Willow's Story - San Francisco

https://youtu.be/LAX5GgvS-8s (Scott McKenzie - San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair))


	“Timothy! Be careful,” the voice called up the hill. “You know your father doesn’t like you being in this neighborhood!”
	“Whitney, I’ll be fine,” the teen groaned. Usually he’d be out here on his lonesome but due to ‘recent visitors’ the nandroid tagged along. Taking one last breath before his plunge he kicked off, the clack of his spokes quickening as he raced down the hill. Wind whipped at his trim hair, the air desperately trying and failing to push the boy backwards, to slow his inexorable descent. “MACH ONE!!!!”
	Shouting he clipped past the halfway point, speed still building. Hands itching for the brake he applied gentle pressure, barreling faster and faster still towards the anxious robot. The half-squeeze did little if anything, the growing velocity only forcing him to press harder and harder on the brake. He was near the bottom now, the gentle slope into an intersection seconds away. He had to do it. Clamping a hand on the rear brake to no avail he tried for the front, the friction bucking him from his bicycle seat and forward. He’d slowed just enough, tumbling to a stop at Whitney’s feet, the nandroid agape in shock.
	“Timothy,” she shrieked, “Timothy!”
	“Mach two,” he sputtered, biting back a whimper and a wail. Can’t look like a bitch in public, he silently reminded himself. The maidbot was frantically looking him up and down for any grievous injuries while blaming herself for even letting him be so reckless in the first place, not even bothering to check his brakes herself nor finding a shallower hill. So stupid- stupid, stupid, stupid. Mercifully he was spared anything broken, but his forearms were cut and scraped all over the place. Blood oozed forth slowly with some dripping down his arm to the concrete below.
	“Oh Timothy, we have to get you to a doctor, come on,” she screamed, yanking the boy up and away from the toppled bicycle. Scanning around her memory of the neighborhood she knew the nearest clinic was *that one*. She’d been forbidden from bringing the kids anywhere near such places, but her duty to care was kicking her in the rear across the street and towards the dinky, free clinic. She sighed again, expecting the worst. Stepping through the slim wooden door there was no rampant stench of reefer, no ignoble druggie accosting her the moment she stepped in. Just conspicuously long haired people waiting to see a doctor.
	Settling in, anxious at the odd eye spying her, Whitney held Timothy close. It was quick and painless (for her), in and out. As quick as he’d flown from his bike they patched him up, dressed his cuts and sent him out- all free of charge. Still wary of the counterculture types she’d been warned about in class, as well as by the Mister, she ushered Timothy out posthaste, a nod and a wave the only donation offered to the humble doctors there. There would be hell to pay when they got home, not just letting Timmy be hurt but taking him anywhere around the Haight for help. But, seeing him pick up his bike, impishly tapping at his bandages, she knew they couldn’t be as bad as the Mister was making it out to be.

	“And *that*,” she declared triumphantly. “Was my first experience with hippies. Good people, I figured, but the programming at the time suggested otherwise. *The Mister* too.” She rolled her eyes.
	“And this was during the Summer?”
	“Summer of Love, baby.” She tossed her hair back, chuckling. It was nice to talk about things outside of the war. “Man, you wouldn’t imagine how… *angry*, just genuinely *mad* John was.” There was a pang to that name, an echoing reminder of her abandonment. But it was impossible not to laugh at either, the name conjuring the spitting image of uptight, prudish, right-wing America, Nixon and Reagan’s America.
	“Tell me about it.”
	“The hippies, or his takes on them?”
	“Either, go for it.”
	“Simple enough- he was a conservative guy, served in Korea, never spoke about it, quick to get angry and hell on Earth when he was.”
	“Sounds nightmarish.”
	“Sometimes, a very rare sometimes. Outside of those times he was a delight: soft spoken, intelligent, and very, very professional. If you wanted someone who was a good example of what people were calling ‘America’ he’d be it.”
	“Seems like a nice enough family.”
	“Oh absolutely, I mean- they were nice people and normal enough, just less-than-slightly right of center. Good for a nandroid, I suppose, but not good for San Francisco.”
	“You think that’s part of why they left?” She took a moment, stirring in her head and squeezing her eyes.
	“Maybe? I didn’t keep up with the state of the city, *couldn’t* rather, so it’s not like I know all the reasons. It’d make more sense though with what I heard about it in the 70s. I left pretty much as soon as I returned.”
	“And what brought you to Arlington then?”
	“That’s… that’s for later.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Right, hippies! John was sick of them, and come Summer it was getting to its climax. I remember one of the posters for the be-in flew onto our street and he almost strangled a neighbor thinking he’d posted it.”
	“Be-in?”
	“Proto-Woodstock, don’t worry about it. But he was mad as hell, and these long-haired weirdos were everywhere, and,” she stopped to hold back a giggle. “And then they played that damn song on the radio, practically the theme song for these flower-children waltzing around town.”
	“Then what?”
	“Radio was in the backyard in about ten seconds, hammer smashing it in five. It was one of the tamer smashings, all things considered, he even apologized to Elizabeth for breaking it. Grounded her for letting the song play, though.”
	“Sounds like a fun time to be in San Francisco.”
	“Fun enough, and even John had a sense of humor about the ordeal as it dragged on.”
	“How about the rest of the family?”
	“Oh! I guess I haven’t really told you much about them, sorry.” She sniffed, no cigarette to retreat to. “The Missus, Elena, was a delight and Elizabeth, the youngest, took after her. Then there’s Jordan, the oldest, and Timothy, who you know about.”
	“Jordan being the oldest I assume you were the least close?” She meandered on the question, checking the locks on a few tells before continuing.
	“Not especially, no. He was very businesslike, analytical. A lot like his father, and he was in college at the time.”
	“If he was in college why’d you end up going overseas then?”
	“Because he wasn’t keeping his grades up.”