Howdy, folks. I spent twenty-two years on the road, hitchhiking up and down the West Coast, and back and forth across Canada, partying. 1970-1992. It started off when I got released from doing seventeen months in the Orange County Jail for selling $20.oo worth of weed in 1969, and I had no money and nowhere to go when I got out. (Other than the futility of the situation, I had a pretty good time locked up with all those interesting people and other young hippies. I was right across from Timothy Leary during one of his two stays there--also for weed.) The Road, the Sexual Revolution, the Vietnam War, the riots and demonstrations, the music, all that good LSD, the assassinations, the five-years-to-life arrest warrant I skipped out on, combined made for an appreciation of every minute I was alive and free. In 1992, I stopped hitchhiking and started tying my hair back every day began writing. AIDS was in the world, I was getting older, and being on the road was reduced to thumbing between work gigs. In 2003, now 57, I could no longer do the physical work I'd always done to get by, so I returned to SoCal and turned myself in. With the representation of a NORML lawyer, I got everything dropped for a $1,000.oo payoff to the county. I've been having a heck of a time figuring out what to do now to make a living, staying in a downtown L.A. hotel the past three years, going to the library everyday doing the Internet. I advertised on that one website under "Wanted" for somebody's old computer and got one. I got it hooked up to a dial-up service and just last night got the last of a number of bugs out of it. (I'm not a computer person. I've never even used a cell phone.) So now, all I can think of to do, I'm going to start an opinion blog to try to generate some income. I'm checking out HipForums, hoping to find people with ideas, suggestions, pointers, any help or thoughts whatsoever. (I've been getting a lot of favorable feedback from posting articles and essays on a couple other sites, but not making any beer money from it.) I'd rather go out and paint houses and cut firewood, but now I think I'm just going to have to use the perspective I got from all those years of travel and staying with all kinds of different people on writing about current events and our tenuous situation here on Planet Earth these days. I think if anything can save us it's the Internet.
Hello there Thumber & Welcome to the forums. Glad you found your way here, and I hope you run into some of your old friends. There are a few from the Haight days on these threads. Please check out the old hippies group, you may find someone there you once knew. Peaceful thoughts your way.... Farmout
Oh man, what a great story! Sounds like you've had a great life. If you have questions about computers, feel free to send me a private message on here, and I'll be happy to help you if I can. Good luck with your blog and everything, I'm sure you'll have enough interesting stories for three of'em! Jimmy
Hello Thumber the way i see it you had a good one look at the good times you .And you are still wiht us, so peace your way , stay happy,
