OT What's your best summer story from the early 1970s?

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Random 70s summer story:

One day this guy who had lived next door to me in college showed up out of the blue. Hadn't seen or heard from him for years, don't know how he found me, obviously the internet didn't exist back then. Maybe the phone book? He arrived in this absurdly huge Cadillac which had seen much better days. He was driving x-country in it, sleeping in the backseat. He'd started in LA, wasn't clear on the final destination. My friend and I had planned to go 'fishing' that day, which really meant going 20 miles up the river, sitting on the flat stone riverbank, smoking and drinking and enjoying a lazy afternoon with our feet in and out of the cool water. So he came along, the three of us had a great time, stories were told, substances consumed, and after awhile he left to drive on over the pass, and I never saw or heard from him again after that.

barfo
 
Summer of 1970. My friend and I were 16 and it was about a week before the start of our junior year. My friend had an older brother, 8 years older than us, who was sort of a "sensei" to us. He'd traveled Europe twice by motorcycle, had been badly wounded in Vietnam and had come back with a heightened appreciation for music, good weed and life in general. His guidance in our lives was inestimable. Anyway, he had just gotten back from a grand tour of Europe (on the back of a 1968 Triumph 650 Bonneville) and had had his bike shipped back to the states. Unfortunately, a major West Coast dock strike was going on, with no end in sight. The brother got tired of waiting on his bike, discovered it was sitting in Vancouver B.C., and so decided to go up and pick it up himself. So he enlisted my friend and I to take him up there in his 1956 VW Bug. It was a great ride up on a Friday morning, and off we went in a cloud of pot smoke and with a cooler of beer.

When we got to Vancouver, the brother uncrated the bike, started it with one kick (Triumphs were such great bikes) and hauled ass off to go visit one of his many girlfriends. Before he left he gave us the keys to the Bug, a bag of weed, $100 and told us to enjoy the journey back home. Again, this was Friday afternoon and we didn't need to be home until Sunday evening. So we hit an all you can eat Chinese buffet (99 cents!) and started heading east (still north of the border). My friend had a sister (hey, that family had 9 kids. Fucking Catholics....) who was married to an Air Force officer stationed at Fairchild AFB in Spokane. We drove until the effects of the day and the weed caught up to us and then spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in the car on a side road. Woke to a beautiful morning and had a huge farm breakfast in some small town, served by very attractive and buxom young Canadian farm girls. Continued east, smoking our brains out, as we still had to cross back over the border, we were long hairs and we didn't want to risk taking any weed back across (We were too stupid and/or stoned to bear the thought of actually throwing good weed away).

We got to a tiny border crossing north of Colville, where we were the only "customers". It was manned by a cranky old man, who took one look at us (Jesus and his disciple with an huge Afro) and pulled us over for inspection. We were high AF and extremely paranoid. As absolutely no one else was crossing at such a remote location, he had all the time in the world. We thought we had done a masterful job of getting rid of any evidence but damned if we hadn't left a single seed in the glove box. We had just made that old fart's day. So for the next hour plus he tore that car apart (as much as he could) and wouldn't even let us use the restrooms until he was done. He didn't find anything else, which did not improve his mood. He finally let us go when another car finally came along. So we continued on to Spokane, where we were well fed, put up for the night in comfortable beds and given the grand tour of a SAC base, including checking out the B-52s.

The next morning we headed for home. Somewhere mid gorge the Bug started cutting out due to electrical problems and finally died just east of Multnomah Falls. Within minutes we were picked up by a car load of friendly hippies who were only too happy to take us home (and share their weed all the way there). For two 16 year old knuckleheads who agreed to a spontaneous offer on a Friday morning, it turned out to be a helluva fun adventure......
 
UncleCliffy'sDaddy said:
Summer of 1970. My friend and I were 16 and it was about a week before the start of our junior year. My friend had an older brother, 8 years older than us, who was sort of a "sensei" to us. He'd traveled Europe twice by motorcycle, had been badly wounded in Vietnam and had come back with a heightened appreciation for music, good weed and life in general. His guidance in our lives was inestimable. Anyway, he had just gotten back from a grand tour of Europe (on the back of a 1968 Triumph 650 Bonneville) and had had his bike shipped back to the states. Unfortunately, a major West Coast dock strike was going on, with no end in sight. The brother got tired of waiting on his bike, discovered it was sitting in Vancouver B.C., and so decided to go up and pick it up himself. So he enlisted my friend and I to take him up there in his 1956 VW Bug. It was a great ride up on a Friday morning, and off we went in a cloud of pot smoke and with a cooler of beer.

When we got to Vancouver, the brother uncrated the bike, started it with one kick (Triumphs were such great bikes) and hauled ass off to go visit one of his many girlfriends. Before he left he gave us the keys to the Bug, a bag of weed, $100 and told us to enjoy the journey back home. Again, this was Friday afternoon and we didn't need to be home until Sunday evening. So we hit an all you can eat Chinese buffet (99 cents!) and started heading east (still north of the border). My friend had a sister (hey, that family had 9 kids. Fucking Catholics....) who was married to an Air Force officer stationed at Fairchild AFB in Spokane. We drove until the effects of the day and the weed caught up to us and then spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in the car on a side road. Woke to a beautiful morning and had a huge farm breakfast in some small town, served by very attractive and buxom young Canadian farm girls. Continued east, smoking our brains out, as we still had to cross back over the border, we were long hairs and we didn't want to risk taking any weed back across (We were too stupid and/or stoned to bear the thought of actually throwing good weed away).

We got to a tiny border crossing north of Colville, where we were the only "customers". It was manned by a cranky old man, who took one look at us (Jesus and his disciple with an huge Afro) and pulled us over for inspection. We were high AF and extremely paranoid. As absolutely no one else was crossing at such a remote location, he had all the time in the world. We thought we had done a masterful job of getting rid of any evidence but damned if we hadn't left a single seed in the glove box. We had just made that old fart's day. So for the next hour plus he tore that car apart (as much as he could) and wouldn't even let us use the restrooms until he was done. He didn't find anything else, which did not improve his mood. He finally let us go when another car finally came along. So we continued on to Spokane, where we were well fed, put up for the night in comfortable beds and given the grand tour of a SAC base, including checking out the B-52s.

The next morning we headed for home. Somewhere mid gorge the Bug started cutting out due to electrical problems and finally died just east of Multnomah Falls. Within minutes we were picked up by a car load of friendly hippies who were only too happy to take us home (and share their weed all the way there). For two 16 year old knuckleheads who agreed to a spontaneous offer on a Friday morning, it turned out to be a helluva fun adventure......
Click to expand...
What an adventure! That's the good stuff right there!
 
The great thing about my time in 1972 in San Francisco was being stationed in Treasure Island waiting for my orders to Viet Nam....if I didn't have guard duty at night..(coldest I've ever been in my life) my buddies and I would rent a Pinto every day and drive into the city and go to concerts at Winterland, Fillmore or the Berkley Ampitheater. I saw all the great bay area bands many, many times and one weekend I had tickets to see Miles Davis in Berkley and after changing clothes and getting ready to go to the show, I got my name called to report for Clark Airforce base and fly to Viet Nam....got to the airport with my duffle bag in my Navy whites and waited in that airport for 2 days for my flight. Hurry up and wait, the military logo. I could have seen Miles Davis that weekend but I spent it dosing on a duffle bag and very soon, flying overseas for the first time. It was one of the game changing days of my life.
 
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