Early influences

   We were able to visit our Dad every summer, if I remember it right. He was living in Palo Alto, CA, pursuing his post-grad work. I don't recall any other names beside SRI, Stanford Research Institute, as to where he worked. There was already a new wife (our step mother) and a little sister. We would do various "kid" things for the couple weeks we had in sunny So. Cal. and Dad did his best to keep us busy.

   We would sleep in the back yard under a ping-ping table in sleeping bags or use the rear trunk area of his 1967 white VW Micro-bus as a fold out bed. Coleen, his new wife, would drive about in their brown convertible Karmann Ghia. It was always fun to vacation in the Bay Area every summer. I would have snail races on the garden hose as it hang from a post out in the garden to the spigot at the house. We would play a sort of "bike polo" as we went to church or school parking lots and kick a flattened soda can around as if we were involved in a match.

   But, there was plenty of "down time." I can remember, in one of the earlier apartments, listening to a Nancy Sinatra album with the song about some Boots that were "Made for Walking." The last house I can  remember was on Addison Avenue, or maybe that was a street name from back in Bozeman, just a stone's throw from the West Bayshore Freeway. This is where I remember listening to Dad's records, the most. He had a Banjo and played for us occasionally. Johnny Horton, Elvis Presley, Peter, Paul and Mary, Arlo Guthrie and, of course, Deja Vu, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, were my favorite albums. I link that CSNY album was the root of my music history.