More immediately significant in my life was my mother's bout with pneumonia that kept her out of work for two months and suddenly sandbagged with medical expenses she could barely afford to pay. Bob was still living with us at the time, and still helping out, but it was plain to see that as 1964 rolled around we would have to move out of this big house I had come to love.

I was really looking forward to another year at Campos Verdes Junior High. I had made a lot of friends there, and I enjoyed the two years in North Highlands that passed by too quickly in which I was coming out of the shadows of a troubled and bleak time in my life.

Being the baby in the family, my opinion didn't matter, and I didn't offer it, fearful that my brother would slap me out of it or my mother we make light of it. I'm sure a lot of people hated being led by that shifty hayseed Lyndon Johnson, but really had no more choice in the matter than I had in persuading my family to stay in North Highlands so that I could at last have some continuity in my life and graduate with the same friends I had made

in Junior High. As an adult I can see now how selfish I was being; but if there was ever a time in which such selfishness could be accepted and forgiven, that was it.

More than anything else, I dreaded sharing a room again with my brother. We were taking a step backward to a time when I was no more than an afterthought in my family's daily life. Now that I was slowly moving out into the world beyond my bed and board, that same bed and board was now closing in on me.

Of course I was aware that Bob would again be moving out very soon. He had already met the young woman who would soon become his first and only wife. I adored Sally, whom I first met when she was 17, still in high school, wearing one of those plaid knee-high outfits that made her look even younger. Barely 5 feet tall, with a round, pixie face and a warm, sweet smile, she seemed to be in every way his better half. I'd always hoped she would sweeten my brother's outlook and make him more human and less judgmental. She did, eventually, but that time was a long ways off, and I had many bridges to cross before then.

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