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dropouts and draft dodgers that ended up here on the

edge of the continent. Anyway, he was speaking at Simon

Fraser University and my friends suggested I go hear him.

He was mesmerizing. His version of transcendental (and

possibly drugged-up) Christian spirituality was so different

from my parents’ old-fashioned by-the-Bible Christianity,

it seemed like it might be the answer to what I was

looking for, at least for a while. He was cool, for an older

guy, and he was surrounded by even cooler young people,

drawing them to him like Christ and his disciples. I was at

loose ends. So when he invited me down to his compound

in California, of course I said yes.

I hopped into my Citroën ID (even then I had a cool car,

though not really a cool car for a teenager) and headed

down the highway to San Jose. I’m not sure now what

I expected, but it wasn’t what I found: a commune, all

young men, living together in this lovely adobe house

with big glass windows, sleeping together, dropping acid.

When he made a move on me, I realized this wasn’t my

scene. I was a goofy kid, what did I know? I hardly knew

what homosexuality was.

I needed to find a way to get out of the house, so I got

a job washing dishes at a twenty-four-hour restaurant.

I also looked up a girl I’d met in Hawaii, who lived nearby,

and we started seeing each other. One night I was coming

home from her place around one in the morning,

driving along Arastradero Road, which is like the

Kingsway of San Jose. As I crossed an intersection,

something flashed right in front of my face. It looked like

a wire wheel. I turned the car around and realized the

intersection was actually a T-junction, with a parking

lot on one side. I looked closer and there was an E-Type

Jag on the roof of a house. A man and woman were

in it, totally inebriated, not a scratch on them. She’d

been driving through the parking lot and hit a log; she

was going so fast, at least a hundred miles an hour,

that they’d become airborne. That car was so close to

me, if I’d been ten seconds, maybe five, ahead, I would

have been dead. I think of that flash now as divine

intervention.

It also made me realize it was time to go home.

It was the end of 1969. The Summer of Love was long

over, and so was my California adventure. So I got in my

car and drove back to Vancouver, all the way in the rain,

without windshield wipers. I got back just in time for

Christmas, parked the car and the axle broke. It never

moved again.

I was twenty-one years old and it was time to figure

out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

But what, I wondered, was that going to be? JF

John meets a Christian guru, who

invites him down to his place in

California. John hops in his Citroën

ID and heads to San Jose, where

he finds a house full of young men,

expanding their minds. It turns out

not to be his scene, and after a

terrifying near-miss while driving,

he returns home to Vancouver in

time for Christmas and the next

step on his journey.

1969

1969

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1968