The overwhelming majority of readers who have appreciated Summer of Love, A Time Travel, those folks who were adults or young adults the summer of 1967, always ask me, “Were you there?” The answer is no, I was safely dancing ballet, swimming, and climbing trees back in Ohio. When, years later, I was drawn to write about that unique and pivotal period, I set out to capture the sights, sounds, attitudes, and culture from the inside out. I started out with The Haight-Ashbury, A History by Charles Perry, a book he worked on for eight years. From there, I read the daily San Francisco Chronicle from June 21, 1967 to September 4, 1967 on microfiche at the Santa Rosa Public Library (the only place in the Bay area where I could find such an archive). I acquired the gorgeous facsimile edition of The Oracle published by Regent Press and found a complete archive of The Berkeley Barb at the Berkeley Public Library. At Walden Pond Books, Bibliomania, and the now-vanished Holmes Book Company (all in Oakland) and Shakespeare & Company and Moe’s (both in Berkeley), I found rare books such as Lenore Kandel’s infamous Beat poem, Love Needs Care by Dr. David E. Smith who founded the Free Clinic, and Notes From Underground. I borrowed people’s home movies, studied Making Sense of the Sixties, which featured the famous Harry Reasoner clip, and watched Star Trek episodes (no, I’m not a Trekkie, but that research was fun). I acquired Life and Time magazines for June through September, 1967 from online bookstores, as well as a privately published corporate history of Marinship for details on Ruby Maverick’s mother’s experience as a war worker (found that gem at a military books specialist in St. Louis). I spoke with, met, or corresponded with Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Katharine Kerr, Allen Ginsberg, and Allan Cohen, and even spoke by phone with Lenore herself. She told me that the bus fare in 1967 was fifteen cents (not a quarter, as I’d thought) and that there was no Sausalito ferry operating in 1967. We shared a laugh over the fact that her brother wrote some scripts for Star Trek (she proofed the manuscript for me and loved the Star Trek riffs). And, of course, I visited the ‘hood itself and walked through the Portals of the Past. What an education! But an historical novel was not my entire concept for the book. I wanted to juxtapose a far future, a dystopia that could have followed that era, as a commentary on our present. More about that tomorrow. Summer of Love, A Time Travel on Nook and Kindle.

Advertisement