A Close Call, 1973
My Mom had arranged an interview for me for a summer cashier job at the local Stop ’N Go. It was owned by a family friend. I was nineteen, back in the LA area after my first year at UCSC, in slang “Uncle Charlie’s Summer Camp,” because it was a college campus nestled in a coastal redwood forest. Paradise, I would have called it. University of California, Santa Cruz, officially. I had heard, or been told, that the interview would include a polygraph test. Alarm bells went off. This did not bode well. When I arrived in Santa Cruz in the fall of 1972, I had never experimented with illegal drugs. Although I had known several high school friends at (Catholic) Crespi Carmelite High School (all-male) in Encino who did smoke pot, I had never been tempted to indulge. Some who did wore wigs to hide their forbidden long hair. Seriously! Away from home, I determined that I would experiment. My first attempts to smoke marijuana with my dorm mates had been uneventful. It wasn’t until Easter of 19...