Writing what I know makes the presupposition that I possess an intimate knowledge of events surrounding my own life. However, this knowledge is so specific to me that it may not reflect what others knew or thought at that same time. If read by a public who grew up and lived in the same manner as me and time as me, they may not see themselves reflected in my work. As a teenager common fashions in the stores were brightly flowered A-lined shifts, embroidered caftans, and bell bottom jeans. Many people my age hummed the same tunes and knew the all words to the latest song by Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. Actually I didn’t follow this path because I wasn’t comfortable with that kind of conformity. I came dressed in one of my few fashionable 1960’s outfits and a friend pointed out to me that it was the same outfit that a popular girl was wearing. I never wore it again.

In 1967 my parents decided it was time to take a grand tour of the country. For three weeks we traveled west of the Mississippi, camping most of the way, hopping from national park to national park (Thank you Teddy Roosevelt, the parks were and still are an excellent idea.).  Halfway through the trip we ended up in San Francisco. Dad wanted to see Golden Gate Bridge, Mom wanted to see Fisherman’s Wharf, and I wanted to ride the cable cars up and down the thrillingly steep streets. My older brother wanted to visit Haight-Ashbury.

So one evening our family, parents with four children nicely dressed for our visit to the big city, walked through this quiet bohemian neighborhood with rows of old apartments crammed against the sidewalk. We stopped in a small store filled with a strange assortment of items; the walls were papered in posters with brilliantly colored surreal patterns. It was the type of establishment that would later be called a head shop. There my older brother got his prized underground newspaper. I found the posters an interesting style, and learned what “psychedelic” meant, but I am sure we weren’t the typical clientele in this birthplace of the hippie movement.

We had taken the grand tour of the country early in the “summer of love.” We arrived at San Francisco when over 100,000 teenagers and college students were about to descend on this same neighborhood to celebrate a counterculture of yet to be illegal drugs and free love. If it hadn’t been a chilly night, when most of the early arrivals were indoors, I am sure my parents would have vetoed my brother’s request. But instead, I had the privilege of sight-seeing in Haight-Ashbury at the cusp of it becoming overwhelmingly famous as a hippie haven, not realizing that my brother knew things ahead of his peers.

As I look back on my life, I realize writing about what I didn’t know can be crucial to my work. Even describing my ignorance, such as being at the heart of the “Summer of Love” and not recognizing it, can be more interesting than writing about my world as I knew it.

Photo of university student in Mexico City, Wikimedia commons