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Summer of 74 and Free Love I t was May, 1974 and I was back in Watervliet. I was still in the apartment but without Dottie. I found a job with Lathem Electric working in their warehouse. It paid pretty well although not as mush as Freihofer”s Bakery, but the bakery job would have been only for the summer and I needed a job right away. Lathem Electric was an electrical equipment wholesaler. It was a pleasant enough place and since it was working in a warehouse I could wear jeans and t-shirts to work, my favorite mode of dress. I am a total jeans and t-shirt kind of guy. I quickly became friends with one of the owner's sons who also worked in the warehouse. We would frequently have lunch in his van listening to Pink Floyd's “Dark Side of the Moon”. You likely can imagine what kind of lunch we were having... A fter Dottie left me my neighbor Angie, who lived in the apartment above me, hung out with me to commiserate and cheer me up. She had just recently ha...

Eugene Oregon Take One T he winter of 1973/74 I packed up my stuff and went up to Watervliet to say goodbye to Dottie. A friend of mine, Joe, was going to ride with me out to Ypsilanti, Michigan. His girlfriend was attending East Michigan State there. I still had my Saab 96 so I was limited as to how much I could pack. The Saab 96 is not much larger than a Volkswagen Bug. I was not going to be able to get everything in the Saab so I organized all my stuff and packed things in priority order. That meant I packed my stereo equipment first and then all my records. I had about 100 albums, so after those items there was not much space left. I packed a few more things and then, in order to make the best use of the space left, I packed all my clothes loose. I stuck them into every nook and cranny filling all the space I had left. I held out a small gym bag that was just large enough to carry some toiletries and additional clothes I would need for the trip. I carefully cl...