How Could I Forget?

On this day in 1974… I woke up in a field about 100 yards behind a gas station in Vacaville, California. I had spent the previous day hitchhiking north from Lompoc, California on my way back to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where I was stationed at the time. My hitchhiking luck pretty much ran out around midnight the previous day; cars were so few and far between on the on-ramp where my last ride had let me out that I decided to call it a day. I picked out a nice comfy spot in the aforementioned field, put my head down on my backpack, covered myself with a light jacket and fell asleep…sorta. One doesn’t sleep all that well out in the open, ya know. I probably woke up every fifteen minutes or so, but even fitful sleep beats the Hell out of standing on a freeway on-ramp at 0200, waiting for cars that never come.

So. I woke up for the final time at first light, brushed myself off, collected my things, walked a short distance to that gas station and cleaned up as best I could…using cold water…in their rest room. From there I went to a coffee shop about a quarter of a mile away, bought a paper, ordered coffee and began to read. I was both shocked and supremely gratified to read that Nixon had announced his resignation the previous day and that Gerald Ford was to be sworn in as president at noon Eastern Time today…August 9, 1974.

I finished breakfast and walked back down the street to the I-505 on-ramp and resumed my hitchhiking trip back home. The rides came easily the rest of that day, the sun seemed a little brighter, and I was back “home” in the barracks at Kingsley Field late that evening, full of cheer and good will toward men. My Buds and I got roaring drunk and partied like there was no tomorrow...celebrating Nixon's Fall. It was that much of an occasion, Gentle Reader.

I was a moonbat.

More later on today, but first I have to get my stuff together and go to the frickin’ laundromat. I’m absolutely, positively out of clean clothes. Completely, as in: “I did it AGAIN.” And I want to get in and out of the laundromat before the temperature gets to “broil” today.