GUYS IN THEIR 20S IN THE '60S : a novel, inspired by actual events

What I remember most about the 1960s are the friends and acquaintances and classmates and colleagues who helped fill my life with rich memories. We did our own thing apart from those given the spotlight. In the 1960s, the media had a good time covering the hippie movement, which started in Greenwich Village and spread to Haight-Ashbury. The overblown coverage, sensationalized for a mass audience, left permanent images of the period. For the media, the hippies and their lifestyle, so colorful and outrageous, were the draw. Stories about sex, drugs, and rock and roll made good copy. It was either the influence of a higher power or peer persuasion that led me to San Francisco in the late 1960s to finish college. I don't disown any portion of the era's values that influenced me. To reject the excesses of the establishment--consumerism, racism, war, and television addiction in favor of peace, love, tolerance, and real experiences--was a no-brainer for me. However, assumptions of others about my life and activities during that time have usually been off the mark. The stories I tell in these pages are works of fiction based on those I've gathered then remembered for over fifty years. These stories are only representations--a small sampling--of how some of my friends lived, worked, and survived during the seismic '60s Guys in Their 20s in the '60s is twelve chronological stories told through the experiences of three former high-school buddies: Adrian, a drummer; Mitchell, a theater student; and Dave, a carpenter. They don't aspire to conquer the world, but strive to figure out how to maintain a music career that's inconsistent, earn a college degree that might be out of reach, and live a simple lifestyle away from the chaos. Starting in Sacramento, then swept up in the great migration to San Francisco, the guys make it up as they go. Learning, loving, evolving and road-tripping, they persevere in spite of seismic events all around: civil rights disturbances, political assassinations, and anti-war protests. Helping them negotiate a cultural revolution is a diverse cast of characters--girlfriends, jazz cats, student activists, drama geeks, nightclub musicians, stoners and dreamers. "Guys" is appealing to women as well as to men. At times, tragic, funny, romantic, entertaining or nostalgic, this historically-rooted novel places the reader in the footsteps of those who have trod the outskirts of the '60s counterculture