How to Make Your Eggs Behave

There were a few magazines I didn’t work for that could have made my eggs behave. One of them was Good Housekeeping. I didn’t even know what that meant. Maybe how to keep a house?

My own housekeeping occurred slightly more often than meteor strikes. With intense concentration, I could wash the floor. I could, but I didn’t tend to.  I pushed a broom once for a job at a ranch in Wyoming. Not for one month or one year. No, once. Then I peeled and sliced potatoes three times a day and was pretty good at that.

The foreman there was named Red and his wife was Maxine. She woke me at 4 A.M. each day. Then we fed 65 seasonal guys from nearby Reservations. While they were called “Indians,” I was called a “Yankee” and was 16 years old. One day, Maxine told me to pick up stuff at Suzanne’s Store, the only store within 17 miles.

Suzanne shared the building with the U.S. Post Office, and instead of driving to the store, I drove into the Post Office, well, just a bit into it, breaking some U.S. government glass. It was my first time driving a stick and my last day employed at the ranch.

I went west to San Francisco, where it was the Summer of Love. I was a teenage girl walking through parks, pot and incense wafting through air. Plus guys in knit hats playing bongos. I was alive beat for beat, moment to moment, even a slight bit bewitching at times. There were 100,000 hippies plus sex, drugs, rock ’n roll and one Yankee (quite sober) girl on the lam.

See the next piece for more on The Summer of Love.