Boston

There are only two cities in the United States I find magical - Boston and San Francisco. There are dozens of places I'd rather live right now, but in their prime, when rents were cheap and excitement free, these were the only two places to be.

I was lucky enough to be in Boston during its heydey - 1967 to 1970. This was before the Highway 128 loop; before high-tech and abundant jobs; before a vital downtown; before massive traffic jams at Logan Airport and "the dig." This was when 250,000 students defined the town, when radical politics and the sexual revelation collided with Back Bay and the Catholic Church.

It started innocently enough for me. My dad dropped me off at Tufts in mid September 1967, and I languished in my room for two weeks, homesick, wondering why I hadn't gone to the University of Maryland, 20 miles from my parents' home in Annapolis. Truth be told, I didn't like being at home much - my mother was drinking and was loud and vicious much of the time - but I didn't like starting over, either. I have had little fascination with the unexpected and unknown in my life, except, ironically, during my time in Boston. My roommate didn't make things any easier. Bobby Deutsch was a good enough guy. He was a local kid - which made me teary - and a bit of a nebbish. He ended up in politics, and was elected years later to the Massachusetts House. There was nothing between us. I needed a friend and Bobby was campaigning for some office within a week of getting on campus.

But soon enough, I came out of my funk. Met the other great guys on my floor. Switched roommates; got approached by fraternity; went to a Red Sox game; walked around the city; learned the stops on the MTA; became a serious student. And that was my fourth week at school.

By November, I was settled, happy drinking beer with my soon to be frat brothers, including Dave Schrumm, my roommate and later to be first citizen of Cheshire, Connecticut, and Marc White and Gary Fradkin, our next door neighbors in the dorm.

Everything was on track, chugging along towards a typical college experience - four years and out and on to my place in some stellar company and successful career.

Fortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

It's 1967: Where are the Drugs?

I certainly didn't know where the drugs were in 1967. I was born in Australia, raised in the US, attended a fine school, hung out which inquisitive minds, but I didn't have a clue when I graduated from Prep School in 1967. I thought Dylan songs were better covered by Peter, Paul and Mary and the Byrds, that the Beatles had peaked on Rubber Soul, that Johnson was OK and the War In Vietnam was an inconvenient necessity.

My immediate concern was college. I had been admitted to Duke and Penn for undergraduate work, but I had decided I'd go to Tufts, outside Boston. They were all good schools, but my American family came from Boston, and I felt some tug there. I could say that I looked at the summer of 1967 as a blow out summer, my "American Graffiti" moment, but the thing I lacked most in 1967 was perspective, the ability to see myself in context, and because of that, I was dull to the meaning of everything.

The summer of 1967 was beer and beer, drunken drives in fast cars, aimless searches for loose women, punctuated by a couple of road trips. I made it through that summer with the help of a couple of close buddies, and when August ended, my dad and I headed for New Hampshire, for some bonding before I started school. I could say I was excited, but I realized later that I'd been in a state of shock most of my life prior to 1968, and what I was mostly as we drove through Connecticut and Southern New Hampshire was numb.

Not knowing what was going on, but hoping something would happen. Anything.