“It was Christmas Day 1969, and I was a graduate student at UCLA. Just a few months downstream of an Army tour in Vietnam, I was still readjusting to normal, civilian life. A classmate and his wife had invited me to their apartment to share Christmas dinner. Since they lived only a few blocks away, I decided to walk (I know, heresy in my new home). As I walked down the street in the balmy 75-degree weather, not a cloud in the sky, deeply green grass in the yards, flowers blooming, palm trees swaying, I sighed deeply and decided that this is my home — and it has been ever since. (Perhaps some of that decision was the memory of the last few weeks in Army basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, in December 1966, when we marched and bivouacked for days in a cranberry swamp, a North Atlantic snowstorm, in summer uniforms, wet through from marching through creeks and marshes. I decided that if I lived I was going to go somewhere where it is warm and stay there. And I did.)”
Source: latimes.com – Los Angeles Times