Armed with this experience and well wishes from my family, I marched off to Penn State as a future electrical engineer. But my non-technical mind would not absorb theories of statics, electromagnetics or calculus and I nearly flunked out. I switched to English. At Penn State, I was swallowed up in the masses, but I had my first sexual experience, learned who the Moonglows were, joined a fraternity and began molding myself for acceptance. I kept a diary and was spurred on in my writing by some favorable comments from John Barth and Paul West. I drank a lot, studied little, but learned a lot.

I find myself still unable to disassociate myself from the longing for a return to the peace and freedom I experienced in the Nittany Valley. Born too soon, as I drove down College Avenue for the last time in 1965, I witnessed the beginning of the great awakening. A Vietnam War protest on the Penn State campus.

I jumped into the real world as a news reporter at $75 a week. My wife, my son and I moved into our first apartment. Now I would settle down and work for that house in the suburbs and financial independence, looking forward to 65. I spent 4 1/2 years on two eastern Pennsylvania newspapers covering everything from cops to concerts. The experience turned me quite cynical. Yet, I could not put down the radical idealism that churned in my guts.

Partially for money and partially for the promise of doing more, I took a job as a public relations man for a public utility. Needless to say, the last two years in this position have been utter frustration, headaches and upset stomachs. Watching my utility peers pay lip service to the individual and freedom, I am an outcast because I wear no American flag pin in my lapel. I have simply done my job and have tried to make the place more human. Getting nowhere fast, it becomes harder each day to sit idly by and watch the bungling and ineptitude that pervades. But that's another story.

Selfishly, I seek to find some way in which I can help to make things better. The most satisfaction I've gained in recent years has been managing a baseball team of 13 to 15-year-old kids. I'm no Danny Murtaugh, but no one expects me to be.

The best job I've ever had was mopping floors in a State College bar for 27 bucks a week. But knowing how I feel, I don't think I could escape to something like that again.

So here I am. Still a radical idealist (more convinced after reading Alinsky's interview in Playboy that people must do more than just talk about the bullshit). I'll soon be 30, but I feel like I'm still 16. (I get carded yet when I go into bars.). My salvation is the Grateful Dead or the Stones on a headset and a few bottles of apple wine. I'm taking guitar lessons because I want to know more about music. I have a home in the country ( a palatial 2-acre estate). I have a fine woman to share the days with. I have two beautiful sons. I wan