Growing up in San Diego

What could have been better?  Between 6th grade and graduation from high school I never lived more than a few blocks from the beach in Point Loma.   And we southern Cal kids invented the skate board by taking our old steel clamp-on skates and nailing them to 2 foot lenghts of 2x4.  The steel wheels wore out on the concrete sidewalks in about a month, and they had absolutely no traction, but we took them everywhere anyway.

In junior high and high school the music was still holdover from swing - the Beatles didn't come on the scene until '63 or so.  It was the Kingston Trio, Limelighters, Peter, Paul and Mary and other folk groups that we listened to and I was interested in, which led me first to the ukulele (I had a cheap, plastic one as my first instrument and taught myself classics like "Five foot Two") and then to the guitar.  A few of us formed a folk group as an excuse to get together and goof off and that was great fun.  It also led to a ride home in a police car.  I was with my pals and had to take the bus home.  Got off the bus to walk the few blocks and was picked up for a curfew violation and got a ride in a black and white.  Very exciting, though not at the time ;-)
Somewhere when I was about 15 or 16 my interest in guitar moved to classical.  I heard an album by Laurindo Almeida and loved it and started teaching myself how to read music and saved for a classical guitar.  Never went back to folk after that.