The Guitar named Betty-Lou.

During the time I worked for Domino's Pizza I went to  Grateful Dead concert in the summer.

I left my acoustic classical guitar in the car and the temperature went over a hundred degrees. Inside the car it was much hotter with the windows rolled up. The bridge on the guitar popped off. It was just glued to the body and the glue failed. When I repaired the guitar later I used glue and molly-bolts to attach the bridge. I did not attach it in the exact correct place and forevermore the guitar was difficult to tune. I could put it in tune to a song in the key of G but when I switched to a song in the key of E it would need to be retuned. At the time of the repair I painted the guitar with a giant yin-yang on the back done in white graffiti pen and random blue and black nail polish on the front.

I was dating a woman named Betty Lou and she word Black and Blue nail polish... Go Figure. She ordered a lot of pizza and specifically asked the store manager to have me deliver it. Eventually I asked her out on a date and then she and her 3 year old daughter moved into the condo in Oxon Hill. The child was half black. This was the only time I had the experience of raising a child. We would go to the National Airport and watch the airplanes land or we would go to the bridge over the Potomac and go swimming. Simple things we could do without the child making noise and disturbing other people. Sometimes we would just drive all the way around the beltway... During this time I was evicted from the condo for failure to pay my Condo Association dues. I tried to sell the condo but no one wanted to buy. The neighborhood had turned into a dangerous ghetto due to the invention of crack cocaine.

When we moved in, it was a middle class half black/half white neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington DC but when I left it was a Crack-Crazy Disaster Zone. At this same time, a delivery driver was murdered at a Domino's Pizza on Capitol Hill. That made me move to a different Pizza Parlor in Mount Vernon Virginia. At the Oxon Hill pizza parlor most of the customers were black in the wealthy neighborhood of Fort Washington... Civil servants of the Federal Government and their children. The Mount Vernon store was mostly white rich people and soldiers at Fort Belvoir. Then a second delivery driver got murdered, the brakes wore out on my car and I left... I drove to my parent's house in Los Gatos, California in a Dodge Omni with no brakes. I used the hand brake to stop the car. I took the Southern Route thru Tennessee. It was snowing in Tennessee and the heater was broken in the car so I stopped briefly at rest stops and then kept on driving. I heated the car with votive candles. Then I drove thru Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and finally California.


Later, my second ex wife give me a roll of duct tape with a tie dye pattern on it and I covered the front entirely... Then I gave the guitar to a hitch hiker in Los Angeles... With the plan to buy a new acoustic guitar that I could put in tune... and I did that... a Yamaha six string classical... and an electronic tuner... However, I lost the miss piggy songbooks... so sad!

Read more of my Autobiography at:
http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

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*HEADLINE: Deadline for "Real ID" for Air Travel Postponed AGAIN Until May 7, 2025... WONDERFUL!

*My Music Video: FREE ALL THE CANNABIS PRISONERS - A Mockery of Nancy Ray Gun... Jest Say KNOW

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*Photographs of a Journey to the Headwaters Forest - Now a State Reserve... Near Eureka, CA - Plus The Story of How It Came To Be!

*Rainbow Gathering July 1-7, 2024 Will Be In CALIFORNIA... Exact Location To Be Revealed June 15th... and As Soon as I Know, I'll Post Driving Directions and Maps Here... What IS The Rainbow Gathering? For Me, It's Woodstock with Amateur Musicians and I'm in the Band... It's a Week Long Backpack Trip for Thousands of People...


*Add THIS to Your Bucket List: Swimming at Bear Hole in Upper Bidwell Park, Chico California. Crystallized Black Lava Rocks - Basalt from the Eruption of Mount Lassen.

*Numbers have Cultural Meanings... A list from Zero to Infinity and Beyond... For example: 007 Means James Bond. 420 Means Marijuana. 5150 means Insane... and... 420 + 5150 = REEFER MADNESS!

*"Conspiracy Theories" that are ACTUALLY TRUE. MKULTRA, Cointelpro, CIA-Contra-Cocaine, Donald Rumsfeld Selling Weapons to Saddam Hussein, UFOs are Real... Sometimes people dismiss Truth as "Just a Conspiracy Theory" because they Don't LIKE THE TRUTH.

1967: The Summer of Love... San Francisco, Hippies, Flower Power, Peace, The Diggers, Haight Ashbury, LSD and the Grateful Dead. It certainly has been a Long Strange Trip. Congratulations to all those of us who have survived... One thing is for certain...The culture of the United States was radically different After the 1960's...



*American History: "The Thunder Machine" was a Giant Sheet Metal Sculpture that you Got Inside and Played like a Drum. Made by Ron Boise and used at Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.

For Maximum Effect, Don't Read This Book. Write Your Own! --- "Lessons Learned" by Gregory Vanderlaan. A Lifetime of Trial, Error and Survival Yielded These Words of Wisdom...

My Biff Rose Trip: Driving To a Cabin in the Woods - down The Coast of California from Arcata thru Ft Bragg to Mendocino... An Excellent Adventure!

How To Remove Smoke from Indoor Air. Tape a Filter to a Box Fan. During Wildfire Season the Air Indoors is Bad to Breathe...


Pretty Soon the Filter Turns Brown
from Smoke, Pollen and Dust.

Who WAS Ram Dass? In the Sixties, He was a Psychedelics Researcher and Promoter at Harvard with Dr. Timothy Leary. (LSD, Magic Mushrooms and Peyote) Then He went to India Looking for Enlightenment and Met a Guru. Changed His Name and Published a Great Book... "Remember: Be Here Now" - It Has His Autobiography and then Many ART Drawings Explaining Eastern Religion. Real Name: Dr. Richard Alpert...


Who WAS Ram Dass? In the Sixties, He was a Psychedelics Researcher and Promoter at Harvard with Dr. Timothy Leary. (LSD, Magic Mushrooms and Peyote)


My Autobiography: Growing Up in Los Gatos, California in the 1960s by Gregory Vanderlaan - and Living in San Jose, Washington DC, Chico, Eureka and Orangevale, CA.

I Was Born in 1954. We lived Near the San Jose Airport until they Started Landing Jet Airplanes and We had to move... We went to Los Gatos in 1960. I lived there until graduation from Los Gatos High School in 1972... an Ideal Childhood... FYI: Los Gatos is about 50 miles South of San Francisco on the edge of the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz.

I Went to West Valley Jr. College, learned electronics drafting and got a job at System Industries in Santa Clara... I feel blessed that not only did I grow up in a great location but I also grew up at a great time. I missed the Vietnam War by ONE Year and Silicon Valley Was Hiring Like Crazy When I Needed a Job.
Peace Sign Pie Chart
History of the Vietnam War. 58,000 Americans Died for Nothing... Something They Don't Teach in School Now... "Too Controversial" -

During the 1950s Americans went into a Mad Panic about Communists taking over the world. We built thousands of Nuclear Missiles and Fallout Shelters. The US Congress had witch hunts (Joe McCarthy-HUAC) to expose "Commies" who worked in The Hollywood Movie business and blacklisted folksingers that were leading our young people astray with Labor Union Organizing songs.


During the height of this hysteria Vice President Richard Nixon went on Television and explained "The Domino Principle" while pointing to a map of Asia. His theory was...

READ MORE: https://gvan42.blogspot.com/2017/11/a-brief-history-of-vietnam-war-58000.html

Who Won the War? DOW CHEMICAL AND HUGHES AIRCRAFT. Selling Napalm, Agent Orange and Helicopters...

Military Death Chart USA

AMERICA'S BOGUS WARS - Since 1945, The US Military Has Never Defended The USA, Not Even Once.

Ever since Victory in Japan, All of Our Wars have been Marketing to Sell Weapons for the Military Industrial Complex.







Free Coloring Book Art by gvan42 - UFO and Alien Hieroglyphics