miles behind. I had spent a month during the previous summer hitchhiking around California with a friend, and decided then to attend college there. With a one-way plane ticket and $200.00 in my pocket, I moved to Los Angeles by myself, forsaking the glory days of my senior year of high school to work full-time and get a head start on establishing state residency prior to beginning school at the University of California at Santa Cruz that fall.
At the time, I knew one person in LA, an uncle who had had a nasty divorce from my aunt ten years earlier, whom I had visited briefly during the previous summer. I lived at his home in Downey for the first month, which also coincided with my first job as an independent adult—selling encyclopedias door-to-door. As bad as that gig was, from it came an unexpected benefit. I became friends with a coworker who had a friend with a small house in Temple City who needed a roommate. For the following eight months I shacked up with Perry, who despite being legally blind rode a motorcycle and somehow had a legitimate California state motorcycle license. I got a job at a glass manufacturing company in East LA, which required taking two different buses, over an hour each way, to get to and from work. Although I used daily, my LA experience gave me important opportunities to grow up and provided a less-than-appetizing taste of what the adult world of work can mean, reinforcing my appreciation for higher education.
The University of California at Santa Cruz is a singular place—2,000 acres of redwood-covered forest, interspersed with wide meadows overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the city of Santa Cruz with its stunning beaches, stretches of sand extending between cliffs perched on the northern tip of Monterey Bay. Established by the University of California as an “alternative” campus in 1965, it was unique in combining the resources and prestige of a major university with the intimate feel of a small, liberal arts college and a rigorous academic environment. After exerting so little effort in school, I was finally ready to invest myself academically.
Even still, throughout my tenure at UC Santa Cruz, I walked a tightrope between working hard and performing well academically and pursuing pleasure pharmacologically. I lived on campus my freshman year and my dorm was located next to some administrative offices. On one occasion, an office assistant followed the pungent aroma of pot to my room and politely requested that I find a way to keep the smoke from infiltrating their building. It was as matter-of-fact as if she were asking me to turn down the live Grateful Dead that I routinely played at loud volume.
Wacky names for college intramural sports teams are not unusual, but during my sophomore year our intramural flag football team likely broke new ground. “The U-40s” was the brainchild of a small group of like-minded friends who shared an affinity for both sports and intravenous drug use, and may be the only intramural team ever named after a specific model of syringe.
I graduated in the spring of 1981 with a double major in Psychology and Environmental Studies/Planning and Public Policy, and an asterisk. The asterisk was that while I received my BA in Psychology with Honors, I had completed all of the requirements for my degree in Planning and Public Policy except one—an extensive senior thesis. Environmental Studies, and the degree I didn’t quite yet have, was my real interest. The program at Santa Cruz was state-of-the-art; the coursework was challenging and thought-provoking, and the professors were awe-inspiring yet approachable. My psychology major was also excellent and growth-enhancing, but I added it basically as a throw-in to achieve the distinction of a double major. I had fully planned to finish my senior thesis the year following my graduation.
[IF YOU MEET THE BUDDHA,] SAY HELLO
“Sometimes the light’s all shining on me
Other times I can barely see.”
ROBERT HUNTER, TRUCKIN’, GRATEFUL DEAD
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In October of 1981, a few months after completing one of my two degrees and going through the graduation ceremony at UC Santa Cruz, I went backpacking in Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe with Mick, then one of my closest friends. Mick had graduated the year before me and was working construction at the time, even though he was a genius in science and math. He had an innate ability to understand how the world works on those levels—areas that have always been a mystery to me. Mick was also one of my hardest-core partying partners. There were frighteningly few mind- and mood-altering rocks that we hadn’t turned over together to explore in-depth what was underneath.
The very first time we met, perhaps not surprisingly, revolved around drugs. I was on the prowl for pot during my first week at UCSC, looking to find, not just a place to score now, but a reliable ongoing source. A friend of a new friend directed me to the dorm next to mine, to a room at the end of the top floor, and there was Mick, wanting to know why I was there. Even though I came with my referral source who lived in that same dorm and I looked no older than my eighteen years, complete with long thick hair down to nearly the middle of my back, Mick immediately suspected that I was a cop. As much as I was tempted to respond with laughter and sarcasm, my mission was serious and I didn’t want to risk leaving empty handed, so I asked what I could do to assure him that I was just a new student who wanted to get high. After satisfying him with my answers to a battery of questions, we concluded our business. It took a few months for Mick to warm up to me, but over time we developed a tight bond.
We had planned to be in the wilderness for three days, and stopped at the Safeway in South Lake Tahoe to pick up supplies. Most critically, a quality steak to go with the killer Cabernet Sauvignon that we had selected for the first evening’s meal. After all, camping in the high altitude wilderness of the Sierra Nevada was no reason not to have a high class dinner. While waiting in the checkout line, I gradually became aware that several lines away the cashier seemed to be engaged, and engaging everyone who came through his line, in having an absolutely great time—on the checkout line at Safeway!
The scene was simultaneously bizarre and compelling. I found myself instantly drawn to this cashier and the quality of his interactions with customers. He was short, bald, rotund to the point of being obese, and wore thick old-school black horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He didn’t just greet his customers; he embraced them: each and every one, in a verbal/emotional bear-hug of warm, welcoming, it’s-wonderful-to-see-you-again-my-old-friend energy.
His manner was boisterous to the point of standing out, yet neither obnoxious nor intrusive. It was congruent rather than contrived, as genuine and natural as the Ponderosa Pines and Douglas Fir trees dotting the landscape around Tahoe. I was mesmerized. Although I wasn’t entirely certain what was going on here, I knew that it was exceedingly rare.
Somehow, in the midst of one of the more mundane, often frustrating environments on the planet, this short, bald, fat grocery store cashier seemed to be operating in a state of unadulterated joy that allowed him to appear to float ever so slightly above the ground that constrained the rest of us. There was a certain music and magic to this person and how he related to others and to the world. Whatever it was that he had, I wanted to experience it up close. I then did something I have never done in my entire life, either before or since. I actually switched lines to one with a noticeably longer wait, just so I would have the opportunity to be in personal contact with this phenomenon, whatever it was.
I waited in his checkout line with curiosity, anticipation, and (especially for me) extraordinary patience, noticing more carefully how the customers, without exception reacted to his unexpected and enthusiastic grace with bemused grins and a sense of wonder. When it was my turn, he greeted me with equal élan and a Cheshire cat smile that consumed most of my field of vision. I made direct eye contact and returned his greeting, adding “It’s great to see someone who really seems to know how to enjoy life.” He leaned toward
