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Kyoko DHE – Dental Hygienist Extraordinaire K yoko has been my dental hygienist for the last 20 or so years. This is my story on finding her and how she became so important to me that I feel compelled to write a story about her. I know it probably seems a bit of a reach that I would write about my dental hygienist but hopefully that will become more clear to you after reading this. F or a long time I had an on again, off again relationship with the dentist office. From the time I got out of the Air Force in 1972 until somewhere around 1980 I had no relationship at all. During that period, I not only did not see a dentist, I also did not see any kind of doctor, the only exception was when I broke my arm playing basketball. In 1980 I finally gave in and decided to see a dentist. I found a dentist I liked in San Jose, but I can't remember his name. When I select a dentist it's always very important that they have a good dental hygienist and by good I mean someone who ...

  Heidi Heidi in my apartment in SF - 1984 S hortly after I met Heidi I was talking with my mom when she remarked that she thought it was great how failed love relationships did not seem to discourage me from starting up new ones. By her count I'd already been through 4 serious relationships, Donna, Dottie, Cyd, and Kathy. I hadn't thought about it. I knew a couple of people who, after a failed relationship, became more guarded about getting involved again. That was not me. I think one reason may be that I don't think of relationships that end as necessarily failures. I also am not one to look too far back or forward. I tend to live in the current week. And maybe most of all, I find the feeling of falling and being in love so intoxicating and marvelous that I could not see where past experiences would keep me from doing it again. Is there a greater feeling or a bigger high in life than falling in love with someone who is also falling in love with you? Not for ...

Heidi and her Mother and Me Heidi 1983 D on't ask me why, but I've always been considered trustworthy, at least by those who don't know me well. In my employment ventures I was almost always the one they put in charge when the boss was gone. I was the one who the big boss would pick out to do a special job when one needed doing. For example: I had a summer job at E.J. Korvette where they made me the acting manager of the Toy Department when the manager left. I was a teenager and they had other permanent employees working in the department. They are no longer in business but I like to think that wasn't because of me. Another example: I worked as a delivery guy for a lighting and lamp parts warehouse. When the owner who ran the warehouse went in for an operation I was asked to take over managing the warehouse while he was gone even though there were 3 full time warehouse workers. I do have to admit that I wasn't looked on quite so favorably by my bosses in ...

1984: Back to San Francisco with a New Job, and More SF: Looking down Market Street from Twin Peaks I t's 1984. 1984 of course is the title of George Orwell's sci-fi classic, a literary rebellion against “Big Brother”. '84 is the year Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to run on a presidential ticket in the US but the Reagan/Bush ticket easily won the election. It was also the year of the Orwellian Macintosh Super Bowl commercial that sort of opened the door for the Super Bowl commercials craze that's still with us today. Other items of note: Alex Trebek debuted on Jeopardy, Hong Kong returned to China, and Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father when Marvin attempted to intervene in a fight between his parents. I am not a person who gets bored easily but I am also a person who likes change, especially when it comes to things like where I live and work. I don't know why that is. As 1984 came around I was about to turn 35. I'd had 2 marriage...

1983 – Goodbye... 1983 was the year of the 2 nd US Festival but it was more than that. How much more? Well let me think... That year the final episode of the popular TV show M*A*S*H was aired, all 2&1/2 hours of it. The Senate created a new National Holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear (some might say it feels like it's gone again...). I was living in an apartment complex in Cupertino. That complex backed up to the Tymshare building where I worked. It was faster to walk to work than it was to drive my car from the apartment parking lot to the Tymshare parking lot. To get to work I literally walked out the back gate of the complex grounds that opened into the Tymshare parking lot. I could go from my apartment to my cubicle on the second floor of the Tymshare building in less than 5 minutes. I could, and did, go home for lunch frequently. I liked my Tymshare job, I liked my boss, and I had made a number of...

  Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks   - Now Playing in Valparaiso In '71 or '72 I visited my friend Bill in Valparaiso (Valpo) and it was during that visit when I first heard the music of Dan Hicks. Bill and I were at his friend Duke's place and Duke was playing a Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks album on his stereo. Dan Hicks' first album with his Hot Licks was released back in 1969. Prior to that he had been a drummer in a group called “The Charlatans” out of the Bay Area. I was not aware of that group at the time either. When we walked into Duke's I immediately noticed the music (Dan Hicks) and liked it. After a couple of songs I asked Duke about it and made a mental note to purchase some Dan Hicks albums when I returned home. That was one of the highlights of that trip for me but that trip turned into a very odd visit. This was my first visit back to Valpo since I was there on leave to marry Donna back in '69 and really the first trip back where I was th...

  Checkers with Andre M y mom heard someone talking about the NYC Fresh Air Child Program on the radio one day. It was a program that finds host families for children from inner city under served communities. A host family takes in a child from a poor family for a week or two over the summer essentially providing a child a sort of summer vacation with a family in the suburbs or the country. Mom inquired about the program and she and my father decided to host. The organization asked my mom what kind of child she was interested in and she asked for a boy near my younger brother's age. My brother was probably around 9 and being 9 and a half years older that would put me at 18 or 19. I was a freshman in college at the time. They asked her if she had any preferences in regards to race or ethnicity. My Mom asked which kids they had the most trouble placing. The answer, not surprisingly, was black children so my Mom said she would like a black child. S o that summer Andre f...

The US Festival Part II - 1983 M y brother Pete and I attended the first US Festival on Labor Day Weekend in 1982. The festival was put on by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and he lost a bundle on it. Of course he still had plenty of money and now experienced, he decided to do it again and planned a second US Festival for the Memorial Day Weekend in 1983 just a little less than nine months after the initial US Festival. This time he enlisted a promoter (Barry Fey) right from the start with the intention of not duplicating the loss he suffered in '82. O f course there was a new lineup of acts with just 3 acts held over from the previous festival, The English Beat, Oingo Boingo and Stevie Nicks, this time solo but had previously performed as part of Fleetwood Mac the first time around. Tickets were sold for both the full event as well as for a single day right from the get-go. As I recall the first one only sold full festival tickets until just before the festival date. In ...

The US Festival Part I - 1982 A lthough I love music and I was the right age at the time, I was unable to attend the Woodstock Music Festival in August of 1969. I really wanted to but instead I, along with a few thousand lucky others, was stuck at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi spending that weekend cloistered in a cement cinder block building riding out the brutal attack of Hurricane Camille. Camille still ranks as the 2 nd most intense hurricane to strike the continental U.S. The hurricane actually destroyed the area's wind recording instruments so the maximum sustained wind speed is unknown but from the information that they do have the top reading is estimated to be at least 150 knots (about 175 MPH). Woodstock had to go on without me. F ast forward to 1982. A big music festival was being planned in San Bernadino California by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, The US Festival. (For those of you not familiar with this music festival the US in the name is a pronoun n...

The Bobs Me moving in for a Kiss with Kevin "The Jerk" much to his girlfriends disgust... L ike most of us, I had a group of friends I hung out with in grade school, junior high, and senior high school, as well as my initial attempt at college, Valparaiso University. Born a boy, that group was male although since my teens I have always had female friends as well. The members of the group changed along the way but there were always a group of guys around that I did things with. Once I hooked up with Donna and dropped out of college I never really had a regular group of male friends again. I tended to only have a friend or two at any one time. The exception was when my brother came out to California to live with me. A fter my break up with Kathy I moved out of the Sunnyvale house to my own place in Los Gatos. Pete and Frank continued to live there and they found a new roommate, Laura. Although Laura was close to Pete and Frank's age, she was a bit of a throw ba...