General Discussion

...our drummer lived in Atherton, but it was on the Redwood City edge...at the Jack In The Box intersection, if you crossed El Camino into Atherton, there were older, single-family homes, closer to what you'd see in Redwood City. My father worked for a billionaire who lived in a mansion.

That whole area, Atherton / Redwood City / Menlo Park / Palo Alto / East Palo Alto made for a really interesting...and volatile mix of personalities...at Sequoia and Menlo-Atherton high schools (I went to M-A).

Went to school with a couple of Don Jr / Eric Trump types. Guys whose fathers owned lumber yards, and would walk into a VP job right after graduating Stanford, etc etc etc, not particularly bright guys, just like Don and Eric. But the whole spectrum from Atherton to East Palo Alto and all points in between was a challenge for me, because I was born in Massachusetts, and my family moved to California at the end of my Sophomore year.

I was lucky enough to have two teachers who were mentors. One formed the aforementioned rock band for a high school dance and enlisted me to play guitar. The other was an English teacher who got me on the literary magazine. That was my sole "belonging" for two years.