back in Ardsley, outside of Philly, where I grew up, back living at home, still running and feeling this feeling about being in the Olympic Games someday. I took a job with Jack Bucciarelli as a landscaper. Jack was an authentic Italian, with a terrific Italian accent. Over the phone on the day before I started working, he advised me to pack a lunch, but it came out as, “Ay, bock a launch.” I was amused. The work was hard but kept me strong for my running.

Penn Relays time came around and I asked Jack for a few days off. He was reluctant, so I up and quit, and went to the Penn Relays. This was in April. Once again I was very inspired and being there to watch the stars shine helped me solidify the fact that I wanted to develop as a runner.

The summer of 1969 was spent with friends. We were hanging out as we had for the two years before that at the Hot Shoppes. It was a really turned-on summer. I had my first experience with hashish. It was sweet. The guy I got it from had been an excellent athlete as a swimmer and a wrestler—good enough to go to states in high school.

One day we were just hanging out in the middle of the day when Jack Olone said a friend of his called Dingbat was living outside of Los Angeles and had space for us there, so right then and there, at the drop of that hat, we decided to hitchhike across the USA to Los Angeles, so on the road we went.

On the road

It was an amazing and unforgettable experience. Hitchhiking was still cool back then, and hippies had no trouble getting rides, although we sometimes had to wait for hours for the right ride to come along, but hey, we had the time and the patience. We got rides from all kinds of people in all kinds of vehicles. Everybody was cool. I remember entering onto US Route 66 in St. Louis. I was fascinated. We took that good old Route 66 all the way to Los Angeles, and we hit all of those stops made so famous by the song by Nat King Cole, “Route 66.” It was like it all came alive; it was fabulous. Of course we were weary, tired, hungry, and dirty. We made it to Los Angeles and stayed at my friend Dingbat’s place and it was fun. But soon I returned home, once again hitchhiking back across the United States, this time alone. I still had my running goal in mind.

Back in Philly in July of 1969, I didn’t do much more than I was already doing. I was running daily but also hanging out and getting high and going to rock concerts like the great Atlantic City Pop Festival, which was a two- or three-day event similar to Woodstock, but a month before Woodstock. I got to see and hear Janis Joplin once again and many other great bands, like Creedence. We camped out, barely slept. It was a real free-for-all with plenty of drugs, booze, you name it; it was one of those summer-of-free-love things.

Thad an order blank all filled out, ready to head to Woodstock, but a friend was getting married at home the same weekend, so I stayed home and gave my

Here | am (218)
with the Philadelphia
Pioneers cross-country
team at Belmont Plateau, home of the 1976
AAU cross-country
national championships, and venue for
hippie functions |
attended, like the
Be-In, a groovy
festival full of music
and war protest.

a E e & ‘So a g &

friend T (a member of my CYO track team) a hit of mescaline at the wedding reception, which was then in Technicolor! T loved the mescaline.

As the summer wore down, I was still running and attending hippie functions like the Be-In, a groovy festival full of music, drugs, war protest, and more at Belmont Plateau, home of the 1976 AAU Cross-Country Championships, a fabulous place for running.

There were a lot of organized war protests that fall as students were back in college but mobilized to get together in large masses to protest the war in Vietnam. I was eager to join them as my first track coach had been killed in Vietnam and some of my other friends were coming home dead from ’Nam. It was an intense time.

In November of 1969 I remember hitchhiking to Washington, DC, for a huge war protest. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was there, thousands were there. I arrived in DC that Friday night ready for the big protest scheduled for Saturday on the Mall.

My friend J and Ihad hitchhiked down from Philly and we took acid just before we arrived. We got to sit in a hippie safe house. The whole area was brimming with angry youth. That night we were staying near Dupont Circle; violence was erupting, with some people smashing storefront windows. Out came the canisters of tear gas. I wasn’t even involved in any mayhem but felt the sting of the tear gas while under the influence of LSD. I just got out of the way and made it back to the safe house.

Back home once again, I got a crappy job. I was living at home, running, and still hanging out with my hippie friends. One night I heard some of these friends talking about how they just came back from Maui in Hawaii and how they had lived in this commune known as the Banana Patch and how cool, groovy, and