As I mentioned earlier, from December of 1966 until June of 1967, I worked at the South Gate Rod and Gun Club every Saturday and Sunday and hated almost every minute of it. We "trap boys" were treated poorly and paid almost as badly, $1.25 per hour. I think Mike's and my trip to San Diego was a reaction to my finally having quit. After graduation, I got a job through my dad at A.U. Morse and Company just off of Atlantic Blvd. in Los Angeles, unloading the weekly truck delivery of heavy case upon case of wallpaper. I also filled orders from paint stores and individual contractors for the wallpaper that A.U. Morse sold. I took the bus each way every day that first summer, intending to quit in the fall when college began at East L.A.J.C. My salary underwent a very modest increase to $1.35 per hour over the gun club. Our supervisor, Joe, was Italian and played the horses every week. My coworkers were generally Hispanic. The office manager was a white woman; all the women who took the phone orders were also white. The manager in charge of all the salesmen was a white man, as were all of the wallpaper salesmen who visited the many paint stores and wallpaper dealers throughout Southern California.
Mike actually got a full-time job that summer through Richard Meyers at a sock warehouse in downtown L.A. When Lilly Butler, the warehouse owner, realized that Mike was an even more industrious worker than Richard, she let Richard go. Mike felt really bad about that. We didn't hear much from Richard after he was fired until he was called up for the draft. He told me over the phone that he had had to take the bus to the downtown draft board. The bus ride was miserable, he explained, and the passengers were disgusting. The day was a bad one, with the smog particularly pungent downtown. Vagrants lined the sidewalk when he got off the bus and entered the draft building. However, during the intrusive physical, he was found to have a bad elbow and was declared physically exempt from the draft. He summed up his day by saying that he stepped back outside and noticed that the birds were chirping and the sky was a brilliant blue. He noticed the lovely Mexican people strolling along the sidewalks of downtown LA and admired their rich culture. Needless to say, his mood and his outlook had improved considerably.
That phone call, however, was pretty much the last we heard from Richard Meyers. He didn't go to college, he was no longer working at the sock warehouse, and he didn't have to worry about serving in the military and being sent to Vietnam. Whatever happened to his life after that, we never heard.
For me now, with a steady, if paltry, income, and having flown on a PSA Electra from San Francisco, a TWA 880 from Kansas City, between LAX and Orange County both ways on a Bonanza F-27, and to San Diego on a National Airlines DC-8 and back on a Delta Airlines DC-8, I was making up for lost time and had been bitten by the flying bug. When I learned that my cousin Doug was back on leave from Alaska with the Air Force, I decided to fly up and spend the weekend with him and Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd. Not one to take the direct route if something unique was in the offing, I took a Pacific Airlines 727 flight from LAX via Santa Barbara and Monterey, CA, to San Francisco, then rode in an SFO Helicopter over the bay to Oakland where Doug picked me up. (A Pacific Airlines 727 is featured in the film MONTEREY POP, carrying rock groups up from L.A. Pacific Airlines had also begun a controversial ad campaign with Stan Freberg not long before my flight, to allay infrequent flyer's' fears of flying. The stewardesses wore hot-pink, mini-skirt uniforms and gave out hot-pink plastic lunch buckets with a security blanket and rabbit's foot inside them. Unfortunately, the whole ad campaign had ended abruptly, and all that remained aboard the aircraft were the hot-pink uniforms and a sign on the front bulkhead that plainly advised those inclined to be nervous: "Relax!" Pacific Airlines would merge with Bonanza Airlines and West Coast Airlines in 1968, to form Air West.)
On Saturday my cousin and I drove over the bay in his '58 Chevy to visit a former classmate of his living in San Francisco. We then drove to Fisherman's Wharf. We also drove through Haight-Ashbury that had already become a mecca for tourists wanting to check out the new hippie haven. The Summer of Love was already in full swing, but I don't think any of us in the car really got the reality of it. We saw a guy with long hair, leading a stoned young woman wearing only a T-shirt down the sidewalk. Once we could, we got out of the heavy traffic and headed back to San Leandro.
On Sunday evening, when I arrived at Oakland airport for the trip home, I was told that my flight had been cancelled. I would have to catch a later flight out of San Francisco. I paid Doug's friend five bucks to drive me to San Francisco International where I caught the Air California Electra to Orange County. I was able to get a bus from their to Disneyland, but that was the end of the line. I had to call mom to pick me up there, for which she was none too happy. Uncle Robert was visiting us, and I think he thought, after he'd heard my story of what had happened, I was pretty inventive to have gotten that close to home before running out of options.
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