After completing college in 1978, I decided to leave Ann Arbor for Los Angeles in a half-baked scheme to fling myself off the deep end and into adulthood in a big strange city, leaving behind my home town with its close and dear friends, plus ghosts and memories in every neighborhood, park, store and other venue from the 23 years of my young life there. Lacking a really well thought out plan, this one at least made me feel like I was moving forward with my life somehow.

I was readying myself to depart from my comfortable little university town, seemingly every inch of it so familiar to me with memories of one or another experience, good and bad, from my youth. All those tree-lined streets I had walked, barefoot and shirtless on warm summer nights, bundled in down jacket, wool beanie and scarf wrapped round my nose and mouth on pristinely frigid winter days, or in the spring rain, with or without an umbrella. All those parks I had frequented, for little league practice and games as a kid, later late night in their hidden tree groves to surreptitiously share a joint, bottle of wine, or a six-pack of beer with friends. The university buildings I had had classes in or the Graduate Library where I skulked the sub-basements looking for dusty tomes written by dead radicals. The many toy, hobby and other stores I had patronized to buy Avalon Hill board games, slot cars, plastic army men, Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel record albums. The movie theaters I had spent hundreds of hours in watching movies and those iconic blue-lit clocks up high to the side of the big screen assuring me that this particular movie adventure had a ways to go yet. Continue reading →