Me or Them
It’s 1965 and Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, family in disarray, flunked out of college, has enlisted in the U.S. Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army. As he stands in the cold outside the...
View ArticleFall In
To Fall In or Fall Out? That is the question, the philosophical question Nate Flowers must grapple with in Chapter 2. Whether it is better to just fall in and follow orders, try to be just one of the...
View ArticleHurricane
In which our unlikely hero braves Hurricane Betsy and lives to write about it. Not only that, but survives military punishment for doing so. And what happens when Dinky, Hubba-Hubba, JD and his...
View ArticleGoin’ to California
A wacko who runs a pizza joint and greets customers with “Goddammit!” A roommate who drives an arrest-me-red Austin Healy 3000 sports car. A lovely young Irish alcoholic poetess. Haight Ashbury. And...
View ArticleHaight Ashbury
Ever wonder what it was like to hang out in the Haight for a kid back in the 1960s? Nate and his roommate Lee find out big-time in this chapter as they unknowingly wander into the Summer of Love....
View ArticleMemphis Blues Again, Part I
Remember Tony Rizzo, whom Jane and Nate met after the Grateful Dead concert? Well, Tony has decided it’s time for Nate to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and that his rather unique digs in a Napa...
View ArticleMemphis Blues Again, Part II
Nate continues to nudge open the doors of perception, compliments of Tony and Owsley's Monterey Purple.
View ArticleThe Summer of Love
Nate, back from his first acid trip, begins examining the meaning of the Real World more closely. Sitting in the swing on Jane’s front porch, they have a spirited discussion and Nate learns a few new...
View ArticleFirst Sergeant Buford
Nathaniel “How could I know” Flowers arrives at his new duty assignment, Kleinelachen Air Base, Germany, and immediately gets himself in a heap of trouble with his new first shirt. He follows that by...
View ArticleStars and Stripes Forever
Nate embarks upon his new duty assignment as base correspondent at Kleinelachen Air Base, and meets Sergeant Tom Tremblay, his NCOIC editor at the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Nate’s excited, but...
View ArticleDer Alten Scheune
Nate, Alan, Henry and Tim have found a secret place to meet up, get high and talk. And it’s right behind their barracks. Tony unexpectedly flies in from England and joins the troops for an evening in...
View ArticleSedition
Nate catches a hop on the courier plane to spend a weekend visiting London. He stays with his old friend from Stateside, Tony Rizzo, in Tony’s bachelor pad in the barracks. London is in full Mod...
View ArticleZeitgeist
What’s a zeitgeist? The troops ponder, debate, question it. But Nate sees beyond Alan’s intellectual posing. He knows – really knows – what Alan thinks of zeitgeist, regardless what he says. And Nate...
View ArticleThe Pieces Fit
Nate is figuring out how to use the I Ching which Jane had given him for his birthday. Henry Harold Henry introduces the troops to John Coltrane’s music. Southern California Ricky, none too stable...
View ArticleA Writer’s Life
“Write what you know” is a common piece of advice given to writers. Nate, given that it’s unlikely he’ll ever see one of his articles for the Stars and Stripes newspaper in print, decides to follow...
View ArticleChange of Command
It’s spring, 1968, and the world as Americans know it is falling apart: the Vietnam War rages, President Johnson is stepping down, Martin Luther King is assassinated, and Nate’s commander is...
View ArticleLiederhalle
Liederhalle. In Deutsch, a place of song. A place to celebrate music of all kinds. This night the Mozart-Saal, one of the music halls within the beautiful Konzerthaus Liederhalle, is host to Ravi...
View ArticleChildren of the Future
This is just so unbelievable. Remember those two old ladies the guys met at the Ravi Shankar concert last chapter? Well, they’ve invited Nate and the gang to their house in downtown Stuttgart, for...
View ArticleSocrates Island, Part I
After listening to this chapter, I know you’ll want to visit Socrates Island. Sorry, but it’s fictional, although there are many wonderful, obscure, charming, historically fascinating islands in the...
View ArticleSocrates Island, Part II
Sun-drenched beaches. Starry nights. Friendship, firelight, and philosophy. Idyllic Socrates Island continues to seduce the troops with its siren song.
View ArticleTime Has Come Today
Their last days on Socrates Island and dissent fills the air. Alan tries to talk the other troops into going AWOL and, well, you gotta listen to believe it. Yep, they go back, but not the same guys...
View ArticleOktoberfest
It’s really such a great German tradition, Oktoberfest, a party to end all parties. Too bad Dylan spoils it for the troops. But then again, if he hadn’t, would they have met the three philosophy...
View ArticleTouch and Go
You may remember that Nate’s recruiter promised he’d become a jet aircraft pilot. This, of course, turned out to be nothing more than a ploy to get him to enlist, and he was disabused of this...
View ArticleFIGMO
Nate undergoes some radical personal changes after learning his story about the General was published without his attribution. His anger is tempered by throwing an I Ching, the fact that he’s FIGMO,...
View ArticleThe December of My Dreams
In which Nate discovers his…well, he discovers a great deal of what’s going on inside of him while attending the performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Stuttgart with the grande dames, and even...
View ArticleNo Place Like Home
Nate finally extricates himself from the grips of the Air Force, but in a parting shot is warned that he may not like the Real World; in fact, he’s told many troops re-up within a few months. Why is...
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