For those who lived it, California in the 70’s and 80’s was time run wild. It was the years of water bed shops in OB, British Invasion rockabilly revival, Dylan being booed at the Sports Arena for going Christian on the eve of Johnny Rotten.  It was the drought ridden years when people drained their swimming pools and boarders from Venice Beach learned to skate them.  Of  PSA 182 crashing in flames in our neighborhood.

PSA 182 crashing in North Park

Most of my friends were selling weed and discovering ever better ways to rip each other off.  It seemed that if you were fourteen in those years, your parents were gone or disappeared in divorce or drinking.  And so their kids pulled their own disappearing acts into weed and meth.

The only truths told were the lies to one another.  And it was all mostly bad whether it was true or not.  You might say one day that Gerry Coon’s sister worshipped the devil. You might say that she had gathered with her friends at the pentagram laid into the stone work of the old Presidio. And that they performed satanic rituals there.  That she had stolen someone’s cat.  That she killed it that night.  But it’s not true.  None of it.  She never drank the blood.  She did not kill the cat to be real cool. Despite how the stories spread.  A song was never written.  How could it have been?  We were kids.  Not the stuff of legends.