From my new novel: "Preface: August 1972 in the Indian River Inn, Rossie"

David and Doug are having a beer. The Indian River Inn is flexible about carding people, and David and Doug looks older than they are, anyway. Their beards are full and bushy; their long ponytails are stuffed into ball caps, not that anyone here is fooled, but no one really cares anymore about those hippies up Tully Road.

The locals have come to understand that most of the hippies around here are nice, polite upper-middle-class kids who are playing at being farmers, not wild-eyed stoners out to slit the throats of their neighbors. The hippies “do you own thing” motto blends nicely with the North Country’s tendency to turn a blind eye to anything short of larceny, making for a neutral mutual ignoring of each other’s kind in public.

So David and Doug are left in peace to sit and talk, occasionally taking a gulp of now-warm Genesee (“Jenny”) beer. It’s been hot all day, but a breeze has picked up and the air is a bit crisp.

“Yeah, well, what do you think? Do we have enough to get by?” David ventures.

“I don’t know…they keep saying how cold it gets here. Sounds like a tough winter.”