His dad welcomed the good news also but expressed some reservations. In the few years prior there had been the Free Speech movement and the rise of the radical SDS in response to the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. He recommended that Michael attend the picturesque sister campus of the UC system, UC Santa Barbara. Since his father and great-uncle were to help fund his education, Michael agreed, even though the Bank of America branch in Isla Vista had been burned to the ground by protesters the year before.
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Michael was elated; indeed “emotionally exuberant” when he received the good news–he was accepted to UC Berkeley as a freshman right out of high school! Perhaps the “tipping point” in his selection by the admissions department had been his two A’s that he had received in Physics in his senior year; albeit with the help of a tutor.
Let us now go back in time, shall we?
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“Santa Barbaria” is not some meaningless drivel spoken by some wild-eyed storyteller, but comprises a very real-life locale within Santa Barbara County. Its southeastern boundary begins along the shoreline of More Mesa (at the base of Hope Ranch) and continues in a northwesterly direction past the Campus Point of UC Santa Barbara. It then proceeds along the cliffs of Isla Vista’s Del Playa Drive; past the waters of the Devereux Slough and ever onward inexorably to the World War II beaches of Ellwood and Haskell’s. Its northeastern point can be found within the waters of the Gaviota coastline some (23) miles from Isla Vista. The Ventura Pitas-Point fault submerged in the Santa Barbara Channel constitutes its sole southwestern boundary.
To be continued…