I look back at the age when my parents married and started a family, and I almost feel like it was a different world, not just a different time. We moved around Southern California a lot when I was young. Starting in a small apartment, moving to a bigger one, then a house in Riverside, then another, bigger house in Anaheim. That was a California where you could hold down a job, support a family, pay your taxes, and still have enough left over to afford a house. You can't do that here anymore. At least most people can't.

Early on, my dad divided his time between working full-time (nights, mostly), going to college, and either playing football or running track. I remember his college graduation from Cal State Fullerton. I was four, and it made a big impression on me that college was something hard, important, and when you finished: a real accomplishment.

Meanwhile, my mom stayed home and devoted her time, energy, and love to raising first me and then in 1967, my twin brothers, Steven and David. Just to keep things from getting too easy, we would often be joined in the summers by my cousin Joe.

Although the family moved to the Bay Area in '74, we never fully abandoned our roots. Most of my mom's family is scattered around Southern California. Summer trips to Grandma's house, just two blocks away from Knott's Berry Farm, were a vacation staple. My cousins, my brothers, and I lived at Huntington Beach (the same spot where my parents hung out when they were dating). "Strips & salsa," the Beach Boys, and bodysurfing. Ahhhh...

Summers in Discovery Bay weren't too shabby, either. If you were one of Don Roberts' boys, you learned to waterski at a very early age. And boy, did we: two skis (jumpers), one ski (slalom), and no skis (barefoot).

After graduating from UCI in 1985 with a B.S. in Physics, I packed up the 1968 Ford station wagon donated to the cause by my Aunt Betty and Uncle Floyd and made my way East, to study Plasma Physics at Princeton University. For a California Boy like me, it was a total, wonderful, culture-shock. In the movie "L.A. Story," Steve Martin points with pride to the well-established Southern California neighborhood in which he lives: "Some of these houses are over twenty-five years old!" Princeton, by comparison, seemed like the cradle of civilization.

Here's a link:

• My friend John Cuthbertson, multi-time Jeopardy! champ, in addition to appearing on Win Ben Stein's Money and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

To be continued...