John Saunders

By this time, I was in my 40s. This is a time of life when men tend to take stock of their life (AKA Mid-life crisis). I first took a resolution to never again do overtime for free. This was common in the East: Hamilton Standard required engineers to work a full day on Saturday without pay - but they were permitted to work in shirt-sleeves! I bought a motorcycle, feeling released from the promise I had made to Pauline so long ago. This was a dual-sport, but I soon tired of dirt riding, and with the onset a year later of a gas shortage, I sold it and bought a touring motorcycle, which had a longer range between fill-ups.

I lost no time in finding San Diego's nude Blacks Beach. I had friends in San Diego: four of my colleagues in the RCA spacecraft project lived there, and one from the RCA Research Laboratories lived in nearby Del Mar. The secretary of my best friend in Montreal recommended that I get an apartment in the Oakwood. This is a singles haven in Pacific Beach, a fun place in itself. I made friends there who took me to Mexico, and tried too woo me into Amway. As a Californian, I bought a king-size bed just for myself.

Before long I fell into the clutches of a woman I should have avoided, since she was bi-polar and an alcoholic, and worse, an Irish Catholic from New York. This would be a pattern, I felt flattered whenever a woman showed an interest in me, and felt it would hurt her self-esteem to rebuff her. Tracy, as she called herself, met me at a dance, and invited herself to my apartment afterwards, for breakfast, she said. This was at 1 AM! Before long poor me was packing up and moving in with her to a rented condominium in Mission Valley. This was the worst period of my life. When she was good she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid. Once she even emptied all of my carefully-sorted stock of resistors down the back of a cabinet. This arrangement ended after three months when she stabbed me with a steak knife. This would have been fatal, were I not a good dodger.

The second was Juanita, who was of French ancestry, despite her name. I fell in love with her too, and took her in since she was down on her luck. The problem with Juanita was that she was 8 years younger than I, and hankered after men 10 years younger than herself. After a promising start, I had to put up with chaste nights sleeping next to a nude woman in her water-bed for 9 months. However, this was mostly a cordial relationship and a friendship that lasted for many years afterwards. I did bankroll her for three good work dresses which enabled her to get a good job downtown, and she never looked back. After she got her own apartment, she hung around the bars frequented by young sailors on Fridays until she got one, and married him.

The third was Priscilla, who is of German ancestry from Peoria, Illinois. The owner of the rented condominium I still lived in was a sailboat enthusiast. He even lived in one. I joined his club, and crewed on their trips, which never went far. At one of their meetings, as I got up to leave afterwards, my exit was blocked by a lady. She told me of a nice beach camp in San Felipe, Mexico next weekend by a church group. Would I take her? This did not seem too exciting, but I did not want to seem ungentlemanly, so I agreed. When the day arrived, she dallied so much that it was dusk when we got to Mexicali, about half way. "We can't go on", Priscilla said, the banditos will get us. So I was forced to share a Mexican hotel room with her. When we arrived at the beach the next morning, I was surprised to find most of the group sunbathing nude. I never did really warm up to Priscilla, who seemed to be fonder of bars than boats, but I got caught again. This time it was deeper. Priscilla, at least was rich. She owned three condominiums, and sold two to buy a nice four-bedroom one with me furnishing half of the down payment. This lasted a year, until Priscilla really upset me. I had arranged for Michael to visit for the summer. My sons generally stayed the summer with me, but by then Ross was in college. Priscilla was upset because her teenage daughter preferred to live with her father, an arrangement which predated me meeting her. Also, Priscilla who worked for a travel agency, had been caught getting a kick-back from a Mexican resort that she had arranged for a club to stay at, of which she was the activities director. So she was fired. Apparently because of this she phoned the airline and cancelled Michael's reservation. This delayed his arrival, and put me in certain mood. I went alone to Los Angeles, picked up Michael, and instead of coming straight back home, we camped the night with Parents Without Partners, to which I belonged. There I met Mollie, and that is the another episode.

I had several other girlfriends: Elsie, Verna, Mavis, Pat, Karla, Debbie, Alice and Helen that I did not set up housekeeping with. All were ongoing relationships, and none were met in bars. I never did go to a swinging party.