Excerpt from "Win A Whistle"

... I graduated in the middle of the class in 1969, with pretty Sherry there in her leathers, ready for the bike after the ceremonies. She was the pretty sister I mentioned earlier, and we were together for a year and a half, until I joined up and she stayed behind, “to wait.”
I had started smoking grass and hash, along with the whole frigging world, it seemed, right around the time I graduated high school, and headed down to Maine for a summer at Rose and John’s, and a job in a shoe factory, Auerbach Shoe Co., if I remember right. I visited the Dragomirs, and was very put out to find that Kristy had moved to Rhode Island with a guy from University. Because of the job, and a little bit of common sense, I didn’t hop on the Scrambler and follow her down there. I knew I’d never forget her, that I’d carry her in my heart all my life. I simply loved her; she was the first girl I actually ever loved, and I was sure even then that I’d probably never find anyone that I could be so in love with.
But, life’s for learning. That summer was my early education with mind-altering substances.
On the weekends, I’d get together with some old high school friends, and Jayney and I took up where we’d left off, having some good times driving around in John’s excellent old Cadillac, with lots of room in the back seat for those times when we were all mature and excellent with one another. A guy named Joey introduced me to LSD one night, and the top of my head came off, and I watched as the skin peeled off Jayney’s face to reveal gristle and blood and bone.
I didn’t go home for three days, and Rose was frantic, even to the point of having the cops look for me. Where’d I go? Well, Woodstock, of course. Six of us got on three bikes and set out for this rock concert we’d heard of not too far over in New York state. We cut through the White Mountains, and were there in no time, stoned, all of us, on good clean Columbian. I’d come down from the acid trip, and was having a bit of a hard time smoking the shit and biking, so I got Jayney to drive most of the way. She was okay at it, and stayed straight for the most part. I never thought to phone Rose, I was a big boy and had no obligations. Good God, I was so stoned...
We were among the bunch that crashed the fence and got in for free, and got wet and starved and dropped a lot of acid and just got off on the music, the people, the atmosphere and the absolute certainty that we were going to live forever. I vaguely remember walking down through a million or so people, in filthy jeans and bare chested, with Jayney the same way, toward the stage and someone, maybe Alvin Lee or, more probably, one of the guys working what passed for security, throwing Jayney a shirt so she could cover up and stop shivering, and damned if I can remember much more, day or night. I watch the movie sometimes, and secretly say hi to Wavy Gravy, who saved me from an awful freak-out sometime in there, telling me, “Hey, man, it’s a trip, it ain’t no more real than you want it to be.” Smoking grass with Arlo Guthrie, in awe and talking about his father. Shit, I was there, for Christ’s sake.
We lost a couple of people, and crawled down the highway and home without them, in paradise withdrawal and paranoia recoil. Going home - Rose kicked me out, and then called me back as I walked down the driveway, saying, “You ever do that to me again, asshole brother, and I’ll kill you.” She didn’t believe me when I told her where I’d been, and I didn’t bother her any more with details, most of which I’d left behind anyway.
I went back to Moncton and spent the rest of ‘70 in college, turning on as many people as I could to acid, dropping out in January when I came close to being busted. That scared me enough to take me home to the family, and sit quiet for the remainder of the winter, finally joining the Forces in March of 1971, and heading to Winnipeg and preliminary training with the super-spooks, my drugging a secret I shared with no one for a long time. Discipline got me past any ghosts in my mind for quite a while, and I learned to fight and defend and shoot, and I got rock hard and able to take down anyone twice my size. I graduated basic trades training at the top of the class, and was promoted two years early, while I was in Washington, on attachment with the Canadian Embassy.
And that was how I became Mr. Super Spook, absolutely fearless and too young to appreciate anything but my next orders. If not for my love of alcohol, which became my drug of choice, and my inability to deal with the effects, I might have had a very good career, retiring at forty and all that normal stuff.
It didn’t happen. As I look back, I recognize that it wasn’t supposed to happen. The cosmos had other plans.