CHAPTER ONE

‘We could be anyone we wanted to in our dreams. We were cowboys, riding imaginary horses across grassy planes, clearing fences and firing guns from pointed fingers, then falling down clutching wounds that weren't there. We could argue for hours over whose turn it was to be Blue Boy from the High Chapparal and who would be Manolito. We were the family from The Big Valley and I was Barbara Stanwyck, sitting side-saddle on the wall.
We spoke to each other in Yankee drawl, mimicking with near perfection our heroes from TV war films and westerns. We may have fought a war each day, rustled cattle or killed a few bandits. But in our secret little world there were no sad endings, no tears, no concepts.
In the real world there were psychopathic teachers who got some kind of twisted pleasure out of torturing and humiliating you. There were drunken fathers who blotted out squandered lives in smokey, stinking pubs with men just like them who never even glimpsed their day in the sun. And there were mothers who you could hear weeping in the night as they saw themselves growing old in a world of broken promises and disappointment. Oh yes, and there were the shadowy perverts lurking in lots of corners, in the guise of uncles, priests and family friends.
But in our dreams, in the far flung places we escaped to, nobody could touch us. We were safe and innocent and pure.
All of that changed in the summer of '68.’