Up In Smoke

This was my life from age 15 to 19. We were brilliant. Read famous books behind our school books. Played chess (and Martian Chess), made up Civil War battlefield games using the actual battles. Read all of Steinbeck one summer. Drank homemade wine and hung out in between working in a college restaurant and pretending to go to college. I can still smell the cigarette ash. You couldn't play chess or write poetry without lighting up. She would stick her burning cigarette in the strings of her guitar near the top of the neck when she played.