Handwritten page of a diary dated June 15, 1966
… since Grandpa’s house smells like old people ever since Great Grandma moved in with him. But then I asked him if I could park my van behind his garage for the summer (because it is his very own daughter who is driving me out of our house by saying that if she hears my radio playing the Beaker Street show on that Little Rock station ONE MORE NIGHT she will make me move in the basement with Uncle Dwayne) (the chainsmoker) (and she will turn my bedroom into a sewing room).
So Grandpa not only said yes I could live back there beside his old truck, but he got some old circus tent out of his garage and draped it around a porta-potty. He calls it my “privy.” I thanked him about a hundred billion times and he said some day when I’m “rollin’ in clover” I can pay him back by giving him a little cottage on the grounds of my estate. So I said “Deal.”
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On good nights, i would lie awake late (for me that is) and listen to Beaker Street all the way in Iowa CIty. When my brother went off to school, I stole his clock radio because it had a better antenna :)
We also had that exact VW bus, with the tent on top. We drove it from IC to Alaska in about 1967 (68???) along the old Alaska Hiway…a fancy term for ‘really long dirt road’. Camped all the way across the country, learning to read ‘chapter books’ beside the campfires
Now my mom lives in an apt. in the basement….guess that means im rollin’ in clover…and guess that means you just about summed up my life ….. thanks.
Andy
If I could go in a time machine, I’d try to “accidentally” bump into you on the road (you wouldn’t know my name yet since we didn’t meet till the 70s) and weasel my way into one of those campfires nights.