Back in those days, the cops would always shake you down and harass you if you were hitchhiking. We were at Topanga Canyon and the Pacific Coast Highway, which is in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angles when we were rousted by some Los Angeles PD cops. For useless information the Pacific Coast Highway is usually California Highway One, and the locals call it PCH for short.

John the janitor from Anaheim had given me a rent a cop badge and I used to carry it around and use scare people by telling them I was a cop.

People used to pick you up hitchhiking and start smoking dope. When that happened I would have some fun and pull the badge out and say something like look I am a narc with the LAPD and scare the shit out of them as I flashed my badge.

I could always prove I wasn’t a cop because back in those days I was too short to be a cop because they had height and weight requirements. I was a tiny 5 feet one inch tall, which was far to short to be a cop. Those requirements were also used to keep woman from becoming cops.

It took the cops at least two hours to verify that my badge was not stolen. There was so much radio traffic about the badge I suspect that every cop in Los Angeles County knew about me.

After they let us go as we continued to hitchhike along PCH and every time we got rousted by the cops I would tell them I was the guy with the badge and they would let us go.

I ended up making it to San Francisco and went to the anti-war protest. I know the protest ended up in Golden Gate Park. I don’t remember where it begin. Probably a good starting place would be Haight Ashbury. I panhandled about $100, which was good. At the time, it was the largest anti-war protest in the history of San Francisco and probably in the history of California. I had a lot of fun.

I thought I was going to have a bitch of a time hitchhiking back to LA, but two girls picked up in the tenderloin district along a freeway ramp I was standing on and gave me a ride back to Los Angles. In fact they gave me a ride all the way back to Orange County where I was living at the time. They dumped me off in Anaheim and continued on to Fountain Valley.

Lonnie met some babe as we were hitchhiking and he stayed with her in LA.