our mother was out of the house.
     
          We joined the Presbyterian church which was a refuge for
     Yankees amongst all of the southern Baptists.  Decatur was in
     a alcohol free county, so the puritanical right was always on
     the lookout for high spirited Yankees.  However, one was
     allowed to keep a bottle at the local country club, not that
     this really concerned myself or my sisters, although it was a
     constant topic of conversation amongst the adults who had
     urban exposure.  Many years later we would find out that our
     maid's boy friend was one of the main bootleggers in the
     county and her meager salary was amply enhanced by his
     contributions.  
     
     
     
     
          In those days the South was tradition bound and ever
     skeptical of Yankee carpetbaggers.  It did not help matters
     that my father was in the business of making Acrylic for
     carpets to be woven in the looms of the textile weavers
     through out the South.  We were relatively prosperous and
     would be able to enjoy a comfortable life in the new Southern
     economy.
     
          I was enrolled in kindergarten and would gradually pick
     up the Southern drawl of my peers while learning the rudiments
     of education.  There would be several plays and pageants and
     a grand time was had by all.
     
          After a year and a half we moved in the ranch style house
     in a new section of town with a couple of other newly
     completed houses and still a few of the old sharecroppers
     cabins with a stone's throw of our new house.  However, a
     couple hundred yards up the road was a large playground
     surrounding an elementary school which had been recently
     completed and would be the focal point of the next six years
     of my education.  Walter Jackson elementary school was typical
     of the fifties architecture brick buildings that sprang up
     through out the United States in that period.  Uniformity was
     the rule of government construction and I would spend six
     years in the pea green classrooms until I grew to despise the
     color.
     
          The family house on the other hand was a large
     contemporary four bedroom home of rough brick and redwood
     which we later painted beige.  The first thing my father did
     was to plant twenty five pine trees in the front yard along
     with several oaks and to surround the back perimeter of the
     yard with Cherry Laurel shrubs.  There was a flagstone entry
     way with a cherry paneled family room and contemporary living
     room creating the heart of the house with a large fireplace of
     redstone flanked by bookshelves, and a bedroom wing off to one
     end and the kitchen and garage off to the other.  The house
     had wall to wall carpeting and central air conditioning
     through out which was a necessity of modern living in the new
     South.
     
          The textile mill was on the other side of town through
     the colored area, and whenever we went to visit Dad at the
     factory we would see the poverty of the old South, a slow
     timeless evolution that had not changed since the Civil War. 
     Both white and colored moved in a peaceful ritual of urban
     tranquility without much exposure to the outside world since
     television was still in its infancy.  
     
     
     
     
          Eisenhower was president and America was at peace,
     however, that did not make it easier on Yankee Republicans in
     the old democratic bible belt.  From the first day at school
     I was a Yankee, and someone to shy away from.
     
          Yet school would be only a minor part of the next six
     years.  There would be numerous childhood adventures and
     family past times that would fill the days with vigorous
     energy and growth experiences.
     
          Our neighborhood friends were the focal point of much
     activity.  There were at least twenty youngsters within a
     quarter mile of each other riding back forth on the flat roads
     with their bicycles.  Still there would be plenty of time for
     reading and reflection by oneself.
     
          School days involved the rudiments of education with a
     dash of local history.  At graduation in sixth grade I knew
     more about Alabama history than national history or the rest
     of the world for that matter.  All six of my teachers in the
     elementary grades  would be matronly woman who were totally
     dedicated to their profession.  With so many years past it's
     hard to remember many of the exact details of that educational
     experience.  However, I'm sure it was no different than any
     other average elementary education.  I excelled in math and
     was average in English.  I showed talent in art class winning
     first prize in the fourth grade for a crayon drawing of the
     Alabama state capitol, former headquarters of the Confederacy. 
     I had a lazy tongue, so I spent several afternoons a week
     taking speech lessons learning to pronounce my R's and L's. 
     I shied away from contact sports and spent most of my recess
     periods in conversation with a few of my peers.   This would
     evolve into a lifelong loathing of baseball and football.  The
     most violent exercise I pursued was kickball played on our
     neighbor's front yard and on the school playground which was
     just up the road.  There was also a lot of hide and seek in
     the early evening hours after dinner.  My sisters were prone
     to be tomboys, so we also pursued a number of crafts at
     home.  The most vivid remembrance of these crafts were the
     production of pot holders on small looms with small cloth
     loops making many designs and patterns.  There was a period
     of several years that I rode my bicycle a half mile away to
     feed two horses that belonged to the daughter of an associate
     of my father.  The horses were unusually high spirited and I
     would spend the vast majority of the time chasing them around
     the pasture trying to get them into their stalls to eat.  
     They were quite different from taking care of our Chihuahua,
     Togo, and parrakeet Tweety Pie.  
     
     
     
     
          Still, I would always love horses though I would never
     ride again after I left the South.  In the summer my sisters
     and I would go out to the far side of town and ride the old
     slow horses at the stables through the endless trails in the
     Alabama pine forests never getting lost since the horses
     always knew their way home.  Once I recall discovering a
     moonshine still, but I never was able to find it again.  My
     father once took me out to the Wheeler Plantation to ride a
     thoroughbred that was satin black which proceeded to run
     away with me at a full gallop but never threw me.  It was all
     quite exhilarating, but I was saddle sore for days afterwards.
     
          I took up golf at age eight and spent many afternoons
     over the next four years perfecting my game.  Playing golf
     taught me a love of walking and I would go out for long walks
     whenever I was not up for playing golf which was seldom.  By
     age ten I was shooting in the nineties for eighteen holes.  I
     spent many afternoons competing with my next door neighbor
     George on the links. 
          
          There was never many people on the course on weekdays. so
     we had most of it to ourselves, although we were not allowed
     to play on weekends.  My sister Patty tried to take up the
     game, but she never pursued it with much success.  Many long
     days were spent at the country club with my mother and
     sisters.  When not playing golf there always afternoons at
     the pool although I never really learned how to swim.  I would
     just dog paddle around in the shallow end, and hardly ever go
     off the diving board.  I was somewhat skeptical of pools since
     the water was much deeper that the beaches of Florida, not to
     mention the chlorine always hurt my eyes.  When I was six I
     spent about five minutes at the bottom of a pool sucking in
     water only to be rescued at the last minute by my mother. 
     Ever since then the smell of chorine tended to make me ill,
     and I would prefer to keep my feet on solid ground or shallow
     water.
     
          I would spend many afternoons walking down to the
     Tennessee river where there was a bird sanctuary about a mile
     from  our house .   There I would skim rocks on the water and
     watch the many birds that were in the sanctuary.   I can
     recall many red wing black birds, king fishers, and orioles. 
     The plague of the birds were the starlings that would show up
     in thick black clouds and frighten away all of the more
     gentile birds.  I developed a strong affection for Robins and
     Cardinals, although I found the Blue Jays to be somewhat
     aggressive.  
     
     
     
     
          In the fall the sky would fill with thousands of Geese
     and ducks much to the thrill of local hunters which included
     my father and many of his friends.  There were quite a large
     number of doves, although I never noticed any eagles or hawks
     which were probably out of my range of vision.  I always had
     to dodge the cattle whenever I was in the bird sanctuary
     particularly the bulls, not to mention the myriad number of
     cow chips drying under the hot Alabama sun.  The red clay was
     fertile and the grass was always shoulder high.  I never
     noticed much in terms of wild animals, and I was more
     preoccupied with the frogs and tadpoles along the riverbank. 
     I never ventured in the water of the river because we were
     always warned of water moccasins and rattle snakes, not to
     mention copperheads.  I never particularly cared for reptiles,
     although I always keep a worried eye toward them whenever I'm
     in warmer climates.   The main bane of frustration on the
     sanctuary was an old Coca Cola machine which never seemed to
     work particularly on the hottest days.  Also the electrical
     barb wire was not fun to try and climb through whenever going
     in and out of the sanctuary.  The cattle  for the most part
     ignored us, but not the horseflies.  I'm sure there were
     mosquitoes, but I must have had good karma.
     
          Another place of adventure was the old stone quarry.  It
     was a hundred feet deep with trees growing all around it.  It
     was interspersed with several caves which we frequently
     explored, but we never found the skeleton of the confederate
     soldier that was supposedly lurking in there.  There was an
     old rope swing one could swing on over the cliff, but it was
     cut down after one of the older boys got a concussion when he
     let go.  The scariest part of the quarry was the pond filled
     full of water moccasins which we always steered clear of.   On
     the far side of the quarry through the woods by the highway
     was a store where I use to buy candy with my grandfather's
     Indian head pennies which I found in my mother's closet.  I
     never seemed to have any money of my own except a quarter for
     church on Sunday.
     
          I had an intellectual mentor, Scott, who was always
     trying to tell me about sex, but I never was interested,
     although his parents had tried to explain it all to him when
     he was ten.  They had lived in California and were more
     liberated.  Although most of the older kids were quite wild in
     their early teens with drinking and wild record parties.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
          I joined the cub scouts when I was seven and would
     pursue its folklore until I was ten when I declined to join
     the boy scouts because all they did was run around camp fire
     in loin cloths.   There were about a dozen boys in our scout
     pack, and we spent most of our time earning badges by basket
     weaving and carving figurines.  We also learned to tie lariats
     and went on many field trips to the water purification plant,
     brick factory, and other points of civic pride.  I generally
     declined to play baseball and would spend my time talking to
     the pack mother.  I always did like the blue and yellow
     uniforms of the cub scouts and never particularly cared for
     the green uniforms of the boy scouts.   The older boys were
     always too rowdy for me, roughing me up and calling me a sissy
     and a yankee.  A lot of them were my older sister's friends
     who would spend all of their time listening to Elvis Presley
     records and other current rock and roll favorites.
     
          Television was just in its infancy in the mid fifties and
     I can remember watching many hours of Zorro and developing a
     fond hatred of country western music which always seemed to on
     whenever nothing else was on.  There were several children's
     shows with a cowboy master of ceremonies and clown.  They said
     if you saved potato chip bags  you could be on the show to try
     and win prizes in an auction.  Needless to say the great
     potato chip bag collection campaign started.  We collected
     chip bags from school, church, and my father's factory.  One
     Saturday we packed up the station wagon and drove to
     Birmingham to be on television.  I remember hauling in
     shopping bags of stale potato chip bags into the television
     studio to bid for prizes.  
     
          I don't really remember winning any thing, but at least
     my sisters  and I got to be on television.  Howdy Doody was a
     great Saturday morning favorite along with Mighty Mouse
     cartoons.  Every weekday afternoon at four o'clock was spent
     with the Mickey Mouse club.  The show would teach all of us
     youngsters how to imitate teenagers.  M-I-C-K-E-Y  M-O-U-S-E 
     was here to stay.  I never particularly cared for Anette,
     but Spin and Marty seemed to be having a good time.  Jimmy
     Cricket was one of my favorite cartoons along with Uncle
     Scrooge and the nephews.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          There was one scientific program on television sponsored
     by the company my father worked for called, " The Man and the
     Challenge," with rocket sleds and other scientific 
     prototypes.  My mother loved Ed Sullivan and Dad occasionally
     watched the news.  In the late fifties one of our neighbors
     would get a color television and we would spend every Saturday
     night watching Bonanza over at the Goodwin's house.
     
          My comic book collection was a great retreat into
     fantasy.  I think I had every Superman and Superboy comic
     published in the late fifties, not to mention Donald Duck and
     Uncle Scrooge.  My sisters all liked Archie comic books.
     
          We all read continually since television did not offer
     that many programs.  I can remember  reading the World Book
     Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia Britannica some time between
     eight and ten years old.  My older sister was always reading
     adult books which my parents gave her, and mother and dad
     always had at least a dozen books by their bed.  I did enjoy
     "Hardy Boys" for lighter reading and my sisters were involved
     in the "Nancy Drew" mysteries.  At age six I received my
     library card from the Carnegie library down town and would
     spend many hours of my childhood down town reading in it.  Of
     course there was plenty of reading provided by our school and
     I was always enthralled by the Scientific text books since my
     father had majored in Science.
     
          We would always enter the science fairs at schools with
     projects we had worked on.  I remember doing one project with
     seed germination.  My sister Jan once did a scientific project
     showing the chemical process of the textile plant with which
     she had help from my father.  They later had to change it
     since it showed too much of their secret technology.  We were
     always taught not to discuss my father's business.
     
          I can remember once being in a hobby shop with my father
     when I was six years old and I wanted a camera.  I was very
     disappointed when I put a piece of paper in it and tried to
     take a picture and nothing came out on it.  I soon learned the
     process of photographic reproduction was somewhat more
     difficult than it initially appeared.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          I spent many afternoons playing with my electric trains
     and always enjoyed crashing them together, although my mother
     was somewhat skeptical of the electrical transformer since it
     would give a mild shock whenever one disconnected the wires.
     
          There were a number of fine old Southern homes of brick
     nearby and my friends and I would always pay visits to some of
     the older folks who lived close by.  A few of my friends lived
     in the older houses and they were steeped in the traditions of
     becoming young southern belles and gentleman.
     
          I remember going to a girl friend's party and one of the
     games was to remember as many items on a tray we were able to
     look at briefly, and then to write them  down.  I was terribly
     excited when I won.
     
          Birthday parties were always a big event in the
     neighborhood.  My birthday and my two youngest sisters fell
     within a month of each other, so we always celebrated them
     together.  We usually invited over our fifty closest friends
     and would have a barbecue and picnic.  My mother was always a
     great trooper at these events, and there were many home movies
     taken to document them.
     
          One of my past times was watching the goldfish in the
     neighbor's goldfish pond.  They were much larger than ones in
     my fish bowl at home.  All of the classrooms at Walter Jackson
     had aquariums in the classroom, and it always seemed to be one
     of my jobs every couple of weeks to clean the aquarium.  I
     recall the first time I used scouring powder and all the of
     the fish died.  It use to be great fun in school counting the
     guppies as they multiplied.
     
          Once the janitor of the school, an old negro man named
     Zanny took me fishing out by the river.  We caught one small
     perch which his dog ran away with and almost chocked on. 
     Zanny was always a source of much amusement to the kids as we
     would sit in the janitor's rooms listening to his gossip.  To
     this day I can not recall what he use to talk about, but he
     was the first negro I ever talked with besides our maids.  He
     was a pleasant distinguished cordial gentleman, however, all
     people in the south were that way for the most part.   The
     teachers did not like us talking with Zanny, but when you're
     young you can get away with a lot.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                                   CHAPTER  II
     
     
     
          One of my first adventures away from home was going to
     summer camp when I was nine and ten at Lookout Mountain Camp. 
     The camp head, Mr. Morrison came to our house to show movies
     of the camp the winter before.  There were great old timbered
     buildings up in the mountains about sixty miles from 
     Chattanooga, Tennessee.  All of the boys would be from through
     out the south, and I was quite excited.  The movies were
     filmed showing as much of camp activity as a youngster could
     ever imagine, with horseback riding, archery, riflery, skinny
     dipping, crafts, and camping.  My mother enrolled me and I was
     off to camp for a month that summer.  What I did not realize
     until I arrived at camp was that  I would be one of the
     youngest boys at the camp.  A few other boys from Decatur
     would attend the camp including our minister's son Rickey.  We
     were assigned to a cabin of eight campers and one consular. 
     About forty cabins were arranged around a half mile long
     perimeter.  My cabin was right next to the showers.  There
     would be about three hundred boys to deal with and being one
     of the youngest ones would not help.  However, the camp was
     run on military discipline so there were not too many hassles. 
      The whole camp would assemble every night before dinner in
     the large dinning hall for taps in dress whites.  My consular
     was from New Orleans and he would always run interference for
     us whenever we messed up.
     
          My biggest nightmare was having to learn to swim the
     river since I was an inexpert swimmer.  I nearly drowned every
     day.  I soon took to avoiding swim practice  when ever I
     could.  Instead I would spend most of my time in wood working
     shop or leather crafts.  Horseback riding was lots of fun, but
     lifting the saddles was quite a strain.   In archery  we were
     taught how to make our own bows out of lemon wood.  I won all
     of the badges on the riflery range and was made a young member
     of the National Rifle Association.  We would go on several day
     hikes which would include much rough housing and skinny
     dipping in the many streams we crossed through out the
     mountains.  There were occasionally dances with girls from the
     neighboring camps which were fun, especially since two of my
     sisters were attending nearby camp DeSota. 
     
     
     
     
     
     
          Whenever I wanted to avoid some camp activity I would
     go over to the infirmary and talk to the nurses who would give
     me a pass for missing said activity.  The main problems with
     free time was all of the boys wanted to play Civil War games
     and I was one of only four Yankees in the camp.  Needless to
     say we always lost, although it was great good sport.  One of
     the highlights of the summer was parents day when all of the
     councilors were given a three mile radius to hide from  the
     campers.  At the start of the game the campers  would spread
     out looking for the councilors and anyone that made it back to
     the gymnasium without having shirt ripped off would get a
     certain number of points.  It was a good way to get even with
     a number of councilors who we disliked, and a number of
     councilors were stripped naked in front of the parents as they
     made their dash for the gymnasium.  The campers always won the
     event since there were far more of us.  I particularly hated
     the trampoline since it always seemed to jar my brains.
     
          The one dreadful experience at the end of one session was
     when my parents showed up several days late to pick me up. 
     However, I eventually had fun having camp all to myself except
     the skeleton crew.   Many good times were had at camp and I
     always remember it with the fondest memories.
     
          Most summers my family would drive North up Route 31 to
     Holland, Michigan for two weeks on the shore at my
     grandmother's cottage.  There were always about thirty cousins
     around not to mention Aunts and Uncles and other distant
     relatives.
     
          We would always stop by at my father's parents in
     Champaign, Illinois on the way up and back.  The shores of
     Lake Michigan were white and sandy with huge sand dunes and
     plenty  of fresh water two hours north of Chicago.  The
     cottage had no insulation so there would be cool nights and
     the kerosine stove in the kitchen was the only source of
     warmth.  I spent many long pleasant days sailing and rowing
     with my cousins and sisters.  
     I never succeeded in waterskiing although I tried a number of
     times.  I was not really an accomplished swimmer and when
     I went too far out in the breakers, I was always nervous. 
     Once I rowed too far out in the old row boat and was
     practically beyond the horizon.  My sisters and I would spend
     much time building castles and other structures and picking
     black berries off the bushes that kept the dunes from eroding.
     
          
     
     
          
     
          Sundays were always at the Dutch Reform church with my
     grandmother and cousins, aunts, and uncles.  There were many
     Dutch reform churches in Holland and I think we attended them
     all.  My grandmother went to church every day of her life. 
     The Dutch Reform were very strict then.  They did not allow
     drinking, dancing, smoking, television, and movies.  My
     grandmother did sin occasionally and watch Lawrence Welk or Ed
     Sullivan.  We always had to read from the Bible after dinner
     and from the Dutch Reform weekly prayer list.  My grandfather
     had died in the 1930's and my Uncles were heavily involved in
     Civic activities through  the church.  
     
          My mother's sister Ardene had chosen to marry a lawyer
     and live in Dallas.  They would occasionally join us some
     summers at the Lake.  One of my uncles was an undertaker in
     nearby Freemont.  Two of my uncles ran dry goods stores for my
     grandmother.  My youngest uncle was an orthodontist.  I never
     met my oldest uncle who was my grandfather's son from his
     previous marriage which made him a widower when he married my
     grandmother.
     
          I had a second cousin who was a dentist, so my sisters
     and I would spend a few hours of pain having our yearly
     cavities filled.  My sisters all had braces installed by my
     orthodontist uncle, however, they never persuaded me to have
     braces, so to this day I have overlapping front teeth.
     
          One of my main preoccupations while at the cottage was
     playing endless games of shuffle board at a neighbor's court. 
     Also in the evening I would go down the road and play many
     games on the pinball machine at the local penny candy store.
     
          For some reason I was preoccupied with digging holes on
     the beach and burying one of my sisters or cousins up to their
     head, so that it looked like a decapitated head was lying on
     the sand.
     
          The evenings were usually spent reading and in
     conversation with my sisters and cousins.  We would go into
     town daily for errands and to visit my grandmother who was
     always excited to see us.
     
          Once we went to visit my uncle the undertaker in
     Freemont, and I had the unnerving experience of walking into
     his work room which was on the ground floor of the house where
     there were a number of bodies laid out for viewing.  That was
     the only time to date that I've seen a dead body, and I've
     always avoided funerals.
     
          
     
          Another one of my amusing hobbies on the beach was
     sifting sand with a magnet for iron filings that were washed
     ashore from the steel mills to the south.  I was very proud to
     have a whole jar of these filings.
     
          On the trip back from Michigan we would stop at my
     father's parents in Champaign.  Frequently grandad would take
     us down to one of his farms to play with our distant cousins. 
     We spent many hours playing in the corn fields, and once two
     of my cousins took me out in the woods to play with baby
     wolves.  There were also a few fights in the chicken coop
     throwing chickens at each other.
     
          One of the perks of my father's job was that he had use
     of several company planes.  He once took me along on a
     business trip with a dozen Japanese business men down to
     Pensacola for a day at the beach.  One of the Japanese tried
     to teach me the art of paper folding.  He made me a paper from
     which I forgot on the plane.
     
          My only acting experience was in a second grade play when
     I played one of three Pandas, and I had to memorize two pages
     of dialogue which I did hours before the play.  I also had
     brief experience modeling children's clothes at the local
     country club.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER III
     
     
          However, the life in Alabama was soon to change.  In the
     spring of 1962, Dad took my elder sister and mother to
     Greenwich, Connecticut to interview at private schools.  Dad
     was being transferred to the New York area that summer and the
     whole family would be moving for the first time in seven
     years.  My interview with the headmaster of Greenwich  Country
     Day School went quite well.  All I talked about was golf which
     I had become quite knowledgeable about, and the headmaster was
     an avid golfer.  I was accepted for admissions that following
     fall, although I  would have to attend summer school to
     improve my verbal and math skills.
     
          Early that summer the movers came and packed up our
     belongings, and the family departed in the station wagon for
     the trip north.  We stopped at Thomas Jefferson's home in
     Charlottesville, Virginia and in Washington D.C..  In New York
     we spent the day at the World's Fair.  Although exhausting I
     particularly enjoyed the General Motors and General Electric
     exhibits about future living.  I also was able to see the
     Pieta which was on loan from the Vatican.  When we returned to
     the car, we found that the car had been broken into.  All of
     our valuables were gone including my mother's fur coat and my
     transistor radio.  Life in a urban area would require less
     trusting in the future.
     
          We moved into a new house in Stamford on a pond about ten
     miles away  from school in Greenwich.  Dad would drive me to
     school every morning around seven A.M. and then catch the
     train from Greenwich to go into New York.  The ride after the
     smooth flat roads in  Alabama was quite scary on the curving
     back roads of Greenwich.  I entered into an intensive summer
     school program having to learn grammar and punctuation,
     writing, and geometry and history.  For some reason I found
     the courses easy though much more comprehensive than my
     studies in Alabama.  I was the subject of much fun from my
     classmates because of my southern accent which I had developed
     over many formative years in the south.  That summer I built
     a tree house in a tree across from our house and would spend
     many evening hours enjoying the new types of birds in the
     Connecticut forest.  I made many friends in school and would
     be going to school with them for the next three years.
     
     
     
     
     
     
          Regular school sessions began that fall, and I was
     introduced to a much more intensive academic schedule. 
     There was English, Latin, French, Math, Social Studies,
     History, and Science.  Woodworking classes and organized
     athletics were held in the afternoon along with study hall. 
     Mid day assembly consisted of hymns and prayers along with an
     address from the headmaster or some other public speaker.  I
     was placed in the top quarter of the class which was quite
     competitive and I would always be given grades for effort
     although my academic grades were only average.  Most of my
     classmates had attended the school since nursery school, so
     they were much more attuned to comprehensive studies. 
     Although I worked hard my previous education in Alabama had
     left many gaps particularly in American history.  I knew more
     about the Indian tribes of Alabama than the founding fathers. 
     I excelled in Math and struggled through Latin.  I was quite
     adept at woodworking class and pursued a number of projects
     from lamps to a desk.
     
          Most of my classmates were politically attuned and mostly
     republican, however, I did not watch much television during
     that period since my studies preoccupied most of my free time
     at home.  Kennedy was president and the children of Greenwich
     were unfamiliar with the south and his civil rights ideals. 
     They were somewhat skeptical of me coming from the south,
     however, I found my classmates more insular than many of my
     Alabama friends.  Greenwich was a large town spread over many
     miles and children were mostly dependent upon their parents to
     visit their friends and do most errands.  Since I lived in
     Stamford a number of miles away I was not able to see many of
     my friends after school and my sisters remained my best
     friends.  My eldest sister was enrolled in Rosemary Hall in
     Greenwich, so she would ride to school with me daily.  We
     carpooled with an English couple who had a daughter that also
     attended school in Greenwich.
     
          Fairfield county was a very attractive area, and although
     Stamford was a quite nice area, my sister and  I started
     urging my parents to move to Greenwich, so we could be closer
     to our friends.  They eventually found a new house and we
     moved to Greenwich the following year and my younger sisters
     were to enroll in the Day school.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          In those days Greenwich was purely a bedroom community
     and there were not all of the corporate offices in town. 
     Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and many families  had
     been resident in the community for hundreds of years. 
     Greenwich was a three hundred and fifty year old community and
     it had only become a suburb of New York City with the advent
     of the railroad fifty years earlier.  There was a tradition of
     rural industry and hard work which was reflected by the
     innumerable stone walls surrounding properties through out the
     community.  As Robert Frost said, " Good Fences Make Good
     Neighbors."
     
          Going to and from school with my sisters was a constant
     ballet of jockeying for position in the station wagon and my
     mother's ear.  We would carpool with another family from
     outside Detroit who had recently arrived in town, and had one
     daughter my older sister's age and two sons near my age, one
     of whom would become one of my best friends although we
     attended different schools.  Greenwich has many fine private
     and public schools, and the children always form cliques
     around the schools they and their siblings attend.  The
     parents tend to carry on this tradition by remaining in
     various cliques revolving around the various country clubs,
     tennis clubs, and yacht clubs of which there are many dotting
     the landscape of the town.  My father chose to join the
     Greenwich Country Club which was a great pile of painted white
     brick since the old club house had recently burned down.  Our
     neighbors the Kings were also members, so my friends and I
     would end up spending many long summer afternoons around the
     pool, tennis courts, and golf course in an endless pageant of
     leisure after our hard days of work during the school year. 
     Without a car in Greenwich, one goes where their mother takes
     them since navigating a bicycle is quite dangerous and
     strenuous on the narrow hilly roads.  The evolution of B.M.W.
     in North America was a direct result of the type of driving
     conditions that existed on the back roads of the New York
     metropolitan area.  Those great big old station wagons were
     not very practical when passing your neighbors on the narrow
     roads that had evolved from cow paths centuries earlier.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          Greenwich always tries to project a tweedy Anglophile
     preppy image that reflects the Anglican - Ivy League education
     of a great many of its prosperous residents.  My family was
     Presbyterian and mid western, but we easily fit in since we
     shared many of the same roots and values as the other
     Greenwich residents, a great many of whom were from other
     parts of the country drawn to the New York area through
     business and other professional ties.  There were a great many
     residents of French, English, Irish, Scottish, Scandinavian,
     German, and Italian descent.  In the 1940's the United Nations
     had thought about locating in Greenwich, but after vigorous
     local protests withdrew, but still the community would reflect
     the international quality of New York.  However, the nature of
     the topography of the community tends to make it like an
     English garden maze with many well traveled and less traveled
     roads and lanes housing many families of diverse background.
     
          My family's house was in the back country area just south
     of the parkway in a new development of clapboard homes.  Most
     of our  immediate acquaintances revolved around carpooling and
     church.  The church was a classical New England church at the
     top of a hill about two miles north of our house.  Although
     encompassing a large area the back country area was not that
     populous since there were a large number of properties
     maintained as estates and small farms.  The abundance of trees
     obscured most of the architectural beauty of the back country
     community, and there were miles of riding trails that cut
     through the forests and fields.  Gradual development has
     increased the density of the population, but still there is a
     strong sense of privacy in  Greenwich to this day.
     
          I use to enjoy exploring the woods with some of my
     friends.  They were always a good place for endless
     conversation out of hearing range of parents and siblings. 
     The winters were more severe than  what I had grown accustomed
     to in the South, and I quickly learned to dash from the car to
     house and other buildings.  I always remember coming back from
     athletics at school to the main building with my hair frozen
     after a shower.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          I quickly learned to play soccer, basketball, and  tennis
     since sports were required at school.  However most of the
     other students were more expert since they had been
     participating in organized sport most of their educational
     careers.  I never learned how to ice skate although I would
     become an enthusiastic supporter of ice hockey in later
     years in school.  I did not care for wrestling since it always
     smelled of sweat, although a number of my friends were quite
     good wrestlers.  Most of the sports required organized
     calisthenics and a good deal of jogging.  Since I was very
     thin, I was always somewhat inexpert in these pursuits and
     would generally get a cramp within a few laps.  Still I would
     try my best against the more athletic students.
     
          In eight grade I changed from shop to photography and
     would gradually become more expert in the techniques of
     photographing and developing.  This activity in the afternoon
     working for the school yearbook frequently gave me an excuse
     to miss athletics which I did not regret.  The worse part of
     photography was breathing the chemicals while working in the
     darkness of the laboratory for hours on end.  One of my co-
     photographers leant me a Leica to use and I was gradually able
     to become more expert in the field of photography, but still
     amateurish by most professional standards.  I really enjoyed
     candid photography and occasional experiments at art
     photography.  Being a photographer gave me plenty of time to
     wander around exploring the more remote parts of the school
     and plenty of time day dreaming while other people were
     competing on the athletic fields.
     
          Once a friend and I found the negative images of our
     transcripts next to the darkroom photocopying machine and we
     learned that we had two of the highest IQ's in the class much
     to our egos pleasure.  That Christmas I received a Canon 35
     millimeter from my parents, and I would spend many happy times
     shooting pictures around our home and school.  Greenwich 
     was the bedroom community of some of the best photojournalism
     magazines in the country, so I received a good deal of
     encouragement although I would never pursue a career in
     photography.  I always found plenty of time for books and
     reading and would never forsake that pastime through out my
     life.  I became an avid reader of the local paper, however,
     the gossip at school was much more interesting.  The boys and
     girls at school were extremely well mannered and well bred,
     but there was always a strong underlying sense of humor
     running through the school, particularly manifested by the
     orations of the headmaster.  
     
     
     
     
          Many of the students had older parents, so the student
     body tended to be somewhat somber, with more of an adult sense
     of humor.
     
          I was able to help out designing sets for Gilbert and
     Sullivan productions which involved more carpentry than
     designing.
     
          The day Kennedy was shot school was dismissed early and
     my Latin teacher was seen crying in prayer.  The next few days
     were my earliest memories of television news, and the vivid
     pictures as they were etched across the national mind would
     always make me somewhat skeptical of the legitimacy of the
     political process.  We always heard so many inside stories in
     school from children of parents in the know that one could not
     help but be repelled by the efforts that individuals would
     undertake to gain political success.  To  this day Greenwich
     is still a very political community, but somewhat less so
     compared to the heartland of the nation.
     
          In my final year at school in Greenwich, I would spend
     more time on my failing studies.  I was transferred to the
     second quarter, thus losing track of my friends in the first
     quarter, however, I would spend much time in pursuit of
     photography for the yearbook.  I also had to be tutored in
     English grammar and spelling, since my early days in the south
     still made me weak in the field.
     
          There were weekly dances at my sister's school during
     which most of the boys would stand on one side of the room
     talking while most of the girls would be on the other engaged
     in gossip.  Occasionally the adults would try to pair us off,
     and as soon as possible we would return to our respective
     sides of the room.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER IV
     
     
          In the fall of my final year at Greenwich Country Day
     School, my father took me on a tour of boarding schools.  We
     went to five schools in one day, first Taft, Choate, Loomis,
     Hotchkiss, and finally Bershire.  I liked Taft the best and
     recall falling asleep during my interview at Bershire because
     I was so tired after touring all the schools.  I would make
     Taft my first choice.  I recall being particularly attracted
     to the golf course, not to mention the other extensive
     facilities.  Moreover, there were a number of Greenwich
     Country Day alumni that had preceded me so the way was well
     paved.  I would wait until the spring to be accepted and I
     naturally decided to go.  One of the reasons for going away to
     school was that my father was going to be transferred to
     Mexico City, and he preferred me to remain state side for my
     education.  However, by the time the transfer fell through, we
     had sold our house in Greenwich, and  were unable to find
     another house.  My parents rented a large rambling carriage
     house in New Canaan while they waited to build another house
     also in New Canaan.  My sister who had her driver's license by
     then would spend much of the summer chauffeuring  us back and
     forth  to our friends' houses since we did not know anyone in
     New Canaan.  Upon entering Taft I made several friends from
     New Canaan, along with my old friends from Greenwich.
     
          I would enter Taft in tenth grade,  while most of the
     boys had entered in ninth grade.  I would quickly make a
     number of friends, although the Greenwich boys tended to stay
     together as a clique.  One of my best friends was from Katona,
     New York; and since his parents had spent much of their time
     abroad, he had been in boarding school since six years old. 
     He really knew the ropes and was always getting into mischief,
     but staying out of trouble since he could fool the teachers.
     
          The academic schedule was quite rigorous with classes six
     days a week and study hall every evening until ten o'clock. 
     We were supervised by monitors from the upper classes and by
     and large my classmates were well behaved.  We were only
     allowed passes once or twice a term, so we were on campus most
     of the time except in the late afternoon when we were allowed
     to go down town.  Once again I was required to take athletics
     and was very clumsy in soccer and basketball, although I did
     enjoy playing golf in the spring.  I would never be
     enthusiastic over contact sports and can not see what the
     attraction is to the violence of sports.
     
     
     
          We followed many of the same courses at Taft as we did at
     the Day school.  My french teachers were my sponsors, and
     French was also my weakest subject.  We had to take six
     courses a term, basically English, French, Latin, History,
     Math, and Science.  I would spend many afternoons between
     sports and assembly in the  library reading and listening to
     music on headphones.  The whole school would eat meals
     together  with students taking turns as waiters.  The food was
     by and large acceptable though sometimes cold.  I had a
     roommate the first year from Long Island, though we were never
     good friends, I always thought he was home sick.  I enjoyed
     the company of boys after growing up  with three sisters. 
     There was much school boy humor though the masters were
     rigorous and the highlight of the week was the Saturday night
     movie.  We kept track with outside events through the New York
     Times in the library and would never see a television for
     months on end, although I had never really watched television.
     
          I had a half dozen friends who were on the wrestling team
     although they could never get me involved.  I never pursued
     photography at Taft since my studies  were all consuming.  I
     did take time out to make hard cider my first year and one of
     the negro football players drank it all and went off howling
     across the campus.  I thought it was all amusing.
     
          We were all required to wear coats and ties, though we
     were always trying to interject fashion statements of
     rebellion.  The  student body and masters and administrative 
     staff were by and large conservative and there  was not very
     much liberal thought.  I did write a term paper on LSD for
     English my junior year, with most of my research drawn from
     Time magazine.  I  excelled in science and math and was
     somewhat slower in English and History.  Overall I was in
     about the middle of the class.   Church was  required on
     Sunday, but my friends and I took to going to morning service,
     so we would have the whole day free for various day trips in
     the area and occasionally to New York or home if we had the
     money.
     
          Several times we would end up drinking in the bars of the
     Upper East side and only make it back just in time for bed
     slightly intoxicated, but no harm done since the drinking
     took place off campus.  The train rides home were quite
     hilarious and frequently we had to carry some of our
     classmates back to the dorms.
     
          
     
     
     
     
          The summer after my first year I started practicing
     driving on the fields surrounding the carriage house in New
     Canaan and by the end of the summer I had taken a driving
     course and had my driver's license.  I would spend much time
     driving back and forth to New Canaan and Greenwich, not to
     mention the long distance phone calls between the two towns. 
     There were many parties in Greenwich and lots of time playing
     golf and swimming at the Country Club.  It was upsetting not
     to be close to my friends, but I enjoyed myself and had plenty
     of time for my summer reading.  
     
          I use to climb the water tower adjacent to the carriage
     house and much excitement was had exploring New Canaan.  That
     fall while I was back at school our new house in New  Canaan
     would be completed and I would miss the drudgery of moving. 
     My younger sister had enrolled in Trinity University in San
     Antonio.  The family seemed to be spreading apart.
     
          I would have a similar year at Taft as the previous year, 
     although I would take to skipping athletics with medical
     excuses obtained from the school nurse who thought I was too
     frail to compete strenuously.  However, I would make the
     varsity golf team that spring when half the team was suspended
     for smoking.  I enjoyed playing golf at Taft, although the
     early spring days were quite windy and chilly.  The amazing 
     thing about Taft was that most of the buildings were
     interconnected, so one hardly had to go outside on cold
     days.  I roomed by myself that year and I would have much
     more time studying since I did not participate in athletics. 
     I did become an enthusiastic supporter of the hockey team,
     since a number of my friends were expert hockey  players. 
     Standing in the  chilling rink cheering for our school was
     very invigorating.  I also joined the ski club, although I
     only went skiing a half dozen times and was terrified.  I
     would only ski one other time after graduating from Taft.
     
          My studying was intensified since there was pressure to
     gain acceptance into one of the Ivy League colleges.  However,
     I had plenty of time to maintain close friendships, and I was
     very happy with my progress at Taft.
     
          That spring when I returned home to New Canaan, my father
     announced that he had arranged a summer job in Greenwich for
     me helping to build a new house in our old neighborhood.  My
     parents had decided to move back to Greenwich.  The whole
     summer would be spent starting work at seven A.M. as a
     carpenter's helper until four P.M. every afternoon.  I was
     generally so tired after work I would return home and eat
     dinner and go to bed.  
     
     
     
          Occasionally some of my friends would stop by the job
     site and visit and make me very envious of their idle summer
     time.  There was still time for parties on weekends.  I was
     in very good shape by the end of the summer from lifting much
     lumber.
     
          That fall we would move into a temporary rental house in
     Greenwich since our house in New Canaan had been sold, and our
     new house in Greenwich was not completed.  While I was away at
     school during the fall term, my parents would eventually move
     into the new house that I had worked on constructing.
     
          My senior year at Taft was going well, however, my grades
     were not as good as they should have been and it began to look
     as if I would not be attending an Ivy league school.  I
     applied to the University of North  Carolina, Washington and
     Lee, Hamilton, and Lake Forest College.  I had visited
     Washington and Lee and Hamilton, but I never visited Lake
     Forest which I eventually would end up attending.  I was very
     enthusiastic with Lake Forest since a number of students from
     Taft would be attending and it was also in the midwest where
     my family had strong roots.
     
          In the spring of my senior year, my parents announced
     that my father was changing jobs to join Polaroid in
     Cambridge, Massachusetts and that we would be moving again
     that summer.
     
          I would have a great summer before we moved playing golf
     every day out at the country club.  I would eventually win the
     junior club championship.   My father had also bought a
     Mustang convertible for my older sister and myself to drive
     around in.  I had a minor wreck in the car that summer, but
     the car was repaired and all was forgiven.  I also attended
     typing classes that summer, and finally learned how to improve
     my typing skills.   In August the family finally moved to
     Boston to a small two bedroom apartment until we could find a
     suitable house to rent.  I would spend the rest of the summer
     driving around the streets of Boston exploring the city in the
     Mustang.  Later in the fall we would rent a house in 
     Wellesley adjacent to Dana Hall which would be our family home
     for the next year.  My two younger sisters would attend Beaver
     Country Day School and Dana Hall.  I flew off to Chicago to
     attend Lake Forest College.
     
     
     
     
      
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER V
     
     
          Lake Forest College was located in the town of Lake
     Forest about twenty five miles north of Chicago on the western
     shore of Lake Michigan.  Lake Forest was as charming and
     beautiful as Greenwich, only the land was somewhat flatter and
     the community was not as large.  There were a lot of preppies
     attending the college, and I soon  made friends.  There always
     seemed to be parties going on in the freshman dorms and a
     great deal of alcohol was consumed the first month before we
     settled down to more serious studies.  We had been over
     prepared for college at Taft, so the courses were not
     particularly difficult.  I decided to major in Economics.  I
     had many friends from Greenwich, the Boston suburbs,
     Hyannisport, Grosse Point, and Princeton.  We had all attended
     various prep schools and had failed to gain admission into Ivy
     league schools.  Most of the preppies stuck together as a
     clique, however since Lake Forest was coeducational we added
     the preppy girls to our group.
     
          Our first year at Lake Forest we were not allowed to
     have cars, but I soon remedied that by buying an old 1951
     Mercedes 300 touring car for transportation.   I was able to
     obtain a parking permit since I said I needed the car to work
     part time during school.   However, most of my afternoons when
     not studying were spent restoring the old Mercedes which began
     to take more and more of my limited funds.  The car looked
     like a German staff car and a number of the students began
     calling me a Nazi.  It did not help matters by being one of
     seven students to make up the Young Republican party.  Most of
     the students were apathetic about politics and campus life in
     general.  I was determined to make the best of college and
     would spend a great deal of time trying to generate enthusiasm
     amongst the students.  Most of the students at least the males
     were concerned about the military draft, however our student
     deferments would make us ineligible for the next four years as
     long as we did not flunk out.  That was a lot of encouragement
     to work hard.  I attended a number of political functions
     campaigning for Nixon that fall, and considered myself
     politically conservative.  Although  one of my friends was a
     neighbor of the Kennedys in Hyannisport, I was never 
     attracted to the democratic party mystique.   My father's
     family had political roots in down state Illinois republican
     politics, so I was hardily welcomed in Lake Forest republican
     politics.
     
     
     
     
          My main weakness in following politics was that I never
     watched television, and I only skimmed the newspapers, so I
     was somewhat ill informed as to what was going on nationally.
     
          The college only had classes four days a week, so there
     was plenty of time for socializing.  Whenever I was not
     working on my car I would spend time at the Mercedes
     dealership studying parts manuals or the at the college
     library doing my homework.  I would make several trips home
     since with student discounts on the airlines, travel was
     relatively cheap.
     
          I also drove down to visit my grandparents in Champaign
     on Thanksgiving holidays.  Although Lake Forest was across
     Lake Michigan from Holland I would never find time to visit my
     relatives there.
     
          I would return to Wellesley at Christmas time for a five
     week Christmas vacation.  The first Christmas period in Boston
     I spent most of my time visiting my friends from Taft and
     going to two or three hockey games a day.  All of Boston
     seemed to pursue hockey with a passion between prep, college,
     and professional hockey matches.  Most of my friends from Taft
     were hockey jocks playing freshman hockey for various Ivy
     League teams.  Since I had a longer Christmas vacation I also
     visited friends at various schools around the Boston and New
     York area.  I would put a lot of miles on my Mustang, while
     the Mercedes would remain back in Lake Forest.
     
          I would return that winter to the bitter cold of Chicago
     and spend most of my time involved in my studies.  The library
     was the main study area and social forum at the college, and
     endless days were spent pursuing knowledge.
     
          Spring vacation would come very soon and I would return
     briefly to  Boston for a week.  I made arrangements for a
     summer job at the company, Polaroid, that my father worked
     for.  I would be a photographer although it had been three
     years since I had regularly pursued photography.  I would
     return for the spring term, and a number of my friends and I
     took jobs on a horse farm in town to earn extra money
     shoveling manure and raking leaves.  The spring, whenever it
     finally came in Lake Forest was quite bucolic and between the
     horse farm, my Mercedes, and studies my time was full most of
     the time.  We would make a number of field trips down to
     Chicago, mostly to the Art Institute, since the fine arts were
     a major pursuit of most of my friends.
     
     
     
     
          Summer came all too fast  and I soon packed up the old
     Mercedes to return to Boston.  The car made it as far as
     Palmer, Massachusetts where it would spend the next month
     waiting for parts while I worked as a photographer at
     Polaroid.
     
          My days as a summer photographer at Polaroid were quite
     fun and enjoyable.  I was paid to test cameras and film around
     Cambridge and Boston, and in the studios of the research
     facility.  I would chose some attractive spot around the city
     to photograph on sunny days, and on rainy days return to the
     studio.  I greatly enjoyed touring around the Boston area in
     my convertible taking many photographs  of whatever caught my
     eye.  The pictures would be returned to the research
     technicians to be evaluated at the end of the day, thus I
     never was able to develop  much of a portfolio, although I
     took tens of thousands of instant photographs.
     
          I earned enough money as a photographer that summer to
     restore my old Mercedes which was becoming an obsession with
     me.  My parents also started to have a new house built in
     Weston just north of Wellesley.  I was so use to my parents
     building houses that I would be the unofficial supervisor in
     the evening going over the progress of the carpenters during
     the day.  I was much happier being a photographer than the
     strenuous construction work.
     
          That fall I would start off in my old Mercedes for the
     return trip to Lake Forest, only to have the car break down
     fifty miles down the road.  The car would spend the winter in
     a barn outside of one of my father's factories.
     
          I flew back to Lake Forest and moved into the preppy
     dormitory along with a number of my friends.  I joined the
     preppy  fraternity.  I also took a part time job in the
     afternoon a television bank teller at one of the local banks 
     in town.  In order to get back and forth to work, I bought
     another old Mercedes 220 for $150.  I now owned two Mercedes,
     plus had access to the Mustang at home  which my sisters used
     to get back and forth to school.  I would work at the bank in
     the afternoon for the whole year, but I had plenty of time to
     keep up on my studies and for socializing  in the evening.  I
     was becoming something of a celebrity in town from working as
     a television teller.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
          My grades would remain fine and I would return to Boston
     at Christmas time to work five weeks as a photographer.  The
     winter would be long in Lake Forest that winter and severely
     cold, but life had settled into a routine of classes, bank,
     library, and evening beers.  We would occasionally  make trips
     down to Chicago.  Most of my social life revolved around the
     two parties a week in the basement fraternity lounge.
     
          That spring I sold the Mercedes 220 and bought an old
     Mercedes convertible which broke down on it's first trip
     down to Chicago.  I had it repaired and was still able to sell
     it for a profit.  Although I had  cash I had no car.  At a
     senior auction that spring I bought a baby Saint Bernard puppy
     and returned home that summer with a surprise for my mother. 
     My mother would undertake the upbringing of the puppy while I
     returned to work as a photographer at Polaroid.  My summer
     would be similar to the summer before working on the old
     Mercedes and playing a little golf in my free time.   I also
     took to going into Cambridge in the late evening for drinks
     and conversation at a preppy bar off Harvard square.  I really 
     liked Cambridge and wish I had been smart enough to go to
     Harvard, although most of my Harvard acquaintances wished they
     could get decent jobs like I had at Polaroid. 
     
          My sisters and I also started visiting friends of theirs
     that had a house on the cape on weekends where we would spend
     time at the beach and sailing and many fun house parties.  It
     seemed like we were regularly making the trip down to the cape
     with frequent regularity, and I began to wish that I could
     spend the entire summer down there.
     
          Later in the summer in August I quit my job for some free
     time and spent some lazy days up at a commune in Vermont
     enjoying  the cool evenings and rural life.
     
          My network of friends from Greenwich and prep school
     and college still formed the main nucleus of my main
     friendships at this time, so I did not know any one at home
     and would have to spend a great deal of time traveling to
     visit friends.  Most of my friends were like siblings and we
     always assumed we would be life long friends.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          At the end of that summer I would return to college in my
     old Mercedes 300, much to the chagrin of my anti Nazi image
     acquaintances.  I decided  I did  not want to live on campus
     that year, so I rented an old forty acre farm outside of town
     with a five bedroom farmhouse that I would share with four of
     my fraternity brothers.  It always seemed that everyone was
     coming and going, and I ended up having to do a great deal of
     the upkeep and maintenance of the "Farm".   One of my
     roommates worked part time as a social worker in Chicago and
     was very much up on the aspects of communal living and rural
     existence.   The focal point of his life was a pet duck that
     was eventually carried off by a fox.  Eventually the farm
     would become more and more of a retreat for students of the
     college and a focal point for many parties whenever there was
     not one in the fraternity lounge.  Many juniors and seniors
     had off campus residences, so there was much time spent
     visiting back and forth.  I would work at the bank through out
     the fall term and my routine would eventually remain the same.
     
          One of my great joys that year was that my youngest
     sister was a freshman at the college, so my circle of friends
     was enlarged to include hers as well.  I would be always at
     her beck and call to drive her into town or take her and her
     friends for drives.  We would spend much time buying
     furnishings for the farm.
     
          Still college required a great deal of studying as I
     advanced in my economics major, and my other hobbies and past
     times increased.
     
          I would return to Boston that Christmas to once again
     work as a photographer, and my youngest sister started working
     as a model for the same group.
     
          The following winter would not be as long since that
     February my father decided to take the family down to Tobago
     for a two week vacation close to the equator.  A great deal
     of fun would be had with my sisters surf bathing every morning
     and in the afternoon I would usually play golf with my father. 
     The evenings were spent watching sunsets with cocktails from
     the club terrace.   Norman Parkinson the famous British
     photographer had a house on the island, and it was rumored
     that Greta Garbo also had a house there, but I would not have
     recognized them if I had run into them face to face.  My
     sisters and I would usually go out to hotels and native night
     clubs with three other girls that were friends with our
     family.  
     
     
     
     
          A great deal of fun was had and many rum punches  were
     consumed.  There was always a great air of mystery to Tobago
     since it was so far removed from the North American mainland. 
     
          My sister and I returned to Lake Forest to finish  the
     winter term well tanned and much to the envy of the other
     students.  I would have to work harder to make up for lost
     time at school, and would not have time to work at the bank. 
     However, I would always yearn for the sunny days of the
     tropics and find the winters more unbearable.
     
          Spring would come soon enough, and life at college
     would once again assume a more bucolic existence.  That winter
     term I finished all of the courses required of my economics
     major, and I decided to pursue a minor in fine arts and art
     history for the year and a term that remained of my college
     education.  The courses in art and art history were a welcome
     change from the structured courses of economics.  I also
     applied to the Italian program for my winter term  senior year
     and the Greek program for the final spring term of my senior
     year.  I also had been appointed as a student representative
     to the board of trustees for the college.  Once a month I
     would put on a three piece suit and go sit in the board room
     of the University Club in Chicago and discuss my viewpoints of
     the college with the trustees.  I was most enthusiastic about
     the foreign study programs and would lobby with the trustees
     to expand the number of programs.
     
          Late that spring I would stay on in Lake Forest for a
     couple of additional week to attend a number of for parties. 
     I would meet a great many local personalities and one
     particularly beautiful blond girl who would be an infatuation
     of mine the following fall term.
     
          However, I had to return home to Boston to go to work
     for the summer.  Instead of being a photographer, I had
     decided to undertake a program at Polaroid as a computer
     programmer trainee.  Much of my summer was spent learning the
     intricacies of COBOL and writing computer programs.  The job
     was very high stress and many of my colleagues had ulcers from
     years as programmers.  Although I enjoyed the experience, I
     decided I did not want to pursue computers as a career, since
     I never imagined being able to afford my own computer. 
     However, I would receive several terms college credit for the
     experience which would insure that I would graduate the
     following  spring provided I completed all of my courses
     successfully the following year.
     
     
     
     
     
          For the last two weeks of August that summer I decided 
     to go down to Nantucket for a couple of weeks of sun and sand. 
     I had been to Nantucket briefly the last couple of summers and
     had thoroughly enjoyed the young environment of many college
     students.  I did not know where I was going to stay, but on
     the way down I stopped at a friend of my sister's house and
     she called ahead  of me while I was taking the ferry boat over
     to the island.  When the boat arrived on the island much to my
     surprise a large number of kids were waiting there to meet me
     and they ushered me to a house where they were all staying and
     a great deal of fun would be had by all for the next couple of
     weeks going to the beach, water skiing, and enjoying the
     abundant night life of the island.  The island seemed to be
     full of mysteries and there was always a strong ebb and flow
     of young life in the ever changing days of my brief visits
     there.   I would always miss the happy days there and would
     return in later years for longer stays.
     
          Also that summer I sold my old restored Mercedes 300 so
     I would have funds for going to Europe the following winter. 
     I  had spent so much time restoring the old car that I had
     become strongly attached to it and I would miss the evenings
     cruising in it, however, it was a relief to recoup my
     investment.
     
          I returned to the farm in Lake Forest that fall, with my
     Saint Bernard for my last term at the college campus before
     going to Europe.  My sister  was not attending since she had
     transferred to my other younger sister's  school Trinity in
     Hartford.  I would drive a cab part time to earn extra money
     while at school, and my classes, a great many of them in art
     would progress quite well.  Since it was our senior year a
     great deal of fun would be had by all going to frequent
     parties and enjoying our last year in general.  I would make
     a trip out to Colorado Springs to visit the pretty blond girl
     I had met the spring before and during the upcoming Christmas
     season I would escort her at her coming out party.   I would
     miss Christmas at home that year since I was attending the
     parties, but I would make it home in time for a brief rest
     before leaving on New Year's Day for Italy.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER VI
     
     
          I had packed far too much luggage and had neglected to
     bring a warm coat.  For some reason I thought Italy would be
     warmer than it actually was.  In transit in Paris I met a
     fraternity brother and we would travel the rest of the way to
     Florence together.
     
          A number of the students in the program settled together
     in a pension overlooking the Arno just down the street from
     the University of Grenoble extension where we would be
     attending classes.  Classes were held only the first three
     days of the week, and for the rest of the week we were
     encouraged to wander around looking at the many art treasures
     of the city and surrounding area.  I pursued these activities
     for about a month spending many late evenings walking around
     looking at the architectural beauty of Florence.  Florence was
     the first city that I had ever lived in, and I was not quite
     prepared for the hectic pace of urban life.
     
          I received a letter from an old friend from Greenwich
     asking to come up and wait in Grenoble, so I obtained a U-rail
     pass and decided to take off traveling to see more of Europe. 
     When I arrived in Grenoble it was dreary and cold, but I had
     a great deal of fun with my friends meeting many exchange
     students who were studying in the city.  My friend and his
     friends had rented a cottage behind a villa outside of town
     that had a discotheque in the old barn adjacent to it.
     
          Every evening at midnight the discotheque would fill up
     with many young people from surrounding areas and a great
     amount of entertainment was had by all.  The discotheque was
     filled with exotic birds, and all of the patrons came from
     all over Europe with a great many of them from  Scandinavia.
     
          However, I missed the warmer weather that I had expected
     to find in Europe, so I traveled down to the south of Spain on
     the train with a brief stop in Barcelona.  Once in Malaga, I
     found it too urban, so I decided to travel further south. 
     When I had been in the Florence flee market, I had run into
     two Norwegians that had told me I should visit an island
     called Lanzerote.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          From Malaga I took a plane to Lanzerote to find it much
     warmer than the continent.  The only problem was there were
     few people who spoke English, but accomadations were
     inexpensive, so I decided to settle in and explore the island. 
     The island was all volcanic with no natural water.  There were
     mostly scandinavian tourists who lived in small stone cottages
     in the surrounding countryside.  The first night they had a
     festival of several thousand fishermen dressed in drag, all of
     which  was very amusing.  I use to spend my days cruising the
     island on motor bike and going to tavernas at night for dinner
     and beer.  I found a great spot on the far western end of the
     island to watch  sunset with a number of young Danish
     tourists.  We would sit watching the sun go down over Santa
     Cruz enjoying the native beer.
     
          I had taken to frequenting the airport twice a day to
     watch the two daily flights in from the mainland to see who
     was arriving and leaving the island.  On one of the forays I
     met a Norwegian boy who invited me to stay at his house.  He
     spoke excellent English and explained that his father was a
     pilot for S.A.S. and he lived during the winter with his
     mother on Lanzerote.  We would spend much time exploring the
     island together and going to native nightclubs in the evening. 
     He introduced me to a colony of Swedes, and we use to all
     enjoy talking about our world wide travel experiences.  I
     would become particularly infatuated by the stamina of the 
     Flamenco dancers at the night clubs.  Since all water had to
     be imported it was just as cheap to drink bottled beer or
     wine, so we were always slightly intoxicated.
     
          After about a month on Lanzerote I decided I better get
     back to Florence for my mid term examination.  I had been
     studying my books regularly and was not particularly concerned
     with any difficulty passing the examination.  I took my first
     fresh water bath since arriving on the island and went out to
     the airport to say good bye to my Norwegian friend.  He did
     not recognize me all cleaned up, but we had a heart felt
     farewell and I was on the plane to Seville.  From Seville I
     took a crowded train to Madrid and changed trains to Barcelona
     without leaving the train station in Madrid much to my regret. 
     From  Barcelona I caught the night train back to Florence,
     just in time for my exam.  I had a great deal of fun telling
     my classmates about my adventures, and would spend some time
     exploring around Florence, though the weather was still rather
     cold.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          The  food and wine of Florence were excellent, and we
     enjoyed  many night spots through out the old city.  We took
     to going to a very colorful bar adjacent to our pensione
     which did not open until late in the evening.  Most of the
     patrons looked like they were out of a Frederico Fellini
     movie with long flowing curly hair in the Louis fourteenth
     style.  Almost all of them were men since Italian women
     usually did not go out with their husbands to bars.  Many of
     them had dyed french poodles and we could never understand a
     word that any of them were saying, and I'm sure they were
     equally amused by us brash American students.  The bar was a
     long series of grottoes and extremely intriguing compared to 
     most of the surrounding tourist bars.  There were a great many
     artists and artisans who patronized the establishment  and we
     were totally bemused by the good times had by all.  Most of my
     fellow students fit in somewhat because we all had long hair
     too, which was the style amongst many students at the time.
     
            However, I would get the travel urge again and I
     would return to Barcelona for a week to enjoy wandering
     through the old quarters of the city and would finally return
     to Grenoble for a two week party at the cottage adjacent to
     the discotheque.  I would meet hundreds of young students, and
     we would all promise to visit each other at our respective
     countries.  Still I could not completely forget my studies in
     Florence, so I would return to complete  them and enjoy some
     weeks of spring weather  around the various plazas of the
     city.  We would explore the gardens behind the Pitti Palace on
     occasional evenings, and I enjoyed  walking endlessly around
     the city.  We use to join up with other Americans at one
     american bar and would exchange stories of our travels.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER VII
     
     
          However, I was due to be in Greece for the spring, so I
     took a train down to Rome.  I spent the night wandering around
     Rome and found the Spanish steps and sat up all night at Saint
     Peter's square talking to other people who happened to  be up
     late at night.  Early that morning I went out to the airport
     and flew to Athens.  I would be studying with an entirely
     different group of students in Athens and much enjoyed the
     warmer weather.  However, the program was much more structured
     in Greece, and we would be required to travel around as a
     group much of the time.  There were thirty girls on the
     program and only five guys.  After my freedom in Italy, I was
     not going to enjoy the more structured program.  However, I
     decided to make the best of  it.  I took a room with another
     preppy fellow and we started to enjoy the plaza and wine of
     Athens.  George was from Buffalo and although we had been in
     the same class at college we had never met although we shared
     many of the same friends back at the college.  He said he
     spent most of his time riding horses back at college and did
     not spend that much time on campus.  We would room together
     for the rest of the program and share many of the complaints
     about the spoiled girls who were always traveling with us. 
     One day while alone at the beach out by the Athens airport we
     saw a S.S.T. take off.  We neither had ever seen one.  George
     kept saying that he'd rather be in England, and I kept saying
     I missed the Canary Islands.  We traveled in  buses with the
     group all around the ruins of ancient Greece, most of which we
     discovered had well equipped tavernas nearby where a number of
     students would rest imbibing the local wine or other spirits.
     
          On the more  structured program we got to see quite a lot
     more, and there was still time for one's self to explore
     on one's own.  In Crete we spent orthodox Easter week at a
     hotel on the south side of the island.  Every restaurant  was
     closed because the Greeks fasted before Easter.  However, on
     Easter at midnight the local discotheque opened and hundreds
     of young people and many Americans showed up out of nowhere to
     party all night.  It was like new years eve all over again. 
     There would be another side trip to Hydra where the beauty and
     the quaintness of the Island reminded me of Nantucket,
     although the beaches were quite rocky.  I bought my mother a
     needle point bag made by blind nuns at one of the convents.
     
     
     
     
          The harbor was quite attractive and I longed to venture
     out on one of the yachts for a cruise, but since we did not
     know anyone we ended up returning on the Ferry boat back to
     Athens.  Part of the tour in Greece would include a trip to
     the ancient ruins of Troy in Turkey and Istanbul.  There would
     be a two week period of free time between the tour so George
     and I bought an old car and decided to drive to Turkey instead
     of flying.  We had an enjoyable trip through Macedonia over to
     Turkey.  We were forewarned that the Greeks and the Turks were
     not particularly friendly and upon crossing the border at one
     in the morning we saw hundreds of young men with machine guns. 
     We took a ferry boat across the water and drove down the
     southern coast of Turkey.  We were able to get the car
     repaired for practically  nothing when it broke down and ended
     up spending a week  at a new resort that had not made it into
     the Michelin guide that year and was totally deserted.  The
     desk clerk was from Newport, Rhode Island the only other
     guests were a German couple.  We had many wonderful French
     meals and drank plenty of Tuborg sitting by the beach every
     day.  Eventually we joined the group in Selchuck and toured
     the ruins where Saint Paul had first preached.  From there we
     drove up  the coast stopping at Troy to wander around and then
     on to Istanbul.  Istanbul was a bewildering large city with
     many elements of Asian influence.  We toured through the many
     wonderful old churches and explored the markets in the city. 
     It was hectic driving in an urban environment in a foreign
     country, but somehow we managed.  The Hilton was our second
     home away from home in Istanbul, and we spent much time
     reading the papers and eating hamburgers there.
     
          Our trip back from Istanbul to Athens was interesting
     driving along the countryside and shore stopping at little
     tavernas along the way for refreshments.  We eventually
     returned to our hotel in Athens for a much needed rest and
     more touring of local sites.  We use to spend many evenings
     climbing the Acropolis to view the city and walking through
     the gardens behind the palace.  The military was everywhere
     since Greece was under a dictatorship, but everything was
     peaceful and we quite enjoyed our Mediterranean tour.  After
     we completed our  exams that spring, I had to return because
     I was running low on funds.
     
          I stopped by in Boston and returned to Lake Forest where
     I attended a reception with my fellow seniors the night before
     graduation.  George had decided to stay on in Europe and
     travel to France as had most of the other students on the
     Greek tour.                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                                  
                                                       The next day
     was graduation which I ended up sleeping through, although  I
     would stay on a month in Lake Forest  visiting friends and
     trying to figure out what I was going to do after graduation. 
     I really wanted to travel more, but I  could not afford the
     expense.
     
          Later in July I returned to Boston and sat around home
     reading before going up to Canada for a wedding and then
     returning  to Lake Forest for another month's visit.   George
     showed up via Buffalo from Europe and after some parties in
     Lake Forest we started driving back east in another old
     Mercedes  that I had purchased.  I dropped George off in
     Buffalo and went on to Boston.  I stayed briefly at home in
     Weston  and then went down to Nantucket for a week to air out. 
     I really felt more at home in Nantucket than in Weston, since
     so many of my friends would frequently touch base on the
     island resort.
     
          After returning to Weston and pursuing numerous
     unsuccessful job contacts, I returned to Chicago to stay with
     one of my college roommates for a month until October.  Then
     on a whim I took off to Florida with two friends who were
     hauling down a speed boat and a race car for the winter.  From
     Jacksonville I caught a plane to the Virgin Islands where I
     spent a month with another college roommate who was teaching
     in the islands.
     
            The atmosphere in St. Thomas was not particularly
     hospitable since there had been a massacre on St. Croix at a
     golf course just weeks before.  Since the tourist season had
     not started I was unable to find a job, so I returned to the
     cold winds of Chicago.  I started attending parties and
     looking for work in banking,  however most banks wanted a
     graduate degree and my father because of financial reverses in
     the market was unable to send me to graduate school.  He
     had also lost his job and was looking  for another one.  It
     seemed appropriate that I stay away from home while matters
     settled themselves.  I borrowed some money from my parents 
     and rented a large three bedroom apartment on the Lake with a
     couple of college friends.  We proceeded to start entertaining 
     although we had few furnishings and in my spare time I sent
     out over a hundred resumes, all of which would come back
     negative.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          I was not making much progress on the job front in
     Chicago other than going to fund raisers for Nixon and other
     republicans where all of Chicago's conservative elite would
     gather over cocktails.  I was not much attuned to politics
     since I had been out of the country and traveling quite a lot. 
     In fact it had been months since I had read an American
     newspaper or watched any television.  However, Nixon was
     reelected and shortly before Christmas after an ill fated day
     of driving a taxi when my license was suspended, I returned to
     Weston for Christmas.  My father had relocated to New Jersey
     to work for a nuclear engineering firm, and my mother was
     minding the house and my two younger sisters at home whenever
     they were home from Trinity.  My eldest sister had settled in
     Tulsa, Oklahoma when her old Mercedes roadster had broken down
     on the way to California.  
     
          After vain attempts of trying to find a job around
     Boston, I went down to New Jersey to stay with my father for
     a week before I moved in with my younger sister who was
     working at a paralegal in Manhattan.  I  proceeded to
     interview at all of the major New York financial institutions,
     but they all wanted individuals with graduate degrees, so I
     was left to endless job  searching in Manhattan where I really
     did not know anyone.  I had very little in the way of funds to
     live on, so I use to take many hours long walks to past the
     time.  Finally in April, I was able to obtain a job at the
     C.B.S. television network through a friend of my father's.  I
     had never watched television for most of my life and it was
     all quite novel.  I was responsible  for maintaining a time
     slot log for all the commercials and programs.
     
          I only earned $85 a week which was less than half what I
     was use to earning in Boston, and after meals and
     transportation there was not much left for any entertainment. 
     I watched small parts of the national news after work in the
     evening and began to hear about the Watergate scandal.  In
     June, I would go to Boston for my youngest sister's wedding to
     a German boy from Philadelphia which  meant I would  have to
     move out of her apartment and find my own place.  I found a
     small room in a rooming house in Greenwich Village for $35 a
     week and proceeded to continue to work at C.B.S. for the
     summer despite the immense heat.  Most of television that
     summer was the senate Watergate hearings.  Even Walter
     Cronkite had taken the summer off to go to Nantucket according
     to friends who saw him up there.  
     
     
     
     
          Life at C.B.S. was not going well.  I never recognized
     any of the celebrities since I had never watched television to
     any great extent, and I was totally unfamiliar with New York,
     but I enjoyed the pace. 
     
          In August my father moved my mother back down to
     Greenwich, and I quit my job at C.B.S. and moved back to
     Greenwich.  I always missed Greenwich since I had spent many
     delightful childhood days there.  I started to reestablish 
     myself in Greenwich and spent the rest of the summer playing
     golf at the country club.  I never followed the news and
     enjoyed spending much of my free time reading.  That fall I
     took a job at a local restaurant as a waiter and bought an old
     Volvo.  Working at Boodles was quite fun, and I got to meet a
     number of the local characters.  When the restaurant would
     close at one A.M., we would frequently drive into Manhattan to
     visit friends and have drinks or go to a discotheque.  There
     were a few friends of mine from college that were now living
     and working in New York, so I began to try and develop a
     social group.  However, between partying in New York and
     working in Greenwich, I was burning the candle at both ends
     and it began to show in my work, and I was eventually laid off
     around Thanksgiving time.
     
          I started spending all of my time going back and forth
     between New York and Greenwich.  I had met a number of fast
     track young New York socialites and there were endless parties
     and discotheque nights.  None of this seemed to help me find
     any sort of a job, however, a number of my friends were
     prosperous and I had use of the of the house in Greenwich, so
     I just continued on the social Merry-Go-Around.  I would sleep
     most of the day and go out to parties all night and late bars
     and after hour clubs.   Still I was meeting a lot of people
     and enjoying the nether world of New York social life.  It was
     more exciting than Greenwich which seemed to be mostly older
     or younger people and few people my age unlike New York.  My
     main pastimes in Greenwich had been raking the leaves and
     cutting the grass and reading and dinner parties with my
     mother's friends.  Dad was spending much of his time in Europe
     for months at a time, so he was never around to get down on my
     case for not working.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER VIII
     
     
          After having traveled in Europe I was meeting a number of
     Europeans traveling in America, particularly in New York.  One
     of my friends in New York was very experienced with the
     international jet set group and I use to stay at his apartment
     attending parties and helping him sort out the hectic night
     life in New York.  He lived adjacent to the United Nations and
     there were a great many of the international types in the
     neighborhood.  We would always talk about getting away from it
     all and going to Nantucket.  Still I began to feel somewhat
     depressed that I was  not working and I did not find my social
     existence meaningful or intellectually stimulating.  I never
     seemed to have any time to read between trips back and forth
     to New York and I was only vaguely  aware of the Watergate
     fiasco that had preoccupied the national conscience.  At one
     of the discotheques one of the young gentleman  I would meet
     was an eighteen year old gymnast from Syracuse that said his
     grandfather had a house next to Richard Nixon's in  Florida
     and he was E. Howard Hunt's god son.  None of this really much
     mattered to me since I did not particularly care for politics
     and knew very little about it.  However, my friend from
     Syracuse was a particularly charming individual and we would
     be friends on and off in our various travels over the years. 
     He too would always talk about getting away from it all and
     going to Nantucket.
     
          However, I would spend a lot of time between the suburbs,
     uptown and down town in the village.  Most of the young people
     in the city seemed to spend most of their time living in
     around the Village, particularly those in the arts and
     communications.  Moreover, my international friends never
     seemed to realize the difference between Greenwich,
     Connecticut and Greenwich  Village.
     
          I would frequent a number of the bars of the village
     talking with old friends and making new friends and then going
     to mid-town to go dancing in the discotheques.  I never drank
     very much and a few times I smoked marijuana which was
     currently in fashion, but most of the time I was going on
     natural energy.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
          That winter was particularly severe and the oil crisis
     was on, so running back and forth to New York would be more
     difficult.  I would spend more time in each place for longer
     periods staying with different friends for a week or two in
     the City.
     
          George would come down from Buffalo to visit a couple of
     times that winter.  He was pursuing a career in horse racing. 
     I would miss having a close friend near by.  One of my friends
     was involved in modeling and decorating.  He knew all of the
     good looking young people in the fashion business and could
     never quit talking about the social register, Billy  Baldwin,
     and the old guard.  Still his parties were fun although he was
     rather superficial and unintellectual, but having a friend on
     the social scene for many years was quite helpful and helped
     me avoid the dreadful social entanglements that so many young
     people can find themselves involved in.  I enjoyed talking
     with his godmother that had raised him and she constantly
     worried about his social naivete despite his many years of
     experience.  She knew all to well that the suburban
     establishment was slow to accept the follies of an ever
     changing urban scene.  I had fun visiting the Long Island
     suburbs with my friend's god mother, but I could never accept
     his international jet set outlook.  I knew my father was more
     worldly traveled than most people, and he never chose to bring
     the international group through our family home.  The myopia
     of the suburbs was a sanctuary in and of itself.
     
          Later that winter George's parents would come down to New
     York and take me out to dinner with his cousin.  They were
     worried about him spending so much time around the horses
     and general indifference to people.
     
          About that same time I would move in with two Yalies
     across from the Anglican seminary in Chelsea and continue my
     night life of discotheques and bars in Manhattan.
     
          Although I would meet a lot of people, I would make no 
     lasting friends and no headway on the job front.  There was so
     much to pursue in New York.  All one's energies seemed to be
     consumed in the progress of going through an unending maze. 
     The apartment in Chelsea was down the street from a leather
     bar, so I took to going there and studying the bizarre people. 
     They seemed like something out of the avant garde, but most of
     them were professional people who liked dressing up in denim
     and leather in their non working hours.  
     
     
     
          
     
          There were a lot of Texans and Californians at the bar. 
     They all seemed to be indifferent to preppies from
     Connecticut.  However, the bar was safe since a lot of off
     duty policeman and military frequented the place.
     
          I was not as mobile at this time since I had sold my
     Volvo because I had damaged it in a skid in a snow storm.  I
     would spend one day a week going out to Connecticut on the
     train and getting groceries from home and bringing them back
     to the city.  Still I was living in the city and having more
     fun that I ever did in Connecticut.
     
          However, when June came I would return to living in
     Connecticut  since I could not afford to live in the city.  I
     started playing golf again and spent a lot of time gardening
     around my mother's house.  Everyone in the neighborhood  among
     the young adults were at least five years younger than I was,
     so there were friends to spend times with.
     
          Occasionally I would drive my mother's car into the city
     during the late evening and visit friends and return in the
     late morning hours.  Most of my friends in the city were
     struggling to get by and they enjoyed a breath of fresh  air 
     out in the suburbs.  I could never accept the fast paced life
     of Manhattan, but I enjoyed seeing vignettes of it.  The 
     W.A.S.P. establishment had mostly moved out of New York City
     twenty years before and John Lindsey was no longer mayor. 
     However, I was still interested in the city since my youngest
     sister was living there with her husband.  Later that year she
     would be transferred down to Atlanta and my interest would
     decline in the city.
     
          Through that fall of 1974, I would make occasional trips
     into the city to visit with friends of my decorator friend and
     to look for jobs.  It was expensive to commute back and forth
     into the city every day, so I would generally stay several
     days and return for a long weekend.  I had a few friends that
     ran galleries and was always invited to various openings to
     see an assortment of the art community.  I would enjoy
     spending most of my free time in the day time going to museums
     and walking around the mid town area and upper east side.  I
     would explore some of the design centers with my decorator
     friend, but compared to what I had seen in Europe I was not
     very impressed.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          I toyed with the idea of becoming a decorator, but I had
     very little experience and preferred to rely upon my economics
     and fine arts degrees from college for my pursuits.  I did not
     really care for the flashy world of decorating and design and
     fashion, but having studied the fine arts and having been a
     professional photographer I had a curiosity as to what was
     current.
     
          Ford was President and Rockefeller was vice president. 
     What I did not know was one of our neighbor's sons in
     Greenwich was the head of the C.I.A..  My decorator friend's
     parties seemed to revolve more around republican politics
     which are really a minority group in New York.  There was
     always something happening around the United Nations
     neighborhood, and I once saw the President coming out of the 
     Waldorf Astoria from the Gridiron dinner.  My decorator
     friend showed up on television with William Westmoreland at
     some international debutante ball.  There were a lot of
     parties going on, but I preferred to ignore them since they
     were all mostly older people's affairs.  However, I saw
     Yassir Arafat around the United Nations and the Archbishop of
     Cyprus coming out of the Carlyle.
     
          One evening early that winter I ran into my father and a
     business associate walking around the upper east side in
     Scottish tartan pants which looked very out of place in the
     black suit world of Manhattan.  I hardly ever saw him and he
     asked me how my mother was and if I had a job yet.
     
          About that time friends of my friend from Syracuse were
     trying to get me involved in opening a night club at a failing
     restaurant owned by a friend of my mother's.  I had had so
     much of New York night life that I did not want to get
     involved in a night club.  The restaurant later reopened as a
     club called the Russian Bear for a short time.
     
          In February I visited George who was staying briefly at
     his cousin's apartment.  I was suppose to go to some party at
     some place called the Victorian society, but I did not have
     white tie and tails and on my way out to Greenwich I got
     arrested for not having money for the train ticket.
     
          In court the next day the judge chewed out the conductor
     for having bothered me, especially since the railroad was
     applying for a billion dollar loan from the government that
     same day, and the loan was in all the papers.
     
          
     
     
     
          My mother and younger sister would show up at home from
     Atlanta the following day to attend a fund raising party for
     a gallery at which I was suppose to be one of the hosts.  I
     had very little to do with the preparation of the party and
     did not know what to expect.  They had cablevision there and
     a naked model and a lot of young people looking at aquariums
     with older black tie individuals who seemed to be from
     business and politics and a few diplomats.
     
          What struck me as odd was there were about a hundred
     New York policeman for security and Mitch Miller was there
     without his chorus.  My decorator friend's godmother kept
     talking about how the snowstorm outside was not as bad as
     the blizzard of 1888.  Anyway no profit was made on the party
     and I was happy to be out of New York and back in Greenwich.
     
                                                                  
                                                                  
                
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER IX
     
     
          I rested around home for the next month reading and
     occasionally looking for a job, but not much was going on in
     Greenwich.  Spring was to come early in March that year, so I
     started going to the beach on the warmer spring days.  There
     were mostly local high school students there, and I really
     felt like an outsider.
     
          One day I was hitchhiking back from the beach because I
     did not have a car which is a definite handicap in the
     suburbs.  The fellow who picked me up told me about a large
     lake in back country which was suppose to have excellent fresh
     water swimming and said that was where most of the kids from
     back country Greenwich went swimming.  I had been unaware
     since I had always swum out at the country club.
     
          Still I decided to check out Conyers Lake which looked
     like something out of the Maine woods.  I started swimming
     regularly there that spring despite the rather frigid water
     and met many local kids from the local high school.  It was
     like summer camp there and we all spent many nights camping
     out.  We would be occasionally run off by the game wardens who
     said we were trespassing on private property, but apparently
     there had been a long history of kids swimming there, and none
     of them seemed particularly concerned.
     
          They use to spend a great deal of time singing the songs
     from South Pacific since that was the show they were
     rehearsing at the local high school for the spring play. 
     Later that spring I would build a raft out of a discarded dock
     and much time was spent floating around the lake and swimming
     from one end to the other.  However, as June approached the
     game wardens became more adamant about us not swimming there
     and the water was becoming murky,
     
          Since I did not have a car, I could not go to the beach
     regularly, so I spent most of my time at home helping out on
     the gardening.  My mother was particularly upset at my father
     since he was never home and always seemed to be away on
     business.  As the days began to warm up, I began to want to
     get away to the shore.  I had received a post card that
     friends of mine were on Nantucket, so I decided to hitchhike
     up to the Cape.  I was not experienced with hitchhiking and
     found it all rather tedious, but I made it up to the Cape and
     ended up spending a week resting at a Christian commune near
     Woods Hole.  I was not really into communal living since it
     seemed antagonistic to suburban living. 
     
     
     
          Instead of going out to Nantucket, I went to Martha's
     Vineyard to camp for a couple of days.  It did not rain much
     that spring or summer, so camping was hassle free, and I use
     to go to the youth hostel for my daily shower.  I spent most
     of my days swimming and exploring the south shore of the
     Vineyard which had not changed so much since I had been there
     seven years before.  However, there were no longer the
     thousands of hippies that use to frequent McNammara's beach. 
     
          The Vineyard was a little busy so I decided to go out
     to Nantucket.  I immediately ran into a number of friends, and
     they were happy to see me.  I decided to continue to camp out
     since I was getting very healthy and had succeeded in quitting
     smoking and was enjoying spending my entire days at the beach
     swimming.  I use to go to Nobadeer beach every day and would
     spend the whole day with hundreds of kids many of whom were
     from various places I had lived around the country.  Jimmy
     from Syracuse was there working at an inn.  I never told him
     I had been going down to Nantucket since 1968, so he assumed
     he had been going there longer than I had since his parents
     had a house there.  My sisters knew families that had been
     vacationing there for decades and a number of my school
     friends were there also.  The island is so small that every
     one goes over board to respect each other's privacy.  There
     were a whole different generation of college kids there, since
     most of my friends were too busy working to get away all
     summer.
     
          Since I was into a health routine, I decided not to
     attend any parties or to go out to any of the discotheques or
     bars.  Still the island was small enough that it was like an
     all day party, particularly at the beach.  I spent much of my
     time reexploring the island by foot which is the best way to
     see the island and declined rides in automobiles for the
     joy of walking.  I use to use the marina showers to clean up
     every day and I ran into a number of my college friends who
     were on boats for brief stays.  Nantucket is definitely a
     Boston atmosphere and a lot friendlier and more slow paced
     than the New York atmosphere.  However, the island was growing
     and there were a lot of New Yorkers who were invading the
     W.A.S.P. enclave.  My former college roommate showed up after
     having completed sailing around the world.  His college girl
     friend was also staying in the same marina.  Her father was
     one of the senior commodores of Massachusetts sailing.  There
     seemed to be a lot of antagonism between the New York Yacht
     Club set and the more sedate members of the New England's
     sailing establishment.  Although I had been swimming quite a
     lot and was less afraid of the water, I was not about to try
     sailing and still had a fond respect for the open ocean.
     
     
     
          The movie Jaws was making its debut that summer and after
     seeing it would be somewhat scared of the ocean swimming that
     I had been pursuing.  I was a strong swimmer and would spend
     hours well beyond shore, but people were always telling me to
     be careful of the south shore current which could drag one out
     to sea.  Surfing was popular that summer, but I never bothered
     trying it since I had almost drowned  on Nantucket trying to
     surf with a British friend five years before.  Jimmy was
     enjoying popularity as one of the ring leaders of the beach
     set and did not have much use for my floating existence on the
     island.
     
          The island had changed a lot in the three years since I
     had been there.  All of the quaint stores down town were being
     replaced by more fashionable resort stores and restaurants. 
     The old guard was becoming a minority to the off island
     entrepreneurs who were speculating on the island's new found
     popularity.
     
          Large planes were unloading hundreds of weekend visitors,
     and ferries were bringing thousands of day trippers out of
     Hyannis.  I began to realize why most of my family's more
     established friends had begun to leave the island in recent
     years for more remote hideaways far from the maddening crowd. 
     I also realized the only way to avoid the crowds was to
     develop my timing better in the future.  Still the beach was
     idealistic and I did not much care for island politics and
     tried to stay aloof from the controversies regarding island
     development and since I was from Greenwich and a guest, it was
     not really any of my concern.  The local merchants were
     thriving at the expense of the once bucolic atmosphere of the
     island.  There were quite a number of recent European visitors
     and New Yorkers to the island that demanded better service and
     accommodations.  As an illegal camper with a lot of friends
     this was none of my concern.  If I got bored of roughing it,
     I could always go back to the suburban tranquility of
     Greenwich.
     
          One day while I was going into town for dinner, a taxi
     pulled along side of me.  It was my decorator friend who had
     spent summers on Nantucket and was the protege of someone who
     had been going out there for a half of a century.  He insisted
     that I stay with him and clean up my act.  He had a number of
     house guests from Andy Warhol's crowd that were coming out to
     stay with him in a large rented house.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          After a night in the house, I decided to leave because we
     did not see eye to eye on the various recreation activities
     the guests were to pursue.  I did not feel like smoking
     marijuana which was currently the fad amongst the artistic
     groups of Manhattan.  I had seen enough of it in the Greenwich
     Village environment and knew how it was destroying the lives
     of many young kids.  It seemed omnipresent every where I went
     in those days, but I simply preferred to remain healthy and
     found it incompatible with my formal education.  I would
     shortly learn that it was a big underworld business when I
     made my first solo trip to Florida.
     
          As the August season approached in Nantucket, the island
     was becoming too hectic and I decided to retreat back to
     Greenwich for some rest and home cooking.  My mother was
     very amused when I returned home, and she did not seem to want
     to bother me as I spent many days reading and enjoying the
     late summer and early fall days.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER X
     
     
          I had begun to worry about falling behind in my
     intellectual achievements, so I hitchhiked up to Yale that
     fall during the beginning of the school year to see what was
     happening.  They were opening a school of business and
     politics which I was interested in, but finding it very small
     and inadequate I decided not to pursue admissions.  Besides
     the cost of graduate education was skyrocketing and I did not
     think I could depend on any help from home.  The assistant
     chaplain at Yale under William Coffin was my old presbyterian
     minister from Taft.  He had me sit in on a couple of seminars,
     however I was not as politically interested as he was in
     groups like Amnesty International and Save the Whales.
     
          I had told him that I had become interested in mysticism
     while I was a vegetarian and non smoker on Nantucket, and that
     on a island it was a viable spiritual experience, however, he
     said I should consult a psychologist which I thought was
     awfully narrow minded.  I talked to the psychologist who gave
     me a tranquilizer, and I proceeded too return to Greenwich.
     
          The next morning I was still under the affects of the
     tranquilizer, and my mother noticed there was something odd in
     my behavior.  Later that day she called the police and they
     took me to talk with a local psychiatrist.  I tried to explain
     that another psychiatrist had given me a tranquilizer, and
     that I was not using recreational drugs.  The local
     psychiatrist decided to have me sent to the local state
     hospital for observation for two weeks.  For some stupid
     reason, he seemed to think I was a suicidal risk.  In fact I
     had not even been the least bit depressed.  I decided that
     they were just trying to scare me into taking a job.  
     
          I was kept for a two week observation period at the
     hospital during which time I was given a number of
     tranquilizers which blurred my vision and kept me from being
     able to read.  I spent most of my time playing checkers with
     an old colored man who was a long term patient for having
     committed murder.  There was another young kid there from
     Nantucket who had been messed up on drugs the same previous
     summer that I was there.  
     
     
     
     
     
     
          After the two weeks observation period, I was told that
     I could be released if I would sign some papers waving my
     rights.  I refused to sign the papers since I believed I had
     been illegally committed and proceeded to write a thirty
     page brief to my state lawyer explaining my view point.
     
          Because I would not sign the papers, the hospital would
     not release me and a waiting game began.  They had control
     over me.  It was all rather bizarre and byzantine.  If I had
     private funds, I would be able to be released immediately by
     my own doctor or lawyer.  The state bureaucrats and mental
     health professionals were so inept that I was convinced that
     it was a conspiracy to throw me in a snake pit.  One doctor
     was so out of it from abuse of drugs that his eyes were
     bulging bug eyed out of his sockets.  Neither of my doctors
     were American citizens, and I began to doubt their
     professional credentials.  Finally I got a preppy social
     worker from Yale, and he agreed with my observations, but said
     to play along with the doctors and to sign the papers
     relieving the institution of legal responsibility.  So after
     two months of state confinement, I was released to a halfway
     house that was run as a commune next to the Yale University
     campus.  At the time my mother did not want me living at home,
     and I was happy to be close to the university facility to have
     access to the library.
     
          However, a number of the people at the halfway house
     had serious mental problems, and I did not enjoy living
     communally.  At Christmas time I returned home on the
     condition that I would take a job.  I was able to obtain a job
     working for a construction company in Greenville, South
     Carolina through my father's help.  I would work as an
     expeditor and the company would pay for my moving expenses.
     
          After the first of the year, I made the trip down to
     South Carolina.  I bought an old Chevrolet for $200 and rented
     a new apartment for about a third of my salary.  Work settled
     into a routine of days on the phone and typewriter working on
     expediting for the large construction company.  The job was
     easy, although my fellow employees were somewhat dull, being
     mostly jocks and retired military officers.  Still I was
     enjoying the change from Greenwich, and after work I would go
     out to Furman University and use the library.
     
          On weekends I would travel down to Atlanta and visit my
     sister and go to a number of local discotheques.  There was
     not much happening in South Carolina on weekends since it
     was a dry state.
     
          
     
          
     
          For the construction company, I was working on building
     a tranquilizer factory in Puerto Rick, and I would spend much
     time on the phone talking to strangers trying to obtain
     shipments of goods and materials to the job site.
     
          After about three months of this routine, my boss began
     to talk about having me shipped to Saudi Arabia, which did not
     interest me in the least.  On one weekend in Atlanta, I drove
     down to Plains, Georgia to meet the Carter people who were
     organizing Jimmy Carter's run for the presidency.  They were
     ambitious but somewhat naive.  I did not think Carter had much
     of a chance after seeing Plains, Georgia.
     
          I continued my job up until the week of the bicentennial
     of the fourth of July.  I quit the job on the first of July
     packed my belongings into a U-Haul trailer and started driving
     north.  I stopped for the day in Washington D.C., and toured
     around then proceeded up to Greenwich.  I arrived home the
     evening before the fourth of July and there was a great
     feeling of festivity in the air.
     
          The next day I drove my car into Manhattan, parked in the
     Village, and went down to battery park to watch the tall
     ships.  For some reason I was able to stand in front of the
     entire crowd in the V.I.P. area and observe the ships.  I ran
     into a few friends from my old disco nights in New York and
     really enjoyed the festivities and celebrations.  On the
     way out of the city, I picked up my mother and her friends at
     the Chase building where they had been observing from the top
     floor and drove them out in my old Chevrolet.  They were
     surprised that I had a car in the city since cars were
     forbidden in lower Manhattan.
     
          The next week I decided to go up to Nantucket that
     evening.  Things were not going smoothly at home.  My mother
     and father had divorced that previous fall after several years
     of separation, and my mother was worrying about the
     maintenance upkeep of the house since my father was not
     sending her enough money.
     
          On arrival in Nantucket, I stayed in a guest house for a
     couple of weeks enjoying the beach and visiting old friends. 
     After two weeks I began to run low on funds, so I decided to
     live out of my car for another two weeks pursuing the routine
     I had pursued when I had camped there during previous years. 
     However, August came along and the island was busy, so I
     decided to return to Greenwich.
     
          
     
     
     
          
          On arrival at my mother's house I was welcomed and I
     proceeded to catch up on my reading and enjoy the fall days of
     Connecticut.  However, it was cooling off quickly and I
     decided I missed the beach.  One day my mother told me to go
     out and get some orange juice, so I packed the car and headed
     down to Florida.  I never bothered to say goodbye since I did
     not know how long I would be gone. I drove slowly down the
     Atlantic coast stopping in beach communities along the way
     down.
     
          I finally settled in Fort Lauderdale figuring I could
     afford to live there on unemployment insurance.  However, my
     unemployment checks were late coming through, so I was
     relegated to living out of my old chevrolet.  I had access to
     the Yacht club for showers, and would spend endless days
     at the beach.
     
          I made several friends with other snowbirds as we yankees
     were called.  I would spend many happy days jogging and
     swimming at the beach.  Several of my friends thought this all
     amusing.  Meanwhile the country was changing.  Carter was
     elected president and as a republican I felt the country was
     going down the tubes.  The holidays came and went without much
     advent that year.  I had told my mother I was down in Florida,
     and she had said she would be in Palm Beach for the winter.
     
          New Year's Eve of 1977 was quite fun with about ten
     thousand young people on the beach at Fort Lauderdale.  My two
     main friends down there were a fellow yankee from Connecticut
     who tried to show me the ropes as best possible, and an old
     gentleman from South Carolina who thought I was from South
     Carolina since my car had South Carolina license plates on it. 
     He was quite familiar with southern politics and told me he
     had known Jimmy Carter since he was a boy and that he was a
     good Christian man.  I was not really familiar with southern
     Christian politics, so I kept enjoying the beach.  Other than
     the Anita Bryant controversy, Fort Lauderdale was a tranquil
     southern town.
     
          About February I got a letter from my friend from
     Syracuse and Nantucket saying he was leaving the University
     of New Hampshire to go to Russia.  I wrote back to him to take
     a Bible and have a good trip.
     
          In the mean time I was becoming disenchanted with Fort
     Lauderdale since my car had been impounded for too many
     parking tickets.  I did not use it very much, so I left it in
     the pound and took a bus down to Key West.
     
          
     
          Key West was about ten degrees warmer than Fort
     Lauderdale, and I immediately fell in love with the tropical
     coral blue waters.  However, downtown Key West was anything
     but commercial.  There were about ninety percent abandoned
     shops and a few bars and discotheques.  However, overnight the
     place began to take on the airs of a low key adult resort. 
     Everywhere there was building and remodeling of old houses
     going on.  There were a lot of older retired people and a
     scattering of fishermen, writers, navy personnel, gays and a
     lot of Cubans.
     
          Still the atmosphere was very laid back, and I found Key
     West a great place to live without a car.  I found an
     abandoned house that someone said I could sleep in, and I
     would use the beach club to clean up every day.   There was
     a health food store that gave me a charge account, so I did
     not have to worry about food.  The friend that I had left
     Chicago with to drive down to Florida with five years before
     was one of the main businessmen and he had an emporium selling
     crafts across from the post office.  There seemed to be quite
     a few deja view friends around, but with everyone darkly
     tanned and coolly dressed I never could really recognize
     anyone, except a few friends.
     
          Most of my days were spent going to the library in the
     morning, the beach in the afternoon, and wandering around
     the old town area.  In the evenings virtually the whole town
     would show up at the pier for sunset along with a different
     group of tourists who every day had driven down U.S. 1 to
     the end of the road.  Sunsets were always quite festive, and
     the whole island had a communal artistic flavor about it.  No
     one was in a particular rush.  Old dogs would spend half the
     afternoon lying in the same spot in the street and everyone
     was very friendly.  I knew that Key West had been the home of
     several famous authors and artists over the years, but one
     never really knew whom was still around or not.  I had drinks
     with a friend my age named Hemingway in Manhattan at John
     Lindsey's going away party, and someone had once introduced me
     to Tennessee Williams on East 53rd street, but I never
     associated these names with Key West.
     
          Jimmy who was in Russia was the godson of the leader of
     the ill fated bay of pigs invasion, however coming from
     Greenwich, I had never associated all of these various friends
     with Key West, until I arrived down there.  The place felt
     like a ready made second home.  In February I received a
     letter from Jimmy who had returned from Russia and was
     attending the University of New Hampshire.  He said he was
     coming down to visit in Key West.  
     
     
     
          I thought it all was amusing, he never visited when I was
     living in Greenwich, but when I was roughing it he would
     always show up.  By the time he arrived in Key West, it had
     taken on a carnival atmosphere with the influx of winter
     tourists.  Someone was writing articles in the New York Times
     saying that Key West was the new fashionable resort to escape
     to.
     
          Overnight real estate prices began to skyrocket and
     remodeling was going on everywhere.  There was a lot of high
     energy going on in a so called laid back resort.  Although I
     knew there were Navy personnel down there, I never saw anyone
     wearing a uniform, and most everyone would spend the day in
     cut offs and T-shirts.  Someone had passed a law that you had
     to wear a shirt in town which seemed rather bizarre for an
     ocean resort.
     
          Still I was enjoying the overall experience of Key West,
     and I never much cared what was going on since I was not
     reading any newspapers at the time nor was I watching any
     television.  The ultimate reality seemed to be the mass of
     people on the pier at sunset every day.
     
          One day Jimmy arrived and he immediately started making
     lots of friends.  He was mostly interested in protesting
     against nuclear energy which did not much concern me since to
     my immediate knowledge there were no nuclear reactors
     threatening on the horizon in any place close to me.  Besides
     the president was a nuclear engineer, and I knew my father was
     considered a respectable scientist, so I did not consider it
     fashionable to be anti nuclear power.
     
          I had not received any of my unemployment checks during
     my stay in Florida, however I was still surviving and enjoying
     myself.  After a couple of months in Key West, I began to get
     island fever, so I took off with Jimmy hitchhiking to Naples
     and we ended up spending the better part of the day standing
     on the side of the road hitchhiking without much success. 
     However, the next morning we were in Naples and we were both
     hungry and broke.  While he slept on the beach, I washed
     dishes at a Howard Johnson's so we would get some more travel
     money and return to Key West which seemed to be more and more
     a sanctuary.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          
     
          On returning to Key West we pursued our simple routines
     and Jimmy took a job as a busboy.  Since my hair was down to
     my belt, it was hard to find a job in the resort business, and
     most people assumed I was one of the hippies involved in the
     local drug trade.  Since I did not drink or use marijuana I
     was extremely healthy and oblivious to people's prejudice
     about my long hair.
     
          After several months of Key West life, I received several
     thousand dollars in unemployment checks at one time, and I
     started to make the trip north with Jimmy after paying off my
     debts and getting my car out of the pound in Fort Lauderdale.
     
          We stopped off in Disney World for a day of touring the
     Magic Kingdom and then stopped off in Jacksonville to visit a
     race car driver friend of mine who had driven me down to
     Florida after I graduated from college.
     
          Jimmy became impatient with driving, so I put him on a
     plane in Jacksonville and proceeded to drive up into Georgia. 
     I stopped off in Plains, Georgia and it had become quite the
     tourist spot since Carter was president.  I drove north slowly
     stopping to visit my sister Peggy in Atlanta and eventually
     arrived home in Greenwich to find everything was the same as
     usual.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
      
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER XI
     
     
          I decided to visit Jimmy at the University of New
     Hampshire only to run into a whole school organized against
     the building of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.  After going
     to one of many scheduled demonstrations, I decided that I
     really had no business participating since I was ill informed
     and not a native of the area.
     
          Thus in late April, I returned to Nantucket, and started
     to work getting ready for the tourist season.  I helped open
     up a number of restaurants and even got involved in
     scalloping.  Still the island was not as exciting in the
     spring as the summer, so I made a couple of trips up to New
     Hampshire to see what was happening and to tour.
     
          Finally in May after what seemed far too much traveling
     I decided to settle in Nantucket for the summer.  I gave away
     my car and a lot of excess luggage to the hospital thrift shop
     since I did not think I needed an excess of formal clothing in
     a resort, only to find I did not even have enough clothes to
     be a waiter.  Thus I ended up taking a job in a bakery making
     rolls and doughnuts.  It was all very theatrical, but it soon
     became boring and I took a job as a dish washer in a
     restaurant.  Other than carpentry one summer, I had never done
     manual labor, and found it all terribly sweaty and tedious,
     however, I did enjoy the company of my fellow college workers. 
     
     
          Once the weather warmed up, I spent most of my days at
     the beach with the other students who worked and vacationed on
     the island.  I stayed in a boarding house which was filled
     full of students and other travelers run by an old nurse who
     had been around the island for ever.
     
          My days evolved into a casual routine of play, work, and
     rest.  My decorator friend and Jimmy lived on the same street
     as I did, however I hardly saw them since they were busy with
     their other island friends.  I became somewhat annoyed that
     individuals who wanted to be my friend when off island chose
     to ignore me when on island.
     
          Still I enjoyed the island as a change from Greenwich,
     although it seemed a large portion of the people there were
     from Greenwich.  Half way through the summer I changed jobs to
     a French restaurant since the work was easier and the
     atmosphere more congenial.
     
     
     
          I took up sewing a canvas back pack on the beach during
     my free time which took many hundred of hours while I was
     tanning.  The summer pace increased through August and fell
     off through the fall.  I moved into an apartment over the
     laundromat and proceeded to help paint the interior as the
     winter was setting in.  On the day after Thanksgiving I
     loaded up my back pack and took the ferry boat to the mainland
     with a friend.  There I rented a U-haul truck and drove up to
     Dartmouth college where I had stored a number of my
     possessions and proceeded to move them down to Philadelphia,
     where my sister Patty lived.  My mother had sold the house in
     Greenwich during the summer and living in an apartment with no
     storage.  
     
          On the way back from Philadelphia my friend and I stopped
     by Manhattan to buy him a camera and have a few drinks at the
     oldest bar in New York.  Then we drove the Uhaul truck until
     we ran out of gas in Mystic, Connecticut leaving the truck at
     the dealer next to the highway.  He took off hitching back to
     the ferry at Woodshole, and I started hitching down to my
     mother's in Greenwich.  I stayed the night in Greenwich and
     borrowed some money from my mother since I had used up most of
     my reserve moving, and I proceeded to hitchhike down to
     Florida.
     
          I had the huge back pack that I made which was too heavy
     for hitching.  However, I had no problem in getting rides
     mostly with students and military.  I spent the night
     traveling down to Florida after a brief stop at Georgetown
     University.  As soon as I arrived in Florida, I went out to
     the airport at Fort Lauderdale and checked my pack except for
     the bare essentials which I kept in a gunny sack.
     
          I was unable to find a job working in a restaurant in
     Fort Lauderdale, however I found a job working in the best
     French restaurant in Florida in Boca Raton.  Unfortunately the
     job did not pay enough to live close by and I did not have a
     car, so the chef leant me a tent and I camped on the Boca
     inlet in the woods.
     
          I would stay at the restaurant through Christmas working
     both Christmas eve and Christmas day.  In the day time I would
     hitch down to the beach in Fort Lauderdale and in the evening
     work in the restaurant.  However, one morning a bulldozer
     showed up where I was camped to build a new hotel.  I quit my
     job and spent New Year's in Fort Lauderdale.
     
          
     
     
     
          
          After a hilarious New Years, I decided I wanted to see
     the Bahamas, so I purchased a round trip ticket to the Bahamas
     with my remaining funds and kept $3.00 exit tax.  On arrival
     I started to hitch hike into town, but a cab gave me a ride to
     Paradise Island, where I found a cypress forest to sleep in. 
     The weather was perfect so I was comfortable without a tent or
     sleeping bag.  That evening when I was walking around I ran
     into two English fellows my age and they invited me to stay
     with them in their beach villa.
     
          We would go to the Casino and much to my surprise there
     were thousands of kids my age in the casino all having a
     jolly time.  I never figured out where they all came from, but
     I always seemed to be running into large groups of deja
     vue friends.  Most all of them were blond haired and blue eyed
     and they all looked like they were related.  I had the longest
     hair of anybody male or female since I had not cut my hair in
     several years.  I had a good time visiting the Bahamas for
     several days and truly believe that expression, "It's Better
     In the Bahamas".  When my British friends left on a brand new
     British Air 747, I caught the local shuttle back to the
     mainland.
     
          On arrival in Fort Lauderdale, I decided that I would
     enjoy the more peaceful island of Key West, so I hitchhiked
     down there.  The old building that I had lived in was still
     abandoned so I moved back in and began my usual routine of
     beach and library.  Nothing had changed on the island except
     that there were a different group of tourists.  One day I was
     talking to the bartender of a small bar that had worked
     in the same restaurant that I had worked in Nantucket.  While
     we were talking, in walked Cliff Robertson and Dina Merrill. 
     They fit very well into the South Pacific setting of the bar. 
     However, I knew as celebrities showed up the island would
     become more populous.
     
          After two weeks of my usual routine, I ran into my friend
     Jimmy from Syracuse.  He had dropped out of the University of
     New Hampshire and was pursuing a health routine of jogging and
     beaching it.  It was good to have an old friend around, but
     since our routines were different we hardly ever ran into each
     other despite the smallness of the island.  After about a
     month on the island, I ran into John from Long Island.  He was
     an artist who was living much the same way that I was.  Having
     quit cigarettes for six months, he got me back to smoking
     Marlboros.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          John showed me an abandoned hotel next to the beach we
     always went to.  He had a key to the Hotel Casa Marina which
     was last used as a peace corps' training center some ten years
     before.  We would spend much time exploring the abandoned
     hotel and decided it would make a fine residence with its
     views of the ocean.  We would spend the next several months
     living there and using the beach club next door to clean up. 
     There were some draw backs to the Casa Marina, mainly that
     there were at least a hundred stray cats living there which
     tended to make it smell.
     
          The cats were all the off spring of the infamous six toed
     Hemingway cats that lived at the Hemingway house.  Still at
     least we had a comfortable place to stay for free.  We would
     live on a simple diet of cuban sandwiches and health food. 
     Most of our mornings were spent swimming at the beach and
     watching the windsurfer.  After going to the library in the
     afternoon, we would wander around town and occasionally talk
     to Jimmy who was working at a yogurt stand.  Sunsets were
     always the main event of the evening and as always most of the
     island population would be assembled for the event.  We were
     amongst the youngest visitors on the island, and every one
     seemed to be happy that we had chosen the island as our winter
     home that season.
     
          After about a month at the hotel, construction workers
     showed up to begin work on renovations for opening a Marriott
     hotel there.  Since we were always around the hotel, people
     assumed we were working on the project.  The head of the
     construction company was an acquaintance of Jimmy's so we were
     allowed to stay on in the hotel with all the cats.
     
          However, we had to get up at sunrise every morning when
     the construction crew arrived and could not return until
     evening.  We began to look for better accommodations on the
     Truman annex naval base.  We checked out the old abandoned
     Truman white house which was termite infested and decided to
     stay at the hotel, although we would move into the annex
     across the street, where most of the cats also seemed to be
     retreating to.  John loved cats and was terribly happy with
     them all, and I always kept worrying about disease from all
     the stay cats, not to mention I always preferred dogs.  No one
     seemed to question our existence in Key West and we were
     welcomed every where we went.  I knew quite a large number of
     the local merchants, and they all seemed to be happy with
     the new prosperity from the increase of tourism mainly from
     the many articles written about the island in New York Times.
     
     
     
          The Chamber of Commerce treated me like an honorary
     member, and I was an omnipresent member of the old town
     neighborhood.  After a couple months on the island, John and
     I were having dinner with Jimmy and he announced that he was
     going to hitchhike out to California.  Since it was only March
     and rather cold up north and out west, we did not really
     believe him, but the next day we walked him to the outskirts
     of town and he was off.  I would sorely miss him since he
     seemed like the focal point of our friends, but he said the
     island was changing and he had played it out.
     
          John and I would stay another month pursuing the same
     routine.  One day I received an income tax return, and I
     decided with the added funds we should start a slow trip north
     in mid April.  John had said that he wanted to go hiking on
     the Appalachian Trail, so we hitched to Atlanta, and bought a
     lot of camping gear.  I visited my sister and brother in law
     while there, and then we caught a bus to Ashville, North
     Carolina.  Ashville was near the lower end of the trail, and
     we started off on our adventure from there.
     
          Since neither of us had used a car much recently, we were
     quite good hikers, however the weather was cooler in the
     Carolina mountains than we were accustomed to in the Keys.  We
     made about ten miles a day on the mountain trails setting up
     camp in the forest every evening.  We would pass about a dozen
     hikers going the other direction every day.  Our guide book
     was very accurate and the trail was well marked.  My only
     reservation was that we were camping out in a bear sanctuary,
     but none of them bothered us despite some noise around the
     tent at night.  On the fifth day it began to snow, and we were
     beginning to feel quite miserable.  However, as luck would
     have it, we came across a hiker's hostel run by a bunch of
     Christians and we were given shelter from the storm.  We
     stayed there for a couple of days resting, and we decided to
     abandon the trail and hitch down to the Carolina shore where
     the weather was warmer.
     
          A day later we were in Hilton Head, South Carolina; and
     we set up camp on the shore of the north end of the island. 
     That night we heard a large amount of snorting around the
     tent, and I suddenly remember the stories of the infamous
     Hilton Head alligators that were indigenous to the golf course
     and surrounding swamps.  I suddenly began to shake with terror
     and John said I was letting my imagination run wild.  However,
     neither of us would look out of the tent, and I began to boil
     water to throw at an alligator if attacked since we had no
     weapons.  Eventually the noise went away and we slept lightly
     that night.
     
     
     
          The next morning there were alligator prints in the sand
     surrounding our tent.  We decided to leave the island.  We
     went down to Beaufort Island which was adjacent to Parris
     Island and set up camp on the beach at Huntington Island. 
     That evening we had been unable to get a ride hitching through
     Beaufort.  I don't think all of the Marines cared to see long
     haired hitchhikers coming through their community.  We had
     walked by miles of Marine Corp's cemetery on the way to
     Huntington Island.
     
          That Sunday morning when we got up, there was a lot of
     noise around the tent.  This time instead of alligators there
     were thousands of marines around us on the beach.  I rather
     enjoyed the scene, but John was somewhat intimidated.  We had
     a good day on the beach with the Marines, and we decided it
     was too cold up north yet and we decided to hitch back to Key
     West, from Marines to the Navy.  On the highway we got a ride
     with a friend of Jimmy Buffett who was going all the way down
     to Key West, so it was an easy trip down the Florida coast. 
     We would remain in Key West until mid May and start hitching
     north again.  We camped out for a few days on the beach in
     Vero Beach, and would spend much time watching the surfers at
     Sebastian Inlet.  The bugs were horrible, but my mother had
     frequently vacationed in Vero Beach, so I felt like I was
     touching base with home.
     
          We continued our trip hitching up to Washington D.C., and
     after walking around the city caught the Amtrack to
     Connecticut
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER XII
     
     
          It had been five months since I had come through
     Greenwich on my way to Florida, and my mother was happy to see
     me and she put John and I up for the night.  She had a boy
     friend staying with her, so we only stayed one night.  They
     would later end up marrying.  I told her we planned to spend
     the summer in Nantucket and we had to get up there in order to
     get jobs before too many students showed up.
     
          We hitched up to Nantucket catching the boat over to the
     island.  I decided to settle into the same guest house I had
     stayed at the summer before, and I took my old job working in
     the French restaurant, and John took a job working in a dairy
     store.  No matter what one did when they left Nantucket, when
     one returned it always seemed to be the same on the island.
     
          We settled into the routine of going to the beach in  the
     day time and working in the evening.  The island was more
     crowded  with students that year, and a few of my old friends
     wanted to know what had happened to Jimmy and I said last I
     heard he was on his way to California.
     
          There were a lot of college students staying at the
     guest house and we would have many fun times partying with
     them all.  The guest house had been run by an older nurse that
     had spent her entire life on the island and she had had many
     hundreds of younger people staying in her home over the
     years.  She would fill us with stories of the folklore of
     the island which seemed isolated in time.
     
          Nobadeer beach was extremely crowded that summer, and the
     restaurant was very busy in the evening.  Since John hated to
     cook, I use to bring him dinner from the restaurant after work
     in the evening.  We used old bicycles to explore around the
     island for most of the summer.  There was a great deal of new
     construction going on around the island, and mid way through
     the summer we decided to take jobs as painters which paid
     better that other jobs.  We worked on a three hundred year old
     house scrapping paint with a crew of carpenters from the Cape. 
     There were rumors that the man who owned the house was Mafia,
     but we were being paid well, so there were no complaints. 
     However working in the day time, there was no time for the
     beach except weekends.  
     
     
     
          We got plenty of sun while watching the boats go by in
     the harbor.  It was a nice existence going from island to
     island of endless summer.  I spent an entire month scrapping
     the paint of an elaborate colonial doorway.  We had many
     friends and the summer was going by all too fast.
     
          In mid August I found and old Subaru for sale for $150,
     so we bought it for cheap transportation.  There was one
     catch.  I had to pull the whole engine and replace the clutch
     myself which took about a week of inexpert work.   We
     continued painting after labor day enjoying touring the island
     in the car.  John bought me a surf casting rod, and I spent
     many evenings hauling in the blue fish and selling them to
     restaurants.  Around the first of October, we had saved enough
     money to leave the island, so we took off in the Subaru headed
     for California.  We stopped by in Greenwich on the way down to
     visit with my mother, and John decided not to visit with his
     family as we traveled through the New York area.
     
          We visited with one of my sisters in Philadelphia and her
     family and then we started off across Pennsylvania only to
     have the muffler break after a few hundred miles.  I remember
     trying to make temporary repairs on the muffler in Allentown,
     while John listening to the radio was telling me the Pope had
     died again.  In our travels we heard so little of the news
     since we did not watch television and read various newspapers
     infrequently that the news seemed an entirely different world
     away.  Finally I was able to find parts to fix the car in
     Cleveland, and we arrived in Chicago to find my youngest
     sister was not home, although they had moved there from
     Atlanta during the summer.  I took John up to visit my college
     at Lake Forest, and only recognized the college president and
     my math teacher.  On Saturday afternoon most of the college
     was at the football game.  From Lake Forest we drove down to
     Champaign to visit my grandparents who were getting older.  I
     had not seen them in several years and I had a good time
     talking about the family and the days when we were younger.  
     I told them I had seen my father in Miami that winter when he
     was changing planes coming back from Brazil, and they were
     happy my youngest sister was living nearby in Chicago.  After
     a couple of days of visiting, we set off for my eldest
     sister's home in Tulsa.
     
          The trip to Tulsa was unadventful and we were welcomed
     when we arrived.  My sister only had a room with a water bed
     to put us in and we spent several evenings and days talking
     about the family and the various adventures of travel.
     
     
     
     
          After leaving Tulsa, we started down towards Texas, and
     in Abilene, the filling station attendant forgot to close the
     hood properly and the hood blew up and cracked the windshield. 
     We would pursue the rest of our trip staring through a cracked
     windshield.
     
          In Arizona we stopped off to visit the Grand Canyon which
     was covered with a dusting of snow.  We proceeded on into
     Southern California and headed into Laguna Beach to rest for
     a couple of days after our cross country trip.
     
          After having rested a few days on the beach during which
     I spent time wrapping and varnishing my surf casting rod while
     watching the surfers, we decided to drive up to San Francisco
     arriving on Columbus Day.  The Fisherman's Wharf area was
     closed to vehicular traffic and there was a great festival
     going on.  Supposedly the Queen of Spain was in the city.  We
     traveled on the cable cars and walked all over the city. 
     There was a railroad convention going on in the Grand Hyatt,
     and I was enthralled by its modern architecture.
     
          After a day of adventure we decided to drive back south
     where it was warmer in Laguna.  We stopped off in Santa
     Barbara and toured the old mission.  There were several bus
     loads of Polish tourists who were terribly excited since a
     Polish cardinal had just been elevated to Pope.
     
          Finally we arrived in Laguna Beach and took a small
     efficiency room in an hotel overlooking the beach.  We were
     running low on funds, so we knew we had to go back to work. 
     We found temporary work handing out telephone books throughout
     the neighborhoods of Laguna Beach, and learned our way around
     quite quickly.  The Laguna area was in turmoil because there
     had been mud slides washing away a number of the homes
     overlooking the ocean.
     
          Our routine of handing out telephone books was becoming
     exhausting and we weren't making enough money to pay our
     bills.  On Thanksgiving day we were evicted for non payment of
     rent while I had a turkey in the oven.  It was all very silly
     since we were due to receive a paycheck the next day.  We
     spent that evening eating the turkey in the car, and were
     surprised by the police who could not believe we were eating
     a turkey.  The news was not good locally.  The mayor of San
     Francisco had been shot and the surrounding areas of Las
     Angeles including Malibu and the Laguna area were being
     swept by forest fires and there was a pink haze through out
     the skies.
     
     
     
     
          The next day there was a tidal wave watch for Southern
     California, so I decided it was time to head back east.  We
     decided to take a more northerly route heading through Las
     Vegas up into Utah.  The weather was very cold and after Salt
     Lake City, the snow started falling heavier and heavier.  The
     car handled fine since it had front wheel drive although the
     heater did not work so well.  We drove all night through the
     snowy rockies and the following day arrived in Vail that
     evening which had two feet of fresh snow, however Loveland
     pass to Denver was closed to vehicles without snow tires or
     chains, and we did not have enough money to buy snow tires. 
     I had an inspiration.  After searching through the discarded
     tires at a number of tire shops, I had a free pair of used
     Michelin tires which I had mounted on the car.  We drove
     effortlessly over the two feet of fresh snow on the pass and
     down into Denver.  After that I thought the Subaru was a great
     car for driving on snow.
     
          It was cold and we did not have any money to stay in a
     hotel, so we spent the night at Stapleton airport, which was
     closed.  I tried calling a cousin that I thought lived in
     Denver, but he had moved.  The next day we started across the
     great plains in the ice storm.  The storm was keeping pace
     with our travel eastward, and few other cars were on the road. 
     We were lucky that the snow tires I had found had studs and
     they handled well on the ice.  After a day we had worked our
     way over to Tulsa, and we stopped by briefly at my sister's
     house and she leant us some money to continue our trip.  We
     had decided to head down to the warmth of Florida and possibly
     Key West.
     
          After leaving Oklahoma, we drove through floods in
     Louisiana, tornadoes in the Florida pan handle and when we
     arrived in Key West there was a hurricane watch on.  I had had
     my fill of traveling and the constantly inclement weather.
     
          We stayed a couple of weeks camping out in the Keys and
     fishing.  Our old hotel was occupied by guests and there were
     no cheap places to be had since the island was becoming more
     touristy and commercial.  However, we had a good time pursuing
     our old routines and John said we could go visit his sister in
     Daytona.
     
          We spent a couple of weeks with John's sister and then we
     started north for Christmas.  We arrived the week before
     Christmas and spent time house sitting for my mother and on
     Christmas we bought a tree in Greenwich and took it out to
     John's parent's house.  They were happy to see him, since they
     had not seen him in close to a year.
     
     
     
          We spent Christmas day at his house, and spent the
     following week helping prune an apple tree around his
     grandmother's house.
     
          After New Years, we decided to return to Florida.  We
     spent several weeks traveling along the coast of Florida,
     unable to find a place in the Keys.
     
          I was able to find a new windshield for the car in Fort
     Lauderdale, and at least we could see clearly again.  After
     having explored most of both coasts of Florida, we decided
     to go visit John's sister in Daytona.  She was going to
     aeronautical school and working as a waitress in the evening,
     so we had the apartment mostly to ourselves.  We were nearly
     broke and I would spend most of the days working on the car 
     and surf casting in the afternoon.  We tried watching
     television, but I found it boring.  John had an idea that we
     could get work cutting down dead palm trees with the chain saw
     that was in the back of the car left over from pruning his
     grandmother's trees.  We started taking off on several day
     trips along the coast cutting down dead palm trees where we
     found them.  Because of a fungus there were quite a lot of
     them and we made enough money to survive.
     
          However, we kept returning to John's sister's apartment
     since it was the least expensive place to stay.  After several
     months of visiting we were beginning to wear out our welcome,
     so in April we decided to head north to Connecticut.  We had
     both cut out hair which had grown down to our waists, so we
     looked somewhat more conservative.
     
          When we arrived in Greenwich, my mother said she was
     going down to Philadelphia with her boy friend since my sister
     was due to have her baby any day.
     
          While my sister was having her baby, my mother and her
     boy friend got married, and she returned with the surprising
     news.  She would be moving into her husband's apartment in New
     Canaan, and John and I would be able to use her apartment
     until the lease ran out at the first of August.
     
          We helped her move most of her belongings up to New
     Canaan, and I got my few belonging out of the garage to
     furnish the empty apartment.
     
          We would have the apartment for three months, so I took
     up woodworking in the garage with some tools we had bought
     during an ill fated attempt to return to Nantucket earlier
     that month to be carpenters which had failed since John had no
     carpentry ability.
     
     
     
          I proceeded to build my mother a campaign chest for her
     wedding present.  It was built out of solid oak and quite
     well made.  As the summer came along she and her husband would
     be going up to his summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine.  She
     asked me to build a wardrobe in the basement of their New
     Canaan apartment for storing her extra clothes.  I would spend
     the end of June and early July building the wardrobe.  I built
     it like a ship to be moisture proof, however it looked like a
     gigantic free standing cube in the middle of the cellar.
     
          In the meantime John had bought a new bicycle with his
     birthday money and was enjoying riding around Greenwich.
     
          As the end of July came along I moved my processions out
     of the apartment in Greenwich to the cellar in New Canaan, and
     gave up the apartment in Greenwich which could not be renewed
     without paying a lot on the rental.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER XIII
     
     
          John and I decided to go back up to Nantucket at the
     beginning of August to see if we could find any work. 
     However, upon our arrival we found that the guest house we had
     previously stayed at was filled up and there was no other
     place to stay.  We decided to camp out in the car and enjoy
     the island.  After about ten days of enjoying the island and
     not finding a place to stay or any work, we decided to leave. 
     
     
          We both decided to drive out to California again in
     late August.  We said good bye to Nantucket and headed west
     via New England up to Canada.  We stopped off for the night in
     Hanover, New Hampshire and spent the night in a dormitory with
     a bunch of college kids.  We drove up to Montreal and explored
     the city and then on to Toronto.  We stayed at York University
     sleeping in our car, and were awaken by a bag piper piping the
     following morning.  Apparently the centennial celebration was
     on and all of Toronto was in a festive mood.  After several
     days of touring the sights in Toronto, we headed west across
     Canada and down to Chicago.  My sister and brother in law were
     staying in their new town house, and they had plenty of room
     for us.  We stayed a couple of days.  John sold my brother in
     law his bicycle so we could have extra money and get it out of
     the car.  We drove to Champaign and visited my grand parents
     in the nursing home which they had moved into.  While I was
     visiting them John toured the University of Illinois.  We
     spent the night with my grandfather's brother and his wife,
     who told us that my grandmother was not well.  They said they
     had made over fifty trips driving to the west coast on the old
     back roads and they urged us on to continue our journey.
     
          We drove across route 80 to Denver and headed across
     the Rockies in the summer weather.  We stopped at a camp
     ground and enjoyed the summer weather of the rockies that had
     been so inhospitable on our return trip the previous fall. 
     After driving across the northern Nevada desert, we drove up
     into the Sierra Nevadas and into Lake Tahoe, for some reason
     there was an early snow in late August and the whole area was
     covered in six inches of fresh snow.  The roads were full of
     campers hitching out on the roads.  While at Lake Tahoe I sold
     my circular saw that I had in the back of the car to a
     carpenter for extra money.
     
     
     
     
     
          Then we drove in San Francisco and toured around the
     city.  We went down to Santa Cruz and toured around the
     university there and visited with our friend Jimmy that had
     left us in Key West and moved to California.  He was attending
     school at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  He
     showed us around the campus in the redwoods and indicated  he
     was enjoying his California existence.  We had missed him on
     our first trip to California since we did not know where he
     was living.  After visiting Santa Cruz, we went by Stanford
     University where an earth quake conference was going on. 
     After what we viewed of the displays at the conference about
     geological faults in California, we became worried about
     trying to settle into California.  
     
          From Stanford we went down to Carmel and I sold the rest
     of my tools to a gasoline attendant for some extra money. 
     From Carmel we drove down to Laguna Beach and decided to rest
     for a while.  To save money we decided to camp out in several
     of the various camp grounds on the shore and in the hills
     behind Laguna.  We spent most of our days touring around going
     as far south as San Diego and driving north up to Malibu and
     Santa Barbara.  John really  liked the University of
     California at Santa Barbara.  He said his grandmother's
     husband that had divorced her in the 1930's had lived out
     there since then and remarried.  However, John never bothered
     to look up his grandfather.  Two months of camping out in
     Southern California went by very fast.  We explored most of
     the area, and had a good time enjoying the beach and surf.  We
     avoided the cities and stayed in the beach communities.
     
          Finally after two months in California. we began the trip
     back driving through Las Vegas and Salt Lake City across the
     Rockies and through Denver and across the Great Plains to
     Champaign where I visited my grandparents in the nursing home. 
     When we returned to the New York area, John moved in with his
     family and I went out to New Canaan to visit with my mother. 
     I enjoyed my visit, but I had no place to stay in the east, so
     I decided to head out back west.
     
          I made a quick three day trip back across the country
     over Route 80 to San Francisco.  The trip was uneventful other
     than in Wyoming I ran into sub zero weather which was cold for
     mid October.  I drove across most of Wyoming and Utah freezing
     since the heater did not work very well in the Subaru.
     
          
     
     
     
     
          I arrived in Santa Cruz and once again visited with
     Jimmy.  I spent about two weeks resting and studying around
     the campus at Santa Cruz.  I made several trips down to Carmel
     which I quite enjoyed.  I also drove south once to Laguna, but
     I was not enjoying the trip as much since I was traveling
     alone.  I spent time around the University of California at
     Santa Barbara and Peperdine University in Malibu.  Around
     Thanksgiving time I had stopped by San Francisco airport on an
     errand, and half the airport was filled with military people
     traveling.  Apparently most of the military was on alert
     because of the attempted Iranian hostage rescue.
     
          It was getting cool in California, so I decided to drive
     back across country on the southern route to Key West.
     I started out from Santa Cruz and drove down to Palm Springs
     and then on across the south west.  Every where on the highway
     were cars with military stickers traveling.  I had never
     driven the southern route across country and when I reached
     Texas I was quite tired of the desert landscape.
     
     
          I had picked up two hitch hikers whom happened to be from
     Greenwich and they helped me with the driving.  About half way
     across Texas, I stopped for fuel and gave one of the hitch
     hikers the money to fill up the tank.  Apparently he pocketed
     the money because I was stopped by a policeman about ten miles
     down the road for not paying for gas.  He released the hitch
     hikers and arrested me.  I spent the night in the Fort
     Stockton jail and was released the next morning when I
     explained the story to the judge.  I continued on my trip
     across Texas and in San Antonio I drove into Kelley air force
     base to see what was going on with Iran.  The whole base was
     on alert and everywhere there were soldiers with machine guns. 
     One of the soldiers told me the base had been a staging area
     for the ill fated hostage rescue mission.  I continued my trip
     across the south east and on down to Key West.  When I arrived
     in Key West the base there was on alert, but since I was not
     watching television or reading the papers I chose to ignore
     the national emergency.  I settled in my usual Key West
     routine of going to the beach and library.  To save money I
     camped out on one of the outer islands and drove into the old
     town area every day.  Fewer and fewer of my regular friends
     were around, and the island was becoming more and more
     commercial every time I returned.
     
          
     
     
     
     
          The holidays came and there were quite festive parties at
     the local discotheques and I quite enjoyed the warmth and sun. 
     New Years arrived and there was another huge party at the
     discotheque with a couple thousand people.
     
          I ran into my friend who raced cars that I had driven
     down to Florida with seven years before.  There were also
     quite a lot of personnel from Pan Am since the airline had
     started in Key West, it was always a retreat for many of the
     old time personnel of the airline.  The chamber of commerce
     threw a number of parties that I attended.  They always
     welcomed me since I was one of the few people that had
     frequented the island over the years.
     
          I remained in Key West another month and as I began to
     run low on funds I decided to return north for the rest of the
     winter.
     
          I drove north and arrived in the New York area around the
     beginning of February 1980.  John had moved in with his father
     in Port Washington, Long Island.  His father had divorced his
     mother that fall and they had sold the family house, and his
     mother had moved into the west side of Manhattan.
     
          I would spend a great deal of time that spring and summer
     driving between Port Washington, New York and New Canaan.  I
     stayed most of the time at John's father's place with John
     resting from my travels and reading a lot of the New York
     Times.  I missed the Fairfield county area and I would go out
     to visit my mother once a week and do my laundry at her house. 
     That summer while they were up in Maine, I would stop by and
     water the plants once a week.
     
          In May I drove up to Boston with John and his mother for
     the tall ships festival on the waterfront celebrating the
     350th birthday of Boston.  We toured the waterfront
     restoration area and the Harvard area and drove down the same
     day.  I had put tens of thousands of miles on the Subaru, but
     it was running great.
     
          That summer John and I spent time working around his
     grandmother's house and we occasionally went out to Jone's
     beach.
     
          Over the fourth of July I was invited up to Kennebunkport
     to visit my mother and stepfather along with my two younger
     sisters.  The Maine weekend was a lot of fun and we enjoyed
     touring the waterfront village.  
     
     
     
          We spent one afternoon watching the republican vice
     presidential candidate, George Bush play tennis at the local
     tennis club.  My brothers in law were very enthusiastic, but
     I had so many young republican friends disillusioned in the
     Watergate era that I tended to shy away from politics.  
     
          Still it was fun to see the rekindled enthusiasm of the
     Republican party anticipating their victory that fall.  After
     returning from Kennebunkport, I became bored with living out
     on Long Island, so I stored my car at the Greenwich Country
     Club and flew out to San Francisco.  I toured the city and
     visited Jimmy down in Santa Cruz.  After a week, I flew down
     for a week in Laguna Beach spending my day time on the beach
     and going to the discotheque in the evening.  I really enjoyed
     the southern California atmosphere of outdoor recreation. 
     Moreover, the people were more friendly than the stuffy people
     back east.  After a week in Laguna, I caught a cheap flight to
     Hawaii and took a commuter plane over to Maui.  I spent two
     weeks at the Hyatt in Maui never leaving the hotel.  I spent
     most of my mornings in the weight room exercising and the
     afternoons swimming in the pool.  I kept the air conditioner
     going full blast in my room, and although I enjoyed being on
     Maui, I found the summer heat overwhelming compared to
     Nantucket.
     
          In mid September I returned to Laguna Beach and resumed
     my usual routine of beach and discotheque in the evening.  I
     had lots of acquaintances and a couple times I caught a
     shuttle up to San Francisco to visit friends in Santa Cruz.
     
          Since I did not have a car with me on this trip, I found
     my range of exploration some what limited, so in early October
     as the weather began to cool I returned back to New York from
     Las Angeles.  I stayed with John for a couple of weeks, and
     then I convinced him to take off traveling again.
     
          I bought a used Volvo in Greenwich and gave the dealer my
     old Subaru which was in desperate disrepair.  We drove up to
     Cape Cod and explored the Cape, but did not go out to the
     islands.  Then we went up to Dartmouth in New Hampshire and
     from there on up to Montreal and explored the city again. 
     From there we went to Toronto and then drove down the New York
     State Thruway.  While in Buffalo I called to see how my old
     friend George was doing.  He apparently was off on the horse
     circuit.  When we arrived back in New York, we rested a few
     days and then decided to take off to Florida.  We drove all
     the way down to Key West and back up the west coast of
     Florida.  There was nothing going on in Key West since it was
     too early in the season.
     
          
     
          From the west coast of Florida, we decided to drive
     across the southern route back to California.  After a three
     day uneventful trip across country we arrived in Laguna Beach
     and rested for a couple of days camping out in a camp ground. 
     From Laguna we drove slowly up the coast through Malibu and
     stopped at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  
     
          We spent a couple of days reading in the library and then
     drove up to Santa Cruz to visit with our friend Jimmy. 
     Whenever we visited with Jimmy he was always very busy and we
     would spend most of our time exploring the University at Santa
     Cruz.
     
          We also spent several days at Stanford using the library
     and returning to Santa Cruz in the evening.  We also made
     several trips down to Carmel to enjoy the village there. 
     During that month we made several trips up and down the Big
     Sur highway between Santa Barbara and Carmel.
     
          On election day we were in Santa Barbara and there was
     great enthusiasm that Reagan had been elected.  We spent a
     week camping in a camp ground adjacent to the Reagan ranch and
     going down the mountain to use the university facilities every
     day.  Finally in mid November we drove back down to Laguna
     Beach and spent a few days there and sold the car and caught
     a plane back from Las Angeles to New York.
     
          On returning to Manhattan in late November, we had no
     place to stay so we spent time going back and forth between
     John's father's apartment on Long Island and his mother's
     apartment in Manhattan.
     
          One evening I was out walking John's mother's dog around
     Manhattan and I happened to see Reagan going into the Waldorf
     Astoria, on returning through Central Park there was a great
     commotion around the Dakota, apparently John Lennon had been
     shot in front of his apartment building.
     
          I enjoyed visiting in New York, although I never cared to
     live there.  Right before Christmas I took off on a cheap
     flight to Frankfort and toured the German city a few days
     before Christmas returning to New York on Christmas Eve. 
     Christmas would be spent at John's mother's apartment who was
     happy to have us back from our travels.
     
          The following winter was spent going between John's
     mother's apartment, his father's place and occasionally up to
     my mother's place to water the plants while she and her
     husband were in Bermuda for the winter.
     
          
     
          I decided to go down to Washington D.C. that January for
     Reagan's inaugural.  It promised to be a good time.  On the
     day of the inaugural I flew down on a Braniff flight on which
     I was the only passenger beside an Arabian businessman.  On
     arrival I checked my bags at the Hilton since I did not plan
     to spend the night and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue to the
     Capitol.
     
          I did not recognize many celebrities except Ed McMahon of
     the Johnny Carson show.  I never keep track of politics, so I
     could not tell one politician from an average civilian.  After
     the ceremony at the capitol I saw Reagan waving from his
     motorcade as I was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.  In front
     of the F.B.I. building I was knocked to the ground by a large
     group of colored people and they started going through my
     pockets trying to steal my wallet.  I was parallel to the
     motorcade and two secret service agents rescued me from the
     scuffle and drove me out of the area.  They were quite helpful
     and interrogated me as to what happened and after calming my
     nerves I returned to the hotel.  However, I missed most of the
     parade in front of the White House.  That evening while I was
     sitting around the Hotel having a drink, Reagan showed up for
     the Medal of Honor party that was being held at the same
     hotel.  There was a great deal of excitement at his arrival
     and rumors that the hostages were going to be released.
     
          I found an inexpensive room that night and spent the
     night in Washington and flew back to Westchester airport the
     following day with a lot of people from Greenwich.  I went up
     to New Canaan and checked on the plants and returned out to
     Long Island.
     
          In February after my mother had returned from Bermuda, I
     called her up one day from the Greenwich library where I had
     been reading that day.  She said someone had just shot the
     President, and there was a great deal of alarm on television. 
     Since there was no television in the library then, I caught a
     taxi out to the airport and watched the unfolding events on
     the television at the airport bar.  I was not concerned with
     politics, but I liked Reagan and was concerned about his
     welfare.  That evening I returned to John's mother's apartment
     and took a tranquilizer and slept deeply.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER XIV
     
     
          I spent the rest of the spring and summer and fall in
     Manhattan at John's mother apartment with John.  I spent a
     great deal of time in the day time reading the New York Times
     and going to museums.  In the evening I would occasionally go
     to the a bar down in the village or to one of several
     discotheques.  However, I knew few people in Manhattan and had
     little in the way of funds to entertain myself.  As usual I
     spent a lot of time going between Long Island, Manhattan, and
     Fairfield County visiting family and friends.  I began to long
     for the simpler life of Key West or Nantucket.
     
          That spring John and I painted his mother's apartment and
     through the summer we did work at his grandmother's place.  I
     could not find a steady job that paid enough to live in
     Manhattan, so I just got by day to day.  In August I was
     all by myself since John's mother was in Europe and John was
     out at his Grandmother's.  It was unbearably hot in Manhattan
     as the winters were frigid and I really began to hate the
     city.  I was living in the center of Yuppie gentrification on
     west 74th street, but I did not particularly care for the area
     since I was uninvolved in any significant activity.  I would
     occasionally go up to Columbia and use the University library,
     and would spend much of my day reading and touring the city.
     
          I maintained my routine through that fall in New York
     with occasional side trips out of the city.  I began to feel
     like I was stuck in Manhattan for the duration, however I had
     no prospects on the job front and was getting depressed.
     
          At Christmas time I went down to my sister's house in
     Philadelphia to be with her family.  One evening while we
     were partying on Christmas eve, I received a telephone call
     from John's mother that her mother had been in an accident. 
     A match had sparked while she was lighting a cigarette and
     ignited her night gown burning half of her body and giving
     her a stroke.  John had been there and saved her putting out
     the fire, however his whole family was in a great deal of
     turmoil.  I called him up and he said she would recover but be
     partially paralyzed from the stroke.  I went ahead and stayed
     in Philadelphia and returned to John's mother's apartment
     after the holiday.  With the tragedy in his family, there was
     a lot of tension in the apartment and John was on Long Island
     caring for his grandmother daily.  
     
     
     
          I moved into a friend's apartment for two weeks and the
     weather was sub zero in New York. I decided to go back down to
     Key West.  Key West was equally warm, however none of my
     regular friends were there and I could not find any place
     inexpensive to stay.  I started shuttling around a group of
     new friends showing them around the island and going to
     parties and the discotheque.  The first week I got third
     degree burns from the sun since I had not been out in the sun
     quite a long time.  Key West was more commercial and
     expensive, but still I was having a good time being a house
     guest maintaining my usual routines of the beach, library, and
     discotheques.  I made quite a number of new friends and every
     one seemed happy to have me on the island.
     
          After about two weeks in Key West, the accommodations I
     was occupying became intolerable, and I decided  to work my
     way slowly north.  Key West had become terribly commercial,
     and it was no longer a tropical paradise.  I later read that
     the island had the highest incidence of meningitis of any
     where in the United States because they pumped raw sewage
     into the ocean.  Moreover the drug problems of south Florida
     had become manifest on the island.  The island was played out
     and I decided never to return.
     
          Early that spring I returned to John's grandmother's
     house on Long Island.  His grandmother was still hospitalized
     and he was very depressed.  I knew how he felt since both of
     my grandparents had died the previous year.
     
          He had an idea for a project to build an accessory
     apartment in the garage behind the house.  He had worked up a
     design for a one bedroom apartment with living room, kitchen,
     and bath.  I had not done any similar work since I was sixteen
     when I worked on my parent's house, but I said in time we
     would be able to do it.  I originally thought it would take
     two or three months to complete.  John had said he would help,
     but when his grandmother arrived home he had to take care of
     her full time.
     
          I bought a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens' home
     improvement book and started to work on a scheme for the
     project.  I made up a long list of tools and necessities. 
     What I thought would be a two or three month project turned
     out to be a nine month project with only four days off in the
     entire period of twelve plus hour days.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
          The project slowly evolved despite the fact that the
     noise constantly irritated John's grandmother during her
     convalescence.  I began to regret that I had undertaken the
     project and could only hope that it would be some day
     completed.  
     
          When I was not working on the project, it seemed that I
     was in various hardware stores and supply houses procuring the
     necessities for the project.  One day blended into another. 
     Practically the first thing I did was install the air
     conditioner, so I was able to work in cool air during the
     duration of the summer.  There were many unexpected hassles,
     such as termites.  In addition to doing all of the carpentry,
     I did the electricity, plumbing, and interior decoration and
     outside landscaping.  Around Christmas time the project began
     to near completion after over fifteen hundred hours of back
     breaking work.  John had not been able to help on the project
     and it had become a solo project.
     
          John's mother was being evicted from her apartment in
     Manhattan, and as the apartment began to look promising she
     agreed to rent it from her mother.  On New Year's Eve, we
     moved her in, but it would take another several weeks of work
     before the project was complete.  John's grandmother was happy
     to have her daughter at home.
     
          As the project neared completion I had not made any plans
     as too what I would do.  I was extremely tired and decided I
     would take off traveling.
     
          I went down to the west coast of Florida and visited my
     father and his wife for a week.  I had not seen them in a
     while and enjoyed visiting with them.  We went over to Epcot
     Center for a day.  After visiting with my father, I went over
     to the east coast of Florida and visited for a day with my
     mother.
     
          I returned to the New York area with no place to stay, so
     I decided to take the Amtrack down to Washington and visit
     there.  I had never spent much time in Washington, so I
     decided to explore Georgetown.  I took a room in the
     Georgetown Inn which was very expensive, but I could afford
     it.  I explored the university and Georgetown area for a week. 
     I met a heart surgeon who told me a lot of inside stories on
     Washington, and claimed it was the most powerful city in the
     world.  Dr. Gillespie was full of inside trivia and he made my
     stay much more enjoyable.  I never left the Georgetown area of
     the city to look at the more monumental aspects of the city.
     
          
     
          After a week I returned to visit my younger sister and
     brother in law in Connecticut where they had moved the
     previous year.  From there I went up to New Haven for a week
     and stayed at the Colony Inn for a week.  I spent most of the
     week using the library and exploring Yale.  
     
          I was gradually using up all my money, but I did not
     think I would be able to afford anything for the long run in
     Greenwich, so I did not return there.  After a week in New
     Haven, I stopped by my sister's and repacked my bags, and
     announced that I was going to Oslo, Norway.  That evening I
     caught the night flight to Norway, and was dropped off at a
     military base outside Oslo the next morning.  Most of the
     passengers on the flight went to Stockholm.
     
          I found a room in the Y.M.C.A. across the street from the
     S.A.S. hotel, and I began to explore the city.  It was not
     particularly cold for winter and there was no snow.  The first
     night I went to a discotheque called Noble Dancer after
     the race horse.  It had one of the best looking groups of
     young people I had ever seen, and I began to long to live in
     Oslo.
     
          I transferred to another hotel behind the palace and
     spent many long days exploring the city.  I would spend my
     mornings in a health club in the basement of the S.A.S.
     hotel swimming, lifting weights, and using the sauna and
     trying to quit smoking.  In the afternoons, I would walk
     around the historical old city.  I fit right in.  I looked
     like your average Norwegian since I had blond hair and blue
     eyes.  I attended a concert in the Nobel Peace Prize Hall and
     toured some of the old monumental buildings in the central
     Oslo district.  I made it up to the Frogmore park and saw all
     of the controversial sculptures.
     
          My norwegian friend from the Canary Islands was not
     listed in the phone book, so I was never able to look him
     up.  I met someone who looked like David Bowie at the
     Intourist party one Saturday night.  I really wish I had
     enough money to visit the rest of Scandinavia and go on to
     Russia, because the Russians were very friendly towards me. 
     I began to realize that I looked more like Scandinavians and
     Russians than an American.  The whole city was Deja Vue, quite
     clean, pleasant, and safe.  I never left the central district
     of Oslo, so I did not get a chance to see the beautiful
     country side.  I spent one late evening at an old pub drinking
     Ringness beer with a group of Norwegians behind the oldest
     church in Oslo.  
     
     
     
     
          After ten days I had to leave Norway, since I was out of
     funds, and I returned to Manhattan on a S.A.S. flight via
     Copenhagen.  I did not leave the airport in Copenhagen.  I
     just bought two cartons of Prince cigarettes and returned to
     the plane.  I arrived back in the country just before Easter. 
     I borrowed  some money from John and flew up to Nantucket to
     spend the rest of the summer there.
     
          I did not feel like doing construction since my arthritis
     had bothered me on the previous project, so I went back to
     work in the kitchen of the French restaurant.  However, the
     season was not busy yet, so I went up to Stowe, Vermont and
     worked in another restaurant my employers owned up there.  I
     spent most of my time around the restaurant since I did  not
     have a car.  The ski season was over and not much was going
     on.  During the first week of May, I returned to Nantucket for
     the rest of the summer.
     
          I had always made it a habit to stay on Nantucket for the
     entire summer once I arrived for good.  The French restaurant
     was busy and I kept busy working six evenings a week.  I would
     read and go to the beach in the day time.  The island was full
     of summer people and I was known from previous summers.  The
     restaurant had a good crew of people and a lot of them were
     friends, however at age thirty three I was getting a little
     old to be working summer jobs, however the resort business was
     seasonal and a great many of the workers would go down to
     Florida for the winter.
     
          Still I had a long summer of sun and the beach ahead of
     me.  I stayed in a basement room of a guest house owned by my
     employer.  The accommodations were lacking, but the house was
     right in the center of town near the restaurant.  I developed
     my routine around working and one day lead into another.  I
     made quite a few friends and would spend most days at the
     beach.  I also did some part time painting in the day time
     with a skier from Stowe.  The island was as beautiful as ever
     in the summer, and it always seemed a world away from the busy
     northeast metropolitan area.  I was making enough money to get
     by, but saving very little since the island is terribly
     expensive.  One month lead into another with the busy period
     coming and going, and before long Labor Day was over and the
     summer was over.  I decided to stay on until Columbus Day
     enjoying the island.
     
          On Columbus Day, I flew off the island and met my mother
     at Logan airport.  She had driven down from Kennebunkport.  We
     drove down the New England Coast stopping in Greenwich for me
     to get a haircut and then on to my sister's house in
     Philadelphia.  
     
     
     
          After a few days in Philadelphia, we returned to
     Kennebunkport to find out that her house had been robbed in
     Florida.  So while her husband was still away we decided to
     drive down to Florida to see what had happened.  On arrival in
     Florida I helped my mother out for a couple of days before
     she returned to Maine, and I headed down to Fort Lauderdale to
     see if I could find a job for the winter.
     
          There was a big Octoberfest party going on in Fort
     Lauderdale when I arrived.  I stayed for a week and was
     unable to find work since the resort season had not started. 
     I drove over to visit my father on the west coast.  He had
     become ill with Parkinson's disease, but I was happy to see
     him and his wife and had a brief stay with them.  I returned
     back to Fort Lauderdale and eventually ran low on funds since
     I had not saved that much on Nantucket.  I decided to return
     north to Nantucket, so I dropped the rental car off at my
     mother's who had returned from Maine and flew up to Nantucket.
     
          Nantucket was not busy and the restaurant could only
     offer part time work, so I started painting in the day time. 
     I stayed in the boarding house run by the nurse since the
     guest house I had stayed in that summer was closed.  All went
     fine until Thanksgiving time when the restaurant closed  and
     I had to move out of the boarding house since a party of
     hunters were coming in.  I had no place to stay and little
     funds since the person I was working with had left the island
     for the holiday without paying me.  I caught a boat to Hyannis
     on Thanksgiving day and spent the night at the airport and
     flew down to New York the next day on a plane that Jackie
     Onassis was on.  On arrival in Manhattan I caught a train to
     Toronto where I thought I might enjoy living.  I stayed at the
     Anglican seminary to save money and explored the city.  I met
     a few natives, but the weather was extraordinarily cold for
     early December, so after a week I caught a train back down to
     New York.  I got off the train briefly in Buffalo and talked
     with George's father who said he was living down on Long
     Island working at Belmont Park.  He lived only three miles
     from John's grandmother's house which I did not know.
     
          On returning to Manhattan, I was totally exhausted,
     broke, and not feeling well.  I called up my father and asked
     him what I should do, and he said to check into the Greenwich
     hospital for a physical, which I had not had in a long time. 
     I spent a week in the hospital undergoing a physical which
     determined I had a protein metabolic disorder, for which I was
     given some pills.
     
     
     
     
     
                                   CHAPTER XV
     
     
          I was released from the hospital with a train ticket to
     Philadelphia where my sister lived, but I did not want to
     bother them, so I went out to Long Island and visited John
     briefly where I could not stay either.  I ended up wandering
     the streets of New York for a couple of days since I was not
     thinking clearly since I was on medication.   I returned to
     the Greenwich Hospital for another week because my ankles had
     swollen up to three times their normal size from excess
     walking.
     
          I was assigned a social worker who said I should apply
     for social security to pay for my hospital bill and to live on
     until I recovered sufficiently.  She was able to find me a
     small room in a house in Greenwich, so I moved there from the
     hospital and began to read and rest and collect social
     security for my expenses.  I had been letting my health
     deteriorate over a long period, so under the medication I
     slept a lot when I was not reading.  I had to go to the
     hospital every day for my evening meal in the cafeteria since
     my room did not have a kitchen.  I was also limited in my
     travels since I did not have a car.  I spent a good deal of
     time reading in the library other than a month in February
     when I went down to my sister's house in Philadelphia and
     built a playroom in the basement of her house.
     
          The winter was cold and when I returned from Philadelphia
     I bought my first television ever to see what was going on in
     the world according to the media.  I made no headway on the
     job front particularly since my medication was making me
     drowsy.  However, it was working and I was putting on weight
     for the first time in my life.  I went from 135 pounds to a
     195 pounds in less than three months which was too much
     weight, but I felt less nervous and hyperactive.
     
          I kept seeing my psychiatrist, Dr. Hampton, once a week,
     and he said my health was improving.  With all of the moving
     over the recent years, I had not had a stable environment and
     not only had my physical health, but my mental health had
     deteriorated.  He encouraged me not to work and just get
     plenty of rest until I felt better whenever that occurred.
     
          
     
     
     
          
          I started going to a church support group for people with
     psychiatric difficulties, and I immediately realized that my
     problems were not as difficult as a lot of the others.  Still
     I enjoyed talking with the house wife who ran the group, so I
     continued with it for two years.  I did not have the funds to
     visit friends in New York, so I became a recluse over the next
     two years spending most of my time reading and catching up on
     current events which I had never paid much attention to since
     I had never watched television regularly.  I became addicted
     to the television news programs particularly the evening and
     late night news.  I kept a late night schedule of reading,
     sleeping most of the day.
     
          Although I had lived in Greenwich on and off for twenty
     years, I did not know anyone or had lost track of everyone
     that I had once known during many moves and my travels.  Still
     it was good to be back to the safety and security of Greenwich
     and with access to one of the best hospitals around.
     
          After six months I found a more expensive apartment down
     by the water which social security would pay for.  The
     apartment was one furnished room with a view of the harbor and
     its own private bath.  I was particularly pleased with the
     collection of books in the bookshelves from the land lady's
     grandmother who had help start the woman's suffrage movement. 
     They added a lot of atmosphere to the room.  The apartment was
     in a pleasing brick house which houses a number of other
     apartments.  It was also within walking distance of town, the
     library, and hospital where I ate since the room only had a
     refrigerator.
     
          That summer went by with much the same routine
     maintained, although I missed Nantucket I much enjoyed the
     warmer weather.  The air conditioner in my apartment kept me
     cool while I read and watched the news through the night.
     
          That summer I went down to my sister's house in
     Philadelphia and helped install a brick patio and prune some
     trees.
     
          I was gradually accumulating books and clothes which I
     had not been able to do in my years of traveling.  The next
     fall and winter came and I maintained the same routine. 
     Although somewhat boring it was a healthy routine and I was
     very concerned about my health for a number of reasons.  
     
     
     
     
     
          I spent that Christmas down at my sister's house in
     Philadelphia, and my mother had visited me that fall on her
     way down to Florida.  I had also been up to Yale once on the
     train to visit the university.
     
          I was not allowed to work or I would lose my social
     security and I could not find any volunteer  work that
     interested me.  I decided to wait until I found a high enough
     paying job to make it worth my while to work and one that
     would not involve a lot of stress and that I was somewhat
     interested in.  I even toyed with the idea of writing, but I
     did not feel competent enough, particularly the more I read. 
      I had always read quite a lot during my school years and I
     always visited libraries and read where ever I traveled, but
     I always felt more overwhelmed the more that I read, I knew
     that there was much more that I had not read.  The Greenwich
     library was an excellent source of reading for a town library. 
     Although not as comprehensive as a university library, it was
     more than adequate for my needs, particularly since I was not
     specializing in my present reading.
     
          The winter of 1985 passed in much the same way as the
     previous winter other than in April, I went down to Florida to
     visit my father for a week who was being treated for
     Parkinson's.  My eldest sister and I visited him at the same
     time and we all enjoyed seeing each other.
     
          After a week at my father's my sister drove across
     Florida to visit with my mother where my other two sister's
     and their families were staying in a cottage my mother had
     rented.  All four of us kids were together with my mother
     for the first time in a long time.  We had a good time
     visiting with each other, although I felt somewhat embarrassed
     being somewhat conspicuously overweight in my bathing suit.
     
          We all spent a week together then I flew back home to
     Greenwich to resume my routine.  I was feeling quite good and
     had become use to life on social security although not as
     prosperous as my neighbors in Greenwich.
     
          That August I went up to Maine with my sister's family
     from Philadelphia to visit for a few days.  I really enjoyed
     seeing Maine, although I prefer the isolation of Nantucket.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
          
     
          The fall came and my mother said she would buy me a used
     car, so I started looking in the classified section of the
     paper for a used car.  I had not owned or driven a car for
     about five years, and I worried that I could not make the
     transition to driving again.
          
          Finally in October, I found a used 1977 Dasher wagon
     like my sister's car in Philadelphia which was the best
     bargain I had seen in the paper in three months of looking. 
     I purchased it, and then immediately had to deal with a number
     of expenses of maintaining it such as tune ups and insurance. 
     My mother helped me cover the expenses, and despite the
     expense I enjoyed owning an automobile.  It suddenly made my
     life considerably easier, all of the walking although healthy
     was time consuming and exhausting.
     
          Within the next six months I would have to buy new front
     tires, exhaust system, radiator, alternator, battery, struts,
     brakes, not to mention routine maintenance.  Although the car
     was not necessarily a lemon, a lot of repairs seemed to be due
     about the time I bought it, moreover I had to pay the
     insurance premiums.  I had my mother's and elder sister's help
     with these additional financial obligations.
     
          Still the car began to help me pick up the pace of my
     life and not be such a recluse.  One really needs a car in the
     suburbs.  I decided that it was time to try and make some new
     friends, so after exploring the immediate area, I decided to
     explore some of the local discotheques which are a convenient
     place for meeting other young single people.  Gradually I
     began to meet a few people.
     
          In February I drove down to Philadelphia to help my
     sister and brother in law paint their new house.  After three
     weeks of non stop effort the job was completed and I returned
     to my routine in Greenwich with some extra funds.  My routine
     remained basically the same in Greenwich other than I had the
     added convenience of the car.  I worked on increasing the
     amount of time that I spent reading.
     
          During this period I decided to assume the additional
     expense of having a telephone.  After giving my number to my
     family, I contacted George my college friend from Buffalo.  He
     was surprised to hear from me, and it turned out I had lived
     three miles away from him when I was at John's on Long Island. 
     George had not changed and was still working with the horses,
     although now in the New York area.  I went out to visit him
     and he was as congenial as ever.  I wish I had stayed inn
     touch with him without the ten year gap.
     
          
     
          About this same time I made friends with a skier from
     Bedford who worked in landscaping in the summer.  Richard
     became a good friend and we spent a good deal of time
     adventuring out in the area until he started work that spring. 
     We made one trip up to Stratton, Vermont on an early spring
     weekend which I enjoyed.
     
          I would not make many trips out to Long Island to visit
     John or George since the traffic was extremely congested,
     but we would communicate at least once a month over the phone.
     
          Richard would come down or I would go up to his house a
     couple of times a week.  He tried to get me interested in
     skiing, although I was quite hesitant after having been nearly
     killed skiing in Italy fifteen years before.
     
          My routine continued to expand and with the arrival of
     June, I started going to the beach in the afternoon several
     days a week.  I greatly enjoyed reading and lying in the sun. 
     I also would take the three mile walk around the beach park,
     particularly enjoying watching the wind surfing although I
     never attempted it.
     
          My summer was quite enjoyable, and I did not spend nearly
     as much time in the library as I should have.  I began to feel
     that I was falling behind on my reading, but my routines were
     keeping me busy.  Richard would come down on weekends to go to
     the beach.  George visited a couple of times, and Richard and
     I drove out to visit George for a rather over indulgent
     evening during the middle of the summer.
     
          On the fourth of July on the spur of the moment, Richard
     and I decided to drive up to the Cape.  We caught the early
     morning plane from Hyannis to Nantucket after driving all
     night.  We were able to find accommodations and rent a jeep
     without reservations.  We spent the day touring the island.
     
          We drove out to Great Point and watched the fisherman
     surf casting.  I had not been out there in ten years despite
     my frequent visits to the island.  The island had changed
     somewhat, mostly the people, but it still looked the same as
     when I had left two and a half years before.  We spent the
     afternoon at Nobadeer beach with a couple thousand other young
     adults.  There was a whole different generation working during
     the summer on the island.
     
          
     
          
     
          That evening we had a delicious salmon dinner at the
     Harbor House and explored the local discotheques and bars. 
     The atmosphere was still the same on the island.  The next
     morning we wandered around town and eventually caught the
     noon boat back to the mainland.  After a pleasant ride on the
     ferry we went out to the airport to pick up the car.  We saw
     Teddy Kennedy arriving at the airport, but neither of us
     were particularly excited since we were both republicans.  
     
          We made the drive back through considerable traffic.  I
     would spend the rest of the summer going to the beach more
     often as the days got warmer, or indoors reading by the air
     conditioner.
     
          During Labor Day weekend, I met a young Brazilian
     exchange student Hernado, who was working over in White
     Plains.  During that fall I spent weekends showing him around
     the Greenwich area, going from the beach to ice skating rink
     as the season changed.  Hernado has a great sense of humor and
     enthusiasm for America.  We made one trip together into
     Manhattan where I showed him the World Trade Center, Mid town,
     the Metropolitan Museum, Central Park, and the Statue of
     Liberty.  After about twenty miles of walking we were greatly
     exhausted, but we had greatly enjoyed the city.  Through out
     that fall, Hernado would come over once or twice a week for
     dinner, and I enjoyed his company.  He came over for Christmas
     dinner and returned to Brazil that January.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER XVI
     
     
          The  beginning of 1987 was uneventful as I recall. 
     Hernado had gone back to Brazil and Richard was away skiing in
     Vermont.  I spent most of my time reading and watching a
     little bit of television.
     
          Around February Richard was back and we would
     occasionally go out to dinner and hit some of the  local pubs,
     per our usual routine.
     
          In March I went down to Florida to visit with Dad for a
     week while Jan was there.  We had a good time visiting the
     Tampa area. We went to an old hotel for drinks and had dinner
     at Burns steak house.  This would be the last time I saw Dad
     alive although he would live for another three years.  His
     parkinson's disease was progressing but he still could get
     around and he was quite happy to see us.
     
          Jan and I drove across the state to see Mother and the
     girls and their families in Vero Beach for another week.  We
     had our own cottage and would spend quite a lot of time at
     the pool.  It was fun to have all the family together.  
     
          In May of 1987 I went to Stewart McKinney's funeral and
     saw Lowell Weicker and George Bush there.  That same week
     Tim McMurray  my roommate from college was murdered down in
     Miami where he was doing social work. I also heard that Rob
     Glore from Lake Forest and Henry Post from Lake Forest
     College, and David Towt from Tenafly, New Jersey had passed
     away from AIDS. David's parents had sailed with the Bush's up
     in Kennebunkport.  I tested myself a second time that summer
     and I was still negative for AIDS and since I was not taking
     any chances should not have any thing to worry about accept
     trying to quite smoking.
     
          I spent most of the summer going to the beach and walking
     around the three mile walk regularly.  I kept up with my usual
     routine of reading.  Richard would come down once or twice a
     week and we would go out for dinner and drinks.  I also had
     begun regular cooking on the hot plate in my room on Steamboat
     road.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
          
          In August Richard and I ran into George Cary at the Polo
     Match at Conyers Farm.  It was amazing with all the thousands
     of people there we sat down right in front of him in the
     stands. He was with the Nielsens who own Butterfield Farm up
     in Bedford.
     
          On Labor Day George  came over on a boat from Long
     Island and we had drinks at the Showboat and went out for
     dinner.  I drove him back that evening.
     
          During the fall I bought Patty and Eddie's old Volkswagen
     Dasher and sold my Dasher.  I spent most of the fall reading
     as usual going to the library every day.  I was gradually
     becoming disinterested in all the espionage novels I was
     reading and started reading in other more general fields not
     to mention the large quantity of periodical reading that I
     always do.
     
          Richard would be around as usual once or twice a week and
     we would go for a drive, have dinner or drinks. As I recall we
     went out drinking in the city with George one evening and hit
     a few hot spots.
     
          Around Christmas time Hernado show up and visited
     briefly. He was back living up in Danbury with a friend of
     his.  That's the last time I saw him.
     
          Richard and I spent New Year's having dinner in Westport
     and went down to White Plains to party at one of the local
     bars afterwards.  I really can not believe the large amount of
     Italians in this area it's not like the old days, but one gets
     use to it.
     
          That previous fall Richard had made plans for him and
     myself to go to Innsbruck in February of 1988. We took the
     limousine from the Showboat and were dropped off at the
     Lufthansa terminal. We had a stopover in Dusseldorf and
     arrived at our final destination in Munich.  I could not
     believe all the soldiers running around the airport with
     machine guns.  Apparently they keep a higher level of security
     around the airports in Germany.  We took a bus down to
     Innsbruck and checked into our hotel.  
     
          Our hotel was in walking distance from town.  During the
     day while Richard was out skiing I would walk around the
     center city.  I spent a bit of time exploring the university. 
     One student I met, a pre med student named Peter Wolf said
     that the average student spends twelve hours a day six days a
     week studying.  I guess the students are very smart after that
     intensive a schedule.  
     
          
     
          On several nights Richard and I went out for drinks at
     the High Life Club.  It's a very small place  but we had fun
     socializing with the other guys there.  They all said we
     should go up to Munich for the weekend, Richard wanted to stay
     near the skiing.
     
          Our meals came with the hotel room and they were quite
     good.  The week went by very fast and before we new it we were
     retracing our steps back to the states on Lufthansa again.
     
          When I returned home the election frenzy was beginning to
     pick up for Bush's run for the Presidency, so I got a bumper
     sticker and put it on my car.
     
          I would return to my usual routine of reading and
     occasional visit from Richard.  Mother would stop by in June
     on her way up to Kennebunkport.  I usually only see her once
     or twice a year.
     
          When summer arrived I began my usual routine of going to
     the beach and reading in the evening.  I never go into the
     water at Todd's Point since I consider it polluted.  In fact
     I have not swum in Long Island Sound since 1964 when I was
     stung by a jelly fish, although I have been swimming elsewhere
     all over the world and the United States.
     
          In July Richard stopped by with a new Isuzu Trooper he
     had just bought and said he wanted to drive up to Newport.  We
     stopped by in New Haven on the way and arrived early Saturday
     morning in Newport. We checked into the Viking Hotel and
     rested.
     
          That evening we went exploring the hot spots around town. 
     There were a lot of people having cocktails on the water.  It
     was quite a deja vue crowd.  We spent the evening wandering
     from place to place.
     
          The next couple of days were fun unwinding.  I don't
     really care for the public beach in Newport and since we
     weren't members of any  of the private beach clubs we roughed
     it on the public beach.  There seems to be a prevailing wind
     blowing all the time.
     Downtown at night is full of young people partying and we
     had a very good time.  We had dinner at the dining room at the
     Viking and it looked like Liv Ullman was sitting across from
     us.  There are I suppose a few Norwegians in Newport.
     
          
     
     
     
          
          I spent the rest of the summer going to the beach in
     Greenwich and doing my usual reading.  In August I was
     accepted for McKinney Terrace Public Housing but it was not
     finished at that point.  It was good news since my land lady
     on Steamboat Road was just about to evict me since she wanted
     my room for her daughter's family.
     
          I quit smoking in September and October, but I started
     smoking again after my land lady started harassing me about
     moving and since McKinney Terrace was not finished I got a
     little bit nervous.
     
          Finally after a long wait I finally moved in mid
     December.  Over the last six months I had been accumulating
     furniture in my furnished room so my room was quite congested
     by the time I was ready to move.  As I recall the move took
     several days and using my Dasher wagon.  However, once in the
     apartment I realized I would need more furniture since I did
     not have enough.
     
          I would spend the next six months looking for bargains in
     thrift shops to finish off my apartment.  I also made two
     trips down to Patty's in Philadelphia to bring back furniture
     that she gave me.  By summer my apartment was pretty much
     furnished the way I wanted it, although I was still
     accumulating books for my book shelf.
     
          It was quite an enjoyment to have a kitchen for a change,
     and Richard would come down more often as my cooking improved.
     
          On New Years of 1989 after having lived in my new place
     for about two weeks, Richard and I  went to the Homestead for
     dinner.  We had a wonderful time and were the last people
     to leave.
     
          In January we went down to Washington for Bush's
     inaugural.  We stayed at the Dutch Inn where I had stayed for
     Reagan's inaugural.  The first afternoon we went to the Qualye
     reception where we stood in line with fifty thousand people
     waiting to see Quayle for five minutes.
     
          That evening George showed up after dropping off Julie
     McGowan with friends.  We all rested for the inaugural the
     next day.  The following morning Richard and I went to coffee 
     in Christopher Shay's office. He had succeeded Stewart
     McKinney.
     
          
     
     
     
          
          That afternoon instead of going to the inaugural George,
     Richard, and myself decided to have a long lunch at the hotel. 
     We had about a half dozen drinks apiece and watched the
     inaugural on the television.  We were the only people there. 
     It was all quite amusing.  Around four we went up to dress for
     dinner and to get ready for the Inaugural party.  We were all
     feeling no pain.
     
          Julie showed up and we all headed to a restaurant  near
     the Inaugural party.  We met our dates and George's brother
     Tom.  After an enjoyable three hour dinner with drinks and
     wine we departed for our different inaugural parties.  Quite
     frankly the inaugural parties were like a cattle show, but
     some how we made it through them.  We lost our dates some time
     through the evening, when some officers found out one of them
     was related to a famous admiral.
     
          The next day we all rested and in the afternoon we
     toured the museums on the mall.  We went through the National
     Air and Space museum and the National Gallery.  Quite frankly
     it was a long time on one's feet.  
     
          That evening we had dinner in our room.  Around eleven PM
     I went out to the Georgetown Inn for a drink and from there to
     1789.  I ran into Dr. Gillespie and  his new wife.  He invited
     me over for drinks and we chatted until sunrise.  When I
     returned that morning Richard was on his way to the service at
     the National Cathedral and George and Julie and myself went
     out for brunch.  Richard said he met Billy Graham at the
     National Cathedral.  I was very hung over on the drive back
     and slept most of the way back.
     
          The rest of the winter and spring was spent reading and
     organizing my apartment.  I resumed my usual routine of going
     to the beach and reading in the summer.
     
          In July I rode up to Kennebunkport with the Websters. 
     We had a rented house behind the  River Club.  All the family
     would be showing up during the month.  This was the first time
     we had our own place and did not stay with mother and George
     since they had moved up to Prouts Neck.  We would all go to
     the beach club every day and sit around the porch in the
     evening.  The kids like going down town for ice cream.  Patty
     and Eddie's friends the McCalls visited with us briefly. Mom
     and George's new place in Prouts neck is about thirty minutes
     north of Kennebunkport and we enjoyed visiting their pool. 
     The time flew by and after two weeks I flew back down to
     Greenwich.
     
          
     
          
     
          In August Richard and I went back up to Newport. This
     time the Viking was full.  We toured around and partied for a
     couple of days. We also went out to see George and Julie on
     Long Island. They had decided to get married in September. 
     George asked me to be his best man, but I decided it should be
     one of his brothers. We went out for drinks at Buckram stable
     in Locust Valley.
     
          Later that month the transmission went out on my car so
     I bought a 1984 Escort for $1,900.  
     
          In September George and Julie got married.  I could not
     make it to the  wedding since my car was acting up.  They were
     married in Geneva, New York.  George showed me pictures of the
     wedding.  He looks a lot like his brother Charlie that I have
     never met.
     
          In October I bought a ten gallon fish tank at Woolworths. 
     In the next six months it would be replaced by a forty gallon
     tank and supporting equipment costing close to a $1,000
     overall.  I've had up to  two dozen fish  in the tank, mostly
     anglefish; but at present I am down to six fish.  They are
     very peaceful pets.
     
          In October Richard's father died.  His father had been
     ill for a while.  He and his brother and sister had thrown
     his parents a fiftieth anniversary party the month before.
     
          That New Years was very peaceful, since Richard was still
     upset about his father's death and my father was ill with a
     broken hip.
     
          In late January mother called up and told me Dad had
     passed away.  He had rebroken his hip and complications had
     set in from the Parkinsons disease.  I flew out to Peggy's in
     Illinois and we met Jan down at the funeral in Champaign. 
     Dad was buried in the same mausoleum as his parents. A few old
     family friends were there. Afterwards Jan, Peggy, and myself
     had lunch, and we dropped Jan off at the airport in Champaign.
     Peggy dropped me off at the airport in Chicago, and I returned
     to Greenwich.
     
          Dad left his entire estate to his third wife,  which was
     no surprise.
     
          I spent most of the rest of the winter in my usual
     routine. Richard would come down and take me out every so
     often to break the boredom.
     
          
     
          
     
          In the summer I resumed my usual routine. That June I
     bought two apple computers at tag sales. I was able to resell
     them at a profit at the computer consignment shop.
     
          In July Richard volunteered to drive me up to
     Kennebunkport for my annual vacation.  We stopped for a few
     days in Newport on the way up. We partied as usual, and had
     drinks on a friend of Richard's boat. When we arrived in
     Kennebunkport we went up to Portland the first night and
     Oconquit the second night. That Sunday Richard had to return.
     I spent the rest of the vacation going to the beach with the
     family members.  Peggy and Peter and kids arrived the day
     before I left.  Jan brought along two friends.  We had a
     cocktail party for mother and George's friends.  I road down
     with Eddie after two weeks.
     
          In  August Richard took me into Manhattan to see the
     Australian ballet.  We went out afterwards.  Since then we
     have been venturing into the city at least once or twice a
     month to party as oppose to places around Greenwich.
     
          I bought an IBM compatible Compaq computer in August, and
     that gave me the computer bug.  I have spent most of my free
     time working on it when I'm not reading, and much to the
     neglect of my reading.  My quote is, " Computer Manuals will
     never be the Great Literature of History."  I was able to pay
     for the computer with the profits from my other computers that
     I sold. I was able to get free programs from a fellow in 
     Stamford who gave me quite a few programs.  I also discovered
     a computer software clearance center that has since closed.
     
          I spent most of the fall of 1990 working on the computer.
     
          In December Richard and I went down to Washington for
     five days. We stayed at the Dutch Inn and would go out to a
     couple of local places partying in the evening.  We toured
     some of the local sights, including the White House and the
     Capitol.  Washington is a different town when the Inaugural is
     not happening.  Bush was in Argentina, so not much was
     happening.
     
          On New Years 1991, Richard and I went into the  Town
     House to party. We closed the place down.  Some time during
     the winter we also went  into see Les Miserables.  I started
     spending more time following the financial reports more
     closely on the news.  
     
     
     
     
     
          I spent a great deal of time during the winter and spring
     working on downloading computer programs from BBS bulletin
     boards much to the detriment of my long distance phone bill.
     
          I had major car repairs in the fall of 1990 and the
     following June.  My car has been a big financial drain.
     
          While maintaining my usual routine of reading and working
     on the computer not a lot has happened.  I spend a bit of time
     reading computer articles now.  I have not written much other
     than letters using the word processing features of the
     computer.  Quite frankly I have not been inspired to write
     much at all other than letters despite the easiness of the
     computer for writting.
     
          This summer I did not spend much time at the beach. I
     worked on the computer during the evening and maintained my
     usual periodical reading.  I occasionally try to give Richard
     some financial advise, but I really consider Wall  Street a
     rigged crap game.  The  Economic perspective is some what
     different.
     
          In July I took the train and the bus to Kennebunkport. 
     We had the Parker Rowland house.  I visited with the girls and
     their families.  Jan once again came with a couple of friends. 
     We all had a good time.  I spent less time  at the beach and
     more time reading on the porch and visiting with family.  I
     took the bus and the train back down.
     
          In August Richard and I went up to Saratoga to visit
     George and Julie for the Travers Horse race.  We all partied
     around town the first night. At the horse race the following
     day I bet on the winning horse Corporate Report and won $30. 
     We had a picnic that evening with friends, and toured the
     racing museum the next day.
     
          On Labor Day weekend Richard and I went into the city a
     couple of times to party. The only other recent events is that
     my phone has been disconnected but I can live without it.
     
          The fall came I  would continue to have minor automotive
     problems.  I rebuilt my carburetor and tuned up the car.   I
     also replaced the battery.  Still the car runs most of the
     time.
     
          
     
     
     
     
          In August I had met Chris Groom.  His father is an
     actor and he grew up in Rye, New York.  He would come visit me 
     about once a week.  It's hard keeping up with him since
     neither of us have phones.
     
          Richard was busy working in the fall.  I did a little
     light computer work at the computer consignment shop.   I have
     gotten fairly good at working on computers although I still do
     not know programming.
     
          I've been chatting regularly with Paul White at the
     Greenwich Hospital Thrift shop.  He was born in  St. Louis, so
     he's from the mid west.  I bought a bureau from him for my
     kitchen around Christmas time.  Paul has a four year old
     daughter, but he never got married.  His father also
     volunteers in the hospital thrift shop.  He still has long
     hair and moved out of Manhattan because he got mugged.  He's
     been running tag sales to make extra money.  Paul told me his
     mother  is related to the Busch family from St. Louis.  He
     also is friends of the LeBlond's in New Canaan.
     
          Julie Cary is pregnant and is due to have a baby in late
     April.  She's suppose to have a girl.  George and Julie came
     out once in the fall and we did some thrift shopping.
     
          On Christmas Day I went out to George and Julie's for
     Christmas.   We had a good dinner.  I met George's cousin
     Charlie and Tom Cary was also there.
     
          I spent most of the fall reading and working on the
     computer.   I have not been driving as much.
     
          For Christmas I was able to buy myself two black
     angelfish which are rare.  Jan got a full size standard poodle
     around Thanksgiving time.   Peggy and Patty and families are
     doing their usual activities.  We all plan to get together at
     the Woodruff house in Kennebunkport this summer.
     
          Chris Groom stayed with me a few days before Christmas. 
     He is getting organized and has become a regular friend that
     I see.  It's nice to have a younger friend close by.   He has
     a lot of energy since he jogs and use to be a life guard in
     Rye.  He would like to be a writer.
     
          On New Year's eve, Richard and I had dinner at my place. 
     We went out and celebrated locally.  We ran into Chris later
     on in the evening.
     
     
          
     
          On the day after New Years I chatted with Bunnie Weicker
     and updated her on the girls' activities.
     
          In January I maintained my usual routine.  I had the
     usual type of car problems.  I had Chris over for dinner
     regularly.  I enjoyed chatting with him in the late evening. 
     
          I kept working on the computer.  I spent the later part
     of January getting ready to go to  Europe.
     
     
          Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to the family
     on the trip to Europe.
     
     
          I got back from Europe yesterday, Febuary 25th, and had
     a very enjoyable trip. I will try to summarize my trip for
     you.
     
          Richard and I left JFK airport on Delta airlines on
     Tuesday February 4.  We had a good flight since most of the
     international flight grew for Delta are old Pan Am employees.
     
          We arrived in Paris in the morning on the 5th. We picked
     up a small  Renault rental car. We drove through the traffic
     to down town Paris and checked into a small hotel near the Arc
     de Triumphe.  The room was very small for $80. We rested and
     drove around the city.  We had an expensive tourist meal at
     the Winston Churchill.
     
          On the morning of the 7th, we drove down the Champs
     Elysee and there were lots of French flags out and police and
     military every where.  We later found out that Boris Yeltsin
     was in town and was laying a wreath at the Arc de Triumphe
     near our hotel.
     
          Driving through the intersecting roads at the Arc de
     Triumphe is quite a horrendous experience with all the roads
     converging.
     
          That morning we had coffee near the Louvre and chatted
     with a couple of young back packers from Australia and
     Argentina. We arrived at the Louvre after walking through the
     gardens in front of it.  Most of the area in front of the I.
     M. Pei pyramid in front of the Louvre is dug up to build a
     huge underground parking lot.  
     
     
     
     
     
          We entered the Louvre when it opened and started touring
     going through the Egyptian collection first. By the time we
     got through the Egyptian collection the building was inundated
     with Japanese tourists.  We saw all the major artworks and
     sculptures.  There were five hundred Japanese tourists in
     front of me while trying to see the Mona Lisa.  After five
     hours of touring the Louvre I felt like I had run through most
     of the collection but it was all quite enjoyable to see for
     the first time.
     
          In the afternoon we drove out to  Versailles through all
     the traffic on the Champs Elysee for Yeltsin.  I walked around
     Versailles for two hours touring the private apartments and
     gardens.  The grounds and the palace were full of young kids
     and it was all quite enjoyable.  
     
          We had dinner next to the Pompadoo center and toured
     around the old streets of Paris in the late evening.  We
     stopped by a discotheque that did not open until mid night 
     and it was packed by the time we left in the early morning
     hours.
     
          That Friday morning the 7th we got up early after five
     hours sleep and drove north through Belgium to Amsterdam
     arriving in the late afternoon after seven hours.  We found
     a hotel room next to the Heiniken Brewery and rested.  We had
     a steak dinner that evening.  On Saturday morning we walked
     all around Amsterdam touring the old canal area.  We also
     walked around in the afternoon.  We had another steak dinner
     that evening.
     
          On Sunday morning we got up and walked down the street to
     the Reich museum and spent two hours touring the Rembrandt
     exhibit with paintings from museums from all around the world. 
     It was a once in a life time viewing of Rembrandts from all
     around the world.  In the afternoon we walked around the city
     more. We had cocktails in an old pub across from the Opera and
     met the head of the opera who said he was taking the whole
     company to Manhattan, quite an amusing fellow.
     
          On Monday we drove out and looked at the new airport
     under construction and it was too late to tour the huge flower
     exchange warehouses where KLM ships all the flowers from. 
     Needless to say the country side of the Netherlands looks very
     flat, since it is all built from fill, but full of lots of
     green houses.
     
          
     
     
     
          
     
          That evening we had a large authentic Dutch meal at an
     old tavern on a canal near the pedestrian boulevard.
     
          The following morning on Tuesday the 11th, we left
     early and drove down through Belgium.  The Belgium forests
     look very beautiful.  Then we drove on down past Nancy and
     Dijon through hundreds of miles of farm land in eastern
     France arriving in Lyon about 9PM.  The twelve hour drive in
     the rain was quite exhausting.  We found a place quickly in
     Lyon in a modern hotel.
     
          The following morning we headed out to Albertville in the
     Alps two hours away.  Our Inn was about ten miles from
     Albertville in Doussard.  It was inexpensive but nothing
     special.
     
          We toured around Albertville after having an uneventful
     meal at the inn.  We had drinks with a variety of people at
     the ST. Michael american bar where every one seemed to be
     partying.
     
          On Thursday we toured around the neighboring area.  The
     following Friday, St. Valentine's Day we took the bus up into
     the mountains for the Ski Jumping event.  We were at the lower
     level of Courcheval, the deluxe area is about a thousand feet
     higher.   There were lots of people enjoying the event and the
     weather was cold and clear.  I was warm enough with parka,
     long underwear and heavy sweater.  The drive through the
     mountains on the bus is really quite scary, so one generally
     does not look down.
     
          On  Saturday, the 15th we went to Tigres above Val Disere
     and  watched the free style skiing.  It was very cold in the
     early  morning hours waiting for the event and snowing.  They
     don't have ski lodges in the ski resorts, so all the thousands
     of spectators just stand out in the cold snowy weather.  I
     guess the natives are use to it.  We would sit in out door
     cafes in the low teen weather sipping coffee at $2 a cup.  The
     free style  skiing is quite creative.
     
          On Sunday we went to Les Arcs two hours away up in the
     mountains again and watch the Biathlon.  It was snowing again
     during the event and hard to see.  That afternoon we walked
     around in the valley around Albertville where it was warmer.
     
          We took all our meals in a moderate priced cafeteria near
     Albertville.  Since most of the events were away from
     Albertville, it was more of a cross roads with out much going
     on.
     
     
     
          That evening we went to the St. Michael bar and talked
     all night with people there for the Olympics and the local
     people.  Needless to say after being outside in the cold for
     three days  and trying to speak French in the noisy bar, I
     ended up with a severe case of Laryngitis that evening.  I
     basically could not talk the next couple of days.
     
          The following monday the ice skating in Albertville was
     rained out.  We rested and did laundry on Tuesday.  It cost
     $30 for three washers and two dryers in the laundromat. 
     Prices were generally higher than expected all over the
     Olympic area.
     
          On Wednesday I stayed at the Inn while Richard went to 
     Val  Disere, since I was worried about my throat up in the
     mountains.   Richard said he had breakfast in the hotel in Val
     Disere where the Kings of Norway and Sweden and Princess Anne
     where staying.  He met an American woman who was one of the
     top sponsors.  He went skiing while he was not watching the
     event.
     
          On Thursday the 20th, we drove an hour to Geneva and
     walked around the old city.  Geneva is very beautiful although
     expensive.  We ate at fast food restaurants to save money, but
     it was still $15 apiece.  We walked around the University of
     Geneva and Richard visited and antique gun shop.  The old
     historical streets have lots of interesting shops.  We walked
     down Rue de Rhone which is suppose to be one of the most
     expensive streets in the world selling diamonds, gold, and
     Rolex watches with lots of Japanese tourists.
     
          On Friday Richard went to another skiing event while I
     stayed at the Inn.  On Saturday the 22nd we left for Paris a
     seven hour drive.  On the way up we saw a forty car wreck with
     traffic backed up thirty miles coming from Paris headed toward
     Albertville.  Driving in those little cars does not exactly
     make one feel safe.  I was glad to arrive safely in Paris.  
     
          We checked into a hotel next to the Jardin Des Plants and
     rested.  That evening we dressed for dinner and went to dinner
     at Precope the oldest continuing running restaurant in the
     world.  They have a statue of Benjamin Franklin who use to eat
     there, amongst many other notables over the years.  The meal
     was quite excellent and I felt reasonable at $50 apiece.
     
          
     
     
     
     
          On Sunday the 23rd we toured around the Notre Dame area. 
     We saw all the birds for sale across from the Cathedral. 
     After dinner that night we went out to a discotheque and once
     again the place was packed in the morning hours.  On Monday we
     took it easy touring  only in the afternoon around the Champs
     Elysee.  I think the Rue Montagne has the Ritz hotel possibly
     if it is not marked along with the American Embassey also
     unmarked.  It has Channel and Pierre Cardin.  I saw a woman's
     dress store called Jean Louise ?????  down from the Canadian
     Embassy that looked quite expensive.   
     
          On Tuesday the 25th we got up early and went to the
     airport to wait for the Delta flight.  The flight back was two
     hours longer because of head winds but excellent because
     of the professionalism of the Pam Am crews Delta acquired. 
     The air bus flies and lands by computer.
     
          At customs at JFK the "Drug" beagle sat down next to
     Richard's flight bag, but that was because we had used it for
     food at the Olympics.  We were surrounded by Russian tourists
     arriving the same time as we were.  We got a driver out to my
     place and as usual in the cold damp weather my car would not
     start, so Richard took the driver on up to his place.
     
          I unpacked and went to bed after talking with mother and
     Jan.  This morning I have to get the car going when it dries
     out.  All my fish are all right after three weeks.  Richard
     figures the trip cost about $4,000 with hotel, planes, rental
     car, meals, olympic tickets for both of us which is not
     too bad.  Plus I spent about $450 that I had.  It is a lot
     more expensive in Europe but I enjoyed the change of scenery. 
     All in all it was a very enjoyable trip but wearing sneakers
     when walking in cities makes all the difference.  I took seven
     rolls of film and seemed to have gained weigh with all the
     activity and smaller meals.
     
     
     End of exert from letter on Olympic trip.
     
     
          After returning from Europe I resumed my usual routine of
     reading and working on the computer.  Chris Groom stayed at
     the apartment for a week and then moved back to his mother's.
     
          Mother and George made a three week cruise around the
     Mediterranean visiting many sights in the holy land, Egypt,
     Greece, and Italy.
     
     
          
          I upgrade my computer with a used motherboard to the 286
     standard with one meg of memory.  I went to an IBM
     presentation of their new operating system OS/2.
     
          The Paine Webber Nekei Puts have been going up with the
     decline of the Japanese stock market.
     
          I put another blue carpet in my apartment living room
     that I bought at a tag sale.
          
          George Cary might come out Easter weekend.  Julie is due
     to have her baby around the first of May.  Julie finally had
     her baby Olivia Victoria Cary in late April.
     
          
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
                                  CHAPTER XVII
     
     
          May was not very eventful. It was a cool spring.  I
     worked on the computer a bit and upgraded the overall system. 
     Richard has been around more often.   We have not been going
     into Manhattan.
     
          I chat with George once a week.  Julie and the new baby
     are doing well.  George hopes to move into his new house
     around the first of July.
     
          Peggy and Peter are planning to get divorced.  They seem
     to be having quite a standoff in Chicago.
     
          I plan to go up to Kennebunkport in July.
     
          There does not seem to be much interest in the
     Presidential election around here.  Ross Perot plans to run
     against both parties.  Once again I feel they will promise
     anything and then ignore every one after the election.  I
     think it would be better to elect a prime minister every year
     from the senate and forget about the executive branch of
     government.
     
          The computer show was in Manhattan during the end of
     June, but I did not go in.  The summer seems to be going by
     fast.  It has been cooler than usual.  I have quit reading the
     New York Times on weekdays and instead am reading the Wall
     Street Journal on weekdays.
     
          I helped the Cary's move in mid July and also helped them
     with some yard work.
     
          I maintained my usual routine in the beginning of July
     and drove up to Kennebunkport in the middle of July.  Peggy
     arrived the same day I did and two days later Peter and the
     kids.  Jan arrived two days later.  There was a lot of tension
     because Peter was there when he was not suppose to be there. 
     Jan was her usual delightful self.  Richard showed up a couple
     days later for the weekend.  Jan and Richard and myself went
     out to dinner.  Peter left the following week and things were
     a little bit more peaceful.  
     
          I felt less confined having my own car.  I started
     smoking because of the stress.  I would go to the beach in the
     afternoon.  I drove down at the end of the second week.
     I caught up on my reading.  The Websters drove up the Saturday
     after I left.  I went into Manhattan a couple of times.  
     
     
          I had to ask Chris Groom not to visit me any more.  He
     is doing well in a half way house in White Plains.  It rained
     for a week and I got a little depressed.  I got a new social
     worker Monica Brunning and she seems pleasant.
          
          I drove back up to Kennebunkport for the last week of
     August with the Websters.  It was very relaxing.  I had a good
     visit with mother also.  The weekend I returned Richard and I
     went in for a tour of Manhattan.  The first week of September
     I spent catching up on my reading.  Mother and George are
     going to leave on September 6, to tour the Canadian Rockies
     and the Northwest.  I am back to my usual budget.  It has been
     a cool summer and hopefully a pleasant 
     fall.  Mother and George had a great trip and think it was
     more enjoyable than visiting the Alps.
     
          I spent most of the fall working on my computer and
     reading about it.  The Bush-Qualye campaign was underfinanced
     and there was not much enthusiasm for the ticket.  They lost
     the election and we will have to put up with a democratic
     administration for the next four years.
     
          I wander if Bill Clinton was in Bill Coffin's drop in
     center up at Yale when I went up there around 1965.  Also I
     wander if Al Gore was at Lookout Mountain Camp when I was
     there.
     
          I went into Manhattan a couple of times with Richard. 
     his new Buick wagon is a great car.  There was a bad storm in
     December that flooded the houses around Todd's Point.
     
          I gave a ride to Stratford to a fellow from Sydney,
     Australia name of Terry Beasley.   He reminded me of Prince
     Charles and was very smart.  At that same time Windsor Castle
     had a fire in the banquet hall.
     
          Jan and Ainslie have been spending more time around the
     house by the lake.   I call her regularly to help her out on
     the computer. 
     
          Peggy seems to be adjusting to living on her own.  She
     visited down in Florida over Christmas.  She is thinking of
     taking her own place in Chicago.  Mother and George sailed
     down around the islands around Aluthra over Christmas.
     
          After New Years,  I spent a couple of weeks cleaning my
     apartment and reorganizing my possessions.  Hopefully 1993
     will be a more profitable year, although I had a good year
     last year.  I am down to 160 pounds and feel a lot better.
     
          
          
          This winter was rather uneventful.  I maintained my usual
     routines.  I am not reading the New York papers.  I am
     spending more time working on the computer.  Mother bought me
     a used 386/33 computer in mid March which will permit me to
     keep abreast of new computer developments.
     
          Richard and I went into Manhattan a couple of times.  We
     did not do very much this winter.  It snowed several times in
     the late winter.  My car has been running fine.  I have been
     trying to economize more on my expenses.  I have been spending
     more time keeping my apartment orderly and clean.  I am making
     food and freezing it to conserve time on cooking.
     
          Terrorists blew up the World Trade center around the
     first of March which created a little panic in the area.  I am
     doing well and fell much better having lost the weight and am
     down to 155 pounds.  I have been chatting with Jan on computer
     matters to try and help her out on her computer.
     
          Spring has arrived today and I am broke.  Hopefully I
     will quit smoking some time soon and have a pleasurable
     spring.  Mother is pleased with my progress on the computer.
     Jan and Peggy visited mother in Florida during the first of
     March.  Peggy's marital situation and family situation still
     has not been resolved.  I look forward to an enjoyable spring.
     
          George and Julie have been redoing their house this
     winter.  The baby is doing well.  I look forward to visiting
     them this spring.   I visited George and Julie in May.  There
     house looks very nice.  They have put a lot of work into it. 
     I have been maintaining my usual schedule reading and working
     on the computer.  Richard comes down on the weekends.  I have
     been chatting with Jan every two weeks about computers.
     
          I sold my old Compaq computer for $425 which paid off my
     new computer.  The Websters are going out to Wyoming in July
     before they go to Kennebunkport.
     
          Richard and I went into Manhattan on the fourth of July. 
     We got mugged by a British fellow from Bermuda.  Needless to
     say I don't plan to go into Manhattan for a while.  It just
     goes to show one can not trust even the people who seem
     harmless.
     
          I will be going to Kennebunkport on the 24th of July for
     a week.  Jan will be there and Richard might be able to come
     up if he is not working.  My air conditioner has been having
     problems keeping up with the heat.  I had my physical and my
     health is all right.
     
          I had a good time in Kennebunkport.  Jan and I visited
     with Richard for the first week.  The weather was very
     comfortable.  Jan had bought a new baby poodle puppy Sheba
     that she was going to take back to Oklahoma.  Kennebunkport
     seemed slower this summer now that Bush is no longer
     President.  
     
          The Websters arrived the following week with Peggy's
     children.  I had a good two weeks in Kennebunkport.
     
          During the fall I worked on the computer and read.  I
     bought a number of items for my apartment.  Jan sent me the
     latest computer programs.  I have decided not to go into
     Manhattan for a while.
     
          My dermatologist said I should not go out and sun bathe
     in the sun any more.  In December, I have to have a small mole
     taken off my back.
     
          Richard has been keeping busy working.  Mother and George
     took a trip to Portugal and sailed back on the Royal Viking. 
     
          Richard bought a house in Wilton he will move into in 
     March.  He got a good deal on the house.  It has two rental
     units and he will live in the restored barn.
     
          I redecorated my apartment and it looks much better.  I
     also was able to get two very good used computer printers for
     my office setup.  I will have a peaceful Christmas and look
     forward to a better New Years.
     
          This winter was very cold we had eighteen snow falls.  I
     felt like I was shoveling the snow off my car every other day. 
     I kept busy through most of the winter reading as usual and
     working on the computer.  I installed OS/2 for Windows on my
     computer which took a bit of time to install and learn.
     
          I went into New York once or twice and Richard was not
     around very much since he was busy working on his house.  I
     pursued a number of redecorating projects in the apartment
     this winter and spring and by summer the place looks quite
     presentable.
     
          Richard finished his house in mid April and moved into it
     around the first of May.  The house came out quite well and I
     suppose he will be quite happy with it.  He has a lot of work
     this year and is not around as frequently.
     
          Ainslie passed away toward the end of April.  He had a
     heart attack from the Nicotine patches he was taking.  Jan is
     quite grief stricken.  He was only 52.  I did not attend the
     funeral because I was under new medication.  I also came down
     with Sominella poisoning two days after Ainslie passed away. 
     I suppose it will take time for Jan to readjust to single
     life.  She plans to continue living in Oklahoma where she has
     many friends. 
     
          Mother had minor surgery in early June, but is doing
     well.  I now have a telephone which makes life easier.  I
     still have to watch my bills, so as to afford the many small
     luxuries in my life.
     
          The better part of June was spent inside reading avoiding
     the warm weather.  We will have the house in Kennebunkport in
     August again this year.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
          I spent the summer walking occassionally around Tod's 
     Point Beach in Greenwich and also taking evening walks on 
     Greenwich Avenue.  
     
          In August I went to Kennebunkport.  The girs were not
     getting along, so there was a little friction in the house. 
     I had very nice days at the beach and returned in mid August.
     
          Around the first of September I bought a 28,800 baud
     modem for my computer and logged onto the Internet.  From 
     then on most of my free time has gone into the Internet.  I
     spent six months compiling an Internet Hotlist of 3200 sites 
     that I published on the Internet.
     
          I have been following the volcanology reports on the
     Internet with interest.  This winter was very mild, and we
     only had one snowfall.  
     
          I upgraded my computer with a 540 meg hard disk, so I
     have room for more programs and occassionally chat on the
     web pages on the Internet with people from around the world.
     
          Mother had minor surgery, but will be all right.  She
     has access to some very modern treatment equipment down in 
     Florida.
     
          This spring 1995 looks to be an early spring and it
     promises to be an enjoyable summer.  I will have to spend
     more time outside after all the time on the computer and the 
     Internet.