In the summer of 1966 I graduated from high school. In the fall of 1966, I started my short college career at San Jose State College. While I grew up in the insular and pastoral farm lands of the Almaden Valley, as innocent and naive as the Timmy in the original, black and white TV serial, “Lassie,” my several semesters at San Jose State in the middle 1960s were a wild catalyst of a ride swirling me through quantum leaps in politics, music, social upheaval, sexuality and spiritual philosophy. I was a post adolescent male with tons of potent testosterone surging through my veins, like most all of the other guys I was hanging out with. It was a tumultuous existence. Overall, I would call it rewarding, but, as well, it was living on the edge, the extreme edge. Many lost it there, many chickened out, and I didn’t make it all the way through unscathed.
Growing up, essentially on a solo basis, I got myself as involved in literature and music, and later on, technology, as I could. I had no mentors, my efforts really had no supporters. Maybe a teacher would take some interest in my efforts, but it would only be for the school year. There was no ongoing, long-term support like the students at some place like the Julliard School, which I’ve recently discussed, might get. My parents were interested in making a decent living for their family, as were all the families surrounding us. About the only extra curricular activity I was aware of was Little League Baseball and Wednesday afternoon Catholic catechism in the community center next to the school and I had little interest in either of those. I loved my reading.
I loved my reading but, as much in the other direction, I hated school. As we were locked in the classrooms, static at our desks, I’d slide my shoes off and watch the sea gulls loop in endless spirals over the “perc” ponds (peculation ponds) whose cool, shallow waters would twist up the air so high above the man-made ponds. Across the school yard, the gulls would play and cavort on these narrow, high whirlwinds, making fun of my incarceration. How I wished I could have been up there with them, ha, yep, “free as a bird.”
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It didn’t take me long to empty out the school’s library with my incessant reading. I would wait for the empty afternoons when my mom would drive me and my sister to the Willow Glen Branch of the San Jose Library, so I could bring home a stack of books about all sorts of stuff. On really rare days, we’d make it all the way to San Jose’s Main Library on Market Street, a staunch, old building made from the stones of our rock quarry on Graystone Lane in our Almaden Valley (the old Library is now the San Jose Art Museum).
(to read the conclusion, click here)
