History 1-A

It was the fall of ’72. I was living in a ’51 Chevy pick-up truck, on the bed of which I had built a wooden, cab-over camper with an A-frame roof to which a crooked, faux stovepipe was attached. My roommate, Atom, was a dog. Literally, a sixty pound, two-year-old mutt—part shepard, part lab—I had gotten as a pup. Curled up next to me in my sleeping bag in the camper, we kept each other warm while parked overnight on the streets of Monterey, where after dark it was already colder than any winter either one of us Southern California transplants had ever experienced.
That morning, the signature fog lifted early. The sun shined brightly. As the morning warmed, Atom and I decided to take a ride down the coast to look for some surf. (With winter approaching, I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to stand the (...)