Brenda and I met in Signal Hill, California in March 1967.  I had just come up from chartering a 72 foot sloop to Spanish Wells in the Bahamas and driven across the country from Miami to Los Angeles in my bright red 3.4 liter Jaguarover the 10,000 foot Loveland Pass in Colorado,  in a blinding snowstorm at midnight.. I hit a deer on the way and the Jaguar's mouth ( on my hood ornament ) was still  full of deer meat and hide. I was high on adrenalin.

After a brief stop in San Francusco to drop off  the model from my oil painting class at the University of Alabama,  I arrived at the Beach Terrace Inn in Long Beach, California. It was an incredibly romantic place.  My room was dug into a cliff, below street  level, with a lovely private terrace and a spectacular view of the ocean.

On our first formal date,  Brenda and I went out to the Coconut Grove in the old Ambassador Hotel on Wlshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles ( the same place where Robert Kennedy was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan  a decade later, and also the scene of a notorious deadly fire a couple of decades earlier).  The old hotel is gone now, but it was smething to behold in its heyday.  We arrived late for a performance by Lou Rawls, the Mojo singer and the mighty hawk from Chicago, but we made a spectacular entrance when the Maitre'D and two waiters carrying 2 chairs and a table over their heads pushed across the packed ballroom floor and set us up right in front of the stage with Mr. Rawls singing directly in front of us, almost within arms reach.  It was well worth the $100 bill I pressed into the Maitre D's hand just before our entrance.  A hundred dollars went much further in those days.

We had a high flying, intoxicating courtship.  We would fly up to San Francisco from Los Angeles just to party or dine out for the evening.  Sometimes I had to be back at work in Huntington Beach the next morning. The sky was the limit and the world was our oyster.  The Fairmount and the "Top of the Mark" were our favorite cocktail hangouts.  Big Sur and the Haight and North Beach were our "hippy hangouts".  On several trips we rented a cabin at the Highland Inn in Carmel, advertised as "the most beautiful place in the world".   Our cabin was right above Kim Novac's house on the Carmel cliffs looking out Into the Pacific Ocean.

One weekend ,while staying at the Highland Inn ( one of the more expensive inns in Califodnia) we met some flower children who were camped out at Lime Kiln Creek ( on Highway 1, south of Monterrey ) . We spent the weekend sleeping on the dirt floor of their Indian wigwam, while our luggage slept in comfort at our high priced lodgings in Carmel.  Life was an adventure. We were living  the " Dawning of the Age of Aquarious ",  without any of the drug after effects..  We were lucky in love.

Brenda took a chance, twice- and married me twice - once in Mexico, with Denise as our best man, and once again in Long Beach in 1973 , after we  made a couple of  cross-country trips with our full entourage of  two cats, a German shepard and four kids and on at least one occasion, a grandmother.  We spanned the economic hurdles of high life and low life ( 4 stars and no stars ).  But we were never poor in spirit.  Not even when on our last trip as a unit we landed in California once again with exactly  43 cents total ( we counted it ).  A month later we were living in a four bedroom ranch house with a swimming pool.

Much of our life style of  boom and bust was caused by economic after-shocks in the aerospace defense industry.  On our final landing in California in 1971,  we jettisoned all our worldly goods ( we couldn't pay the shipping charges ) and started over. I went back to school while Brenda worked as a waitress and in a couple of three or four  years I had three or four more degrees and had retrained, or rehabilitated,  myself ( depending on your view-point ) from the physical sciences to the social sciences.

Now that all of our children are grown and on their own ( to varying degrees ) we have an  "empty nest".  So, we are free to flee or fly the coop whenever we want.  Last year we were in the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  The year before we were in Yellowstone Park in Wyoming and Utah.  We got there by following the " Oregon Trail "  along the North Platte through Nebraska and Iowa.  We covered the old " Pony Express " route.  We know the prairie country and the mountains and the deserts and the oceans and the rivers.  We've been there.

And we've been to Paris and Rome and the wine country of southern France and the Swiss Alps and the glacier at Chamonix and the water fountains at Lake Geneva  and the gold coast of  Monte Carlo and the Riviera and the woods in Maine and the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec and Montreal and  Key Largo and Key West in Florida and DisneyWorld in Orlando and DisneyLand in Anaheim and Tiajuana and Cozumal and Chiappes and Qintana Roo and  Chichenitza and Uxmal down in ole Mexico.  We've been there.

If  Brenda is not too tired we may travel to a few more places.  We had planned to sail around the world on a freighter, but Brenda got seasick crossing the Florida Straits.  But no matter where we go, we will always return to California, "God's country".  Our friends and family are far flung, across all the states.  We enjoy visiting them.  Home is where the heart is.