Excerpt: Road Through Wonderland

It was 1967, the Summer of Love, a time of bralessness and bellbottoms. Flashing the peace sign was a sign of solidarity, we all knew what bitch'n meant, and nobody cool said groovy. I graduated from high school that year. I was only seventeen, small scrawny and freckled. I was barley 5’ tall, 5’ ½” to be exact. I looked like a little girl. I felt like a little girl. I certainly didn’t feel ready for a career. That’s not to say I didn’t have goals – aspirations. I wanted to travel the world, experience new and exotic places, or at the very least, have a mind-blowing adventure. But in the three years that followed, all I had accomplished was to replace my Jackie Kennedy style A-line dresses with hip hugger jeans and long flowy skirts. Girls my age migrated to the West Coast in droves to experience the remains of the mythical life of sex, drugs, and rock-n'-roll. They had their adventure. I wanted mine.

I was born and raised in Carlsbad, California. I grew up just a mile from the Pacific Ocean and within spitting-distance of Camp Pendleton. Everyone in the community was, in one way or the other, connected to the base. My dad was a retired career marine and Mom was a civil service worker. She catalogued equipment and supplies for shipment to Vietnam. When she worked late it usually meant there was a change in troop deployments. More young guys my age being sent to fight a war we didn’t understand. Being so tightly woven into the fabric of a military community added a palpable urgency to our lives especially for those young men going and coming back from a war zone. For some that urgency made them hold on to their homes and families more tightly; for me though, it stirred my discontent and emboldened my wanderlust.

I wanted to get away, far away. And then I met Bob.