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Youth is truly wasted on the young

I remember it was a Sunday morning because the church parking lot across the street was packed with cars and my radio alarm woke to the sound of Charles Stanley sermonizing about the signs of the times'. Earlier in my life I'd gone a few places I should have never let me go, but that day, I should have listened to my inner voice as it not so quietly warned me I was about to start down my own little yellow brick road, complete with Tin Man, Scarecrow and one very cowardly Lion.
I don't really think it was destiny calling me away from the safety and comfort of the well padded cell of my youth, but more likely the promise of a new adventure. I remember thinking, "Change is good for the soul." I suppose at the time the reference to soul pacified my anxiety and made me feel like everything was going to be OK.

That summer in 1969 truly was the beginning of my downfall, although I believe the previous years in Viet Nam may have had a little to do with my decision to shelf my previous moral and ethical codes, while I "tuned in, turned on and dropped out by visiting the magical and mysterious world of the social rebel. Hippyville! "San Francisco here I come."
And there I went. My duffel bag over one arm, my guitar's soft case over the other, I loaded into my V.W. bus and never looked back. Well, maybe once or twice.
The first person I met in Frisco was the Tin Man. "Name's James. Call me Jim I'll pop your chin!" He said with a grin, shaking my hand as if the action would bring a flood of well water spewing from my mouth.
"Robert." I didn't really care what he called me. I didn't think I'd be seeing him much after that first night in Golden Gate Park. But the next morning there he was and for the next two yearsthere he was.
We ended up calling him Tin Man because he was a percussionist. Previously the drummer with a small unknown country western band in Austin Texas, he'd decided to go to Frisco "Ta get me a few of them free love chicks and find me another band ta hook up with."
Two days later, after I'd had my first taste of pot, my first taste of free love and my last taste of acid, Tin Man and I met Scarecrow. "Nathan Williams, from Cherry Point North Carolina. Where you boys from?"
The Tin Man answered for both of us, then ask Nathan if he knew how to play the ax he carried in his old beat-up leather case. It was large enough to carry the base guitar, two changes of clothes, a douche kit (military slang

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