My friend, I ditched my high school graduation practice to make my student trip to Indio and back, no hours of service for "students".....

And, at that time no stipend for a room in one of the various motels that housed LA Indio pool folks...over by the bus station, convenient for deadheading home, and that great Mexican restaurant where I learned to eat machaca and eggs, with beans and tortillas, with plenty of peppers and hot sauce, for breakfast (something that stays with you the whole trip home...).

So my first night away from home, "on the road? for the friendly SP, at the tender age of 18, was to sleep on a bench in the Indio Roundhouse locker room, on a 110 degree June night, with about 80% humidity from the gulf, and no air conditioning, surrounded by 10 or 15 thousand "date bugs" crawling on every surface imaginable. And, I thought I was in heaven, this is the real RR, and what a long strange trip it's been from there.

I later got to stay in Bobby Baker's "submarince", ate lobster on my first check, and they served me beer, too, at the Indio Bowl, and I looked about twelve years old... But, I was a RR guy n Indio, ant that was all that mattered......wouldn't trade a bit of that, I was lucky to be born at a lucky time, when I could still see and experience all of that. Were we ever that young?