Buddha At The Gas Pump

I was born in the summer of 1942 in Camden, New Jersey to a father and mother about whom I know little other than what I have been told by others. When I was three or four, my mother and father split up and I was taken to be raised by my grandmother, a Holy Ghost Pentecostal Christian, and grandfather. When I was about ten or so, my grandfather died and my mother came back to town for his funeral. Soon thereafter, she was remarried to a sweet man, a tool and die maker, who gave me much and provided me with the basis for a philosophical outlook on life. They took me back from my grandmother, and, within a year or so, we — my mother and step-father — moved to Southern California. In 1958, when I was sixteen and in tenth grade, I stole my parents' checkbook, booked a flight to New York with a bad check, and moved into the Plaza Hotel, where I assembled a wardrobe and other artifacts, went to a play on Broadway (J.B.), drank, ate high and finally bought a $2,500 Patek Phillipe watch in the hotel jewelry store —