A lot of people think of the Sixties, and they remember the Vietnam War, the Kent State Massacre, and the counter revolution. They remember bad acid trips, draft dodgers, and the Kennedy assassination.

I remember all those things, too; but more importantly, I remember the Sixties as a time when those of us who were just coming of age honestly and truly believed that we could change the world and bring about the age of peace and harmony that would be known as the Age of Aquarius.

This brief three-year period of my life holds some of my happiest memories. I was a flower child, a genuine, certified Sunset Strip hippie. One of the favorite hangouts of the group of people I was friends with was a psychedelic coffee house called the Blue Grotto. It was a dark cavern of a place, hung with blacklight posters and run by a man named Foster. Foster looked like a black George Harrison to me, with his Beatle haircut, his Mod clothes, and his Beatle boots.

One of the most memorable features of the Grotto was a painting of the Cheshire Cat that adorned the western wall of the main room. It had Day-glo orange and yellow eyes that seemed to follow you wherever you went. That painting gave my group the idea of naming ourselves after characters from Alice in Wonderland. I was the White Queen because of my penchant for dressing in white at the time; Leigh, a black man of gigantic proportions became the Cheshire Cat because of his remark that he was so black that in the dark, the only part of him that could be seen was his smile. Candy, a petite Jewish princess, was the Dormouse because of her small stature. Mick was the White Knight because he was just simply so handsome that he made all of our 17 and 18-year-old hearts swoon. And Jinx was the Madd Hatter because we all considered him a lunatic.

When our Summer of Love passed, I lost touch with these dear friends. When I moved back to California in 1980, after a ten year absence, one of the first places I went was to the hallowed ground of my memory, but the building on Fairfax just south of Santa Monica which had housed the Blue Grotto had been torn down. I felt as if I had lost an old and dear friend.

The Blue Grotto lives on in my memory as a place of love, peace and hope, and a dream of a better future.