After I broke up with Stanley and moved to 1667 Haight Street, I bought my first brand new car. Mom and George had helped me buy a VW station wagon when I lived in Ontario and going to Valley Vocational in La Puente. No one had ever told me that I needed to change the oil, though, and I froze up the engine eventually because I neglected to do so. After taking the engine apart myself, I had to finally pay someone to put it back together. When I finished the program to become a Licensed Psychiatric Technician, I returned to San Francisco with my little red VW. I really didn’t need a car in San Francisco, though, and it was a hassle to park it and to move it for street cleaning and it was so easy to get parking tickets, I eventually sold the VW and bought a stereo with the proceeds.

I had not had a car for several years but in 1977, I started longing to have a car again. I went and looked but even back then, I was reading Consumer Reports. I almost bought an American car but stopped just prior to picking it up. My research showed that a Toyota would be much more reliable. I looked at the Toyota Celica and fell in love.

The first road trip I took in the new Celica was with Mary Jo. We drove down the incredibly scenic Highway 1 through Big Sur to San Diego where we visited Mary’s Mother and my Sister, Darlene, and her kids, Chris and Misty. On the way back up to San Francisco, we stopped in Los Angeles, where we visited Disneyland and Morro Bay from which we visited Hearst Castle.