A first trip ‘round the world, part 69

As I woke up the next morning in Santa Monica, I took care of a few maintenance issue, wrote a few aerograms, one of which would have an enormous bearing on my future life, located the Greyhound station and was intent on discovering San Francisco first.  

I was kind of infatuated with the place, having already romanticized the City after hearing of its Summer of Love and its vanguard social culture. 

I got there the next day, managed to find my way to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, the birthplace of the 1960s counterculture movement.

There after purchasing the unavoidable paraphernalia, I met a bunch of hippies who were kind enough to invite me in their apartment to spend the night there. 

I was thinking “America truly is the land of milk and honey, what a terrific country, what bunch of wonderful people!” 

This statement would prove to be true in San Francisco, but soon enough, I found that it did not quite apply all over America...