1971

My world was Topsy turvy. Things I hoped would happen, didn't. Things I hoped wouldn't happen, surely did. Emotionally I was troubled.

I took my military physical two weeks after landing a job in a stock brokerage firm. Three weeks later,, I was called for military service (army). This was when the Vietnam War was raging.

Away from the New York scene, I went from New Jersey to Texas to Kansas. To say that Kansas was a culture shock is an understatement.

I believed that the world I knew then would change. I didn't know how but I sensed it in my being. The popularity of huge outdoor concerts, anti-war protests, radicalism was waning. 

In July of that year I read that Jim Morrison, the charismatic front man of the rock group, the Doors, died in Paris, France. The previous year Jimi Hendrix and Janis Jopkin have died. All from drugs and all only twenty seven. I was twenty two when Morrison passed. I was heavy until the music scene at that time. Now my heroes were gone.

The final chapter of life as I knew it was drawing to a close. Two songs captured what I was feeling, "Highway Song " by James Taylor and the Doors song "Riders on the Storm " . Confused, lost, inner turmoil, and nowhere to turn. I just wanted to hop on a bus and ride around the country. 

By the end of 1971, this chapter of my life book was closed. Right back at the starting, I was lost. Didn't know which way to go, but I could not stay where I was What was ahead I didn't know.