Home Free: Adventures of a Child of the Sixties

by Rifka Kreiter

Overview

On a bus trip to a Catskill Mountain ashram, Rifka Kreiter recollects her past as she travels to meet Swamiji, another new guru on the scene in the bustling spiritual marketplace of 1976. Memories abound of an eventful childhood with an unstable mother on New York’s Upper West Side and in LA, of dancing the Twist at Manhattan’s Peppermint Lounge, and of sitting in against the war—as well as getting tear-gassed in Mississippi, surviving broken love affairs, and more. A checkerboard ride through the fifties, sixties, and early seventies, Home Free is powered by Kreiter’s passionate drive for pleasure, self-knowledge, and—above all—freedom from limitations, whether psychological, political, or spiritual. Ultimately, it is a joyful trip, as she strives to bust free, be it with drugs, therapy, political activism, or meditation. At last, she arrives at a destination as unexpected as it is transformational.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631521768
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	05/16/2017
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

An astrologer once told Rifka Kreiter that a certain planetary conjunction in her chart signifies “an unusual life, full of unexpected happenings,” and this has certainly proved true. She studied acting at New York’s High School of Performing Arts, philosophy at City College of New York, and clinical psychology at Adelphi University. She worked as a waitress, hat-check girl, and hearing researcher. She was Continuity Director at a New York radio station and Assistant Convention Manager at the Concord Resort Hotel. More recently, she tutored SAT Prep courses and was Assistant Director of Admissions at a rural community college. Since 1976, she has been following an ancient yogic path; she lived in a meditation ashram for ten years, and traveled to India three times during that period. Kreiter lives in suburban New Jersey with her partner. She blogs at homefreechildofthe60s.wordpress.com.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Ties That Bind 3

Chapter 2 Ardsley 18

Chapter 3 LA, 1955 32

Chapter 4 New Frontiers 44

Chapter 5 Stagestruck 59

Chapter 6 JFK & Me 80

Chapter 7 The Loser's Club 87

Chapter 8 March On 100

Chapter 9 City College 117

Chapter 10 Alan 131

Chapter 11 A Mind Blown … 142

Chapter 12 Brave New World 151

Chapter 13 Goodbye to All That 170

Chapter 14 Brains 183

Chapter 15 Adelphi 192

Chapter 16 On 72nd Street 210

Chapter 17 The Trip 214

Chapter 18 Rinpoche 224

Chapter 19 Est 229

Chapter 20 Greyhound Odyssey 236

Chapter 21 Odyssey, Continued 248

Chapter 22 Are We There Yet? 254

Chapter 23 Home Free 259