This is an excerpt from a story, “Summer of Love,” that can be download with the book PATHWAYS using the link http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

How did I react? I was pretty much oblivious. I knew about the war and did not want to go fight in a distant rice paddy. The Summer of Love decade in San Francisco, however, was nothing like the summer of love decade for me in Indian Land. From 1964 until 1969 I was so in love I could not think about anything that did not involve my raging hormones. A little blond girl had me by the short hairs and would not let go even when we weren’t seeing each other. For five years we drifted into and out of each other’s lives until I figured out the dynamics that were at play and managed to end it for good. Even then she may have contributed to a divorce in 1978, despite the fact I have not seen or spoken to her since 1969. I was a late-blooming baby boomer who was primarily a blooming idiot. The day we met, in the late summer before our freshman year in high school, I was walking up the dirt road from the river to my home after an afternoon of hay hauling. Not exactly dressed to impress in hay and mud-covered blue jeans, a tee shirt covered in sweat and grime, and “s@#$ kickers” that got their name honestly. I might have had on a straw cowboy hat but it would not have been described as “jaunty.” I am sure I did not make a great first impression. I am also positive when I stammered a greeting of “Hey, how y’all doing?” her first estimation of me was even further reduced. Sharon Leigh Busch, however, made my heart stop or, at least, flutter. Already “full-figured” in a Rubenesque way, fourteen-year-old Sharon Leigh had the attention of the fourteen-year-old me, even though she was dressed quite sedately in her longish shorts and fully-buttoned oxford cloth blouse. With short blond hair and blue eyes to go with the clear, alabaster skin poems are written about, her lips were red without benefit of lipstick. Not fully understanding why I was attracted to those lips, I am sure I was a sight standing there with jaws slack and agape, acting like the country hick that I was.

Don Miller has also published two other books

Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

All books may be purchased in paperback.