1975

After being released from the U.S. Navy, I lived in an apartment building in Norwalk, California with two of my friends from the service.  John was a friend I had known at Clark Center Bowl and I was later surprised to see in boot camp in San Diego.  Mark was from South Bend, Indiana.  I met him at the Lemoore Naval Air Station where we both worked in the electronics shop.  John, Mark and I enjoyed a carefree, post-Navy life for several months going to movies and sporting events and playing loud music on our stereos.  We were eventually joined by Claire, a woman-friend who John had met when he was stationed at Whidbey Island, Washington.  Claire quickly became the leader of our "gang of four."

I do not smoke and never have.  However, my friends were quite adventurous in this regard.  I remember one day when I joined them on a trip to obtain something to smoke from a connection known to one of them.  At the place, the three of them tested the product and purchased some.  All of them really started to feel the effect of it on the drive home.  John was driving at about 20 mph on the freeway.  He had smile-face and, Mark and Claire were giggling about the license plate on the car in front of us because it "looked like a tuna can."  I could see that the two-dimensional plate had some resemblance to a can but I was not as amused as the other three.  At the time, I thought that was the craziest thing I had ever done.  [JAM 2/2/2011]

 

Lorna Rae Shrum (Daley) and I had our first date on New Year's Eve.  We had met earlier in the year at the lab where she worked as the inspection department secretary.  She was married when she first came to work there but she soon separated and then divorced her first husband.  [JAM 6/12/2020]