I REMEMBER - Chico State College and the pigeons

When I had first started thinking about college and where I should go, I set up a meeting with my high school career counselor.  Being seventeen, I was seeking independence from home and my parents, as my top priority.  Career, college, life...everything else was secondary.

When I met with my counselor, he asked "What do you want to do"? and 'had I thought about what college to attend'.  I told him it had to be in California for in-state fees (my parent's criteria) and it had to be at least one hour away from Rancho Cordova (my criteria - not living at home anymore, close enough for me to get home when I wanted to and yet, too far away for my parents to just drop in anytime they wanted).

I applied at several colleges.  My grades were good, my SAT's were good, so I got accepted at a few places and took them into my counselor's office to discuss. We narrowed it down to UC Davis, Cal State, San Luis Obispo, and Chico State College. We talked about the merits of each:  UC Davis was a good university and close to home, so I could save money from dorm fees and live at home.  San Luis Obispo was a good school, close to the beach and was only a few hours away.  Chico State College was a good school, one hour away, rated the number one party school in America in Playboy magazine and had an enrollment of 3 to 1, women to men.

It was a tough decision, but at the end, I chose Chico State.

My first day enrolling for classes was easy and yet, traumatic.  I had done my research on available classes, filled my schedule card early and was taking a break under one of the huge Valley Oak trees that is a hallmark of the Chico State campus.  I was reading over the class descriptions when I was approached by a very friendly and attractive coed, with an arm full of books.  She asked if she could sit down in the shade (early September in Chico - close to 100 degrees outside).  I gladly invited her to share the shade and thought to myself: "This has to be the best school in the universe. Here it is - the first day of school and I might end up with a girlfriend".  We talked about where we were from, blah, blah, blah and the whole time I am thinking how lucky I was and how great it was to be on top of the world, as I was, at that moment.

Then, the moment ended. 

The challenge of sitting under the shade of a large tree, is that birds also like to sit on the limbs of shady trees.  The young woman and I were hitting it off magnificently and had closed our personal space to about two feet, when a large pigeon pooped on my head, my nose and down the inside of my glasses.  I was stunned. At first I thought it was rain - but at 100 degrees on a cloudless day, that couldn't be it.  A second later, I realized my budding romantic moment had just been crapped on.

My new friend had maintained a respectful silence for that same long one second also.  Then, unable to hold it in any longer, she burst out laughing, so hard she fell over.

I turned beet-red and tried to clean the bird doo off my nose, head and glasses with my shirt sleeve.  It didn't work.  It smeared and got worse. I am sure I looked like I had Indian war-paint on, in gooey black and white streaks, from my nose to my chin.  I couldn't see because the inside of my glasses lenses were streaked with the same greasy pigeon droppings. 

I thought my new friend was going to choke to death.  She couldn't get her breath.  Tears of laughter and big air-sucking sounds were bursting forth from her face. I took it somewhat personally, as I had not yet fully refined my now finely honed, self-depreciation skills.

I got angry.

She grabbed her books and ran away, laughing hysterically.

I had just lost my first college relationship in record time (from beginning to end in under seven minutes). I didn't even get her name. I was hoping she didn't remember mine, as I am sure I was the topic of conversation in her dorm that night or probably all week.  That was 46 years ago.  She is probably somewhere, writing a blog about it, right now.

The day wasn't totally crappy as I got a brand-new  3-ring binder out of the deal.  She had dropped one as she ran away and didn't stop to retrieve  it. I eventually gave the binder to my roommate.  Too many memories.

I REMEMBER...the palm reader & the 3 accidents

....having my palm read when I was in college and how it turned out. But first, let's back up a bit.

I was a pretty good wrestler when I was in college. [Trust me, there is a segue here]. As a result I was fortunate enough to get a "deal" when I went to college. Chico State College in 1965 did not have wrestling scholarships, but I got the next best thing. I got pre-admitted to all the classes I wanted [just gave the coach your class list and it was a done deal]. I got two classes with an automatic "A" Health (taught by the coach) and communications (I was a DJ at the KCSC college radio station] to help keep my grade point up to be eligible for sports. I also got a much sought after job [working at the cafeteria at the college dorms]. This is when the ratio of girls to guys was 3:1...as a bonus, I got paid, too.

So, [here comes the segue], I worked the cafeteria line serving up vegetables and the student that worked next to me was from China. Her parents were fortune tellers and palm readers. She believed in it so much, she refused to "read palms" for her friends, because she didn't want to see what was in store for them and tell them bad news. Anyway, I finally got her to read my palm after I convinced her that I wouldn't take it seriously.

After she looked at my palm, she got quiet and said she changed her mind. With much cajoling, she finally told me what she "saw". First, I would be wealthy in friends, but not in money (at the time it seemed I got a raw deal), but friends and family "appreciate" at a far better rate than dollars over the years, so (if you believe in fortune telling), it worked out OK.

The other, more serious view, was my palm’s "Life Line". Mine has a major break in it, early on in the line and then the second part goes off the side of my hand. Her comment was that there would be a major incident early in my life (remember, this is 1965 and I was 18) and I might not live through it. But, if I did, I would live a long, full life, with enough money to get along, but rich in friends and family.

I didn't think about it until the summer after my senior year. The "Bad News" comes in threes was the catchword for my "interesting break in my life line". In June, some friends (2 guys & 3 girls) and I went for a drive up to Feather River Canyon in my buddy's newly purchased old beater pick-up truck. The girls were in the back and the guys were in the cab. No seat-belts. Coming back down the steep and winding grade, I got the "shotgun" rider's bird’s eye view of the 500' drop off on my side of the cab. As I was sucking up my breath, due to the speed with which we were taking the curves...I heard these comforting words: "S---t, the brakes are out - what should I do"? As we only had two choices, hit the side of the mountain or go over the cliff, we made an extremely hasty unanimous decision to swerve across the oncoming lane on a curve we knew we couldn't make and hit the side of the mountain. Without much discussion, we figured our chances were better with a crash than a lead airplane drop off the side of the mountain.

Oddly, we didn't crash [note: I am writing this tome some 40 some odd years later, so I didn't die, nor did anyone else], but rather, we went up the side of the hill like a motorcycle jump and into the woods on the other side. That newly purchased truck was like a rocket ship out of control. We landed in a dry stream bed, and with all the wheels and both axles gone, gravity had us follow the stream bed like a little slot car.

The driver was still trying to steer, which, looking back on it, was pretty funny as there were no wheels. Note: the three girls were thrown out of the back when we shot up the hill slope. Although bruised and scared, they were alright. Those of us in the cab were OK. The truck died and is probably still there.

The next month, July, I went to visit a former college roommate in San Jose. He wanted to take me for a ride in his parent's new Camaro before they all left on vacation the next day. Full moon, nice night, he cruised up into the hills for a winding road test of the hot sports car. Still reeling from the accident the previous month, I asked many times for him to slow down and cool it. After the car squealed around yet another sharp turn up in the mountains, I undid my seat belt and started to climb over the front seat into the safety of the back seat. That was the moment that Mike couldn't make the next curve and rolled the Camaro over the cliff. I thought surely I had died and moved on to the afterlife. It was a very surreal scene. The engine was running, emitting a high pitched whine. The inside of the car was full of a smoky dirt cloud with just the light of the full moon shining in. Everything was oddly different, as my former roommate was hanging upside down, suspended by his seat belt. The headlights shone out into a dark night right towards the full moon. We were slowly swaying back and forth. It was creepy. Slowly, I figured it out. We had rolled over the cliff and had landed upside down in a tree growing out of the side of the mountain. My friend undid his seat belt and landed on his head. I laughed. We carefully climbed out of the car window and up the side of the mountain through the bushes, to the road. It was very weird looking down on the moonlit undercarriage of the Camaro, engine running, lights shining out into nothingness, with a 300 foot drop under it. That tree was the only one on the side of the mountain and we had landed right in the middle. This was BCP (before cell phones) so we hiked down the road to the nearest house and my former roommate called his parents to get a tow truck and come get us. Mike’s parents arrived at the same time as the tow truck. Mike’s dad only said “Where’s the other car”? Mike told him there was no other car and I don’t think I heard his dad speak again. When the tow truck got there, he refused to hook it up because he feared if the car fell out of the tree; it would drag him and his tow truck off the cliff. So they had to call another tow truck and use both at the same time to get the Camaro up to the road. Needless to say, Mike and his family didn’t leave on their vacation in their new car the next day. Mike didn’t come back to college that September either.

Two bits of irony followed. The car was totaled except for the driver’s side which looked like it was in show room condition. When the tow truck pulled away back to San Jose, the Camaro came loose from the chains and swerved over to the opposite side of the road and scraped everything off the formerly pristine side, mirrors, door handles, paint, etc. Also, Mike and I, other than a few bruises were unscathed…except for two days later when we found out the hard way that the hillside we climbed up in the dark was covered in poison oak.

That was two. The trifecta was completed (thankfully) the next month, where once again I was a passenger in someone’s car. A friend from college and I had gone to Tahoe to apply for jobs at the ski resort for the next winter season. After a long day playing at the lake, we were driving back to Lodi late one Saturday night. There was a Y in the road coming up and we had to be in the left side of Y. The driver thought she was over too far to the right and moved over one more lane to the left. It was dark and it appeared as if we were just about the only ones on the freeway. Just as we noticed the highway divider chain link fence appear out the passenger side window (meaning we were in the oncoming lane on the wrong side of the freeway) we also noticed the oncoming traffic, three abreast, taking up all the lanes coming right at us. This is all happening at 60 miles an hour in opposing directions. Instinctively, I uttered some situation-appropriate, adults-only, words and raised my arms up over my face. The driver instinctively pulled a hard right, even though the chain-link fence was there. Fortunately, the sixty miles an hour, two-ton Cadillac swerved to the left just as it kissed off our tiny tin-can Volkswagen Bug. It was like throwing a small flat rock at the right angle and at the right speed to skip along the surface of a huge lake, defying gravity and impact. The Volkswagen was destroyed. About 30 yards of highway divider chain link fence never lived to see the dawn. Cheryl went to the hospital with a broken rib and a lacerated liver (seatbelt). Once again, I walked away. I suffered a fractured finger and a gazillion tiny cuts from the implosion of the windshield over my head.

I figured I had survived the odd break in my palm “Lifeline”. Three months. Three major accidents. No one should have lived through any of them. Only the vehicles died. Bob, the passenger, walked.

Fast forward thirty years. I meet Lise and early on we took some picnics, trips and adventures. One day she says, “You always drive. Why don’t you let me drive and you be the passenger.” I couldn’t do it. I never was the passenger again after that summer. If I couldn’t drive, I didn’t go. I have since relaxed with it a bit, especially if I can fall immediately to sleep but mostly. I drive. Note: back in the day, before seat belts and before seat belt laws, the passenger seat was often referred to as the Suicide Seat (the act of doing something that seems contrary to your own best interests and seems likely to lead to a disaster).

Drive My Car - Beatles

I REMEMBER...Stonehenge

...traveling to England in the late 70's and going to see Stonehenge. This is a short observation about how really small the world is and a small moment in time for me.

Backing up a bit...

A few years earlier, I had opened a leather and jewelry store in Chico called Lone Eagle Leather. The night of my grand opening, I had an open bar, a lot of friends and a band playing. As a gift to the guys in the band, I made custom leather belts with the name of their band stamped in the back. Store worked great - an awesome time to be in the crafts business, I expanded to a second store, and then a wholesale leathergoods business as well. I had accounts with the Tower Records chain and the CSU college bookstores throughout California. I was a madman and worked far too much and burned out.

Friends threw me a birthday party on my 28th birthday and put 35 candles on it. A subtle hint I should slow down and take a break. Sold the business, bought a houseboat, put my house up for sale and temporarily "moved" to Jamaica. This is another blog, and the mention here is meant only to show some passage of time.

Came back to town, worked as a carpenter and burned out again (hmmmm...is there a pattern here?).

When I was 30, I went to Europe and stayed in England for awhile and managed to make it out to Stonehenge for the day. A rare sunny day (see me in red tank top in one of the photos). So, I am walking up to the stone pillars approaching the crowd already gathered there for a history lecture being given by one of the caretakers. As I walk up , I see at the back of the crowd, a tall guy (see pic of guy in white pants and white shirt at the back of the crowd with his hands on his hips) that stunned me. Here I am many miles and years away from the Grand Opening of Lone Eagle Leather in Chico, California, and there in front of me is one of the band members wearing my custom made belt. Turns out he was traveling with his dad and was only going to be there for a half hour (a tiny moment in time). I never would have seen it if I had been earlier, later, walked slower or had been less observant.

I am fascinated with time. The time we have, the time we don't have and how little moments in time have special value. This was one of those special moments.

Quote of the day:

Time is the coin of life. It’s the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let others spend it for you. .....Carl Sandburg

I REMEMBER...dreams, sights, sounds, smells

....sights and sounds that conjure up people and places from the past. I was talking with my daughter Sarah (age 10) about memories and making this blog. She had this really cool observation. She said young people dream of things that will happen in the future and old people dream of things that happened in the past. I like it. That just about sums it up. We talked about memories and how the older you are the more memories you have and how certain sounds, songs and smells can trigger vivid remembrances of past people and experiences. Every time I hear Suzie Q by Creedence Clearwater Revival, I remember working at the Italian Cottage Restaurant in 1968. I was a junior in college, taking 21 units, trying to graduate on time after “not paying attention to my academics” for far too long and working nights. It was the hot song of the day and it played on the radio all the time.

There are smells that can transport me, like a time machine, back 55 years in an instant. When I was a kid, my mom used to take her makeup off using Noxzema skin crème and both my dad and my granddad used Old Spice after-shave lotion. I have a tub of Noxzema I use each morning to wash my face – wakes me up instantly and I go back to when I six years old and kissing my mom good night with her face covered in white crème. I use Old Spice after-shave on the weekends and I am spun back to when I was about seven years old, visiting my grandpa in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. He would let me shave with his double edge razor (with a cardboard blade), using a shaving mug with a big hairy brush to spread the lather on my face and then splash Old Spice on afterwards, as we got dressed for church on Sunday mornings. After church, we would often go on a picnic and fishing on Pennington Creek under the old swinging bridge (actually quite famous and probably the only thing that put Tishomingo on the map) after church while grandma worked on “supper’. It wasn’t dinner, it was supper. Lunch was dinner. That was probably a Midwest or Oklahoma thing. It certainly wasn’t used that way after we moved to California.

Song of the Day: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Suzie Q

I REMEMBER..."Big Red" - My Volkswagon Bus

...my Volkswagon Bus - "Big Red." I loved that van. It was an all-purpose vehicle. I hauled plywood, tools, people, furniture, and went camping in it. It was my first NEW vehicle, and I drove it to Mazatlan, Mexico, the first week I owned it. I had the first 1,000 mile check-up at a Volkswagon factory in Mexico. Stayed in a little hut on the beach south of Mazatlan for quite awhile. Fished every day; had a great time.

Back in Chico, California (99 miles north of Sacramento - I graduated CSUC in 1969), I had various jobs from running the Italian Cottage Restaurant, working at Kramore Inn, etc. Most of the time I had my own business as a carpenter and a leather worker. Leather worker stories (Lone Eagle Leather) later. While I was a carpenter, I worked on a great three-story Victorian (built for a college student by her parents - nice), helped build the Redwood Forest retail store in a downtown mall, remodeled Ron's S.F. Flowers flower shop, Sundance Records record store, Bird in Hand Gallery, a couple of homes, a big 6,000 square foot mansion and caretakers quarters/barn in Woodside, CA (lovingly referred to as the home to Horses & Porches) and worked on my 40-foot houseboat in Walnut Grove, California (yet another story). I hauled my table saws and tools and lumber in Big Red. Never had a problem.

Side bar: I once bought a quarter ton of walnut slab scraps from a gun stock manufacturer in Chico. I hauled that pile of walnut from house to house, storage to storage for years, thinking I would someday make valuable things out of it (clocks, I think, was the original idea). All of that was accomplished with Big Red. After close to five years of hauling that wood around, I eventually used it as firewood in my fireplace...ha.

Went camping often to the north coast of California in the Ft. Bragg area many times and slept in Big Red when it was foggy and cold. Caught many a good fish--but never a cold. Picture of successful fishing trip attached.

Before I was a carpenter, I had many fun and successful years as a leather worker in Chico. I used Big Red to go to San Francisco and Berkeley for leather supplies and Haight Ashbury trips (used as a very loose term here). More stories to come later about those days, if I can remember them. (My sister, Sharon, says that if you can remember the 60's, you weren't really there.) Anyway, I bought a radial arm saw to manufacture belt racks from redwood to help convince retail store owners to carry my line of leather belts and so got hooked on carpentry. Leather evolved into wood. Big Red was perfect for both ventures.

All things have a beginning and an end. Good times and bad. The one thing you can always count on is that whether times are good or bad, they will eventually end. The beginning of Big Red's life I took him to Mexico for quite an adventure and throughout the leather and woodworking years, I never had a problem.

I was commuting between Chico and Walnut Grove (on Snodgrass Slough in the Sacramento River Delta) on a regular basis. I co-owned a house in Chico with friend Bob Crowe. I learned the hard way about the downside of living in and remodeling a house simultaneously. We had every room torn up and half finished for a very long time. Sheetrock dust and sawdust was in everything. By the time we eventually finished it, we had turned it into a rental and eventually sold it to break even on the investment.

On weekends, I would travel to Walnut Grove to work on the houseboat (was thinking I would become a houseboat builder and write a book about it--and travel to Amsterdam to check out the world famous houseboat community there...never did...but it was a temporarily good dream). I traveled back to Chico one fateful weekend and (thank God) unloaded all my tools at the house and set off through the middle of downtown Chico, headed to the lumberyard. The cool thing about Volkswagen buses is that they had a notoriously good Porsche engine block and except for an occasional minor flaw, ran forever and a day with no problems. The minor flaw was that the fuel line would occasionally become detached while in motion and spew fuel all over the hot engine block, causing a weird little "POOF" explosion, just loud enough to get your attention...followed by a lot of fire and an exceedingly large amount of smoke in, say, two seconds. Fortunately for me, I was traveling down Main Street, Chico, at about ten miles an hour, when it was Big Red's final moment. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran from store to store on Main Street, looking for a fire extinguisher. By the time I found one, poor old Red was engulfed totally in flames. Even the tires were on fire. Someone had called the fire department, and when the firetruck eventually pulled up, it was too late for Red. As they arrived, a rather memorable last hurray for Red happened. There was an electrical short and Big Red started up and started lurching down the street, full of smoke and flames everywhere. The firemen thought someone was still inside, trying to drive away. They were dragging the hose and running alongside, spraying it with foam and water. One fireman ran up and whacked the driver side window with an axe to see if someone was driving. As the fresh air hit the now broken window area, a small firestorm replaced the smoke and finished off old Red right there on the spot. Melted to the ground in the middle of Main Street. Note: I did not need the pictures someone took to convince the insurance company that it was to be declared a total loss. Rest in Peace, Big Red.

I REMEMBER- Kramore Inn Creperie in Chico

...working in Chico restaurants (part 2). After working at the Italian Cottage for quite a while, I grew my hair down to there, bought a bigger motorcycle and headed to the “City” (San Francisco) to make my fame and fortune…many stories connected here, but later for those.

I eventually came back to Chico and got a job as a waiter and cook at a very cool crepe restaurant called the Kramore Inn. The restaurant morphed into being pronounced: “Cray –Moor Inn” (very sophisticated sounding for economic development reasons)…but in the beginning, owners Steven and David, were goofing one night, trying to come up with a name for their budding restaurant idea, and as they made fabulous food you just couldn’t stop eating…they came up with “Cram More In”.
 
Great little restaurant, where I learned the fine art of being a good waiter. Crackers and banana slices immediately to families with small children, before they even order. Quiet dinner, bigger tip.

Young women tipped the best, sometimes with a slip of paper and a phone number. Young men didn’t tip at all (slobs) and even more insulting, was a table of old ladies…all had to have a separate check, after endless haggling over who ordered what. Then they would each leave a quarter or even less, in small change.

I learned how to cook well, how to make an impressive crepe dinner (all young men should learn how to do this, as it works wonders on a “have dinner at your house” date night).

I also learned the hard way why you don’t ever chip frozen ice off the freezer elements with an ice pick. I had sleepless nights for awhile after stabbing to death the house freezer in the middle of lunch rush and standing by helplessly as Freon spewed out through the stab wound to the coils.

A few days wages covered the repair and paid for the hard-knock lesson.

I REMEMBER-Working in Chico Restaurants & The Music Scene

...working in restaurants while living in Chico [part one]. I had worked in the school cafeteria (Bradley Hall) while a student at Chico State College (1965-1969). I had been "recruited" by the wrestling coach (Doc Peterson) and our 'scholarship' was that he would get us a job, get us all the classes we wanted in advance, without having to stand in line and apply and at least 2 classes we could get an "A" in, to keep our GPA up so we wouldn't be kicked off the team for academic issues.

My job was working in the cafeteria (for about $4.75/hr) and my two gimme classes were sex education that Doc Peterson taught and a communications class where I was actually the DJ on the school radio station ( I now do very well with 60's music trivia contests).

Those classes could be another story, but today it is about working in restaurants in Chico. My first job outside the cafeteria was working for Pizon's Pizza on Nord Ave. where the owner taught us to make intentionally bad coffee, so students wouldn't hang out and take up the tables and lose potential dinner customers. He also watered down the pizza sauce so much, you had to hustle it out to the customer before it separated into red water and tomatoes.

The San Francisco hippie scene was in full swing with the greatest (soon to be classic) rock music and a host of young bands you may have heard of ( Jefferson Airplane - Hot Tuna, King Krimson, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Janis Joplin, Santana, Savoy Brown, The Band, Golden Earring, Delanie-Bonnie & Friends (Eric Clapton), Country Joe & the Fish, Laura Nyro, Sly & the Family Stone, Joy of Cooking, Fleetwood Mac, Guess Who, Seals & Croft, Chicago, Beautiful Day, Albert King, B.B. King, Canned Heat, Cold Blood, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Dino Valenti, Al Kooper & Friends, Mike Bloomfield, Creedence Clearwater, Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck, Frumious Bandersnatch, Sha-Na-Na, Kinks, Taj Mahal, Greatful Dead, Humble Pie, Chambers Brothers, Grand Funk Railroad, Fat Mattress, Noel Redding) and a host of others. As I purge myself of excess, I continue to run across some very cool rememberances of the past. Just found a handfull of playbills from Bill Graham Presents from the late 60's and early 70's - Winterland, Fillmore West, etc. Tickets to see the greatest bands ever were about $3 and on Tues nights from 9pm to 2am was "Sounds of the City" - Auditions, Jams and Guest Performers - only $1.

Anyway, as I said, this is a story about restaurants in Chico (part one)...so I was off to the "City" (often referred to as "Frisco") to live the good life during the Summer of Love (1967) on weekends and even grew (gasp) a mustache and hung out in the Fillmore and in the Haight Ashbury. The owner of the bad coffee, watered down spaghetti sauce, Pizon's Pizza, became paranoid that I would bring back "hippie diseases" in my mustache from the city of sin and infect his restaurant, so it was my job or the mustache. The mustache won.

As I was only 20, I went to the only place that would serve me beer to bemoan my unemployment, The Italian Cottage Restaurant. Very cool place, sawdust on the floor, good pizza, good coffee and good pizza sauce.

They had a job open for night manager, and as I was having a beer while filling out the application...I put down that I was 21. As interim manager, my job was to answer the phones when applicants called about the manager's job. Strangely, none of them seemed to be qualified and I got the job. I managed that restaurant for quite a while and had to forgo an eventual 21st birthday celebration at work, as I had to tell everyone I was turning 22. Every night after work, everyone would head to the "Silver Room Bar," in downtown Chico and I couldn't go, so I wouldn't get carded and expose my tender age. Once, the owner, age 35, got carded at the liquor store buying more wine for the restaurant. He didn't have his ID, so he came back to the restaurant, got me, and took me back to the liquor store to buy the wine. I was terrified I would lose my job, until I discovered I was born for sales and never stopped talking until we were out the door with the wine- never got asked for my ID.

Side bar: a kindly pregnant waitress at the Italian Cottage lent out her birth control prescription to a young couple I knew, as they were too young and too intimidated to get their own. The pharmacy was in "White Front", an early forerunner of stores like Sam's Club. It would have worked, except for the couple's reluctance to pick up the prescription when their name was called over the store loud speaker system. As the waitress's name was Vera Dee Balls ( I am not making this up), the prescription was called out with initials and last name: "V D Balls, your birth control pills are ready." They just left the store and never came back.

Now that my fading memory is jogged a bit - coming soon: partying with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna in Asbury Park, New Jersey and my trip to Woodstock West - the Altamont Free Concert...but not now, as I said before, this about my jobs in restaurants in Chico (part one).

Today's song: Super Jam - Santana, Greatful Dead & Jefferson Airplane