On the Mountaintop

I took the train to Culver City, once a working class town but now another trendy spot in the glittering Westside of Los Angeles, to see a play at the Kirk Douglas Theater. With a little time to spare, I walked over to an old two-story building and looked up at the windows of a corner apartment. It was there in 1957 when I was 18 and a freshman in college that my alcoholism began. I drank with an older crowd and since I was just a kid they bought the liquor, which was fine with me because I only had the allowance my mother gave me.